Exploring the neighborhood(s)

A school teacher near my old Western Massachusetts hometown has a column on MassLive (The Springfield Republican newspaper) about his XO and mentions not finding others to chat with...

It's not as if I really need another technology gadget in my life. We already have a desktop computer, a laptop, a few digital camcorders, two digital cameras, a handful of MP3 players and a digital voice recorder or two. I use most of them, regularly. Really, I do. I didn't really need this XO.

There are, however, two reasons why I took the plunge with this project...

And his reasons are pretty similar to mine.

He's already found a few other XO donors in his area, but is looking for more. Surprise: I've found them! My XO isn't lonely anymore: I've started using a "jabber" connection set up by a gentleman in Rhode Island that lets me share documents, chat sessions and other activities with a colorful crowd of XO users around the world (see the image).

My "neighborhood" now shows not only local Wifi antennas here in Radford, but other XO owners and the activities they are sharing. (Each XO looks like an O atop an X, shared documents look like documents, chats are word balloons, etc.)

Note: I also just stumbled on this very nice list of keyboard shortcuts for the XO