Ken Novak: Digital Development

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 07:15:08 GMT

Bruce Sterling update: Now calling his concept "cybergreens": "They're all about creating irresistible consumer demand for cool objects that will yield a global atmosphere upgrade. It's the Net vs. the 20th-century fossil order in a fight that the cybergreens are winning. Why? Because they're not about spiritual potential, human decency, small is beautiful, peace, justice or anything else unattainable. The cybergreens are about stuff people want, such as health, sex, glamour, hot products, awesome bandwidth, tech innovation and tons of money.

We're gonna glam, spend and consume our way into planetary survival. My own favorite sci-fi planetary-saving scheme for naming, numbering and linking to the Internet every piece of junk we create so that it can be corralled and briskly recycled, creating a cradle-to-cradle postindustrial order and averting planetary doom, may sound pretty shocking and alien. But I wrote that book while in residency at a famous design school. I received an honorary doctorate there and the book was published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It gets great reviews, designers love it. It's not even science fiction -- it's a cybergreen manifesto.

In 1998, I had it figured that the dot-com boom would become a dot-green boom. It took a while for others to get it. Some still don't. They think I'm joking. They are still used to thinking of greenness as being "counter" and "alternative" -- they don't understand that 21st-century green is and must be about everything -- the works. Sustainability is comprehensive. That which is not sustainable doesn't go on. Glamorous green."

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:34:46 GMT

Coltan and Your Mobile: Disturbing effect of a key electronic material on the ongoing disaster in the Congo. "Columbite-tantalite (from here on referred to as Coltan). On its own it looks and feels like a very fertile soil, but when refined you get a highly heat-resistant metal powder called tantalum. Once refined, coltan has myriad uses, all of which pertain to its particular properties of being a dense mineral with the ability to withstand high temperatures and stress.To the high-tech industry this tantalum is a magic dust that is essential in making computer chips, stereo’s, VCR and DVD players and mobile phones. As such, coltan derivatives are used as capacitors in devices such as mobile phones and even complex missile guidance systems. ..

Coltan is mined by hand in the Congo by groups of men digging basins in streams by scrapping off the surface mud. They then “slosh” the water around the crater, which causes the Coltan ore to settle to the bottom of the crater where it is retrieved by the miners...

While a fair majority of the worlds tantalum supply comes from legitimate mining operations in Australia, Canada and Brazil the recent demand for tantalum has caused a more sinister market to begin flourishing in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where 80% of the world’s known coltan supply is subject to “highly organized and systematic exploitation.” There, warring rebel groups - many funded and supplied by neighboring Rwanda and Uganda - are exploiting coltan mining in the Eastern DRC to help finance political and human oppression, child enslavement, torture and war. The mining area is also within one of the main ranges of the threatened Eastern Lowland Gorilla .. In April of 2001 the United Nations issued a report on the rape of resources from the DRC. In their findings field investigators reported that Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundian rebels had looted and smuggled thousands of tons of coltan from the Congo into their countries to export to the global market, using the profits to finance their militias. ..Coltan smuggling has also been implicated as a major source of income for the military occupation of Congo which is also linked to forced child enlisting, rape and the rampant spread of HIV. ..

Manufacturers rely on their “suppliers” which are Tantalum capacitor makers like Kemet of Greenville, S.C., the world’s largest tantalum capacitor maker and on the companies trading the minerals. .. some 80 percent of the worlds Coltan comes from the DRC and most of that passes through several black market hands before its finally delivered to the refineries it what appears to be legitimate means."

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 07:24:52 GMT

Global Voices Online: Interesting compilation of current blog material from citizens of many counties, including Lebanon, Libya, China, Iran, with coverage of local news. Would provide interesting inputs to the "open source intelligence" movement.

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 07:16:04 GMT

Inflated influence of India's IT-factor: "In 2003, for example, India claimed to have exported US$8.7 billion worth of software, most of which went to the United States. But US companies recorded just US$420 million worth of software imports from India — a remarkable 20-fold difference. The GAO believes that this huge inconsistency arises, in part, from India misreporting financial data. For instance, India counts the earnings of all temporary workers in the United States as part of their exports figures. But this is against universally-accepted financial disclosure conventions suggested by the International Monetary Fund. The result is a gross over-representation of Indian software exports.Several factors also point to a relatively small impact on economic development from India's IT industry. In 2005, for instance, the IT exports industry was a marginal job-creator, employing 770,000 people — just 0.21 per cent of the total labour force."

Tue, 26 Dec 2006 08:25:16 GMT

WaterHealth International Closes Series C Funding: "WaterHealth International, Inc. (WHI) today announced the final close of its Series C funding for a total equity investment of more than $11 million. SAIL Venture Partners, L.P., anchored the latest investment of $4 million. Series A investor Plebys International LLC, founded and led by WHI CEO Tralance Addy, also invested in this round. The new investments are in addition to the $7.25 million equity investment anchored by Dow Venture Capital that WHI announced last month.

WHI has more than 450 installations of its water purification and disinfection systems in developing countries around the world. This additional funding further strengthens WHI and will allow for accelerated growth in the company's target markets, primarily India and South Asia, West Africa, the Philippines and Mexico." This is the product developed by Ashok Gadgil, which I've been following for a few years. Glad to see it get substantial backing.

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 22:46:19 GMT

Non-profit Discount - DreamHost: Free web hosting for non profits from a reputable hoster. (via John Sequeria).

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 17:58:20 GMT

Strong Angel 3 lessons: This year's Strong Angel exercise has received extensive coverage. An excellent long summary is provided by Sanjana at his ict4peace blog. The linked magazine article provides a few tech takeaways:

"Perhaps the most popular technology used during Strong Angel was the Fossil Abacus smart personal object technology (SPOT) watch. This is a wristwatch with an embedded FM radio receiver designed to receive text messages. Although the watches are primarily intended for personal use, a portable and configurable FM transmitter with a 50-mile radius allows the devices to operate in areas without infrastructure, power or Internet connectivity. Messages can be sent to selected groups of SPOT wearers, such as police, fire department personnel and National Guard troops. ..
[Also popular were] satellite dishes manufactured by GATR Technologies, Huntsville, Alabama. The dishes resemble oversized beach balls and are available in several sizes. The smallest antennas weigh 70 pounds and provide a two-megabit-per-second Internet connection. ..
Route 1 Incorporated, Toronto, Canada, provided all of the event’s participants with a device called a Mobikey. Roughly the size of a data stick, it fits into a computer’s universal serial bus port to create a virtual private tunnel from any terminal or computer that users are operating in the field back to their organization’s server or personal desktop. ..
One assumption that was quickly dispelled was that wireless Internet connectivity could be easily established. “Everybody showed up with a Wi-Fi [wireless fidelity] router and nobody could get online,” [Microsoft's] Kirkpatrick shares."

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 07:18:45 GMT

Record-Breaking Governance Prize Launched: Great idea: reward leaders to leave office peacefully. "Mo Ibrahim Foundation announced today a $5 million annual prize for African leaders who were elected fairly, improved their country's standard of living, and handed over power peacefully to the next elected government.

Recipients of the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership will get $500,000 a year in their first 10 years out of office, and $200,000 a year for the rest of their lives. The prize will be the world's most generous award, according to the foundation. .. [Ibrahim] hopes to make the first award by the end of 2007.

The prize's selection committee will choose winners with the help of a governance index that is being developed by Dr. Robert Rotberg at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The foundation will spend about $500,000 a year to develop and update the index. ..

Rotberg told AllAfrica that most existing measures rely on interviews and other forms of documentation for comparison, but that he will use only quantifiable, objective measures. For example, in measuring changes to the national infrastructure, the index may count the miles of paved road in a country. To measure political freedom, team members may identify the number of journalists or opposition leaders held in prison. ..

Ibrahim said his financial models assume that leaders will live 25 years after leaving office, making the estimated net prize worth $8 million. With new winners being added each year, the cost to the foundation will quickly rise into the tens of millions, but Ibrahim said .. "We are fully funded. We are not seeking money from anybody."

Much of Ibrahim's personal fortune comes from last year's sale of his African telecommunications company, Celtel, to Kuwait's MTC for $3.4 billion."

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 07:11:42 GMT

WorldChanging book and book tour: I've been a fan of the blog for years, and now it's a book, complete with big city book tour. Bravo!

Sun, 01 Oct 2006 05:55:29 GMT

Windows XP Multiuser Remote Desktop: With a couple file renames and a registry change, XP can run three remote desktop sessions (normal desktop plus 2 more).
Combined with the $20-30 terminals that are available from outlets like www.surpluscomputers.com, and the $150-250 LCD screens, you can extend an ordinary PC to multiple users (with very low power and zero noise to boot).

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 02:13:57 GMT

Mifos: Grameen Foundation USA is sponsoring teh open-source development of an ambitious system for microfinance management. "Mifos is a universal, flexible and scalable software platform for information management for the global microfinance community. Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) will use Mifos as their base operational software to administer their client accounts and financial portfolio. Loan officers will use it to create loans as well as savings, insurance and other financial services. Mifos will be used to record all transactions. It will manage the user and client database, define the products, and create reports for internal use and outside reporting to regulators, funders and supporters. Finally, it will include surveys to help measure the social impact of the MFI operation."

Sun, 02 Jul 2006 18:39:11 GMT

I'm back from my trip to the Conservation International conference in Madagascar. I kept a travel blog, which is now finished, at http://kensroad.blogspot.com/ . Feel free to visit.

Sat, 28 Jan 2006 07:17:30 GMT

Lessons of post-Cold War development: Summarizes and links to papers by Harvard's Dani Rodrik, especially an excellent review of economic development policies since 1990, "Goodbye Washington Consensus, Hello Washington Confusion?" For example: "While it is true that over the past ten years scores of developing nations have not experienced economic growth, and in some cases have actually fallen backwards, despite following the rules of the Washington Consensus, paradoxically, that doesn't mean the era of globalization has been an unmitigated disaster. Quite the contrary: "From the standpoint of global poverty," writes Rodrik, "the last two decades have proved the most favorable that the world has ever experienced. Rapid economic growth in China, India, and a few other Asian countries has resulted in an absolute reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty."

But what's fascinating is that China and India made their march forward, according to Rodrik, not by willy nilly opening up their markets with neoliberal abandon, but with great attention to policy choices, and with explicit government involvement in the economy that can only be described as industrial policy. The same was true of many of the East Asian nations who developed earlier, like Taiwan and South Korea, which only started to seriously open up after they had achieved substantial economic growth through a mix of protectionism, export subsidies, and other policy choices."

Sat, 28 Jan 2006 06:38:17 GMT

Text messaging, thumb drives, and Web mail for disasters: "Communications systems were largely useless when Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast region, “but text messaging did work,” said John Lawson, CIO of Tulane University in New Orleans. Lawson and other officials who were on the ground during Katrina’s aftermath told a gathering of public-sector CIOs that because text messaging requires so little bandwidth, and in very short bursts, it became a primary means of communicating during rescue-and-recovery operations.

“Our young folks figured that out for us,” said Joe Castillo, chief of operations for the Coast Guard district serving New Orleans. .. Castillo [also] said the Coast Guard relied on thumb drives to courier data around the area. The miniature storage devices contain flash memory and typically connect to computers through a USB port. “I bought a ton of them,” Castillo said.

Agencies on the ground also relied heavily on commercial e-mail services and recommended off-site e-mail systems as part of a continuity of operations plan (COOP). Eric Rasmussen, a director of emergency medicine for the Navy, said his group set up accounts on Yahoo Mail, Google and others in order to share information.

Lawson said he learned to have an off-site e-mail system in place in case of disaster. Tulane was eventually able to find an offsite partner to set up accounts for students and personnel, but the school was unable to populate the system on the fly with all user account information. ..

Rasmussen was pleased with the Groove peer-to-peer collaboration tools his team employed in New Orleans, but they weren’t perfect. In order to establish secure collaboration, Groove’s communications are encrypted end to end. Therefore, an emergency response official must be invited to a Groove workgroup in order to collaborate. COOP plans should include technologies for workgroup discovery, Rasmussen said. .. “The ability to find out who is doing collaborative work … by having some Web-based discovery capability or some e-mail-based discovery capability would be very useful,” he said. “A lot of work that was done in a collaborative workspace was not available to anyone else.” "

Wed, 18 Jan 2006 16:30:58 GMT

111m surfers in China: "The number of Web users in China, the world's second largest Internet market, grew by 18 percent in 2005 to 111 million, the Economic Daily reported on Wednesday. Some 8.5 percent of the country's 1.3 billion people now had access to the Internet, the newspaper reported, citing a survey released by the China Internet Network Information Center. .. The 2005 gains represented an acceleration from 2004, when the number of Internet users grew 16 percent to 94 million. More than half of China's Web population -- or about 64 million people -- accessed the Web via broadband connections, suggesting a 50 percent increase versus 2004 as China strongly promotes the development of its broadband networks. ..

China is the world's No. 2 PC market, with nearly 16 million units shipped in 2004 and the number expected to have grown another 13 percent last year, according to data tracking firm International Data Corp."

Wed, 11 Jan 2006 17:06:49 GMT

Why Do Some Turks Have Bird Flu Virus but Aren't Sick?: I wonder if surviving a mild version of bird flu immunizes against the bad version. "five cases in Ankara hospitals are different from those elsewhere in Asia. Four of the five display only mild symptoms, or no symptoms at all.. Doctors are unsure whether they are for the first time seeing human bird flu in its earliest stages or if they are discovering that infection with the A(H5N1) virus does not always lead to illness. ..

