Travel. That single word sparks thoughts of exotic beaches, hidden towns, memories, and enjoyment. Techlife has covered unique mapping tools, making your own maps, finding the perfect place to stay and more. Our diverse readership, You; often comment how much travel is a part of your life.

Meet Travelista (Techlife slang for Travel Expert) Anne Hornyak, who holds a Masters in Music; loves photography and travel; and has a day job advising Travel and Convention Bureau’s. We asked her to help Techlife readers with an education in what travel means in today’s super connected world of mobile sharing, bite size ideas, and off the path finds.

Techlife: How did you get started in the Travel and Tourism industry?
Anne Hornyak: I began my tourism career with Chicago Plus, a regional tourism office for Chicagoland. As a staff of one, I mostly managed marketing projects for the 17 Chicagoland Convention & Visitors Bureaus but also handled everything from finance to social media.

TL: What do you do today for the industry?
AH: I work mostly as a Social Media Strategist for tourism clients. I’m a cofounder of #tourismchat, a biweekly twitter chat focusing on social media in the tourism industry, and frequently tweet and blog about the same topic.

TL: Why is online travel and tourism so big? And how big is it?
AH: People love to travel and share their experiences with others. Social networks, especially Facebook, are perfect for this type of sharing. Many are also planning their trips, searching for the best discounts and then booking these trips, all online. Everything from Frommer’s to Budget Travel, Expedia to Priceline, Flickr to YouTube and travel blogs to a simple Facebook update about a friend’s recent trip…it’s all online. The travel industry is massive. Over 7.4 million U.S. jobs are directly related to it.

TL: How do you disconnect from the digital realm?
AH: I used to joke about needing a “social media detox” every once in a while but it has become rather habitual lately. Whether hiking in a state park or photographing lighthouses along Lake Michigan’s coast, I have to make time “off the grid.”

TL: What digital tips do you have for a traveler pre-trip?
AH: Research! Ask your Facebook friends and Twitter followers for recommendations and tips. Take advantage of CVBs (Convention & Visitors Bureaus) in your preferred social networks. Many of them are on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube, and have blogs and interactive websites that can help you plan your trip. Find them on your network and connect before you travel.

TL: In-trip?
AH: Have fun! If you have a smartphone, send photos and updates to your friends on Facebook and Twitter but be sure that it doesn’t get in the way of your experience. If you’re on Flickr, upload your photos regularly so you can add descriptions and geotag them accurately.

TL: Post trip?
AH: Talk about it! Create photo albums on Facebook, upload Flickr photos and YouTube videos, write a special blog post and add write reviews to TripAdvisor. Share your experience with others who are in the research stage.

TL: As of this question being written you had 3,673 Followers on Twitter who have seen 16,406 updates via your username “WhosYourAnnie“. What’s one thing you never talk about? Why?
AH: Tweets about my family and personal life are usually kept pretty vague. The internet is public and safety is the primary concern. I’ve received a few google alerts for random things I’ve tweeted about my dogs. I don’t need to give stalkers extra information.

TL: What percent of your followers and updates are related to your career?
AH: I would say that 65-75% of my followers are somehow related to the travel industry, either as travel bloggers, CVBs, or people who just like to travel and talk about it. Probably 50% of my updates are conversational replies, most of which are to friends within the tourism industry, leaving around 30% as content tweets directly related to my career.

TL: Is Twitter your main channel?
AH: Most definitely! To me, twitter is all about connecting and having conversations. It’s a little surreal but some of my closest friends, a few I have yet to meet in real life, started as twitter followers.

TL: Last question, Who’s Your Annie?
AH: I’m your Annie.

Tell me, how I can help?

As a rule, the idea of calling or emailing a support service for help with a toaster, a lawnmower or your 1982 Emerson Lilac Purple boombox is akin to having a conversation with a bear at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.  You know the metaphor, right? It takes a long time to get down to the bottom of a big endless hole.  Once there the conversation is pretty scary with you pleading that they understand.  More than likely you are left with growling.

Or there’s our way.

In a March 2010 Techlife column, we celebrated with you the reader how RDRR Labs was named a Top Android Developer by Google.  A few notes on this; RDRR Labs is a two person team including myself and a friend. Google’s definition of “top” was more than 3.5 stars and at least 5,000 downloads.  Nice qualifications.  But to us that was not “top” yet. At that time our most popular app, Timeriffic had just under a 4.5 rating and near 10,000 downloads and was available in a few languages.

