After the blog I just wrote on Brother Number Two, I need to cleanse my soul with something pleasant ... a good idea, perhaps.

Hey! Here's one!

We've all heard of the $100 laptop, right? The one that's supposed to connect kids in underdeveloped countries to the WWW, thereby giving them access to education and information that otherwise passes them by completely?

Well, it appears that the computers are a go and ready for production on a big scale to begin next month. There's a slight hitch, however, in that the computers are starting out almost twice the predicted cost ... they're about $188 to make ... and so far no one, not one single government, has sent any money for the things.

What to do? What to do?

How about capitalize on the fact that people in rolling-in-rich America are totally gaga over these cool new gadgets and sell some to them? And how, exactly, is that going to help, you might ask?

Get this:

Under Give 1 Get 1, which will run for two weeks starting Nov. 12, U.S. customers will be able to pay $399 to buy two laptops: one for themselves and one to be shipped to a child in one of those four countries. [Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, and Rwanda.]

Is that cool, or what?

Also, as of this week people can just 'give' a laptop by making a $200 donation. Check out the XO laptop Webpage for information.

Sticking with communication for another paragraph or so, it seems that Cambodian bloggers are opening up dialog in the country.

I'm a big fan of blogs and bloggers, and although that sounds like I'm in danger of hyper-extending my shoulder in an attempt to pat my own back, I do feel that the world is becoming a better place for our efforts.

As blogs move away from personal accounts of adventures in shopping and such and more toward what the soul of journalism once was, information moves more readily from one place, and one mind, to another.

Bloggers putting questions of participation in the KR trials to former King Norodom Sihanouk ... an avid blogger himself ... and such is kicking off what some are calling a "cultural revolution ... in terms of self-expression" and a "completely new era in Cambodian life".

Of course, with Cambodia's Internet penetration among the lowest in the world, there are few in the country taking advantage of this brave new world ... but those laptops we were just talking about could sure help that over the next few years!