Since none of the five have died, it is raising the possibility that human bird flu is not as deadly as currently thought, and that many mild cases in Asian countries may have gone unreported. Turkey is the first country outside eastern Asia to have human cases, and the first one anywhere to have so many separate animal outbreaks simultaneously.

In one week, Turkey announced 15 confirmed human cases of A(H5N1); Asia has seen only about 140 in the space of five years. .. In Ankara, where the government has been sending out vans with loudspeakers urging people to report symptoms and avoid contact with animals, even people with mild symptoms are being checked for bird flu, meaning that milder cases are more likely to be detected than they are in other parts of Asia. "I'm sure that part of the explanation for the high number of case in Turkey is better surveillance," said Maria Cheng, a spokeswoman for the W.H.O. in Geneva." Again, better surveillance and quick communication are key.

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 19:33:41 GMT

Getting in early as China cleans up: "Stories on environmental disasters come out of China and other Asian developing countries regularly. A review of impacts and the resulting investments: "Environmental damage from pollution is costing China the equivalent of 7.7 percent of gross domestic product annually .. Other sobering statistics in the report, called "Connecting Asia," include estimates of 6.4 million work years lost annually in China to air pollution, 178,000 premature deaths in major cities every year caused by the use of high-sulfur coal and the fact that 52 urban river stretches have been so contaminated that they are no longer suitable for irrigation. ..

[Investment manager] Sorenson said that in terms of environmental standards, "China is now where the U.S. was in the late 1960s" [when disasters and new laws] changed the way U.S. companies conducted business. A similar process was seen in Japan, spurred by the Tokyo Olympic Games of 1964, and in South Korea, when Seoul was host of the Olympics in 1988. There is much hope that the 2008 Games in Beijing will prove as seminal in China's environmental development. .. In November, [China's] State Environmental Protection Administration estimated that the government would spend around $156 billion in environmental protection from 2006 to 2010. ..

Sorenson's FE Clean Energy Group is currently putting together an Asia fund, which Sorenson expects to total around $75 million. .. [Another is] the China Environment Fund, set up in 2001 by Tsinghua Venture Capital Management, a fund management company affiliated with Tsinghua University in Beijing. Catherine Cao, executive director of the firm, said that its third fund should be ready by the end of 2006 and aims to raise $50 million. Two previous funds [were] $13 million and $30 million..

The easiest means of entry for small investors still remains the mutual fund. The Impax Environmental Markets fund of £45 million, or $79 million, rose by around 32 percent in 2005. Among its biggest holdings are Casella Waste, a U.S. waste disposal company, Kurita Water of Japan and Horiba, a Japanese environmental testing company." Other options: big utilities, especially European, operating in Asia; Shenzhen Dongjiang Environmental, listed in Hong Kong; canada's Zenon Environmental; Nordex of Germany; solar companies Kyocera and Sharp. [via Salon]

Mon, 09 Jan 2006 18:09:51 GMT

Uganda in trouble: Uganda's government has been a model of moderation and economic liberalization for over 10 years. But now the long-standing Museveni government is cracking down on opponents. This reports on a demonstration for an opponent just released from jail, which was attacked with teargas and batons by police. "From 1986 to 1996, one of them told me, crowds of this size would meet Museveni wherever he went and whomever he was with. A decade later, a growing number of Ugandans wonder why their president doesn't seem ready to emulate his colleagues in East Africa and leave power peacefully, as Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania has done. No amount of tear gas or water can erase the doubts about Museveni, but using them often seems to increase public anger. ..

Britain's [decided] last month to cut $26.5 million in aid to Uganda due to concerns over Besigye's arrest .."

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 08:50:27 GMT

Gapminder: An interactive presentation for the "Human Development Report 2005" by UNDP, relating population, income and health across countries and regions over 50 years. Much improved in recent months. In 10 minutes, it conveys a lot about where the world is going.

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 17:23:34 GMT

Nanotechnology for Development: More groups are studying the potential impact of nanotech on developing countries. The World Bank Development Gateway has a site, with a few familar names (editor John Daly, and advisor Anil Srivastava) . The Merdian Institute Nanotechnology and Development News provides daily updates via RSS or email. From a Press Release: " Several recent reports, including the report of the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Science, Technology, and Innovation, conclude that science and technology, in particular nanotechnology, can contribute significantly to alleviating poverty and achieving the MDGs. "The use of nanotechnology applications for water treatment and remediation; energy storage, production, and conversion; disease diagnosis and screening; drug delivery systems; health monitoring; air pollution and remediation; food processing and storage; vector and pest detection and control; and agricultural productivity enhancement will help developing countries meet five of the Goals," states the Task Force Report. .. Over 20 countries, including innovative developing countries such as China, South Africa, Brazil, and India, have national nanotechnology programs.."

Mon, 21 Nov 2005 21:33:09 GMT

People Finder Interchange Format: For Katrinalist.net, an "all volunteer team created a searchable directory of persons displaced or affected by Hurricane Katrina, consolidating over 25 different online resources into one central, searchable repository. PeopleFinder Interchange Format, (called 'PFIF') is a new, standardized data format implemented in XML. ..

The Katrina PeopleFinder Project mobilized hundreds of volunteers over the Labor Day weekend to make an immediate difference. .. The team plans to turn its attention to housing and job solutions next, creating a centralized technology solution that aggregates acomprehensive resource set from sites all across the web, standardizes them, and makes them searchable from anywhere."

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 18:47:04 GMT

NearlyFreeSpeech.NET Web Hosting: Hosting with "long tail" pricing. "no contracts and no commitments .. If you'd like to talk to one of our sales reps to get a quote, you're out of luck. We don't have any. We also don't have any commissions, referral payments, or kickbacks. With NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, your money goes straight to the services you actually use"

Data Transfers (Bandwidth): $1.00 per gigabyte
Disk Space (Storage): $0.01 per megabyte-month
DNS at $0.02 per registered domain per day, no matter how active your domain gets.
Domain registration at $7.45 for a one-year .com and $7.68 for .net or .org.

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 04:07:35 GMT

Mobile Comms Satellite Launches Into Orbit: Inmarsat bGAN broadband network nearly complete. "The second step in a $1.5 billion program to create a mobile broadband communications network spanning the globe for users at sea, in the air and on land roared into space today. .. When [The Inmarsat 4-F2 satellite] enters service from geostationary orbit 22,300 miles (35,888 kilometers) above Earth next year, the craft will join the Inmarsat 4-F1 satellite that was successfully launched on Lockheed Martin's Atlas 5 rocket in March from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Together, the two craft will deliver broadband communications to 85 percent of the world." Connections are expected at around 400 kbps in each direction.

Also interesting is how it got there. It was launched SeaLaunch, a private company using a floating platform and Ukranian and Russian rockets.

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 07:44:11 GMT

The Year of Rewards: Penestanan 2: When I travelled in Africa and Asia in the 80s, I shot a lot of slides. I dreamed then of a digital future where my camera would record sound as well as pictures, and where I could annotate the recordings and beam them out to my friends at home in real time. Even in 1983 you could see it would come, eventually. Now, here's a fine example from my friend David Lincoln. Today he's in Bali, taking a walk with villagers in their rice paddies.

Tue, 04 Oct 2005 07:56:01 GMT

Hurricane Katrina Relief: IT providers like Microsoft, Novell, etc, are providing assistance to businesses recovering from Katrina. "For businesses, organizations, and institutions whose computing systems were adversely effected by the hurricane, InsynQ and a community of ASP, technology, and software providers are donating various virtual computing solutions to help them transition to recovery. .. "

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 20:58:35 GMT

Current BPL Internet Service Plenty Fast: An early user of BPL (Broadband over Power Line) Internet service from Current Communications over a local Cincinatti power company, Cinergy. "To use the service, you get a BPL modem. It looks like a largish wall-wart power plug with some LEDs on it. It has an RJ-45 jack on it to connect to a computer or a router. That's about it. We opted for the Cadillac level service: 3mbps up, 3mbps down, and a dedicated IP. That runs $49.95 a month, but the price decreases as more people in my neighborhood sign up (my current price with >3 neighbors signed up is a paltry $42.46)" Measured performance: 3.5 mbps downline, 4.2 mbps uplink (!).

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 19:14:29 GMT

Energy Solutions Toolkit for ICT: USAID interactive website for design of ICT's with off-grid power sources.

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 21:08:19 GMT

FTC Message Switching Systems: A blast from the past, the project I worked on 20 years ago. "The Sombers Group built the company's fault-tolerant Tandem Computer-based switching systems, which were installed both in the U.S. and overseas. " By "overseas" they mean Cameroon, where I installed the message switch at Intelcam in 1983. I also upgraded the switch in 1986, and then hosted their staff for TCP/IP training in 1995 in California.

Sat, 27 Aug 2005 16:33:51 GMT

Wildlife trade on the web: "Internet shoppers in search of the exotic have sparked a booming trade that is threatening the existence of many endangered species, according to a report released Tuesday by the International Fund for Animal Welfare. .. “Trade on the Internet is easy, cheap and anonymous,” said IFAW UK director Phyllis Campbell-McRae. .. The report “Caught in the web - wildlife trade on the Internet” found in just one week 146 live primates, 5,527 elephant products, 526 turtle and tortoiseshells, 2,630 reptile products and 239 wild cat products for sale."

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 19:14:36 GMT

Cellphones Catapult Rural Africa to 21st Century: 20 years ago I travelled in Africa, telling people that wireless phones would be the IT that would matter there. Nice to read the stories of how that works today. "Bekowe Skhakhane does even the simplest tasks the hard way. Fetching water from the river takes four hours a day. To cook, she gathers sticks and musters a fire. Light comes from candles. But when Ms. Skhakhane wants to talk to her husband, who works in a steel factory 250 miles away in Johannesburg, she takes out her mobile phone. .. "It is a necessity," said Ms. Skhakhane.. "Buying air time is part of my regular grocery list." She spends the equivalent of $1.90 a month for five minutes of telephone time. ..

One in 11 Africans is now a mobile subscriber. .. cellphones are enabling millions of people to skip a technological generation and bound straight from letter-writing to instant messaging. .. One woman living on the Congo River, unable even to write her last name, tells customers to call her cellphone if they want to buy the fresh fish she sells. "She doesn't have electricity, she can't put the fish in the freezer," said Mr. Nkuli of Vodacom. "So she keeps them in the river," tethered live on a string, until a call comes in. Then she retrieves them and readies them for sale. ..

William Pedro, 51, who deals in farm and garden plants, said he tried for eight years to lure customers to his nursery in a ragtag township near George.. "now [customers] can phone me for orders and I can deliver them the same day." ..

Congo was in the midst of a civil war when Alieu Conteh, a telecommunications entrepreneur, began building a cellular network there in the 1990's. No foreign manufacturer would ship a cellphone tower to the airport with rebels nearby, so Mr. Conteh hired local men to collect scrap and weld a tower together. Now Vodacom, which formed a joint venture with him in 2001, .. [hauls] each satellite dish into place with ropes. Base stations are powered by generators. .. Vodacom Congo has 1.1 million subscribers and is adding more than 1,000 daily. ..

How does an African family in a hut lighted by candles charge a mobile phone? .. the solution is often a car battery owned by someone who does not have a prayer of acquiring a car. Ntombenhle Nsele keeps one in her home a few miles down the road from Ms. Skhakhane's. She takes it by bus 20 miles to the nearest town to recharge it in a gas station. For 80 cents each, Ms. Nsele, 25, lets neighbors charge their mobiles from the battery. She gets at least five customers a week. "Oooh, a lot of people," she said, smiling. "Too many." "

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 06:35:13 GMT

Global University Phone System: "The GUPS Initiative provides universities with a voice over IP (VOIP) system they can easily install and configure to connect their phone networks with other academic institutions around the globe. Calls are routed over the internet using VOIP thus bypassing traditional telecommunication charges for phone calls "

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 04:48:26 GMT

Royal Philips Electronics development pilots: Three projects, including one launched by Paul Rankin from the Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship at Stanford. "Voices in Your Hand is a pilot project running in Recife, Brazil, to bring digital connectivity to people at the bottom of the economic pyramid. .. Using modified MP3 players, people can listen to personalized web casts of audio information offline in their homes, talk back and use voice email. Then they visit a public utility point to link their sets to the Internet. The customer here may be a family or a village, rather than an individual. .. The pilot will be completed mid 2005, learning will be captured and results will be used to test the feasibility of possible scale up scenarios."

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 04:33:32 GMT

The Africa You Never See: Africa, "according to the U.S. government's Overseas Private Investment Corp., offers the highest return in the world on direct foreign investment, [yet] it attracts the least. Unless investors see the Africa that's worthy of investment, they won't put their money into it. .. Consider a few facts: The Ghana Stock Exchange regularly tops the list of the world's highest-performing stock markets. Botswana, with its A+ credit rating, boasts one of the highest per capita government savings rates in the world, topped only by Singapore and a handful of other fiscally prudent nations. Cell phones are making phenomenal profits on the continent. Brand-name companies like Coca-Cola, GM, Caterpillar and Citibank have invested in Africa for years and are quite bullish on the future.