We made an effort to improve. We added more languages, today we have eleven. We have added features and listened to our users and today have more than 50,000 downloads. Best of all we have increased our app’s rating to 4.56 stars and rising. And lastly we have gone on a customer service campaign and this is where the real magic has happened.

Our app is free.  We don’t need to listen to anyone. We want too. To listen even  better, we have a developed an easy error reporting tool to help us answer our users questions. And that’s where things get interesting.

A user reported our app was broken and would not work on his new Droid X. I should add his tone was more like we had stormed into his home, taken his Droid X and crushed it under our foot. In other words; he was mad. We tried a few calm replies suggesting various options to him. 20 emails later, the app was still not working. Now admittedly we didn’t have a Droid X. Could it be this one phone actually didn’t like our app? It was worth finding out.

Techlife reader to the rescue!  I sent a quick message to a loyal reader who had just been bragging about her new Droid X. She was happy to see if the app worked. She installed it and reported back it was great. I thanked her and now was really stumped. How could our app be showing errors so different from what was expected? I took another crack, with a long email detailing the steps our loyal reader had taken and how the app worked great. The email I got back was the key to the whole mystery.

Our efforts are exactly what you can do when getting or giving help. Stay calm. Look carefully at the problem from the user’s side and above all don’t give up. The email we got back detailed the issue and talked about a specific feature. A feature we didn’t offer! It was then I realized he wasn’t using our app at all! A quick exchange  and he replied how happy he was we had solved his problem. Case closed.

Loyal Techlife reader Dan contacted me again. (Other readers feel free to follow his lead.) Dan’s company wanted to convey “some information” and he was brainstorming with me and said, “What about a graph?” Now rule 1 of brainstorming is there are no bad ideas. And as I like to add, only bad people who rip on ideas that scare them.

So I listened. You could hear in his voice that this was an idea he was really loving.  He started really getting focused on this one idea.  About this time I said “info ick.”  ”Huh?” he replied.  I said take your idea one step further, Info-graph-ic.  Silence. Then even more silence. “What do you mean?”

“An infographic is a way of displaying more than data in a simple pie chart or a bar graph,” I explained.  Now fellow readers, you have the advantage here of being able to see our beautiful illustrations.  Dan needed a bit further explanation, and the definition I used was,  ”An infographic is exactly as it sounds. A set or multiple sets of information that is a graphic designed to inform, entertain and simplify massive amounts of somehow related data.”  ”I love it!” he burst out.

To illustrate a personal infographic, we directed him and all our Techlife readers to visit Brazil’s ionz personality map creation tool. (Click the flag in the upper right.)  With a few simple questions answered by you, nearly 50 points of data are relayed back and graphically represented against the other 66,000 plus people who have participated in these questions.  They even let you save your infographic as wallpaper for your computer.

Can anyone create an infographic?

Probably not. To effectively share unique information, you need both the information and someone with skills to help you craft your design. With many of our past columns we often offer a how-to, so this seems like a little departure from our normal advice. It is.

How to create your own infographic

Ok fine…We want you to be a success and feel good so here’s a small step by step to making a great infographic.  Be warned this is not for the timid.

Step 1 – Collect your Data  - How many engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Step 2 - Review your data’s key findings – Clients love Fed Ex over Bernie’s horse and buggy delivery service.

Step 3 – Pick out how multiple findings might overlap/be juxtaposed. – People who love French Fries also enjoy French Films.

Step 4 – Visually represent your data. – If this icon represents our purple hair customers then this map of Cleveland will be used to show growth of superball sales.

Wow I was wrong, just 4 steps that was easy. Next time…prepare for quick lesson in particle nuclear physics.  My sincerest apologies for that last comment to all our friends in the physics department. We all know chemistry has the grand daddy of all cool infographics – The Periodic Table of Elements.  Physicists are always lamenting that, but hey maybe now they too can make their own.

If you make a cool infographic, be sure to share it with us.  Who will be the first to design an infographic  with all the bad jokes this column has compared to useful information?

We* are hobbyists just having fun developing for Android, but Google sure knows how to make our day.  Check out the email we got.

From: Android Market
Date: Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 3:46 PM
Subject: Device Seeding Program for Top Android Market Developers
To: rdrr.labs@gmail.com

Subject: Device Seeding Program for Top Android Market Developers

Due to your contribution to the success of Android Market, we would like to present you with a brand new Android device as part of our developer device seeding program. You are receiving this message because you’re one of the top developers in Android Market with one or more of your applications having a 3.5 star or higher rating and more than 5,000 unique downloads.

