Hasta La Gadget!

Amidst the frenzy of Macworld and the Consumer Electronics Show, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative quietly announced Wednesday that it would cut its staff by 50 percent, cut the salaries of 32 workers, and refocus its mission.

“We are streamlining our operations this month, cutting staff by roughly 50 percent and laying out broad targets for the coming year,” the company said in a blog post.

Though its focus is admirable – providing $100 laptops to children in developing nations – the OLPC program has struggled to catch on. Though it recently expanded its presence via Amazon.com, the project kicked off 2008 by losing the support of Intel.

“While we are saddened by this development, we remain firmly committed to our mission of getting laptops to children in developing countries,” according to a note from OLPC founder and chairman Nicholas Negroponte.

You might have your own list of great products we saw within the past year, but so does our former Editor-in-Chief and current Forward Thinking blogger, Michael J. Miller. What tops his list? The number one item from his post, My Favorite Products of 2008:

The rise of smartphone applications. Smartphones have been around for years now; so have applications that run on them; and even 3G networks. But the introduction of the iPhone 3G and Apple’s App Store has changed the landscape, by combining all of these with a user interface that just makes it really easy to download and install new applications. I’ve long thought that mobile applications would be huge, but it took Apple’s platform to make it mainstream. Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile have either introduced or are supposedly working on applications stores of their own, meaning that this concept should be much more prevalent in 2009.

Want more insight from this premier tech expert? Check out the rest of Michael’s list here.

If you’re a lucky, lucky person, someone `ust bought you that shiny new desktop or laptop you’ve been longing for. Well, try to curb your excitement a little bit longer. On his blog, Forward Thinking, Michael Miller posted a truly useful list of tasks you should do before you start using your new PC that’ll save you some trouble and heartache later on.

His first tip? “Make sure you have restore disks. These are disks that will restore your computer to its original state, just in case something bad happens to the configuration. Many computers come with restore disks, others with a “restore partition” on the hard disk, and still others with software that lets you make a restore disk. Don’t forget about this–take or make the disks now, and put them in a safe place where you’ll know where to find them. Then when and if you need them, you’ll know where to find them. I like to do this almost immediately on a new computer, right after plugging everything together, turning it on, and connecting to my home network.”

And that’s just the beginning. Take a look at all Michael’s advice for new computer owners at his post, So You Got A New Computer – Your First Tasks.