The failure to show this side of Africa creates a one-dimensional caricature of a complex continent. .. With good governance and sound fiscal policies, countries like Botswana, Ghana, Uganda, Senegal and many more are bustling, their economies growing at surprisingly robust rates.

Private enterprise is not just limited to the well-behaved nations. [In Somalia] private enterprise is flourishing. Mogadishu has the cheapest cell phone rates on the continent, mostly due to no government intervention. In the northern city of Hargeysa, the markets sell the latest satellite phone technology. The electricity works. When the state collapsed in 1991, the national airline went out of business. Today, there are five private carriers and price wars keep the cost of tickets down. .. Obviously life there would be dramatically improved by good governance -- or even just some governance -- but it's also true that, through resilience and resourcefulness, Somalis have been able to create a functioning society.

Most African businesses suffer from an extreme lack of infrastructure, but the people I met were too determined to let this stop them. It just costs them more. Without reliable electricity, most businesses have to use generators. They have to dig bore-holes for a dependable water source. Telephone lines are notoriously out of service, but cell phones are filling the gap. .. As I interviewed successful entrepreneurs, I was continually astounded by their ingenuity, creativity and steadfastness. These people are the future of the continent. "

Mon, 15 Aug 2005 22:04:44 GMT

Are We Prepared for Avian Flu?: An interview with "Laurie Garrett, the only reporter to win all three of journalism's big "P" awards (the Peabody, the Polk and the Pulitzer) .. resigned from Newsday earlier this year [citing] a deteriorating climate for journalism .. Today, Garrett is Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her story "The Next Pandemic?" was published in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs ..

"Avian influenza comes from aquatic birds, including migratory ducks, geese and herons. The loss of these birds' migratory routes in China has brought them into direct contact with humans in farms and parks. In this way, influenza is spread from migrating birds to domestic birds, then to pigs and ultimately to humans. This chain of events involves veterinary science, ecology and medicine, the triumvirate studied by the science of conservation medicine." One general issue: we lack "respectful mutual lines of communication between those protecting human health, those protecting animal health and those dealing with ecology."

On avian flu response specifically: "I think the CDC is doing a lot. But what I keep trying to get across to people is that flu starts in Asia. We're a lot better off if we can stop it in Asia than if we wait until it is here and try to figure out some means to minimize the damage. And that means a whole lot more multinational agreements, and this is difficult at a time when our Congress is full of members saying really terrible things about China [and Vietnam]..

In a recent study published in Nature, a team at Oxford University did a computer model just simply asking if it is possible to stop pandemic flu. And the good news is their answer is yes, it is possible, but the bad news is it can be stopped only if you identify it when there are just 30 human cases. Well, we're not going to spot those first 30 human cases before it spreads to hundreds or thousands of people unless we have a much better infrastructure of public health, vigilance and surveillance in poor countries like Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and in countries with more money but completely lacking in sophisticated public health infrastructure, like China." "

Sun, 14 Aug 2005 20:57:04 GMT

Mobile phones in Kenya: Good anecdotes on small business' use of phones. "When handyman Alex Theuri puts down his wrenches after laying water-pipes in buildings, he picks up screwdrivers and pliers to install electric wiring elsewhere -- but there's one tool he's never without. The mobile phone has become the most essential work item for Theuri, a Kenyan plumber, electrician and small businessman who, like so many others in the East African nation, makes a living from various different jobs at the same time."

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 19:12:31 GMT

Internet Scammers Keep Working in Nigeria: "In Festac Town, an entire community of scammers overnights on the Internet. By day they flaunt their smart clothes and cars and hang around the Internet cafes, trading stories about successful cons and near misses, and hatching new plots. Festac Town is where communication specialists operating underground sell foreign telephone lines over which a scammer can purport to be calling from any city in the world. Here lurk master forgers and purveyors of such software as "e-mail extractors," which can harvest e-mail addresses by the million. Now, however, a 3-year-old crackdown is yielding results, Nigerian authorities say.

Nuhu Ribadu, head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, says cash and assets worth more than $700 million were recovered from suspects between May 2003 and June 2004. More than 500 suspects have been arrested, more than 100 cases are before the courts and 500 others are under investigation, he said."

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 13:32:53 GMT

G.M. Thrives in China With Small, Thrifty Vans: "In this obscure corner of southern China, General Motors seems to have hit on a hot new formula: $5,000 minivans that get 43 miles to the gallon in city driving. That combination of advantages has captivated Chinese buyers, propelling G.M. into the leading spot in this nascent car market. ..

The minivans, which G.M. builds in a joint venture with a Chinese partner, have a quarter the horsepower of American minivans, weak acceleration and a top speed of 81 miles an hour. The seats are only a third the thickness of seats in Western models but look plush compared with some Chinese cars. ..

The utilitarian minivans and pickups are mainly purchased in China by small-business owners in towns and smaller cities, who drive them both to carry supplies for their businesses and to transport their families. .. The minivans have been a big hit, helping G.M. sell more than 170,000 very small vehicles - automobile types not available in the United States - and to pass Volkswagen this year in sales in a market that VW has dominated for two decades. They have helped turn China into G.M.'s biggest center of automotive profit - in contrast to losses in manufacturing operations in the United States - and its second-largest market in terms of the number of vehicles sold, after the United States...

The Chinese government has also encouraged a shift toward more efficient models through stringent fuel-economy regulations, even as Congress has opted for more subsidies for oil production and a limit on hybrid car subsidies .."

Tue, 26 Jul 2005 08:00:38 GMT

Inveneo.org: San Francisco-based NGO bringing IT to remote villiages. One project in Uganda with ActionAid, with pedal- and solar-power plus a Linux-based server/IP-PBX. Infoworld story says 15 mins pedaling the bike powers 1 hour of VoIP talk time. Also proposed: an NGO remote office or a villiage education system.

Sat, 16 Jul 2005 00:08:11 GMT

France Telecom offers ''Big Screen'' Video EyeWear to Mobile Phone Users: "MicroOptical's video eyewear contains two Kopin full-colour, QVGA-resolution (320 x 240) CyberDisplay 230K microdisplays. The sleek eyewear allows users to privately view large-size video or pictures equivalent to a 12-inch screen as seen from three feet away, yet simultaneously view their surroundings thanks to the small size of the frame and MicroOptical's patented optics which allow the user to see around the screen. ..

Orange SA, one of the world's leading wireless companies with 52 million customers in 16 countries, will bundle a MicroOptical binocular video eyewear with Samsung's SGH-D600 cell phone as part of its new "Orange World" wireless multimedia service. The bundled package, unveiled at the recent European Research and Innovation Exhibition in Paris, will be made available to Orange subscribers in October 2005. ..

Built with nanotechnology, the CyberDisplay 230K .. operates at traditional video speeds and consumes only five milliwatts of power." I find the power figure amazing. Display size and power consumption are big limitations to many applications. Looking geeky is a small price to pay for portability.

Wed, 25 May 2005 04:11:30 GMT

Samsung Builds Flash Based Disk Drive: "Samsung says it has developed a way to store up to 16GB of data using Flash memory, a development that could lead to extended battery life for notebook and tablet PCs. Flash memory has a power consumption that is five percent of today's hard disk drive, according to the company. These solid-state disk (SSD) Flash-based drives will also provide faster access to data, at about two-and-a-half times the speed of current notebook hard drives. In tests, Samsung was able to read data at 57 megabytes per second (MBps) and write at 32MBps." That's 2-3 GB/Min, comparable in my experience to desktop HD.

"Flash drives also offer the benefit of less noise and heat emissions. They are also less temperature- and humidity-sensitive, meaning Flash-based drives can be used in a wider array of applications and environments. The disk drive itself will look much like a regular 1.8-inch hard disk drive, meaning manufacturers will have to make minimal adjustments to PC designs in order to incorporate the new drives. .. SSD Flash drives based on the new technology are expected on the market by August of this year." They would be useful in off-grid locations, in developing countries or in sensor apps. I wonder if the price will remain at today's $30-50/GB or will be lower.

Tue, 24 May 2005 07:35:26 GMT

Fundable: A web site for pooling money in small groups. "Get it to happen or get your money back." Could be great for non-profits, open-source coders or freelancers wanting to get paid for making a contribution, fans raising money to fund a concert, bulk buying, school projects, and more. (How about a private lottery: if we all chip in, one of us gets to go somewhere amazing..) [From Hugh Pyle]

Mon, 16 May 2005 20:29:13 GMT

Water Filters Rely on Nanotech: Report from the October 2004 NanoWater conference. "A slow, methodical transformation of the $400-billion-a-year water-management industry is currently in progress, and nanotechnology appears to be leading the way. .. Two products incorporating nanotechnology are going to hit the market within the next year and are already being tested in developing nations. .. Matrikx water filters will be on store shelves within the next year after already having experienced success in 50 pilot programs throughout central Asia. Argonide's president, Fred Tepper, is trying to get his product in the hands of consumers in the next 60 to 90 days, he said, having recently secured a distribution deal with a European company ..

Though these breakthroughs seem cutting-edge, the technology is not terribly new. Water-treatment plants have been using nanofiltration and ultrafiltration membranes to separate good water from bad for more than five years. And already the technology is becoming the industry standard. .. The same technology is allowing desalination -- the process of removing salts from fresh or sea water -- to occur at a much greater rate. The largest desalination plant in the world will begin operating in Ashkelon, Israel, in March 2005."

Argonide Nanomaterials has an interesting history of collaborations with US govt labs, Russian institutes active in nanotechnology, and others in Italy, Japan, and Singapore.

Mon, 16 May 2005 20:11:50 GMT

Development Through Enterprise: New web site, NextBillion.Net, with multiple author blogs. "Our goal is to identify and discuss sustainable business models that address the needs of the world's poorest citizens." High quality content, looks like a good model for collaborative blog/infohub.

Mon, 16 May 2005 16:21:32 GMT

Soros funds mesh nets: "The Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN) has been awarded a $200,000 grant from the Open Society Institute, funded by the Soros Foundation, to develop wireless technology to be used around the globe, with a focus on developing nations. The result will be the most advanced community wireless technology in the world. " OJC Technologies is doing the implementation under contract. CUWIN has released an open source beta: "Imagine a free wireless networking system that any municipality, company, or group of neighbors could easily set up themselves. Over the past half-decade, the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN) has been developing an open source, turnkey wireless networking solution that exceeds the functionality of many proprietary systems. CUWiN's vision is ubiquitous, extremely high-speed, low-cost networking for every community and constituency." More background: "To set up a CUWiN network, you burn a CD with the 0.5.5 software later this week and use it to boot a computer with a supported wireless card. The system finds nearby nodes, creates tables, and establishes itself as part of the network. The software is free and open source. "

Fri, 06 May 2005 20:46:20 GMT

Operation Tsunami Aid: April 25 2005 collection of stories on comms in the tsunami response. Highlights include fast deployment of wifi nets, extension of nets with new WiMax links, and military-civilian cooperation lessons. "The Defense Department conducted an unprecedented humanitarian relief operation to aid victims of the tsunami. "This was the largest relief operation since the Berlin airlift" after World War II, Tapper said. To aid countries hit by last year's tsunami, the Air Force airlifted an average of 261 tons of relief supplies a day for 47 days, he said. The Navy deployed a veritable humanitarian relief armada off the shores of Indonesia and Sri Lanka, with a total of 18 ships and 35 embarked helicopters dedicated to tsunami relief [from December to April] ..

In early January, [at] the headquarters for a multinational force called Operation Unified Assistance, Monti realized he had a problem. He had more than enough military assets and personnel — including deployed DISA personnel — to provide SIPRNET and NIPRNET communications. What he lacked, Monti said, was an unclassified network that could also be accessed by military personnel from Thailand, Indonesia, Australia and other countries, as well as representatives from the United Nations, other NGOs and U.S. civilian agencies, such as USAID... a separate, shared unclassified network for purposes of trust, which he believed could not be achieved with U.S. personnel operating behind a classified wall. ..

Rasmussen said DOD units also need to pay more attention to social networking, or person-to-person communications among U.S. military and UN, NGO and USAID staff, which "is the dominant part of collaboration in the field." Rasmussen wrote in the report that those relationships need to be developed through frequent exercises before a disaster hits. .

Steckler said the NPS team plans to use the Thailand experience as a model for quickly developing networks during future humanitarian and military operations. NPS officials are developing a WiMax and Wi-Fi kit that could be easily transported and quickly set up. .. Steckler returned to Thailand in March and, with the assistance of Marine Capt. Dwayne Lancaster, increased the power of the humanitarian network with another satellite terminal at the survivor camp and a dual-redundancy router. Officials at the World Wide Web Consortium have provided initial funding for survivor camp satellite connections, Steckler said. They have also formed a partnership with California State University at Monterey Bay to set up an NGO training center. "

Tue, 26 Apr 2005 16:42:19 GMT

$100 computers are on the way: Interview with Advanced Micro Devices CEO Hector Ruiz. "The PIC was our first attempt to do something different. I think that will continue to morph into a new generation of products. We have a PIC 2 and a PIC 3 on the road map. All those products will improve the (computing) power and value, while at the same time lowering the cost.

Low-price computer design is meant to help provide Internet access to people in emerging markets. I don't think a $100 computer is out of the question in a three-year time frame. A lot of people forget that the first cell phones came out at $3,000 to $4,000 dollars and today are free. I think there's going to be some of that same kind of movement with computing and communications devices.

