Mary Lou Jepsen, who once held the title of chief technology office of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation, the non-profit organization diligently working to provide the world's poorest children with $100 laptops, is now hard at work creating the world's first $75 laptop.

Jepsen recently founded Pixel Qi. Qi means, "the circulating life energy that in Asian philosophy is thought to be inherent in all things."

Quoting from the Pixel Qi Web site:

Just as mobile phones now have reached billions of users, we can--and perhaps must--enable the fully global reach of computers and Internet access. The open access to knowledge, and global communications that this will enable has the potential to transform many societies--enabling all the world's population to join the Information Age. This will join many communities to the global conversation, enable new forms of creation and innovation, and spur education in deprived communities.

Many of the tenets of Pixel Qi's mission statement mirror those of One Laptop Per Child, with emphasis put on hatching innovative hardware designs and concepts that stand to not only reduce the machine's price tag, but reduce its overall power consumption as well.

On the Pixel Qi Web site, Jepsen explains that the solution to bringing computer and Internet access to the world's poorest and most rural population is not necessarily a matter of increasing CPU horsepower, but rather of initiating open-source designs.

She also plans to commercialize the screen technology she engineered while working with One Laptop Per Child, which is a high-res display that allows users to go from color to black-and-white, when hit with direct sunlight.

I like hearing stories like this. Who doesn't?

It's important that organizations such as Pixel Qi and One Laptop Per Child think about those populations and people that, frankly, no one else is really thinking about.

And it is especially admirable when organizations such as these can bridge that gap that often exists between technology and the downtrodden, and how the world's most progressive sector is really where the most powerful strides towards change can be initiated.

What I find really encouraging is when people like Jepsen can take the tools currently available, and instead of simply building upon those available tools and concepts, turn them on their ear, tearing apart the status quo to bring forth new concepts that stand to change the way we do everything.

And I'd be lying if I didn't say it makes me happy to see such ingenuity come from the mind of a woman. It's the same kind of delight I get in seeing Tina Fey absolutely kill on 30 Rock, where she's the show's creator, an executive producer and every bit as funny as her male counterparts.

Of course, there are many other examples I could list, but that list continues to be too short.