It seems that the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program’s XO laptop is just popping up all over lately. Twice in as many weeks, mention of the green and white laptop has appeared in the most unusual places.
The first appearance was when I recently flew down to southern Indiana to attend an annual IT advisory committee meeting. I used to drive to this meeting when I lived in Indianapolis, but now that we’ve moved to the northern part of the state, driving an 11-hour round trip for a two-hour meeting is a bit crazed. Luckily, there’s a new commuter airline that gets me close to the university.
The first leg of the trip took me to Indianapolis, which still feels like my home airport even after a year away. There, I saw this ad, all big and backlit on the corridor wall across from my gate. 
I thought this rather surprising, because being a straight-laced Midwestern city with a relatively small airport, I really did not expect to see this kind of program advertised in Indianapolis. I was obviously wrong. I cringed though, to see that it was still up in March with the originally November dates of the Give One Get One program still displayed.
Then, this morning, I drove to the grocery store to get much-needed comfort food after discovering my wife had contracted the flu. On the way, I heard this story about the OLPC program in South Africa on Morning edition. It was a good piece, and gave me the warm and fuzzies about how Linux was helping this program along.