It's important for us to not lose sight of the segment that today doesn't have any products built for it. The trickle-down effect of desktops and laptops into that segment just doesn't work. I believe that we have an opportunity to use our x86 know-how and capability to really build products for that segment. That will be the PIC at the beginning, and there will be more. I think, within three years, it's not at all unreasonable to think of a $100 laptop for that segment. "

Wed, 13 Apr 2005 04:47:04 GMT

Cellular Internet relayed to Wi-Fi: "Enter a little green box, about the size of a videocassette, called the Junxion Box. It grabs a wireless cell connection and turns it into a Wi-Fi signal (it also outputs Ethernet). The result: instant high-speed network." Applications: trade shows; client visits by consulting teams; workers at construction sites; wifi access on public transport. Takes a PC card to adapt to different cell networks. Cost: about $600.

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 22:33:50 GMT

How SMS Could Save Your Life: Cell phones are being used "to manage the treatment of HIV/AIDS in [South Africa] where health care systems are overburdened and doctors are scarce. ..

Therapeutic counselors fill a crucial gap at the Gugulethu clinic, where 525 patients taking ARV drugs are served by just two doctors and two nurses. They visit patients at home and count pills. They take note of conditions that interfere with treatment, such as the absence of food in the house. In short, they are the first line of defense against problems with side effects and drug resistance that can develop if treatment isn't managed properly. In the past, this job involved writing out the cumbersome details of each home visit by hand. But as the clinic data accumulated and the number of patients on treatment grew, the system became unmanageable..

They [now] use SMS to send all of this information to a central database, where Sister Mtwisha can instantly view it on her computer screen. With all of the relevant information compiled neatly in front of her, the irregularities stand out. .. "I used to pick up some faults in the system after a week or a month," she says. "Now I send a message and things are sorted out on the spot, without having to wait." ..

The system, which runs on open-source software, is inexpensive and can easily be managed remotely and adapted for various projects. ..

"If a patient in Gugulethu goes to the Eastern Cape and gets sick and goes to a clinic, they would need to know what drug regimen he's been on, what side effects he had, whether he was hospitalized," she says. "We need to get a system like an ATM where you can get money from every bank. We need something like that for HIV." The Cell-Life project, started by civil engineering faculty and students at the University of Cape Town and the Cape Technikon, has enlisted engineers and computer programmers to provide just that.

Meanwhile, a number of other clinics have expressed interest in using the system, but it has been difficult to raise funds to expand the program. Most donors would rather buy drugs than spend money on systems for distributing them, Rivett says. Instead of donating money, however, she maintains that large companies like Coca-Cola could make an even greater contribution by sharing their knowledge in areas like distribution and product management. "You find Coca-Cola in rural villages everywhere, but you don't find drugs," she says. "The Coca-Colas and the Unilevers can make sure their products get to these places. We need to use these guys to help us get drugs into every single clinic."

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 17:58:25 GMT

U3 - New USB memory/device standard: "U3 makes the promise of anywhere, anytime, any PC computing a reality. By combining the widely adopted storage capabilities of today’s UFDs (USB Flash Drives) with the ability to transport and run applications from a small UFD, U3 ensures truly personal and portable computing. The U3 standard enables developers to create easy to use applications that minimize the complexities of today’s digital life. From your own email folders to healthcare history to fully functional work applications, U3 makes everything available anywhere without having to access multiple devices or lug around a laptop."

Memorex, Kingston, and Verbatim have promised products: "Called a smart USB flash drive, these drives enable consumers to carry all of their personal computer settings, applications and data for use on any PC wherever they go. The new Verbatim smart Store ‘n’ Go USB flash drives will be availabe worldwide [in 2005]. .. The U3 platform includes three components. U3’s hardware specification gives manufacturers the core technology to build their smart USB flash drives. The U3 software developer kit includes sample code, a standard set of application programming interfaces (APIs), and thorough documentation. The U3 Launchpad is a friendly graphical user interface that is used to access and run applications."

This could improve the utility of internet cafes: users can keep an offline personalized environment and secure information store for a small purchase price. Many of today's UFDs play and record sound; with U3, they could rapidly download and upload voice mail at an internet cafe to extend VOIP services (e.g., in developing countries). The U3 could be added to an entertainment device, like an MP3 player, radio, game machine or camera, making the net cost per user negligible.

Mon, 07 Mar 2005 20:45:30 GMT

frontline: high stakes in cyberspace: Paul Saffo in 1995 on PBS: Fun to read the old stuff. Paul Saffo is remarkably on-target, 10 years later. This article mentions "macro-myopia: A pattern where our hopes and our expectations or our fears about the threatened impact of some new technology causes us to overestimate its short term impacts and reality always fails to meet those inflated expectations. And as a result our disappointment then leads us to turn around and underestimate the long term implications and I can guarantee you this time will be no different. The short term impact of this stuff will be less than the hype would suggest but the long term implications will be vastly larger than we can possibly imagine today." I've since encoutered Gartner's Hype Cycle, which they say they started to use also in 1995, with a graphic version of this insight.

I found this when looking for a reference to an aphorism that I think comes from Saffo. The aphorism: Over two years, things change much less than we think they will; but over ten years, they change more than we imagine.

It makes me wonder about the timeframe in between, say 5 to 7 years in the future, when major impacts will be felt from things we know are changing now, despite hype (digital sensors and surveillance) and disillusion (wind and solar power).

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 19:33:29 GMT

Network Startup Resource Center: A venerable source of help, founded by Randy Bush about the same time as CGNET. "The Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC), a non-profit organization, has worked since the late 1980s to help develop and deploy networking technology in various projects throughout Asia/Pacific, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and the New Independent States. Partially supported by the US National Science Foundation, the NSRC provides technical and engineering assistance to international networking initiatives building access to the public Internet, especially to academic/research institutions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)." Nice recent shot from Bhutan.

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 09:37:18 GMT

WorldChanging: Nanotechnology and the Developing World: "the Global Dialogue on Nanotechnology and the Poor [is] a project intended to trigger a conversation about the ways in which nanotechnology can be applied to the problems of development and poverty. Anyone may participate .." SciDevNet covers the conference and has an introduction to the material. The 29-page report covers risks as well as benefits, with a useful appendix showing the UN Millenium Goals for reference.

This has been a major interest of mine since 2000. The bottom line for me came down to two things: nano-engineered materials for energy and water. Nanotech's first fruits are a new universe of materials with electrical and chemical properties that will offer new options to engineers of all goods, including those meeting basic needs. It's like plastics a century ago; we're at the start of a decades-long absorbtion of new possibilities, both good and bad. This time the changes will come faster, sped up by computer-aided design and manufacturing. (Nano-assembly, whenever it arrives, will only further add to the changes.)

For developing countries, the key benefits are in the basics for manufacturing and urban life.

purified or desalinated water
distributed electric generation and new options for fuel, ideally from renewable sources with hydrogen and/or battery storage of power
more efficient use of energy and materials overall

I think this will be on balance good for the environment, in its greater material efficiency. However, nano-engineered materials will also be applied to increase the efficiency of raw material extraction, such as taking fossil fuels from the earth faster and cheaper. It will also give rise to more extravagant ways to use energy in the developed world, perhaps super-sonic transport, large-scale military applications, or ever-larger interiors for housing and commerce. I am optimistic that enough funding and volunteer attention will be given to pollution-reducing and poverty-alleviating applications to tip the balance. (I think that the top-down and exploitative applications have been refined so much already, that it's probably easier for researchers and innovators to have a big impact in the less-explored sustainable applications.)

Tue, 08 Feb 2005 07:50:26 GMT

Ethiopians unite for Marley anniversary: "About 200,000 people gathered in Ethiopia's capital Sunday to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the birth of reggae icon Bob Marley. The concert, dubbed Africa Unite and billed as the country's largest ever, marks the first time the late reggae star's birthday celebrations have ever been held outside his native Jamaica. Marley, who died of cancer in 1981. .. Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson also declared an official year-long celebration to honour Marley's birth." In the 80s, I spent 5 years on the road in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. I don't think I spent a week without hearing Marley's music in the street or on the radio. Long live liberation music.

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 08:04:47 GMT

EPIC 2014: Very amusing flash projection of media in 2014. Worth all 8 minutes.

Fri, 04 Feb 2005 18:11:29 GMT

More on the AMD PIC: Cringely offers some info and suggested applications outside the developing world: "the OS is Windows CE. It keeps user changes and personal settings on a separate disk partition so that the main OS partition can be updated at any time back to factory settings from a hidden 'factory reload' partition. It has no legacy interfaces at all (just VGA, RJ11 modem, AC'97 audio ports, and four USB 1.1 ports). It has no fan or even any passive ventilation. It has a 366 Mhz AMD Geode processor, 128-megs of SDRAM, and a 10-gig Seagate hard drive. It is ugly [but] cheap. Think of the PIC as a cheaper, dumber Mac Mini. ..

in the ultra-low-end computer market right now as consumers are starting to use mobile phones to perform functions that might previously have been done with handheld computers like the iPaq. As a result, handheld sales are actually dropping, which in the PC market means the niche is already dead. .. The logical thing to do, it seems to me, is to split the niche into its two component parts -- mobile communication and cheap computing. Phones get the nod for mobility, but HP and Dell could easily pick up the cheap computing segment by selling many sub-varieties of PIC. It is ideal for home automation, for becoming a car video server to end drowning in Dora the Explorer DVDs, for acting as a home Internet gateway, for hosting the inevitable VoIP home PBX -- each a 100 million unit market, and each totally untapped by the big OEMs. .. Given a bit more effort on AMD's part, this little guy could be used to replace fading K-12 PCs all over America at prices that schools can actually afford. The power savings alone are such that an eight watt PIC will pay for itself in under two years. .. "

Cringely links to a page showing an Antiguan hacker's view of the PIC, and the AMD annoucement page that says that Linux will soon run on it.

Mon, 31 Jan 2005 18:14:22 GMT

The hundred-buck PC: "The founder and chairman of the MIT Media Lab wants to create a $100 portable computer for the developing world. Nicholas Negroponte, author of Being Digital and the Wiesner Professor of Media Technology at MIT, says he has obtained promises of support from a number of major companies, including Advanced Micro Devices, Google, Motorola, Samsung, and News Corp. The low-cost computer will have a 14-inch color screen, AMD chips, and will run Linux software ..

An engineering prototype is nearly ready, with alpha units expected by year’s end and real production around 18 months from now, he said. The portable PCs will be shipped directly to education ministries, with China first on the list. Only orders of 1 million or more units will be accepted.

Mr. Negroponte’s idea is to develop educational software and have the portable personal computer replace textbooks in schools in much the same way that France’s Minitel videotext terminal, which was developed by France Telecom in the 1980s, became a substitute for phone books."

Mon, 31 Jan 2005 18:11:43 GMT

ComTechReview: Winter 2004-2005. Interesting journal of digital divide articles, with recent addition of an international section. This edition includes a profile of the Owerri Digital Village, a project of a recent Reuters Digital Vision Fellow. (The fellowship is accepting applications this year until March 15, 2005)..

Wed, 26 Jan 2005 19:48:32 GMT

HumaniNet - Tsunami Relief: "RBGAN working in Banda Aceh area of Indonesia. We have received additional confirmation that the RBGAN will operate in the Aceh area, although it is not within the guaranteed coverage area. Both the World Food Program and International Medical Corps confirm successful connections. (One user reported they were unable to connect.) We received this report on January 14 from an Inmarsat Land Earth Station (LES): "We have been told by Inmarsat that Regional BGAN works in Northwest Indonesia (Banda Aceh Province, Andaman & Nicobar Island). As with Thuraya, it is outside of the official coverage and service is therefore not guaranteed. "

Sun, 23 Jan 2005 06:30:50 GMT

CMU project envisions computers even the poorest Third World farmer could use: Further coverage of Raj Reddy's project. "Sometime next year, Reddy plans to begin field tests in India, China and Africa of a device he calls the PCtvt ---- a combination personal computer, television, video recorder and telephone that wirelessly connects with the Internet. It all comes at a projected cost of $250 apiece. ..

These computers, in turn, would link up with an ultra-low-cost broadband technology being developed at the University of California, Berkeley. The goal, said A. Richard Newton, dean of Berkeley's College of Engineering, is an antenna, power supply and other equipment necessary to provide wireless Internet access for a village for about $500. ..

At Berkeley, the initiative is called Information and Communication Technology for Billions, or ICT4B. The National Science Foundation has provided Berkeley with $3 million to help develop low-cost broadband networks."

Wed, 19 Jan 2005 06:38:42 GMT

Wired 13.01: The BitTorrent Effect: Nice intro to the software and its effects. "One example of how the world has already changed: Gary Lerhaupt, a graduate student in computer science at Stanford, became fascinated with Outfoxed, the documentary critical of Fox News, and thought more people should see it. So he convinced the film's producer to let him put a chunk of it on his Web site for free, as a 500-Mbyte torrent. Within two months, nearly 1,500 people downloaded it. That's almost 750 gigs of traffic, a heck of a wallop. But to get the ball rolling, Lerhaupt's site needed to serve up only 5 gigs. After that, the peers took over and hosted it themselves. His bill for that bandwidth? $4. There are drinks at Starbucks that cost more. "It's amazing - I'm a movie distributor," he says. "If I had my own content, I'd be a TV station." [Update: It just passed 1 TB.] ..

