Children deserve access to technology. Not just for technology's sake, but for the freedom and knowledge it represents. Children everywhere should have this freedom. That's why we founded QuinnCo.

One of the best things about QuinnCo is that we are focused on our community. Communities know their needs better than anyone else, and so we are able to put our limited resources to work most effectively this way. Unfortunately, this approach puts so many communities in need beyond our reach.

Fortunately, those communities all have their own members with both the ability and the desire to approach. Some are well known, like HeliOS in Austin, Texas. Or Free Geek in Chicago. But for every group you've heard of, there are hundreds of others, maybe some right in your community, that you don't know about.

That is why we've launched Growing Up Free, an information hub for parents, organizations and communities to find each other, to communicate and collaborate with each other, to bring the freedom that technology represents into the lives of those who would not otherwise have it.

So please, visit the new site. It has a small but growing number of organizations and projects listed. If you are a part of an organization with a similar mission to those listed, please add yourself. If you know of an organization or program in your community that isn't on our list, please add them.

If there aren't any in your community and you want to start one, we will help you get started. It doesn't take much to make a difference, a computer here, two computers there, if you help one child improve their future prospects, you've made a huge difference. We will help each other, as well as our communities and the children in them.

After months of hard work, we are pleased to announce the first official release of Qimo!

Visit our Downloads page to get your copy today!

View the full Press Release.

Help Promote Qimo:

It's been a very busy couple of weeks for us, and especially for QuinnCo. We've doubled the number of computers donated, started planning a marketing campaign for Qimo, and of course we've been preparing for our trip to SCALE 7x.

First off, let me introduce Qimo. No, not the software, Qimo the Eskimo, our new Mascot! Qimo is just the tip of the iceberg, thanks to the very generous Brian Hall for donating his time and talents we are getting all new artwork for Qimo.

Even though we haven't release a final version of Qimo, we haven't let keep us from getting computers out the door. In fact, we've given away more computers in the past week than we have all of last year! If you know of any kids who could benefit from one of our computers, please let us know, and as always if you have any computers, parts of computers, or even computer accessories, please consider donating to our cause. We would especially like to start getting printers that we can donate to households that don't already have a computer.

As if all of that wasn't enough to keep us busy, we've also been planning our trip to L.A. for the Southern California Linux Expo. Thanks again to Brian, we're going to be showing off in style. We will have commercially printed Qimo CDs to give away along with lots of other marketing material, all with much better artwork that we could have made ourselves. We've also enrolled to host a "Birds of a Feather" discussion about how Linux and Open Source can help charitable organizations save money without sacrificing capabilities.

This week has been eventful!! I wanted to send out special thanks again.

First, a thank you goes out to Pat Taft, who has been helping us establish connections at our local university!

And additionally, we owe a debt of gratitude to Chris Crisafulli, who arranged with Rod Sharp for us to have space at both the Jacksonville and Orlando Linux Expos. Thank you very much, Florida Linux Shows, for allowing us the opportunity to show at the expos!!

QuinnCo is establishing contacts and making friends with a number of people across the nation, as well. We're pleased to welcome our friend Tim (Thanatos) into the QuinnCo fold, as he will be helping us to establish our first Chapter in his community.

The response has been incredible and we're very grateful to each and every one of you who have offered help and support. Without you, we would not be doing this!!

Wow, oh, wow! Has it been a hectic couple of days for us!!

First, we've been in touch with the Walk Now for Autism folks. Very kind people! We're set to be vendors for the resource fair then. End of March.

We've also been in touch with a local university, a local hospital, and several members of the OpenSource communities. We've been thrilled to be featured in two blogs from LinuxInsider, and we've been mentioned in the blog of Mr. Jono Bacon, of Canonical.

And just tonight, we were contacted by the organizers of the Southern California Linux Expo. We have been invited to come out and show off Qimo!! We are thrilled that we will be joining them in late February. This is tremendous exposure for Qimo, a major forum to show off not only what we do, but WHY.

We've also been preparing for our Hillsborough county roll-out. That should take place very soon.

We owe a great deal of gratitude to Jono Bacon, of Canonical, for taking the time out of his busy schedule to help us along, as well as a great thank you to Katherine Noyes from Linux Insider, for featuring us in her blog. And a great deal of thanks go out to the developers of the games we feature, without them, Qimo would not be. And a thank you to the Florida LoCo community, an online community of Ubuntu users, for all of their help, support and patience. And a special thank you to MIANOSM, of Fla. LoCo, for generously donating space for us to host the CD image of the software.

Thank you ALL for your patience and support. Without our local community, this would not be possible, and without support from friends scattered far and wide, we would not be blessed like we are.

Please, go check out the website, download the CD image, and let us know what you think. We're open to suggestions, testing, critique, etc.

Take care, everyone!

One of the very generous members of the local Florida LoCo (Ubuntu Local Community) is hosting a CD image of Qimo for people to download. Thanks MianoSM!

You can download the ISO file here: Qimo RDv7 (MD5: 8e5905f7e90286ced394c078cc2cc50c)

In order to try Qimo, you will have to burn this ISO file to CD as a CD Image, not as a regular file. Some CD burning software can do this, othes can't. If yours doesn't have an option to treat the file as an image, you can get a free program here that will.