In order to receive this device, you must click through to this site, read the terms and conditions of the offer and fill out the registration form to give us your current mailing address so that we can ship your device.

You will receive either a Verizon Droid by Motorola or a Nexus One. Developers with mailing addresses in the US will receive either a Droid or Nexus one, based on random distribution. Developers from Canada, EU, and the EEA states (Norway, Lichtenstein), Switzerland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore will receive a Nexus One. Developers with mailing addresses in countries not listed above will not receive a phone since these phones are not certified to be used in other countries.

We hope that you will enjoy your new device and continue to build more insanely popular apps for Android!

(email links removed)

RDRR Labs has:

Timeriffic with near 4.5 stars and way more downloads.
24 a beta app has 3.8 stars and way more downloads.
Brighteriffic has near 4 stars and way more downloads.

*Update 1: “We” means, a friend who does the code and Techlife’s lead writer who does visual design for Android apps.

What is your organization’s magic number?

Searches resulting in your website? Visitors to your brick and mortar store? Subscribers to your social media page; fans, friends, feeds, readers? For each business owner the answer is different.  I propose the answer is: 1,000 Loyal Customers.

Recently an excited Techlife reader called about to start a business.  They had some great long term ideas on their success once they had tons of website visitors.  But they were missing the element of growth in their plan.  I politely listened to all their excitement and unbridled energy.   But when I asked how would they get their first 1,000 Loyal Customers they didn’t know.

A Historical 1,000

In the days of the general store in America, small towns would have a single store that carried a wide variety of  products.  Often times this store was too small to carry all the things people would need, so a proprietor would stock catalogs from various places allowing a patron to pick out items that could be ordered and shipped to the store for future pickup.  This made the customer loyal, partly because they had no where else to turn, and partly because in small towns supporting a local business was good for the whole town.

Fast forward to today, where there are megastores with megabrands advertising on megastations offering megasavings if you spend megabucks.  Three example companies that have grown into megabrands Google, Ebay and Amazon don’t manufacture any “real” products (yes Amazon does have the Kindle, to push the purchase of more ebooks.) These three company’s are general store’s of data.

What is a Loyal Customer?

A Loyal Customer for most organizations is a person who actively seeks out your brand.  Loyal customers aren’t swayed easily to switch brands.  Loyal customers refer their favorite brands to others.  Loyal customers ride out a small problem or a price increase.   Most important of all, Loyal Customer’s return again and again.

1,000 Loyal Customers is admittedly simple math which states for each employee an organization needs a 1,000 Loyal Customers who return $100 net profit each year.  Good examples of unique organizations with easy to spot Loyal Customers are local restaurants, local clothing stores, museums and summer camps.  In each of these examples if the organization releases a new product or revenue stream Loyal Customers eagerly support the effort.

Techlife was once again inspired by Kevin Kelly, who’s column on 1,000 True Fans is aimed at artists such as; painters, musicians; photographers; writers and more.  His goal is make those artists realize having a megahit is hard, but achieving 1,000 True Fans is enough to sustain the artist comfortably.

Start with One

When expanded to organizations, readers of Techlife are able to use online tools like websites and social networks to connect and build their community of 1,000 Loyal Customers.  It may seem daunting, but break it down.  Who are your Loyal Customers today?  Where did you find them?  Will they refer you to the next Loyal Customer?

Share with us in the comments.  How many Loyal Customers do you have today?  What’s your goal?

A good idea before a bad economy has turned into an even better idea during a horrendous economy. Freecycling. While many people use Ebay to sell items for money to anyone and other people use Craig’s List to sell (and sometimes trade or give) items somewhat locally, there is another option, Freecycle.org. Started in 2003, the non-profit organization is basically a simple way to offer items you no longer want to people who might want them, the only catch: everything is free.

Initially Freecycle was conceived as a way for people to offer items to non-profits, and non-profits to respond if they wanted them. It quickly expanded to include anyone, anywhere and now there are 85 countries and near 5000 local group made up of 7,000,000 people all following the same set of principles. Let’s fill up fewer landfills with items that other people might care to rescue.

