Sugar Labs/Current Events

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What's new

This page is updated each week (usually on Monday morning) with notes from the Sugar Labs community. (The digest is also sent to the community-news at sugarlabs.org list and blogged at walterbender.org.) If you would like to contribute, please send email to walter at sugarlabs.org by the weekend. (Also visit planet.sugarlabs.org.)

Sugar Digest

1. A dear friend and mentor, Henry Aristide “Red” Boucher, died yesterday at the age of 88. Red taught me never to say never. His energy and enthusiasm were infectious and his capacity to do the right thing was boundless. I'll miss him.

2. Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Sebastian Dziallas and the Sugar community, Sugar Labs announces the availability of Sugar on a Stick, codenamed "Strawberry". It features the latest version of the Sugar desktop environment—Version 0.84—and a number of additional activities, providing a great learning experience for new and experienced users. For more information and instructions—how to put SoaS on your USB key or how to deploy it—please refer to our release notes.

Help Wanted

3. Lionel Laske has asked for help with the French version of the Sugar FLOSS manual. He is happy to announce the results of their efforts.

4. There is a new page in the wiki, What could I do in an hour?, for collecting ideas for quick contributions. Please add your ideas.

In the community

5. Coming up this week: Sugar at Linuxtag (24–27 June in Berlin). The marketing team has made a great banner to draw attention to our booth.

6. Also, Sugar at FOSSED in Bethel, Maine, 24–26 June. Caroline Meeks and I will be running a three-hour Sugar workshop for teachers.

7. And Sugar at NECC in Washington DC, 28 June–1 July. Mike Lee, Jeff Elkner and others from the Washington DC area will be representing Sugar Labs.

8. Squeakfest will be held in Los Angeles 10–12 August and in Porto Alegre 23–25 Julho (starting today!).

9. There is an on-going discussion about setting up a program similar to the Fedora Ambassadors program to help facilitate more community involvement in Sugar. Sugar "Facilitators" would:

  • Represent Sugar to the wider public
  • Help spread the word about Sugar
  • Be a point of contact for local community members and channel the feedback to the Sugar community
  • Help recruit contributors
  • Think of creative ways for promoting Sugar in your region

Tech Talk

10. Tomeu Vizoso has been making great progress on improving support for Gnash/Flash based activities within Sugar.

11. David Van Assche started a thread on personalisation and collaboration. The gist of the discussion is that we should be able to enhance many of the collaboration and evaluation scenarios by capturing and sharing information about user preferences and activities. Please join the discussion as this could be an important topic for Sugar 0.86.

12. A few weeks ago, I mentioned that Nexcopy had donated a USB replicator to Sugar Labs. Caroline and I have successfully used the replcator to make Sugar on a Stick keys—we'll be bringin gthe system with us to FOSSED this week. We plan to use it at the Gardner Elementary School this summer as well.

13. Eric Bachard reports on http://planet.go-oo.org/ that starting in July there will be a new collaboration between OpenOffice.org Education Project and Epitech Paris. Thomas Fontenay, Abdelkader Bellabes will work on a forked version of OpenOffice.org, named OOo4Kids for performance improvement on powerless machines, like XO or gdium.

14. Manusheel Gupta reports the release of SocialCalc 0.8.3g for the Sugar environment. Please try SocialCalc.xo and share your feedback. Many thanks to Dan Bricklin, Luke Closs, K.S. Preeti, Nicholas Doiron, Claudia Urrea, and Vijit Singh.

Note to developers: K.S. Preeti has compiled a manual for programmers for SocialCalc.

15. Last week, I mentioned that I had modified Mitchel Charity's Ruler activity to look up the screen resolution so that it would render properly on non-OLPC-XO displays. I had been parsing xdpyinfo to get the display resolution. Tomeu recommended that I use gtk.gdk.screen_width_mm() instead. Alas, it turns out that neither method is returning the proper screen resolution (either from within Sugar or otherwise) on any of the machines I have been using. Back to square one.

Sugar Labs

16. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[1]]).

Community News archive

An archive of this digest is available.

Planet

The Sugar Labs Planet is found here.