[In] November Jon Stewart made a now-famous appearance on CNN's Crossfire. Stewart attacked the hosts, Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson, calling them political puppets. .. Delighted fans immediately ripped the segment and posted it online as a torrent. Word of Stewart's smackdown spread rapidly through the blogs, and within a day at least 4,000 servers were hosting the clip. One host reported having, at any given time, more than a hundred peers swapping and downloading the file. No one knows exactly how many people got the clip through BitTorrent, but this kind of traffic on the very first day suggests a number in the hundreds of thousands - and probably much higher. Another 2.3 million people streamed it from iFilm.com over the next few weeks. By contrast, CNN's audience for Crossfire was only 867,000. Three times as many people saw Stewart's appearance online as on CNN itself..

"Blogs reduced the newspaper to the post. In TV, it'll go from the network to the show," [and for that matter, MP3 reduced the album to the song]

The P2P technology company Kontiki produces software that, like BitTorrent, creates hyperefficient downloads; its applications also work with Microsoft's digital rights management software to keep content out of pirate hands. The BBC used Kontiki's systems last summer to send TV shows to 1,000 households. And America Online now uses Kontiki's apps to circulate Moviefone trailers. In fact, when users download a trailer, they also download a plug-in that begins swapping the file with others. It's so successful that when you watch a trailer on Moviefone, 80 percent of the time it's being delivered to you by other users in the network. Millions of AOL users have already participated in peercasting - without knowing it."

Fri, 14 Jan 2005 16:48:38 GMT

'Our government in Burma is lying when it says just a few people were killed': Aid workers "say the death toll is certain to be higher than Burmese officials have admitted. "It is in the thousands," estimated one foreign diplomat. ..

Since the tsunami the military's grip has become even tighter. Conscript soldiers have been deployed on main roads leading out of the southern town of Kawthaung. They have orders to prevent foreign nationals from travelling more than two miles from the centre. The naval vessels are looking for boats that they do not recognise in order to prevent unauthorised missions landing along the ravaged coastline. ..

A government official intercepted our vehicle as we left Kawthaung with the aim of catching a glimpse of the damage wreaked on one of the world's last dictatorships. "Go back now," he told us. "I cannot give you permission to leave town and the army checkpoints will stop you. There is nothing to see. We are handling the situation in our own way." ..

Rangoon brushed aside most offers of help, accepting a token £104,000 worth of aid from communist China. .. [Aid organizations are prevented from visiting nearby islands and coastal areas] Further clues to the extent of the damage come, however, in reports of foreigners who are missing in the area. Two South African backpackers and a group of Christian charity workers have not been in contact with friends and relatives for a week. A Florida-based missionary group has launched an appeal to rebuild a Burmese village destroyed in the tsunami. From the government, however, there is no word."

Fri, 14 Jan 2005 16:44:46 GMT

The politics of disaster: What happened in Burma from the Tsunami is still unknown. "for the first three days, the official version was that Burma had survived without a scratch. The uniformed gangsters who run the kleptocracy, ravish its forests and murder its citizens, expressed their heart-felt sorrow and decent regret at the news from the rest of the region, but made no mention of the waves taking Burmese lives. A meteorological officer from Rangoon explained the miracle. The border with Thailand may only be 150 miles north of the devastated hotels of Phuket, but Burma was fortunate to have a coastline which rose from shallow seas. ..

On Wednesday the hacks on the New Light of Myanmar, the junta's mouthpiece, admitted that 43 people had died and 25 were missing. Few believed them. Ever since Boxing Day, opponents of the regime who produce the Democratic Voice of Burma website have been receiving leads from scattered sources. An anonymous naval officer told them that a military installation on Coco Island in the Indian Ocean had been washed away. Magye Island in the Gulf of Bengalmay also had been swamped, other sources said. There were reports of the Maubin University building being torn apart, possibly by an earthquake which hit after the waves, of fishermen never returning from the sea and of villages losing dozens of inhabitants. One rumour doing the rounds says that 500 died in one district alone, and it sounds plausible... the inhabitants of the coastal districts are desperately poor. Their flimsy shacks never looked as if they could withstand a raging sea. ..

It will take weeks to find out if the real death toll is anywhere near as bad as in Thailand - if, that is, we ever find out. The junta has an interest in maintaining the illusion of total control.. Last week reporters who tried to get information from the Unicef office in Rangoon were given a short course on the facts of life. The aid workers stonewalled because they would be thrown out of the country if they said a word out of place. ..

In Burma, many charities have decided that giving aid to Rangoon is like giving EU grants to Sicily or oil-for-food programmes to Saddam's Iraq: whatever your good intentions, the money always ends up strengthening one mafia or another. Thus, while Unicef, Save the Children and a handful of other organisations cling on, most won't go near the place. They know that what Burma needs isn't hand-outs but a revolution. "

Fri, 14 Jan 2005 16:26:28 GMT

Nuclear test monitoring network useful: Here's a tidbit from Cringeley: "Here is word from a reader in the UK: "The infrastructure for a global tsunami warning system already exists. The system set up to monitor nuclear testing is capable of, detected, and pinpointed the South Asian tsunami as it happened. The monitoring headquarters is in Berkshire, England, and the head of the station had made suggestions in the past that its role be expanded to include earthquake and tsunami monitoring. Better still, the necessary treaties are in place to allow immediate two-way communication between the centre and affected countries. Indeed, they carry an up to date list of contact numbers for key people. What's missing is political will. With that in place organisations, public information, and training can be put in place to make sure any warning is responded to on the ground."' I recall seeing a map of the placement of their monitoring devicesand the satcoms that relay their information (uniformly spread around the planet). Interesting to think of the other uses of that sensor network.

Wed, 12 Jan 2005 19:06:37 GMT

The Pen, Too, Is a Tool for Rebuilding: A view of tsunami reconstruction in India, where the local government and NGO sector are leading. "It occurs to me that the tsunami has done something not even Mahatma Gandhi could: It has brought fundamentalists together to work for a common cause. Since Dec. 26, three sworn enemies have been working with each other on the relief effort: The RSS, the Hindu extremists who are part of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party; their fierce rivals, the Marxists in the Communist Party of India; and the Jamaat, the authorities who run the mosques and serve the Muslim community. ..

The politician told me that the government will endeavor to rehabilitate the islanders on shore. One of my traveling companions, an engineer from Madras, whispers to me that politicians aren't afraid of breaking promises, they're only afraid of the press.

And he's right. India has a dozen 24-hour news channels -- the most in the world. They're all offering nonstop coverage of the disaster and the relief efforts. So much scrutiny is focues on the government, relief organizations, and politicians about their responses to the devastation that any slipups become national news and prompt heated debates. Although I had wanted to volunteer to help with relief efforts, I now don't mind being a reporter again."

Wed, 05 Jan 2005 19:17:17 GMT

More on IBM tsunami recovery aid: "volunteer and corporate support that includes $1 million in cash and services, a total that may increase. IBM Corporate Community Relations worked closely with its US business partners to secure the technology -- as well as extra batteries, country-specific power supplies, Web cameras and fingerprint scanners -- over the New Years holiday weekend. IBM volunteers are now in the process of preparing the equipment for shipment to Bangkok, Thailand, where they will be distributed to outlying areas. IBM managers in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia and Thailand have received calls from officials in those countries seeking recovery assistance. The IBM Crisis Response Team has been in the region for nearly a week coordinating universal technology solutions that can be used across geographies to help coordinate disaster recovery efforts." Mark Prutsalis of Strong Angel II is leading one IBM team in the region.

Mon, 03 Jan 2005 20:37:31 GMT

Fritz Institute: Develops software and shares best practices in disaster relief logistics. Good resource for background information, case studies, and links to practitioners.

Mon, 03 Jan 2005 20:31:43 GMT

Groove-based efforts in Sri Lanka: S.B.Chatterjee reports on Virtual Volunteering with information moving through Groove spaces, building on networks of NGOs there (including Info-Share).

Mon, 03 Jan 2005 20:27:19 GMT

Sumatran Surfariis - Surfing Indonesia: A number of local Indonesian tourism and shipping companies are organizing bottom-up delivery of relief packages by sea. Susi Johnston in Bali is blogging details on the ground, with photos. Assistance from the US is coming via the IDEP Foundation . [Via Julia Lerman]

Mon, 03 Jan 2005 20:19:14 GMT

Office angels: FT Story of how UNHCR used volunteers from Microsoft and other companies (Hewlett-Packard, Kodak, Screen-Check and Security UK) to create a refugee registration system in Kosovo, which is still in use in refugee situations elsewhere. Shows how corporate partnership programs are potential win-wins in many areas, highlighting the desire of corporations' staff to contribute to humanitarian efforts.

Wed, 22 Dec 2004 16:54:55 GMT

The Broadband Daily: BPL Hype: A summary of skepticism about Broadband over Power Lines. Links to stories saying that it generates high levels of radio noise that disrupt other spectrum users; it has been tried by many utilities but only one is going commercial with it; and that industry engineers think it won't scale.

Thu, 16 Dec 2004 23:18:29 GMT

Senegal: Digital video over DSL trial. Tivo-like functions, starting with 200 users in 2005.

Mon, 22 Nov 2004 16:27:15 GMT

UN International Year of Microcredit, 2005: "One key need is to collect and analyse hard data on the state of microfinance: its availability by region, client profiles, and types and quantities of services offered. As part of the Year’s activities, a Data Project will bring together expert statisticians and researchers from the Bretton Woods institutions and the United Nations, in collaboration with governments and the private sector, to address current data gaps, anticipate future needs, and build agreement on the best way forward for donors, private investors and practitioners. In addition, the “Blue Book” project will seek to identify constraints and opportunities for the promotion of inclusive financial sectors, culminating in recommendations of concrete actions that countries can take to make microfinance an integral part of national financial systems" Ongoing activities, including a planned online marketplace, at http://www.yearofmicrocredit.org.

Thu, 18 Nov 2004 18:49:12 GMT

Here are some pictures of the AMD PIC ("Emma") product as launched. It runs a Windows CE version, and typically ships with a 15-inch screen.

Wed, 17 Nov 2004 17:22:50 GMT

NetHope procures Eutelsat network: "Eutelsat, one of the world’s leading satellite operators, announced today that it has been selected by NetHope as a supplier for 2-way satellite broadband connectivity for aid organisations in over 100 locations in Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. NetHope is a collaborative organisation formed by the world’s largest humanitarian aid organisations that provides IT equipment and solutions in countries where its members execute their programmes and projects.

Skylogic, a 100 percent broadband affiliate of Eutelsat, based in Turin (Italy) will coordinate logistics, installations, operations, after-sales service, and QoS management for NetHope’s participating member sites in more than 40 countries, from Paraguay to Nepal. From its location in Turin, Skylogic will provide a turnkey broadband access solution to NetHope members through the extensive coverage it can supply through Eutelsat’s fleet of satellites.

The network will use capacity on four satellites and coincides with the commercial entry into service of the African beam on Eutelsat’s recently launched W3A satellite, which is operated through a new IP hub located at Skylogic’s Turin premises. NetHope’s member organisations will also benefit from commercial conditions pre-negotiated with Eutelsat/Skylogic, for broadband 2-way access deployment, as well as project management for the entire rollout and maintenance of their sites for a term of three years."

Tue, 16 Nov 2004 19:01:31 GMT

Korean Cyworld - commercial blogging: "Cyworld is a popular site that provides personal homepage services. As of yesterday, the site surpassed 10 million members, or more than a quarter of the South Korean population. Within just a few years of launching, it has become an important part of mass culture. Cyworld's main feature is a type of Web log called a "mini hompy," short for mini homepage. Like other blogs, users can create various Web boards, produce online photo albums, and upload other content. Its specialized content includes a "mini room," which users can decorate with items from a cyber shop. Arcade games and music can also be bought to be included in one's hompy. These are bought with acorns, which cost 100 won (9 cents) each. Currently, Cyworld earns about 150 million won a day from acorn sales."

I was a Cyholic: Good description by a young user, with screen shots and insights into the social processes cyworld builds on (vanity, status-seeking, and even the pleasures of being stalked).

A recent essay by Clay Shirky provides a valuable counterpoint. Looking at mailing lists and SlashDot, he notes how a focus on personal computers and individual users obscures what they are used for. Networked computers are less like "boxes" than "doors" into a social space. Simple means and rapid experimentation can create a lot of value.

Tue, 16 Nov 2004 08:19:55 GMT

In some nations, the rise of 'shortgevity': "It's an article of faith among most 21st-century humans that life is getting longer. In the last three decades, the average life span at birth has increased from about 60 years to 67 years worldwide, a remarkable achievement. But in two dozen countries, human life spans are shortening." Article has table of several countries. In US from 1970-2000, L.E. grew from 71.5 to 77.1 years.

"Today illicit drugs and alcoholism are still major social ills in the [former Soviet] region. But the outlook has begun to improve as those countries stabilize socially and economically, though longevity rates have still not returned to their peak levels of the 1980s.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the picture remains alarming. Experts attribute much of the problem to the HIV/AIDS epidemic there, which accounts for 25 million of the 40 million cases of HIV/AIDS in the world. According to the latest United Nations Human Development Report, life expectancy in Zimbabwe plummeted from 56 years in 1970-75 to just 33.1 today. Zambia went from 49.7 years to 32.4 in the same period, Lesotho from 49.5 to 35.1, and Botswana from 56.1 to 39.7. ..

