Magnifique.

Slashdot posts about the OLPC Human Interface Guidelines. They're incomplete, but just check out the keyboard map. Also, according to the blog post from which the Slashdot article was derived, there are aentirely new approaches to security and application access as well... The system uses SVG for graphics, and you can "view source" on any running application! Sweet. These guys are really putting some thought into this.

Good News.

There's a lot of good news in science and technology today!

Sol will save us.

A breakthrough in Solar collection techniques raises the efficiency of solar cells. On average, solar cells collect an about 12-18% of the sun's energy, but the highest level of efficiency achieved to date has been about 30%. This new technology raises that level to an astonishing 40.7%. Clean power, here we come.

Perltidy.

Ah, perltidy. Where have you been all my life? I mean, seriously, why would anyone even bother to format code carefully when you can have a script do it flawlessly for you?

Wikipedia RSS Fun.

This page describes some of the nifty things that one can do with RSS and wikipedia. Some of this is new to me, like the new page tracker. There are also a number of cool ideas listed.

Betterhumans.

Here's a link to a Digg-style news aggregator centered on the subject of Singularity and Transhumanism, called Betterhumans. Thanks to Tepid for this one.

SmallTalk Revolution.

Many of the most innovative programming languages ever invented aren't widely used because they're designed for too broad a function, they're designed for too narrow a function, or their underlying syntax is unreadable (witness (LISP(Scheme))). One such language is Smalltalk, whose usage is limited outside a university environment not as widespread as, say Java, C++ or Perl. Still, this didn't stop Smalltalk from creating a paradigm revolution in the way that programmers think, by being the first of the Object Oriented Programming languages (The most common of which is C++).

Now, a descendant and close relative of an implementation of Smalltalk, known as Squeak, is quietly making itself known in wider circles. As a part of Croquet, Squeak is poised to become the language upon which the internet will eventually run. Squeak is also apparently going to be the language implementation of choice for users of laptops provided by project OLPC. I think I'd better start brushing up on Smalltalk and Squeak. It will almost certainly prove useful.

Update: Some changes made here. Thanks to Ramon Leon for the clarification.