Once you have the CD created, just leave it in your CD drive and reboot your computer. When Qimo first boots, it gives you the option to try it from the CD, or install it to your computer. Trying it from the CD means that nothing on your computer will be changed, you can reboot without the CD and everything on your computer will be exactly as it was before. This is the easiest way to try Qimo, though it will run a bit slower this way.

Be Careful: Qimo isn't like the programs you can install on Windows! Installing Qimo means you are putting a totally new operating system on your computer, and it may cause problems (or totally replace) your installation of Microsoft Windows.

If you want to convert an old, unused computer into a Qimo computer, then go ahead and install it, you've got nothing to lose. Try it from the CD first, to make sure it will work on your computer, and there should be no surprises when you install. During the installation, Qimo will give you the option to remove your current operating system (like MS Windows), or install Qimo alongside it. If you choose to install Qimo alongside a current operating system, it will ask you which one you want to use.

The install will ask you to create a new user account, this is for administrative purposes. You can choose anything you want except "qimo", which is reserved. Do not choose to be automatically logged in with this account, by default the "qimo" account will be automatically logged in, so your children don't need to enter a username and password.

We hope that you enjoy trying Qimo, and we welcome any feedback. Please send any questions, comments, or problems to info@quinncoincorporated.org

Thanks again to Katherine Noyes for another mention in her weekly Blog Safari column at Linux Insider.

You can read the full article here: http://linuxinsider.com/story/Linuxy-New-Years-Resolutions-65693.html

WOW, can you believe we're preparing for the Walk Now for Autism event already? Seems like the event last year was just yesterday. I can't tell you how incredible last year was, there were upwards of 10,000 people at MOSI for the walk. To be surrounded by that many people, all of whom have something in common, is just indescribable. We're all there to support someone we love, child, friend, aunt, uncle, with Autism.

Many of you know, although some of you may not, how close this is to my heart. Quinn is an amazing child, with many, many facets, one of which is an Autism spectrum disorder. His diagnosis is something called Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, or PDD-NOS. The essence of the diagnosis is that he is an odd child, with many Autism characteristics, but not in the necessary arrangement to be considered classically autistic. His prognosis is excellent, he will function as a productive member of society. Many will not.

Autism affects 1 in every 150 children. The statistic is staggering, and we essentially have no idea what causes this spectrum of disorders. Many children are functional, but some are not, and we must fight to provide what support these children need. Funding is limited, research is even more limited still. We must, as a society, do something.

So, we - Michael, myself, Quinn and Ainsley - we walk. We put on our t-shirts and our smiles, and we WALK. We walk for ourselves, and we walk for each and every one of those ten thousand other people at MOSI, as a show of support, as a gesture of strength.

And this year, we're doubly blessed - we are also participating as an organization. QuinnCo, Inc is registered to be a vendor at the resource fair. We're going to present our software at a forum that allows multiple thousands of people to see what we do. It's an incredible opportunity for us to get off the ground.

But we need help. We need others to walk with us, if you're available. The date is March 28th, and registration is at 8:30. It's at MOSI, and yes, we do have admission to the museum afterward. Bring the family, make a day of it. Everyone is welcome! Just let me know how many are coming, so I can be sure to have the appropriate headcount in Quinn's Crew's numbers. It's a delightful day, the kids are a joy to see. But, with us being vendors as well, we're not going to be able to participate in the walk itself. We'd love to have as many of our friends and family as possible walk in our stead. Please consider, if you're available. Oh, and a note - the walk is not far. It's less than a mile, literally around the MOSI parking lot.

Additionally, if you can, please help monetarily, we would most definitely appreciate it. We know times are tough, we're certainly feeling it ourselves. It doesn't take much to make a difference, though. Imagine 10,000 people contributing 10 dollars a piece. What we could do with that. The donation information can be found at my Walk headquarters website, which follows below. Also following below is the tax information for Autism Speaks, because donations to them are tax deductible.

We hope for many blessings for you and yours in this new year.

God Bless,

Michelle Hall
http://www.walknowforautism.org/tampa/quinnsmommy

Donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law.
Autism Speaks 501 (C)(3) Tax Id #: 20-2329938

A big thank you to Katherine Noyes over at Linux Insider for the wonderful write up and exposure she's given us on her latest Blog Safari.

You can read the full article here: http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/64864.html

Quinn Co is on MySpace too, check it out for the latest news, pictures and blog entries! If you have a MySpace profile, add us to your friends list.

QuinnCo Profile: http://www.myspace.com/quinncoincorporated

The Qimo desktop is coming along nicely. It can now be run entirely from a CD, without being installed on your computer. Screenshots from the Live CD session are now available.

We have had many Pentium I and Pentium II computers donated to us that, unfortunately, are just not going to be able to run the full-sized Qimo desktop. Instead of passing up such generously donated hardware, we are also producing a trimmed-down version of Qimo, called Qimo-lite, to give new life to these computers. Some of the games from the full version of Qimo are not available on this version, but it will still come packed with many fun and educational programs, especially for younger kids.