Every year of life expectancy gained is estimated to raise per capita gross domestic product in a country by about 4 percent. That's prompted some researchers to question whether development aid to Africa, only about 10 percent of which is aimed at improving health, is being properly spent. It's in everyone's interest "to overcome what I call the 'longevity divide,' " Dr. Butler says. While the per capita GDPs of sub- Saharan countries have not dipped as dramatically as their longevity rates, that measure can be deceiving, Hill says. The deaths of young adults have reduced the labor force, but that has allowed survivors to pick up extra work and boost their own earnings. Thus, the fall in per capita GDP doesn't look so bad."

Sat, 13 Nov 2004 16:42:15 GMT

Caught in the Net: Maldives Repression: "Late this summer, Maldivian President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom employed an extraordinary tactic to quell a two-day pro-democracy uprising in his small Indian Ocean nation: He completely cut off Internet access and text messaging via cell phone, apparently to prevent activists from contacting press organizations and others outside the islands. Gayoom has ruled the Maldives since 1978, and his cabinet said the decision reflected “patience, wisdom, and leadership.” Free-speech advocates called the move irresponsible and unprecedented. There was one exception to Gayoom’s Internet ban—his personal Web site remained up and running, with regular updates during the 48-hour affair. FP invites readers to suggest incidents in which a government, corporation, or any organization is involved in a unique technological abuse at
caughtinthenet@ceip.org."

Sun, 07 Nov 2004 20:04:10 GMT

Suggest an X PRIZE: "The concept of the [World Technology Network] WTN X PRIZES is to utilize the concepts, procedures, technologies and publicity developed X PRIZE Foundation's Ansari X PRIZE competition for space and .. launch a series of technology prizes seeking to meet the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century." I think I'll suggest a few in sustainable energy, starting with catalysis of cellulose to liquid fuel, efficient electricity storage systems, small-scale low-grade heat to electricity conversion. Desalination and other water purification would be another high-impact sustainability technology.

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 20:46:54 GMT

AMD Launches Global Strategy with Partners to Provide Internet Connectivity and Computing Power to 50 Percent of World's Population by 2015: "50x15 is AMD's initiative to enable affordable Internet access and computing capabilities for 50 percent of the world population by the year 2015. With the current global Internet penetration rate at approximately 10 percent, and the global population estimated to reach 7.2 billion people by 2015, there is tremendous potential ..

AMD is announcing the Personal Internet Communicator (PIC), an innovative consumer device that enables affordable, managed Internet connectivity and offers Microsoft Windows-based computing capabilities to help fulfill the communication, education and entertainment needs of people in high-growth markets. ..

In conjunction with the introduction of the PIC, AMD announced customers in various countries around the world, including the TATA Group in India, CRC in Mexico, and Cable and Wireless in the Caribbean. TATA is the first company to embrace and distribute the PIC in its respective region. TATA will market the PIC and offer it initially to consumers in five cities in India. CRC will work with local distributors in Mexico to offer the PIC along with a suite of educational software. Cable and Wireless is deploying the PIC in support of disaster relief efforts throughout the Caribbean. AMD is diligently working with other customers in several regions to make the PIC available to consumers in high growth markets throughout the world. ..

The Personal Internet Communicator is designed to be an easy to use, affordable consumer device that provides managed Internet connectivity and basic computing and Internet capabilities such as a browser, e-mail, productivity tools (word processing and spreadsheet), and the ability to view images, multimedia files and standard format documents. More information and pictures of the new device can be viewed and downloaded at www.amd.com/50x15. .. Other companies playing an integral role in the development and manufacturing of the PIC include Solectron, Seagate, Samsung and Macromedia played an integral role in the development and manufacturing of the PIC. .. The PIC is branded, marketed and sold by local service providers such as telecommunications companies and government-sponsored communications programs. Pricing to the consumer is determined by the service provider, which may offer variety of subscription, microfinancing options and bundling packages at different price points. Microfinancing in the form of payment plans helps consumers avoid large, up-front cash deployments at the point of sale. Suggested system price point is $185.00 with a keyboard, mouse, and preinstalled software; or $249.00 which also includes a monitor. ..

[AMD is] developing an in-country value chain [to ensure] that the technology gets into the hands of those who need it most, and that the business ecosystem develops and spreads within the markets the products ultimately serve. "Technologies developed for mature markets cannot be dropped into new markets and then be expected to succeed," said Shane Rau, Program Manager, IDC... "

From Red Herring: "To run the PIC, AMD chose its Geod chip, which is typically used for making computer kiosks and set-top boxes for broadband connections. The chip uses only one watt of electricity and runs without a fan. The PIC will provide 128 MB of memory and a 10-GB hard drive. The company is eyeing some 205 million households in China, India, Mexico, Brazil, and Russia as future PIC buyers, said Mr. Shine. .. Knowing that many of the PICs may go into homes lacking a regular power supply, AMD plans to make PICs that can run on batteries, said Mr. Shine. The company is even exploring alternative sources of energy, such as solar power, in designing the future generations of the machine."

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 07:02:16 GMT

Linux growing in developing nations: ""In emerging countries people are using Linux to accelerate development," says Scott Handy, IBM's vice president for worldwide Linux. "[There's a] relatively similar model in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Korea. In those five countries, Linux is growing faster than the IT [information technology] market in general." .. Sergio Amadeu, the head of Brazil's National Information Technology Institute [says that with open source,] "The country goes from being one of mere consumers to one that develops solutions." ..

Since 2001, São Paulo has saved almost $10 million by ditching Microsoft and buying hardware that does not require nearly as much memory or such fast processors as required by systems running Windows. Officials also say they save on maintenance and security because Linux systems are less vulnerable to attacks from hackers and viruses. .. Amadeu, who aims to transfer 40 percent of the federal government's computers to Linux before the end of 2006, even compared Microsoft to drug traffickers. He says Microsoft's offer to provide Windows software to schools was like that of dealers offering children a first hit for free."

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 05:54:14 GMT

Solar plan for Indian computers: "Authorities in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh have drawn up a pilot project to use solar power to run computers in village schools. Nearly 80% of houses are estimated to have no power, and many villages suffer frequent disruption in supply because of power cuts or other faults. Many have to use kerosene lamps for light and most government-run primary schools have no power at all." There is rural experience with solar for other purposes, such as battery charging and water pumps. "Last year 109 solar pumps were installed, but the administration now aims to install 400 in 2004. "

Sat, 23 Oct 2004 08:21:20 GMT

Anywhere Books: "Print-on-demand is a natural application for the developing world. Anywhere Books is a US-based nonprofit dedicated to deploying mobile print on demand solutions for development." It's been demonstrated in Uganda and seeks further funding to operate there. D-Lib magazine suggests for-profit applications, and mentions trials in Egypt and India. Wired mentions projects in Ghana and Macedonia.

Fri, 22 Oct 2004 18:47:09 GMT

Cringely gets it about BPL: The recent Fcc approval of "broadband over power lines (BPL) is going to totally shake up the Internet industry. .. One thing to remember about electric utilities is that they are very slow and deliberate. They move like glaciers, so it will take awhile for these services to be available at your house. But like glaciers, they are also impossible to stop.

The appeal here to an electric company isn't that $20-30 per month they'll charge for becoming your ISP. What matters to them and what makes this whole thing so important is that it will lead to your electric meter being monitored 24/7. That means utilities can start to offer true dynamic pricing, with electric costs dropping in low demand time periods and dramatically rising with high demand. While that sounds bad, the end result is actually good, since for the most part, profits from electricity sales will be regulated. The real end result is that demand will be better controlled by dynamic pricing, and the utility may just be able to forego building that $2 billion power plant they've been planning and saving for over the past 20 years. Dropping $2 billion to the bottom line has to appeal to any board of directors and, in a tightly regulated environment, will probably lead to overall power rates going DOWN, not up.

So this BPL stuff is mainly about getting smart electric meters and only partly about offering Internet service. But having made the effort to build the network, offer it they will, generally through unregulated subsidiaries." This is particularly interesting for developing and newly industrializing countries that are still building their grids and can design BPL in at the start.

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 06:56:19 GMT

Strong Angel II: Lessons Learned. Several points of advice from Cmdr Eric Rasmussen. Also online: Video emphasizing Groove, and some presentations with excellent notes. "If there was a single core statement that emerged from the week of collaborative integration and post-conflict reconstruction design, it would be “COMMS FIRST”. Whether the communications was language translation, data transmission, voice-over-IP, reference library accessibility, or cultural explanation, the overarching concept of communication proved far more valuable than political, diplomatic, or religious statements. .. Bring the best and most inclusive language, communications and collaboration tools you have, incorporate everyone into your comms sphere daily with a constant expansion of service, teach the locals – especially police, fire, and medical – what they need to know to keep it all running when you leave, and then give them everything when you walk away. " Great demo of important features:

Babylon Chat, a multilingual realtime chat tool within Groove
Recording and distribution tool for local emergency radio, allowing monitoring from anywhere on the Internet
Jeep-mounted wifi "pony express"
VSee (good photos on their site) for video-conferencing, whether p2p, air-to-ground, sea-to-shore (!) or integrated into Groove workspaces
Various disaster-specific reporting and coordination tools, some with GIS mapping

Fri, 01 Oct 2004 17:33:41 GMT

Open source networking: Wireless for TV-on-demand, VOIP, and broadband, on a neighborhood scale in Canada, all with iopen-source software. One PDA acts as thin-client PC, TV remote control, and roaming phone (home, work, mobile). A community PVR server records and plays essentially everything from wholesale cable sources. Interesting future vision, to be sold by the Canadian company as a futuristic WISP. Could be a model for new developing country infrastructure.

Thu, 23 Sep 2004 07:24:36 GMT

VOIP in development: Good review of VOIP progress from Brian King of Interaction. Among several cases noted was a national developing country provider: "Eguitel Communications in Guinea-Bissau, the only company in Africa with an unrestricted VOIP license, included CrystalVoice software as a key technology in their plan for rural telecenters. The company plans to buy software licenses to support 24 simultaneous phone conversations. CrystalVoice offers a broad range of approaches and prices and reportedly will help clients identify the optimal solution and best return on investment. Eguitel will deploy Pentium III computers and handsets that run from USB ports into the phone booths. The telecenters will be connected via an existing 11 megabyte, fixed-antenna microwave network. The company expects the investment to be amortized very quickly, through mostly in-country traffic."

Sat, 18 Sep 2004 07:15:31 GMT

Magic Bike :: Wireless Access Bike: Fun combination of 'art' and tech: "magicbike is a mobile WiFi (wireless Internet) hotspot that gives free Internet connectivity wherever its ridden or parked. By turning a common bicycle into a wireless hotspot, Magicbike explores new delivery and use strategies for wireless networks and modern-day urbanites. Wireless bicycles disappear into the urban fabric and bring Internet to yet unserved spaces and communities. Mixing public art with techno-activism, Magicbikes are perfect for setting up adhoc Internet connectivity for art and culture events, emergency access, public demonstrations, and communities on the struggling end of the digital-divide."

Sat, 18 Sep 2004 07:08:38 GMT

Indian state rolls out wireless broadband: "An Indian state has launched wireless broadband to provide connectivity in rural areas unreachable by traditional telephone lines or cellular phone services. The community Internet kiosks, named Akshaya, have been set up by the Kerala State IT Mission Department. More than 550 of the kiosks have been opened in the Mallapuram district, spread over 3,500 square kilometers. .. Five Wi-Fi hotspots have also been established around government offices and a tourist resort. "This is the world's biggest rural wireless network," H.S. Bedi, managing director of Tulip IT Services," an Indian IT services provider that developed the project.

The gear comes from the Canadian Wi-Lan: "its Versatile Intelligent Network Environment technology deployed in India is designed to "line of sight" limitations, using network nodes as repeaters and routers for other nodes that either do not have line-of-sight or are too distant to have direct connectivity to the Internet node. VINE networks can cost less than conventional cell-based networks, particularly when covering large, sparsely populated areas, the company said. WiLan is also setting up a statewide WLAN in another state, Gujarat.""

Sat, 18 Sep 2004 06:52:53 GMT

Reddy's PCTVt: "a $250 gizmo that does a whole bunch of things: a computer, a TV, a DVD player, a videophone -- a PCTVt. "I kept asking myself, What would the device have to do for someone on the other side of the digital divide, to be desirable?"wondered Raj Reddy, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. The answer, he decided, was a simple device that would offer entertainment. This November, Reddy hopes to begin installing the first 100 prototypes of the PCTVt in India and possibly several other countries. Reddy is hoping his project -- with backing from Microsoft and TriGem, the Korean computer maker, and in partnership with the Indian Institute of Science, the Indian Institute of Information Technology and researchers at the University of California, Berkeley -- can prove that it is possible to bring IT to impoverished communities without depending on philanthropy. Because his low-cost computer doubles as a TV and a DVD player, Reddy believes that he will be able to use it as a vehicle to take computing to populations that until now have been excluded. "

Thu, 16 Sep 2004 01:27:55 GMT

Low cost email over satellite: Nice analysis of RBGAN costs by Humaninet. Result is 12-18 cents per average message.

Thu, 16 Sep 2004 01:21:22 GMT

Electrovaya - Powerpad: Laptop extender batteries that fit under the unit and supply power for "up to 12 hours" when fully charged. $200-500.

