Rob Hauge has a nice update on the Raspberry Pi. I think like many people who grew up during the 80's and 90's with computers that didn't do an awful lot when they first came out of the box I'm excited about this concept.

I like the idea that any kid with enough determination will be able to take this and learn how to turn it into something useful. I've had a lot of conversations with people of a similar age and we all came to the same conclusion. The home brew computer culture of our childhoods was a key factor to our success as computer professionals years later.

Maybe kids of today will need some mentoring to grasp what is actually possible, after all so many of them these days believe computers are just Facebook/YouTube terminals. But if Raspberry Pi is a success I think we'll see a lot of software projects that make accessing the platform more universal for all.

Some projects I'd like to see come out to support this are:

• Simple Graphical Programming environment like STOS the ability to do something graphical can capture the imagination.
  
• Programming Training Courses (Open Source Training) that allows people who know about programming to teach kids who don't.
• A web framework that makes it easy for kids to produce interactive web-apps.

More info on Raspberry Pi.