1. 28 April 2008
Dr. M.P.S. Bhatia
Training and Placement Officer
NSIT, New Dehli
Dear Dr. Bhatia
For the fourth time, I am writing in regard to Manusheel Gupta and another
successful internship at One Laptop per Child (OLPC). Once again it was a
pleasure it has been to have Manu as part of the team. Again, he has been
studious and imaginative, respectful and thought-provoking, productive and
creative—in short, everything I learned to expect from him.
During his month-long internship in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Manu pursued a
number of projects on behalf of OLPC:
(A) Spreadsheet Application: Manu played a principal role in the efforts to develop
“SocialCalc”, a spreadsheet program. He worked closely with Dan Bricklin (the
inventor of the original spreadsheet, Visicalc), Luke Closs, K.S. Preeti, and Eben
Eliason in merging the SocialCalc efforts into the Sugar environment (OLPC's
learning software paradigm). The technical challenge they faced is that SocialCalc
is being developed in JavaScript while Sugar is based upon Python. SocialCalc will
become the first JavaScript application to be made available on the XO laptop,
hence the project takes on even more significance, as it will be much emulated in
the future.
(B) E-Book Reader: Manu worked with Marco Gritti and Tomeu Vizoso to support
“DJVU” and “TIFF” formats in the Read activity available on the XO laptop. The
activity now supports these formats.
(C) Keyboards: Manu worked with Walter Bender, Arjun Sarwal, and Bernardo
Innocenti in the development of Devanagari and Nepali keyboards for the XO
laptop. The Devanagari keyboard has been manufactured and is now in use in
India. The Nepali keyboard is being manufactured this month.
(D) Community Citizenship: Manu has been a leader in the OLPC-India special-
interest group. He continues to make progress with Sumit Chowdhury and
Bhalchandra Joshi from Reliance Communications, and the OLPC team towards
building a sustainable foundation in India. Has been working in managing
deployments, and building collaborations with Government bodies, and non-profit
organizations. Manu will be working with Partners at PricewaterhouseCoopers to
assist the National Insurance Company of India to deploy XO laptops in their rural
chapters all across India.
Other community engagement included a demonstration (with Dan Bricklin) of the
XO laptop on Tech Tuesday held on February 7 and a demonstration of the Read,

2. Paint, and prototype version of Spreadsheet activity to teachers in OLPC Learning
Workshop held in the month of February.
I want to thank you very much for the continued opportunity to work with Manu.
He is an outstanding young man and a bright reflection of NSIT. I look forward
towards working with him in our efforts to bring one laptop per child to India.
Sincerely,
Walter Bender