User:SudarshanP

Negroponte's 100$ laptop per Pixel. What??
'''100$ Laptop per Pixel. What???'''

I am sure you are familiar with: www.milliondollarhomepage.com

If not check out For a buck a pixel, Brit kid nets nearly $1 million

This guy sold 977,400 pixels and earned $977,400 in just 4 months by using a simple nifty advertising strategy.

Just imagine what could be done with the MIT Brand Image & Technological Opinion standing behind a 100% Charitable cause of providing each kid on the planet with a laptop. Alex Tew was earning Pocket money/his own education as he himself admits ;-). Imagine the potential for a 100% worthy social cause.

Incidentally a single batch for Laptop production needs a million orders and the number of pixels in the image is a million. How Apt!!! If Advertisers would pay a 100$ for each pixel, A million pixels means a million laptops.

As you might observe, the idea of renting pixels is now being cloned all around. and the value of the pixels is droping down to pennies. So Is there any point in asking for a higher amount, that too 100x?

The fact is simple. Nobody wants to turn some random guy into a millionare. At least the first person (Alex Tew) derserved it coz it was his idea. Web sites, recursively trying to repeat this will fail. Infact I have heard of companies trying to raise funding this way. But I guess that would be futile.

But the case of the 100$ PC is different. Here the result of someone's click is some one's education and upbringing. Also people will be curious about what this this new mashup of ideas is all about. They will rush to the ad out of curiosity. Advertisers now get a much bigger crowd. All one needs to do is be lightning fast. If one waits until my grandma knows about this scheme, then no one will turn up. The whole action should be so fast that the novelty of the concept should not have faded away. Right now probably only the alpha geeks and early adopters are familiar with this I guess.

Who would Advertise?

 * New startups could find this an easy marketing avenue to grab eyeballs.
 * I cant see why bigger companies such as AMD, IBM, HP, Lenovo, Google, AOL, Yahoo etc, wouldn't put their names in there just for being part of the buzz.
 * Go ask Oprah to buy some pixels. Just some hints...
 * Ask Bill Gates to buy a lot of pixels... He needs to sell Vista, Visual Studio, Office, Live.com and his own Image in 2006. And has the largest treasure-chest around.
 * Search Engine Optimization guys can use this for boosting Pageranks. This page will have tremendous pagerank due to its popularity and pages linked to it. This karma will flow down to the pages that are linked to from here. I guess the price they pay would be too low for what they get.
 * In fact I hope Alex Tew will at least buy a 10x10 pixels ;-). At least here is a request to him... dont donate all that extra money to some charitable instution that eats a fat slice out of it or give it up as taxes.
 * Google already pays nearly a dollar for a toolbar download. They could buy the required number of pixels to show they care. Also they are likely to trigger off a large number of toolbar downloads. The Firefox Community could put up the "Get Firefox with Google Toolbar" button on the Page. That might also churn out a few extra dollars. Eg. [Image:http://static.flickr.com/32/59942842_14417f7841_o.gif]
 * Coke/Pepsi/Cars...
 * Add more ideas here. (this is a wiki.)

To make it even more lucrative to the advertisers, the giant image can be made the homepage of the browsers of all the laptops shipped. Or maybe a link from the desktop. This alone would generate about 15 million visitors or more to this page. Of course, the page could be later changed by the users. But still the laptops would generate at least a few visits.

So whats in it for me ;-)??? Nothing more than, the best wishes of a million families and a million inventions coming out of a million blooming minds. (@some one else's cost)

Who gets the laptops? Here is an idea... A specific deadline can be fixed say (31st of Jan). Whichever government places the largest order within that period, gets the million PCs extra. Others can suggest more ideas here or on the talk page. The general idea is to do whatever is best to increase the incentive for the governments to increase size of the initial bulk order so that the prices come tumbling down further.

How long should it take to pool the cash??? This is Web 2.0 or so you say... If Alex Tew could invent improvise and complete his idea in 4 months. How long will/should it take to redo it on Web 2.0??? Lets see... Maybe even Alex Tew might help with stuff ;-) Or we will make him to ;-). It is just an imagemap or something with tooltips. so i guess it is a non issue anyway.

Not sure if this is the right place for me to say all this. Just thought that my own User Page on the MIT wiki should not hurt anyone... In case anyone has objections. pls let me know and I shall move it elsewhere.

Warm Regards. Sudarshan. Blog: dreams2text.blogspot.com

'''Do something now fast...... I am sure there is something you can do.'''

Example Invitation to Oprah Winfrey
Heard of the www.milliondollarhomepage.com ?

If not If you are not sure what the fuss is about you check out the article on CNN Money.

Alex Tew earned a million dollars for himself by selling a million pixels(colored dots on his web page) for 1 dollar each. Random clones of this are doomed to fail. Who wants to enrich some random guy so that he lives happily ever after. Alex deserved to get it for pioneering the concepts. But(Oprah=Buzz Factory ;-).

''The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) non-profit association have launched a global program to equip hundreds of millions of students and their teachers with ultra-low-cost, individual, connected laptop computers to dramatically enhance the children’s primary and secondary education. These will be fully powered, general-purpose laptops, sized for children and adolescents, running Open Source software, with wireless mesh-network connectivity.''

''The machines will be built and sold at cost to ministries of education, with a floating price targeted at $100 and thereafter floating down. Each of the nations will identify three or more regions within their country emphasizing, when possible, rural and remote areas where all students in all primary and secondary grades receive a personal and connected machine: One Laptop per Child.''

''Participating countries: Brazil, Thailand, Egypt, United States (Massachusetts), Cambodia, Costa Rica and Tunisia have already committed in various ways. The laptops will be sold only to governments, to be distributed through the ministries of education willing to adopt the policy of one laptop per child.''

Weblinks:
 * http://laptop.media.mit.edu
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$100_laptop

As an extension of this program, a "$100 Laptop/Pixel HomePage has been created".

Now you could Buy your place in history for $100 a pixel.

The entire $100 would go towards giving a Laptop to a needy child. For Eg you could buy a 100x100pixels put up the "Big O" on the top left corner of the page. But that space will soon be gobbled up. If you want to reserve the spot, you better hurry up.!!! The pixels are available on a first come first serve basis. Imagine the value of that on the branding. People will visit the Million laptop page ever after. Imagine the amount of traffic that 'O' will bring to the Oprah.com.

You will have one more interesting and attention grabbing thing to discuss on the Oprah show. Get the additional credit of setting the ball rolling by being the first to register. Imagine the fact that the OLPC plans to ship some 15million such units soon. Imagine if the million laptop page was made the home page all those 15 million laptops how much traffic that would generate to Oprah.com. In fact these would be new users and they may spend a few weeks before they figure out how to change the home page. This is in addition to all those people who would just turn up to see what the fuss is all about. Imagine the impact of having the "Big O" on the top left corner of such a page.

Cost of books + learning materials + Good Teachers (for 12 year education) >> $100.

Just imagine the power of Google, Free Text books, Access to remote teachers. Peer to peer Networking in disasters like Tsunamis, Earthquakes, Hurricanes and the Famous blackouts... The independance from power and peer to peer capability makes it far superior to even cell phones.

Let a million more minds bloom in the bright sunhine of knowledge.

Regards. ...

(This is an wiki.) It could evove though contributions...

'''Note: Right now all this is plain hypotheses. Do not take it literally.'''