It is recycling with a few well thought out rules. One of the biggest is letting people join any group, but keeping in mind each group is based on a small geographic area such as a town, or county.  As such groups vary in size.  The other important rule is what you can’t offer including no listing illegal items, tobacco items, alcohol, firearms, people, pornography, or medicine of any kind. Each local freecycle group is run by volunteer moderators who enforce the rules and the very specific way to offer, inquire and list items.

Most groups use a simple email list tool called Yahoo Groups to share their items and indicate items they are looking for or items that have been taken.  Techlife has been a user of YahooGroups since 1998, as a long time user who was introduced to this great service by Alan Braverman, employee #1 at YahooGroups (formerly eGroups) we asked him what he thought of Freecycle.

“Freecycle has a great mission.  It is gratifying to know something we all worked so hard on more than 10 years ago at eGroups is not just being used but growing, growing a great organization and supporting such a beneficial cause as saving the environment and helping people recycle.  Grassroots movements have always been great at adapting new technology, but with close to 5000 groups and 7,000,000 members it is clear that Freecycle.org is successfully spreading a positive message worldwide.”

How to Freecycle?

Easy! First make sure you have a Yahoo ID with an email associated to it, this lets you access any of the nearly 4800 local freecycle groups which use the Yahoo Groups email list system.  Once you have a Yahoo ID, visit freecycle.org, and sign up for an account with the other 7,000,000+ members all over the globe, of course sticking to your little area of it.  (Krakow, Poland has 231 members for example!)

To join a local group, search for your hometown and you will likely get at least one town nearby if not a few hundred.  Sign up on freecycle.org and make sure you use the same email as associated with your Yahoo ID (little known fact, you don’t need to use your Yahoo email as your main email).  Then select one or more groups, each which might have a slightly different set of rules but all following the same overarching principal.

Click “Join this Group” and away you go.  I joined quite a few groups in my area, each with a different feel.  One let me join right away, another had a lot of “we are looking for quality and people who give not just take” and yet a third let me browse the current listings before even joining.

Start listing your items and you will soon have a few people who want them.  Arrange a pickup and you are done.

Is this for real?

While your experience may vary, I was looking over items here at Techlife HQ and considering what we should recycle with the locals when emails started coming in for various items; some candles, a dsl modem and a working Palm Tungsten T.  I have a friend who still (tries) using their Palm but was complaining how it was getting pretty old and not always working.

I replied to the original poster indicating when I could get the device, drove over, picked it up and in just a few hours I had completed my first freecycle.  I plan on giving my friend this one for a backup device.  Plus it was saved from a landfill. (Thanks Marija!)  Your mileage may vary, but if all you want is a clean basement, here’s a great easy way to make that happen and keep the Earth a bit cleaner.

Freecycle.org is a Techlife must try.  It is easy.

Thanks to loyal reader Brad for sharing his experience and introducing us to Freecycle.  Please email or comment ideas for sites you find amazing.  It’s our own little way to recycle.

Dear Techlife,

I don’t have a lot of money, but my old computer is dying on me.  I think there is something wrong with the power supply or the fan thingy.  Either way, I am going to replace this 5 year old beast with a new one.  Tell me how to buy a computer with today’s choices, and I will.  I am drowning in too much information.

To many computer choices and no time,

Overwhelmed

Dear Overwhelmed,

As a writer for Techlife and the owner of an internet marketing and hosting company we are actually asked this question a few times a week.  We have got “How to buy a new computer” down to the following three simple questions, cause hey, we like things simple.

Of course we need a quick paragraph of assumptions.  You are replacing an existing machine, pretty much a given these days.  You have data you don’t want to lose. “Duh!” You would like something that will last, so you don’t have to buy again in 1 or 2 years.  Yes, the word genius is tossed around quite often, feel free to to use it again.  You are going to at a minimum surf the net and send email.    ”Of course I am.  Enough of the small talk, let’s skip to the questions already, you had me at easy.” 

Top 5 Laptops on Amazon – $675 – $1600, 13.3 – 16 inch screen size, 2 – 3 GB RAM standard and DVD Drives

Question 1 – What can you bench press?

Answer – “Are you kidding?  This is your first question?”  Give me a chance, I have a reason for this.  These days there are a few types of “new” computers for you to consider.  The standard desktop, a laptop or a netbook.  ”Yeah I know this already, the desktop is the cheapest, the laptop is the lightest and – ”  Not so fast there professor, things have changed.  Netbooks are even smaller laptops, and are often both the cheapest and the lightest.  Many also have longer battery life than a regular laptop.  ”So what’s the downside, they sound perfect?”  Well these machines are normally small which means, a smaller keyboard and a smaller screen and most don’t include a DVD player/recorder.  We typically tell people to visit an electronics store or even your local Target and Walmart to see these machines first hand.  They are also sometimes a bit less powerful than a laptop or desktop, which is probably ok if you are doing the basics; email, web surfing, paying a few bills.