Thu, 16 Sep 2004 01:17:07 GMT

SunWize Portable Energy System: "The SunWize Portable Energy System converts sunlight into electricity, allowing the user freedom to recharge a handset or other portable device anywhere the sun shines. The system is lightweight, weather-resistant, highly durable, .. UL listed, CE certified and has a system output of 8.5 watts. Built into the product is the patented SunWize OPTI-Meter LCD metering system that instantly measures sunlight intensity and allows optimum placement of the panel. The SunWize Portable Energy System is designed for daily field use. The 9.9 watt solar panel is constructed using a proprietary process in which the highest efficiency, single-crystal photovoltaic cells are permanently encased in rugged, weather-resistant urethane plastic. The panel’s nine-foot cord winds on a spool recessed into the back of the panel. A hinged metal stand folds flush into the panel’s back side. " Can output a variety of voltages. Can be combined with a second panel to double output. Price currently about $360.

Or, on a larger scale, The EN-R-Pak solar-powered portable power generation system, 50w panel bundled with battery to deliver 200w maximum, for about $2200.

Wed, 15 Sep 2004 18:29:27 GMT

DIGITAL LITERACY FOR DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONALS: Announcing a new online course, "Digital Literacy for Agricultural Professionals": "A growing number of agricultural professionals now have Internet access but many are not quite sure what resources this makes available, how to best access these resources, or how to use the Internet in support of their work or to develop themselves professionally. This course is designed to help learners overcome these uncertainties"

Wed, 15 Sep 2004 18:27:56 GMT

Design that Matters: "DtM acts as bridge to bring problems identified by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the communities into the classroom for university engineering and business students to tackle in their courses and research. " Affiliated with MIT and a design course there.

Wed, 15 Sep 2004 18:24:15 GMT

TechSoup Skillsoft online training: Tech courses available to nonprofit staff at cut rates ($35-150) until end-2004.

Mon, 13 Sep 2004 07:31:52 GMT

Michael Helfrich describes a mobile WiFi cloud experiment during Strong Angel II: "The Pony Express was nothing more than a Chevy SUV, housing a Groove Relay, a yagi mast, and a 5-watt in-line linear amplifier between the PC's WIFI card and the yagi. The vehicle was driven in a large circle linking three camps, much like the [refugee] camp described above, spread across the big island. These camps had personnel with laptop computers and WIFI capability, but no uplink to the internet. As the Pony Express was driven into each camp, the devices would detect the mobile cloud and dispense their locally cached Groove payloads, while taking in messages that were housed on the relay from the other camps and from others around the world. The Pony Express moved from camp to camp, and to the base camp where the internet was available. ..

Actual applications were distributed to these far flung camps. From the base camp in Kona, we created a Rapid Assessment capability using the Groove Forms tool. The Pony Express was able to actually DELIVER the application to those in the field without any IT intervention. The space was created; the form added; and invites sent. Upon acceptance in each camp, messages were delivered back to the inviter and the space/application was delivered using the Pony Express. Subsequent data was delivered back to base camp automatically. It just worked."

Sat, 11 Sep 2004 07:23:24 GMT

Wikipedia Reputation and the Wemedia Project: The rationale for the value of Wikipedia and other open-modification resources. Describes one test where a dozen errors were introduced, and all were corrected within 3 hours. Reminds me of "single text" conflict resolution, open source intelligence, and the codification of traditional knowledge. As long as there are enough authors paying attention, it may work for capturing collective knowledge.

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 06:30:42 GMT

Internet prods Asia to open up: "in China, where the government has mounted a huge effort to filter Internet content. The "Great Firewall of China" is manned by at least 30,000 censors who blocked as many as 50,000 websites in the first half of 2002, according to a US State Department report on China's human rights. Just this week, Beijing introduced stringent penalties against purveyors of Internet pornography, including life imprisonment for those behind major sites that receive more than 250,000 hits. "Pornographic" is left undefined. ..

China's massive firewall is already showing cracks under the weight of the Internet's expansion. The pressure has come from innumerable sources, including an onslaught of weblogs, open-source directories, and projects like Wikipedia, an "open-content" encyclopedia. Five years ago in China, most Western newspaper websites were blocked from viewing. Today, the Chinese censors who watch the Internet target more specific sites - chat forums on ultrasensitive topics like Tibetan liberation and the Falun Gong religious movement.

So while the average Chinese still can't walk into an Internet cafe in Ningbo and pull up the homepage of the Taiwan government, he can read The New York Times. Even some sensitive topics, surprisingly, are readily available in China. A quick browse through Wikipedia's Chinese-language version for the "June 4, Tiananmen" entry offers a broad look at the Democracy movement of 1989 and its violent end. Without using any special software or proxy servers, a Chinese web user can view the famed photo of a lone man facing down tanks outside the square 15 years ago in Beijing. ..

Despite its firewall efforts, the Chinese government is not stopping people from buying PCs or signing up for cheap Internet access. The country has an estimated 87 million Internet users this year, nearly four times the number in 2000, according to the data website www.internetworldstats.com." Of the world's internet users, 32.1% are now estimated to be Asian, 28.1% European, and 27.9% North American.

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 06:21:45 GMT

Fewer Asians live on less than $1 a day: "In a new report, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) says the number of people in Asia living on less than $1 a day fell by 223 million between 1990 and 2002. China accounted for 3 out of 4 of those whose incomes rose above a level classified as "extreme poverty" by economists. .. Ifzal Ali, chief economist of the ADB estimates that by 2015, provided this growth is sustained, the number of Asians living extreme poverty could fall as low as 150 million, down from 690 million in 2002. ..

The growing gap [between rich and poor] is particularly evident in India. A booming software industry has sprouted office towers and gated communities, while the number of people living on under $2 a day actually rose 17 percent to 840 million through 2002. ..

Access to land, clean water, education and healthcare are also crucial to the fight against poverty. The ADB chides South Asian governments for failing to invest in public services. .. "People are no longer willing to be patient for trickledown growth. They want a better life and they want it now," says Ali. "Governments must be sensitive to their issues or they will be tossed out.""

Thu, 02 Sep 2004 08:12:20 GMT

New Ideas for Emerging Markets: Cellphone micropayments for the BOP: For cell phone operators, "mature markets [are] near saturation, and carriers must develop new strategies to reach low-earning customers. Carriers in emerging markets often find quick early success by catering to customers at the upper end of the local income scale, but at some point, they have to start looking a little lower down. While they'll still go all-out over those top-tier customers, operators must also figure out a way to remain profitable at the low ARPUs generated by low-income subscribers. ..

Smart Communications in the Phillipines and several other Asian carriers have proved, raising subscriber figures and revenues by letting users refill their prepaid accounts with electronic micropayments. Smart users used to have to buy refills of a minimum of 100 pesos (about $1.75), but the lower limit is now just 30 pesos. .. Now, users buy the smaller refills from one of Smart's 500,000 resellers across the country, who then updates the user's account with an SMS.

The smaller refill amounts, along with the negated need to print scratch-off refill vouchers, cut Smart's costs by 300 million pesos ($5.3 million) in its first six months and helped the company add a record number of subscribers in the second quarter. Indonesian carrier Indosat is also using the electronic micropayments, and says it will add more subscribers this year than it first estimated since the system helps attract new lower-income users."

Wed, 01 Sep 2004 00:49:59 GMT

Mini-Box.Com: "Mini-Box is a small, lightweight, yet powerful x86 system designed for embedded or general purpose PC computing applications. Consuming under 10 watts, the M-100 is an excellent candidate for low power, small form factor computing requirements. The M-100 is equipped with a backlit LCD, customizable 14 key keypad, front load Compact Flash, USB and audio." Comes with Linux on a bootable CF. Powered by 12v DC.

Tue, 31 Aug 2004 19:10:21 GMT

Darfur, Sudan: A shocking map of the region as of August 2, 2004. One red marker for each of 395 destroyed villages, another 121 orange markers for damaged villages, the locations of camps with over 100,000 refugees, the dirt tracks and airports used by relief workers to get there. (The map is a poster-resolution PDF, 1.87mb, including satellite image details.)

Mon, 30 Aug 2004 08:09:49 GMT

Made to Order - How industrial design became a weekend hobby: Many examples of customization (and "wrangling"), like fitting computers into other cases, modifying cars, playing The Sims, using rapid prototyping machines, and vendors like cafepress.com. About rapid prototyping machines (aka "3D printers"), check out the Solidscape: T66 ($50k), and Z-corp (with a cool GIS application).

Fri, 27 Aug 2004 02:50:41 GMT

Horizontal innovation networks - by and for users: 2002 MIT paper on what I've been calling open production, related to the book Enabling Innovation. Several examples, both techie and nontechie (like mountain bikes). "Innovation development, production, distribution and consumption networks can be built up horizontally – with actors consisting only of innovation users (more precisely, “user/self-manufacturers”). “Free” and “open source” software projects are examples of such networks, and examples can be found in the case of physical products as well. User innovation networks can function entirely independently of manufacturers when (1) at least some users have sufficient incentive to innovate, (2) at least some users have an incentive to voluntarily reveal their innovations, and (3) diffusion of innovations by users is low cost and can compete with commercial production and distribution. When only the first two conditions hold, a pattern of user innovation and trial and improvement will occur within user networks, followed by commercial manufacture and distribution of innovations that prove to be of general interest. In this paper we explore the empirical evidence related to each of these matters and conclude that conditions favorable to user innovation networks are often present in the economy." Related: a Jonathan Schwartz blog entry on how users are making IT decisions; personal uses of IT come to the office now, it's not just work going home.

Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:36:42 GMT

Economist on Prahalad: Good short review. "To be profitable, firms cannot simply edge down market fine-tuning the products they already sell to rich customers. Instead, they must thoroughly re-engineer products to reflect the very different economics of BOP [the bottom of the pyramid]: small unit packages, low margin per unit, high volume. Big business needs to swap its usual incremental approach for an entrepreneurial mindset, because BOP markets need to be built not simply entered. Products will have to be made available in affordable units -- most sales of shampoo in India, for example, are of single sachets. Distribution networks may need to be rethought, not least to involve entrepreneurs from among the poor. Customers may need to be educated in how to consume, and even why -- about credit, say, or even about the benefits of washed hands. The corruption now widespread in poor countries must be tackled (about which Mr Prahalad has penned a particularly useful chapter). "

Wed, 18 Aug 2004 15:40:06 GMT

Bruce Sterling SIGGRAPH 2004 speech "When Blobjects Rule the Earth": Fastastic speech connecting memes from all over (open production, new media, sci fi, cluetrain, sustainability) into a new techno vision. An update of Bucky Fuller, maybe an "As We May Think" for this generation. Too much to summarize, I'll quote just a few bits that stuck out for me.

"We are facing a future world infested with digital programmability. A world where our structures and possessions include, as a matter of course, locaters, timers, identities, histories, origins, and destinations: sensing, logic, actuation, and displays. ..

[There were products, then gizmos, now spimes] A spime is a users group first, and a physical object second.. A Spime is today's entire industrial process, made explicit. That is the whole shebang, explicitly tied to the object itself. A Spime is an object that ate and internalized the previous industrial order. Some of this information might be contained inside the Spime, and some of it might be conjured up on the Web by, say, a barcode or an RFID chip -- but in practice, you wouldn't notice the difference ..

The natural world should be better for our efforts and our ingenuity. It's not too much to ask. You and I will never live to see a future world with those advanced characteristics. The people who will be living in it will pretty much take it for granted, anyway. But that is a worthy vision for today's technologists: because that is wise governance for a digitally conquered world. That is is not tyranny. That is legitimacy. ..

The question we must face is: what do we want? We should want to abandon that which has no future. We should blow right through mere sustainability. We should desire a world of enhancement. That is what should come next. We don't need more dead clutter to entomb in landfills. We should want to expand the options of those who will follow us."

Wed, 18 Aug 2004 06:22:28 GMT

WFP creates game to tackle hunger: "Food Force is the brainchild of the World Food Programme (WFP), which last year fed more than 100 million people. The UN body seeks to capitalise on the popularity of video games to educate youngsters about hunger and the work of the aid agency. The game is due to be released later this year for the PC and Mac, and will initially only be available in the US as a free CD or download from the net. ..

"The game itself is somewhere between a game like Tomb Raider and a lecture from the WFP," explained the game's designer, Mike Harrison. "It starts with a short movie that explains a crisis in an imaginary country due to drought and civil war, two of the main reasons for people being hungry in the world," .. The challenge for players is to complete a series of missions, guided by a team of WFP characters...One of the missions is a Sim City type game "

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 01:18:54 GMT

The Wisdom of Crowds: A popular new book sheds light on the earlier post about Open Production. The publisher's notes provides an outline; the Amazon reader's comments are interesting, not least in noting examples (like intelligence failures -- reminding me of the movement to open source intelligence). "While our culture generally trusts experts and distrusts the wisdom of the masses, Surowiecki argues that "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." To support this almost counterintuitive proposition, Surowiecki explores problems involving cognition (we're all trying to identify a correct answer), coordination (we need to synchronize our individual activities with others) and cooperation (we have to act together despite our self-interest). His rubric, then, covers a range of problems, including driving in traffic, competing on TV game shows, maximizing stock market performance, voting for political candidates, navigating busy sidewalks, tracking SARS and designing Internet search engines like Google. If four basic conditions are met, a crowd's "collective intelligence" will produce better outcomes than a small group of experts, Surowiecki says, even if members of the crowd don't know all the facts or choose, individually, to act irrationally. "Wise crowds" need (1) diversity of opinion; (2) independence of members from one another; (3) decentralization; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions. The diversity brings in different information; independence keeps people from being swayed by a single opinion leader; people's errors balance each other out; and including all opinions guarantees that the results are "smarter" than if a single expert had been in charge."

