Worth watching. Hat tip to Ajit Verghese.

Obviously, you get what you pay for. But I think for families and other people that don't have the cash to splurge on a high-end desktop or laptop, netbooks like this are great for removing the barriers for getting online.

Personally, I'd chuck in a cheap LCD monitor plus a wireless keyboard and mouse so you can use it as a desktop machine (and reduce wear and tear). Speakers or headphones are also a must if you want to listen to music or watch video. All up I think you can kit yourself out like this for about AU$360.

However, based on my own experience with a 3-cell battery on an Acer Aspire One, you also can't expect to really use a low-end netbook like this as a mobile or commuting computing device. If this is what you want, then you'll need to spend a little more on a netbook with a 6-cell battery.

Note: As the link appears to be broken, the model I'm talking about is an eM350 10.1" Netbook with Windows 7 starter. Wireless b/g connectivity. 1GB RAM. 160GB HDD. 1.66GHz processor.

Since I was talking about Shirky's new book the other day. I'm also a fan of Krotoski via the Guardian's Tech Weekly podcast, although her own blog looks quite interesting too.

It was a really pleasant surprise to find Anne Faulkner, from the UK's online centres, here in Australian and attending BarCamp Canberra 2010. Anne is a champion for digital inclusion in the UK and does it in a way that I don't think I've seen anyone do here in Australia just yet.

Anne Faulkner, Head of Policy and Business Development for the UK online centres network, kindly agreed to share her observations from BarCamp Canberra 2010 about the differences between the UK and Australia in terms of social innovation and digital inclusion.

SIMON: We, as you know, have tried to work the use of social media into our program. We do get some resentment from people who, some people, not everybody has access to the internet or think that they have no interest in social media sites.

Mr. SHIRKY: The conversation around the digital divide, this gap between who can participate and who can't, has shifted. In the '90s, it was mainly about access to hardware and network connections. Right? Not everybody has a computer. But as computers have gotten cheaper and spread, as they started showing up in specific places like libraries, and as phones increasingly have, even just through SMS, these kind of functions, the conversation's really shifted from the question of access to a hardware to the sense of permission and to the sense of interest. And that's a much squishier, more social question.

So part of the digital divide question, the new digital divide question is, how do we go to people who don't sense they have permission to speak in public and offer them that permission? And then the other, as you say, is the interest. If there are people who are just uninterested in this stuff, how can you make an experience that's still satisfying for them as, you know, traditional consumers of media, without making them feel bad for not being the people posting the Flickr pictures of potholes or, you know, adding a comment to an NPR story?

This is from an interview of US National Public Radio with Clay Shirky. The Digital Divide issue is often seen in simple terms - those that can access and those that can't. However, I think Clay is right that the issue has shifted. While not discussed in this interview, another point is the gap between those that do want to engage online but in a particular domain are not given the chance (such as local government consultations that are only conducted face-to-face).