Sugar in the news

15 Jun 2009 TechSavvyKidsEpisode 10 FOSSVT: Sugar on a Stick (audio)
10 Jun 2009 LWN.netSugar moves from the shadow of OLPC
27 May 2009 LWN.netActivities and the move to context-oriented desktops (subscriber link)
27 May 2009 Business WireDailymotion Launches Support for Open Video Formats and Video HTML Tag
29 Apr 2009 El MercurioAsí se vivió la fiesta del software libre
27 Apr 2009 ostaticSugar on a Stick: Good for Kids' Minds (and School Budgets)
25 Apr 2009 Free Software MagazineThe Bittersweet Facts about OLPC and Sugar
24 Apr 2009 Ars TechnicaFirst taste: Sugar on a Stick learning platform
22 Apr 2009 BetanewsBeta of Live USB Sugar OS opens
27 Mar 2009 Mass High TechGoogle promotes summer open-source internships
18 Mar 2009 MetropolisA Good Argument
16 Mar 2009 Laptop MagazineSugar Labs’ New Version of Sugar Learning Platform Is Netbook and PC Ready
16 Mar 2009 Market WatchSugar Labs Nonprofit Announces New Version of Sugar Learning Platform for Children, Runs on Netbooks and PCs
14 Feb 2009 OLPC Learning Club – DCLearning Learning on a Stick
05 Feb 2009 xconomySugar Beyond the XO Laptop: Walter Bender on OLPC, Sucrose 0.84, and “Sugar on a Stick”
26 Jan 2009 Linus MagazineSugar Defies OLPC Cutbacks
19 Jan 2009 Feeding the PenguinsThe status of Sugar, post-OLPC
16 Jan 2009 OLPC NewsSugar on Acer Aspire One & Thin Client via LTSP
12 Jan 2009 Bill Kerrthoughts about olpc cutbacks
07 Jan 2009 Ars TechnicaOLPC downsizes half of its staff, cuts Sugar development
06 Jan 2009 OLPC NewsAn Inside Look at how Microsoft got XP on the XO
30 Dec 2008 OLPC NewsSugar Labs Status at Six Months
22 Dec 2008 The GNOME ProjectSugar Labs, the nonprofit behind the OLPC software, is joining the GNOME Foundation
16 Dec 2008 Feeding the PenguinsSugar git repository change
14 Dec 2008 NPRLaptop Deal Links Rural Peru To Opportunity, Risk (Part 2)
13 Dec 2008 NPRLaptops May Change The Way Rural Peru Learns (Part 1)
09 Dec 2008 SFCSugar Labs joins Conservancy
31 Oct 2008 Linux DevicesAn OLPC dilemma: Linux or Windows?
10 Oct 2008 Feeding the PenguinSugar on Ubuntu
21 Sep 2008 GroklawInterview with Walter Bender of Sugar Labs
17 Sep 2008 Bill KerrSugar Labs
16 Sep 2008 Open SourceSugar everywhere
28 Aug 2008 OLPC NewsAn answer to Walter Bender's question 22
20 Aug 2008 OLPC NewsSugarize it: Intel Classmate 2
08 Aug 2008 Investor's Business Daily'Learning' Vs. Laptop Was Issue
06 Aug 2008 OLPC NewsTwenty-three Questions on Technology and Education
18 Jul 2008 Bill Kerrevaluating Sugar in the developed world
28 Jun 2008 OLPC NewsA Cutting Edge Sugar User Interface Demo
18 Jun 2008 PC WorldOLPC Spin-off Developing UI for Intel's Classmate PC
17 Jun 2008 DatamationIf Business Succeeds with GNU/Linux, Why Not OLPC?
11 Jun 2008 LinuxInsiderThe Sweetness of Collaborative Learning
06 Jun 2008 Bill Kerruntangling Free, Sugar, and Constructionism
06 Jun 2008 Open EducationWalter Bender Discusses Sugar Labs Foundation
06 Jun 2008 BusinessWeekOLPC: The Educational Philosophy Controversy
05 Jun 2008 Code CultureThe Distraction Machine
05 Jun 2008 BusinessWeekOLPC: The Open-Source Controversy
27 May 2008 The New York TimesWhy Walter Bender Left One Laptop Per Child
26 May 2008 Ars TechnicaOLPC software maker splits from X0 hardware, goes solo
22 May 2008 BetaNewsLinux start-up Sugar Labs in informal talks with four laptop makers
16 May 2008 OSTATICOLPC's Open Source Sugar Platform Aims for New Hardware
16 May 2008 PCWorldBender Forms Group to Promote OLPC's Sugar UI
16 May 2008 MHTBender jumps from OLPC, founds Sugar Labs
16 May 2008 News.comSugar Labs will make OLPC interface available for Eee PC, others
16 May 2008 Feeding the PeguinsThe future of Sugar
16 May 2008 Sugar listA few thoughts on SugarLabs
16 May 2008 xconomyBender Creates Sugar Labs—New Foundation to Adapt OLPC’s Laptop Interface for Other Machines
16 May 2008 BBC'$100 laptop' platform moves on
15 May 2008 OLPC wikiDual-boot XO Claim: OLPC will not work to port Sugar to Windows.
16 May 2008 SoftpediaBender Launches Sugar Labs for Better Development of OLPC's Sugar UI

Press releases

See our Press Page