Top 5 Netbooks on Amazon – $319 – $389, 8.9 – 10.1 inch screen size, 1 GB RAM standard, some with 9.5 hour batteries

Question 2 – What’s the demo?

Answer – “The demo?”  Sorry, in marketing speak the demographic.  Who is using this machine?  Business, Family with little kids, a young woman on her way to college? What will they do on the machine?  If you are a single business user who will be the only person on the machine, what do you use it for?  Presentations?  Invoicing? A family might have a dad into photography and who pays some bills, a mom who shops for the kids clothes and researches and plans her garden, a son who wants to play video games and a daughter who wants to use voice and video chat.  ”What about homework?”  I did say “want” not “need.”  Finally a college student can hopefully get by on a single machine for the life of school, which means staying in touch with home, writing papers, research, and maybe some 3D models of chemicals, people, art, or fashion depending on her major.  

Surprisingly the business user might be able to get by with a low powered netbook, if they have a lot of travel and a full size monitor, keyboard and mouse in their office.  The active family needs a bit larger hard drive with all the users and their various needs.  The college student has to consider a combination of power, speed and mobility as well as what their prospective career calls “standard.”

Question 3 – Lottery or  Stimulus?

Answer – For the high percentage of lottery winners who read Techlife we want you to know the price of a computer is just as important to those looking for a little economic stimulus love. When it comes to price each of the three types have their high and low end.  I always recommend looking at the maximum amount of RAM your machine can accept, it rarely comes with all that can be put on board.  Buying extra RAM is one of the best ways to ensure a speedy machine.  If you are looking to skimp, you can always opt for a smaller hard drive and use an external drive to store archives, which has another benefit of being a bit more secure.  

Final thoughts:  We have been suggesting people get laptops these days.  They are less power hungry then a desktop which means a slightly lower cost of ownership.  They have their own battery backup in case of a power failure while you are working on that masterpiece.  With your keyboard, monitor and mouse can act very much like a desktop and take up less space in the process.  Let us know what you think the best machine and why.

New Release.  New Version.  Sequel.  The second time around audiences know what to expect and the build up is extremely exciting.  This is why we tell clients to re-invent themselves.  It is exciting for the client, their employees and their customers.  Everyone likes the makeover.

We had three exciting stories recently in Techlife that all are forms of version 2.0.  All of them are exciting and unique.

First we have a follow-up to the Techlife Gift Guide with version 2.0 of the Give 1 Get 1 program from the folks at OLPC that we wrote about last year.  You can get involved and make the donation of a lifetime, by giving the metaphorical fishing pole..

Next we have two companies who have released new versions of very popular free flash games.  XGen Studios released the new Stick Arena Ballistick and The Casual Collective released a new site with a whole bunch of upgrades and new games. We pit them head to head. (Hint we are all winners.)

Finally, we were emailed from a reader the viral video that was part of a presidential campaign starring “you” the voter.  It was a unique bit of marketing with certain Web 2.0 twist.  And while the election is over this bit of marketing is something we are sure to see more of as time goes on.

Do you have re-make, re-do, re-invention or re-ally good idea?  Share it with us.

We love our readers!  Let me say that again, we LOVE our readers.  A faithful Techlife reader just sent me this custom viral video which certainly got my attention and had me watch it.  Techlife is covering this technology, more than posting election coverage as this technology will be seen more and more.  This viral tool has been used more than 9.7 million times for this site alone according to the New York Times.  It is a very interesting move to get American’s out to vote.

You will notice if you watch carefully, this video has my name, Dave Kaufman, sprinkled throughout in various places.   It came with an email, targeting me by name as well.  I have to say it was very well done and got us thinking about the ways people and companies will be soon making more and more personal approaches to everything we do.  It is certainly a form of Digital Ethnography.

I appreciated the humorous nature of this video and website effort, but I wonder how much I will like it when it tells a young child to do something and uses their name.  Another scary use of this technology is more advanced phishing or social hacking scams.

