"$5 iPod" follows in $100 laptop tradition

Along the same lines as we discussed in our post Will ebooks be the Next Big Thing?, Cliff Schmidt, formerly of the Eclipse Foundation and The Apache Software Foundation, has proposed Talking Book, a $5 partially subsidized iPod-sized flash-based mp3 player that will provide health, educational, and other audio programming downloadable from Linux-based content distribution kiosks.

As reported in Linux Devices, Schidmt's Seattle-based nonprofit organization plans to sell the more expensive kiosk laptops to entrepreneurs via micro-loan programs. The entrepreneurs will sell access to content, as well as the Talking Book devices themselves. The content will basically be royalty free and uncrippled by DRM, allowing users to share them between devices using a USB cable.

In designing the Talking Book, Schmidt and his colleagues wanted to use Linux, but they could not find an embedded Linux platform that would support a $5 end product. Instead, Schmidt said they will probably go with a low-cost chipset found in Hasbro or Mattel toys.

Schmidt expects that prototypes of both the Talking Book and the Linux-based kiosk will be tested by the end of the year in Ghana and India.