I can't remember hearing a more inspiring speaker, eloquently relating stories on the importance of education, learning, solving the world's big problems, the technical and business details of actually building $100 laptops, Seymour Papert and logo, Linux, open source, raising millions of dollars of funding in just 3 emails and a few hours, wikipedia, and 'google' being the first English word learnt by children in remote primitive villages.

The project is ambitious and potentially world-changing - he expects to ship 100 million laptops a year for 10 years to the world's 1 billion children. Listening to his enthusiasm and intelligence, and realising that his connections and reputation in academia, government and business are stellar (to say the least), then you start to think that maybe he might just be able to pull this off. He will be releasing a prototype on November 17, so we'll know pretty soon.

I have learned that Alan Kay is involved in the project. Now just imagine Squeak and Seaside in the hands of millions of children...

Update 1 : article in Tribune de Genève (French)

Update 2: laptop.media.mit.edu now has drawings. Cnet article has some specs.