Guy Kawaski appreciates the humor and suggest’s a good use for his own company and as a marketing tactic.  A site called New York Politics Room 8 talks a bit about the study showing personalization in election marketing helps get voters to turn out.

For today enjoy it and if you want to send one to a friend click here, but let us know what you think and always keep the great emails coming in.

Dear Techlife,

As a long time reader, I noticed all of a sudden a big change.  You have all these Amazon links.  I like Amazon as much as the next person but do you really think we need to have you throw it in our face like that?

Annoyed

Dear Annoyed…

Our print editor for the syndicated column asked us to write a Gift Guide for the upcoming column, so we started with the easiest solution that everyone seems to trust.  Amazon.com has been around for a while and provides a great shopping experience with reviews and photos and videos.  We wrote about them back in 2005 for “Shopping 101” and rarely do we highlight them.

The gift guide series will be over soon.  “Should we not expect a present from you this year?”  We love all the feedback from our readers.  Keep it coming.

Techlife

Techlife loves the letters we get from readers Their real world problems are things many other readers deal with on a regular basis. This month the ever common, “technology for the sake of technology” issue rears its ugly noggin. Can our hero help? Can we resolve the dilemma?

(part of the syndicated print column’s writing process exposed to online readers)

Techlife has gone mobile. As Sidekick’s Blackberry’s gain in popularity we often get requests from readers to offer a quick loading mobile edition. When selecting our direction we wanted to make sure to provide the same great experience our readers have come to enjoy in the paper edition and full web edition.

As you can see from these screen captures it’s a pretty decent option. Please let us know if you find any browsers that have issues. The nice thing is it should auto-detect your mobile browser.

Dear Techlife,

My organization bought a piece of technology that is cumbersome and hard to use and really takes an expert which we don’t have on staff. If we could use it correctly it would make life easier and improve our bottom line.

I think we made a mistake as do many other co-workers and partners. It is the industry standard but maybe not a perfect fit for us. Can we just cut bait already and move on?

Sincerely,

Troubled by Tech

Dear Troubled,

Techlife is one facet of work and life, but these days there are many vying for attention in this ever faster world we inhabit. Sometimes it is easy for people and organizations to get swept up on the crest of a wave, riding the technologic marvels created for consumption. Often technology claims of better, faster, stronger are planted right along side. But as our headline asks, is this always true or would people have us believe we do function in a vacuum devoid of all other forces?

We encounter examples daily of clients and prospects who were oversold. It reminds me of the elementary children’s problem.

A child just finished a big dinner, and someone asks them if they want ice cream. There’s always room for ice cream, right? If the child was asked would you like a small or large portion, 99% would reply, LARGE! They likely would eat the size small portion but not finish the large.

(more…)

Google’s inviting all their users to become trapeze artist’s and work without a net, an Inter-net connection. The innovation machine that is Google just keeps on rolling, and their newest trick is using a tool called Google Gears to let users work untethered.

One of the bigger drawbacks of Google Docs is now a thing of the past. Techlife Illustrated has put together this easy to follow guide to getting Google Docs offline. (This is our first Illustrated How To, leave a comment with your thoughts.)

Step 1

While in Google Docs, in the upper right hand corner is a link to “Offline.” Which gets Google Gears on your computer.

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While writing a recent article, on the OLPC XO Laptop, one of the all time most popular articles on Techlife, we got to meet Wayan Vota the founder of OLPC News. Wayan’s a strong, independent voice in the community of OLPC and the XO Laptop. He was featured on 60 Minutes for his work. (see 7:06 mark on Techlife TV for Wayan) I appreciated his grasp of both technology and non-profits and how the two mesh, so we sat down with him to learn more about what makes Wayan tick (tick, tick.) (unabashed 60 Minute pun for the OLPCNews readers who know me.)

Lesley Stahl discusses the 60 Minutes piece on the OLPC on Techlife TV.

Techlife: Wayan Vota. Interesting name, what are the origins?

Wayan Vota: Born on Bali to hippie folks. Got a local name in the process.

TL: Why did you start OLPC News?

WV: In the summer of 2006 I noticed there was much hype around OLPC, but little thoughtful analysis of its proposed methods and assumed impacts. I wanted to explore the details of OLPC’s implementation plan – how it expected to actually get laptops in the hands of children worldwide – in public form of open commentary and discussion. With ~5,000 daily readers, over a dozen writers, and too many contributors to count, I feel that OLPC News is successful beyond my wildest dreams.

(more…)