mediajunk

We've just launched a new website called FooSchool.com.

The aim of the website is to provide free multimedia lessons, including video lessons, in a variety of subjects.

The design of the website is pretty basic at the moment -- we just wanted to get the site up and running quickly. But we'll overhaul the design in the near future.

We've launched the site with 40 video lessons that will help students who are learning French. Each of the lessons is three minutes long, and they are organised according to the Parisian arrondissements. There are two lessons for each arrondissiment, starting with the 1st arrondissiment.

The lessons tackle points of French language and grammar that are gradually more difficult as they progress through to the 20th arrondissiment.

So we've launched the site with over 2 hours of free video lessons. Over the next 12 months, we intend to add more subjects and lessons. Most likely these will be additional language subjects to begin with, including English language lessons for non-native speakers.

Stay tuned!

On hearing of the OLPC organisation's attempts to create a hundred-dollar-laptop that can be distributed free of cost to children in developing countries, many people (including myself) asked "if you can build them that cheaply, why not do it in developed countries too?"

It seems market forces may get there ahead of OLPC. In the US, Walmart is selling a PC for $199usd. At the time of writing, that works out at €137.43039eur".

The PC has been created by gOS -- a name which suggests Google Operating System, except it's not a Google venture. gOS is an independent company that seeks to use open source software, although it does have Google's permission to use its trademarks.

The PC boasts a decent 1.5 GHz processor, 512 MB of memory and an 80 GB hard drive. Its operating system is Ubuntu (i.e. Linux), and it makes use of Google's many (free) applications, such as Gmail, Gtalk, Calendar, Maps, Docs and Spreadsheets, etc, as well as other popular open source and Web 2.0 applications.

If you are buying in euros, you will probably see the price drop even further over the coming weeks and months, as the dollar continues to slide on currency exchange markets. As for shipping to Europe and paying the taxman when it arrives -- unfortunately, these expenses will probably cost more than the PC!