Mon, 16 Aug 2004 15:37:40 GMT

The Cgnet Story: A Case Study of International Computer Networking: How cool: Our 1994 book is actively traded on second-hand book sites. Under $6...

Mon, 16 Aug 2004 07:44:56 GMT

Open production: I talked with Brewster Kahle briefly in 2001, and got the idea that the degree of collaboration is a spectrum. At one end is the conventional commitment to play a role in a team; at the other is the incidental activity that leaves a trace that can be datamined in an implicit collaboration. At the implicit end, we see Google mining the links I make as though I were collaborating with all other web authors; and Amazon mines my purchases and makes recommendations on my behalf to similar buyers. Howard Rheingold sees this as part of a broader pattern, and ends up sounding like Buckminster Fuller:

Besides Google and Amazon, "there's open source [software]. Steve Weber, a political economist at UC Berkeley, sees open source as an economic means of production that turns the free-rider problem to its advantage. All the people who use the resource but don't contribute to it just build up a larger user base. And if a very tiny percentage of them do anything at all -- like report a bug -- then those free riders suddenly become an asset.

And maybe this isn't just in software production. .. The dogma is that the two major means of organizing for economic production are the market and the firm. But [Yale law professor] Yochai Benkler uses open source as an example of peer-to-peer production, which he thinks may be pointing toward a third means of organizing for production.

There's also Wikipedia [the online encyclopedia written by volunteers]. It has 500,000 articles in 50 languages at virtually no cost, vs. Encyclopedia Britannica spending millions of dollars and they have 50,000 articles. .. [Rheingold also mentions unliscenced wireless "open" spectrum] ..

If I was a Nokia or a Hewlett-Packard, I would take a fraction of what I'm spending on those buildings full of expensive people and give out a whole bunch of prototypes to a whole bunch of 15-year-olds and have contracts with them where you can observe their behavior in an ethical way and enable them to suggest innovations, and give them some reasonable small reward for that. And once in a while, you're going to make a billion dollars off it."

Sun, 15 Aug 2004 22:11:32 GMT

UNV Online Volunteering: UN Volunteers has an online program: "Volunteers from all over the world are helping organizations that serve communities in developing countries -- but without leaving their own communities. These online volunteers translate documents, write articles, research data, build web sites, mentor young people, design logos, and engage in many other projects to benefit organizations serving people in the developing world. Online volunteers are volunteers without frontiers."

Sun, 15 Aug 2004 22:02:26 GMT

Microsoft OS for third world: "Microsoft is set to roll-out a 'no-frills', low-cost version of its Windows XP operating system for third world markets. The new OS, Windows XP Starter Edition, offers lower-resolution graphics and restricts the ability to connect computers via a network. Also, the OS can only run three programmes at any one time. The stripped-down edition of the operating system is an attempt to undercut the spread of Linux in developing countries."

Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and 2 other countries are in the rollout. "As part of the program, certain schools in 67 developing nations can qualify for free upgrades to the regular Windows software and for copies of Microsoft Office that cost $2.50. "

Gartner released a report on it, approving the concept, but criticizing certain limitations and the lack of an upgrade path to the full XP editions. "Microsoft would continue to gather feedback from consumers over the next 12 months."

Sun, 15 Aug 2004 15:59:58 GMT

(Almost) Instant Cash Transfer with Mobile Phones: "last week Philippines' largest mobile phone company, Smart Communications, launched a cash transfer service that uses text messaging to speed up the process. Overseas workers still have to go to the bank to initiate the transfer, but the recipients in the Philippines get a text message on their phone notifying them that they have immediate access to the cash, which is stored in their phone's "electronic wallet," a feature included in all 16 million Smart Communications subscribersâ019 accounts. The recipients can then use their Smart Money debit cards to withdraw the cash from ATMs. An International Herald Tribune article on this story has some interesting details about why this could be a very successful service: Eight million Filipinos work overseas and send $7.6 billion dollars home every year. The average income of a Filipino is under $1000 a year. Nevertheless, 30 percent of the country's 84 million residents have a mobile phone. Most people use SMS because it is much cheaper than making voice calls. All this adds up to a potentially huge income opportunity for Smart Communications, which is charging about 4.5 cents per transaction"

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 22:58:10 GMT

e-business and development: Information about several efforts in developing countries to use online catalogs and orders, information and travel services, and money transfers. Includes links to appropriate technology suppliers in this area.

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 17:41:47 GMT

The FIVIMS Programme: "Poverty Mapping is a joint initiative by FAO, UNEP and the CGIAR consisting of a network of institutions dedicated to: analyse and map the spatial distribution of poverty, produce and promote the use of poverty maps and shows linkages between poverty and food insecurity, the environment and development and to promote the use of poverty maps in policy making and targeting assistance. The initative has been funded as a thee-year project throught he Government of Norway, closing by the end of 2004. The poverty mapping initative is performed within FIVIMS, an Inter-agency initiative to promote information and mapping systems on food insecurity and vulnerability."

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 05:47:55 GMT

New Solar Tent Prototypes for US Army (June 16, 2004): "Iowa Thin Film Technologies, Inc., has completed the development of integrated solar technology for three Army tent prototypes. The tents integrate the company's PowerFilm® flexible solar panels directly with the tent fabric. Iowa Thin Film Technologies says that it is the only company in the world that has developed this fabric integration solar technology." Could be equally useful during disasters or in refugee camps.

Fri, 06 Aug 2004 18:19:46 GMT

China backs Nigeria rural comms: "In the bid to provide cheap telephone services to rural communities, the Federal Government yesterday launched a rural telephony programme for the country for which it plans to spend $200 million (about N26.6 billion) in the next few years. The money is a loan package granted by the Chinese Government while the Federal Government will provide a counterpart funding of N2.8 billion...

The rural telephony programme will be delivered in three projects spread across 343 local government areas of the country. The three projects include Rural Radio Systems (RRS), which will be provided in 125 local government areas, Alcatel Shangai Bell (ASB) covering 108 local governments, and the ZTE, which will be provided in 110 local government areas. ..out of the $200 million loan facility, 50 per cent would be committed to ABS while the other 50 per cent will spread across the other two projects under the rural telephony programme.

He explained that the rural telephony programme would provide service in rural and under-served urban centres, local government areas through tele-centres and .. educational institutions.. "

Fri, 06 Aug 2004 18:14:02 GMT

Zimbabwe prepares Internet controls: "The Zimbabwe government is planning to acquire high-tech equipment from China for the purpose of bugging the internet. This is to enable it to interfere with the flow of information it considers subversive as well as the operations of independent internet based media outlets. Authoritative sources within Posts and Telecommunications (PTC) and government circles revealed that the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) is already looking into ways of controlling internet communication as soon as the equipment arrives.

The whole of Zimbabwe has during the past weeks been experiencing intermittent internet break-downs, which PTC management had failed to explain, according to sources at the PTC. 'They merely said that there was work being done in upgrading or some security measures being implemented. There are CIOs [agents] that seem to have been permanently stationed at Tel One (the state owned hub for internet providers) and were carrying out some surveys in the past weeks. We understand that there are some Internet Service Providers (ISP) who have agreed to cooperate with the CIOs and let them use their domains for the tests with samples of equipment brought from China,' a PTC source said.

Sources within the CIO said that the equipment from China is expected to be delivered next month. Government would push for the promulgation of a law allowing it to bug the internet for security reasons. President Robert Mugabe announced during the opening of parliament last week that government would introduce a bill in the house to give it powers to control communication systems for the sake of 'tightening state security'. .. Tel One recently asked ISPs to sign commercial contracts obliging them to take 'all necessary measures' to prevent the transmission of illegal material on line."

Fri, 06 Aug 2004 17:52:29 GMT

WRI Conference: Eradicating Poverty through Profit: Dec 12-14, 2004, San Francisco. Program lists presenters and tracks on Connectivity, Energy and Agriculture, among other topics.

Wed, 04 Aug 2004 19:22:05 GMT

LeapFrog donating 20,000 books to Afghan women to learn basic health lessons in own languages: "Twenty-thousand interactive women's health books, built with the LeapPad learning system technology of LeapFrog Enterprises, are en route to Afghanistan to help teach basic health care lessons .. The recipients are Afghan women, 80 percent of whom are illiterate .. They will also begin to learn to read using the device, just as many children have.

The popular technology-based learning device has been tailored for speakers of Dari and Pashto, the primary languages of Afghanistan. They will be able to use it to learn about personal health subjects including diet, childhood immunization, pregnancy, breastfeeding, sanitation and water boiling, treating injuries and burns, and disease prevention. The [DHS] department, LeapFrog and several consultants for the company, including Dr. Najiba Zamani of Hayward, who had practiced medicine in an Afghan refugee camp, took 12 months to develop the material. The result: 350 items of recorded information on 19 personal health subjects that carefully take into account a host of cultural and religious considerations.

For example, reproduction is a culturally and religiously sensitive topic in the country. The solution: a page of text and a page of pictures with the analogy of growing carrots. Growing them too close together produces skinny and not-well- formed carrots that do not look good to eat, but if you space the carrots, they're plump and appetizing -- the lesson being it's better to space children rather than having them in rapid succession. " US DHS provided $1.2m for content development and translation.

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 21:14:26 GMT

Dialogue with the Grassroots: A collaborative project between Mountain Forum and Radio Sagarmatha in Nepal. Interesting model of collaboration between an international NGO and community broadcasters to develop and deliver audio content in local languages. The Mountain Forum is an interesting collection of people and institutions with many moderated email distribution lists.

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 20:27:22 GMT

Sustainable Resources: "An International Forum Connecting People with Hands-on Solutions to World Poverty." Boulder CO, Sept 30 - Oct 2, 2004 (plus pre- and post-conference workshops). Keynotes by John Todd, A.T. Ariyaratne, William McDonough.

Unfortunately, it overlaps with Engineers for a Sustainable World - 2004 National Conference, Stanford CA, Sept 30-October 2, 2004. Keynotes by William McDonough (busy guy!), and Jeffrey Sachs.

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 07:46:04 GMT

SDSU MiTAP Home Page: "The MiTAP system is a research prototype for monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and other global threats. MiTAP focuses on providing timely global information access to analysts, medical experts and individuals involved in humanitarian assistance and relief work. Multiple information soures are automatically captured, filtered, summarized, and categorized into searchable newsgroups based on disease, region, information sources, person, and organization. .. The system currently processes thousands of articles daily, delivering up-to-date information to hundreds of users. Because MiTAP uses an intuitive news browser interface, users are able to use the system with little or no training."

Sun, 01 Aug 2004 06:33:53 GMT

Reporters sans frontières - The Internet under surveillance 2004: "Obstacles to the free flow of information online," reported by country for about 40 countries. Also, in the article On a Filtered Internet, Things Are Not As They Seem, RSF reports that many countries have gone beyond blocking web sites: "The past year has brought a rise of new filtering methods that, intentionally or by happenstance, are considerably more confusing. Try using Google in China : Most searches work fine.. But run a search on a controversial policy area, and Google will stop working for perhaps half an hour. ..

Still more subtle are the "modified mirrors" sometimes used in Uzbekistan. Rather than simply blocking access to sites of political dissenters, Uzbek authorities make copies of the controversial sites - then change the copies to undermine or weaken the unsanctioned positions. The key step : When Uzbek users request the controversial sites, they automatically receive the altered copies in place of the authentic originals. Experts might realize something is wrong, but this tampering is exceptionally difficult for ordinary users to notice or detect. "

Fri, 30 Jul 2004 05:15:17 GMT

In battle against hunger and rural poverty, UN uses satellites and Internet: " United Nations agencies have developed a new Internet-based system to provide vital agricultural information to decision-makers in developing countries. ..GeoNetwork’s InterMap viewer, developed jointly by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), allows users to overlay maps from multiple servers housed at development institutions worldwide to create a customized thematic composite map on their own computer covering such variables as soil quality, vegetation and population density and marketing access. ..

In Mozambique, 12 government and international agencies working on agriculture, food security and humanitarian issues have been using it since September 2003 to share information and avoid duplication. WFP has implemented the system in its regional bureaux in Senegal, South Africa and Uganda. "

Thu, 29 Jul 2004 17:20:46 GMT

GFS Tactical Radio Comms: Application of Groove to emergency group voice comms, at the Strong Angel 2 exercise: "Groove 3.0 feature called Groove Folder Sync (GFS). With Groove 3.0 installed, GFS allows one to share a Windows file system folder with another Groove user without using a shared space as the container. One of the requirements at Strong Angel was to demonstrate how tactical radio communications could be extended to other continents. ..

As police, fire, and other first responder communications came in across the radios, [their voices] would be trapped and converted into MP3. The files were then dropped into a GFS folder which immediately synchronized GFS folders in Baghdad, Washington, and other parts of the globe.

I constructed a .NET app that would monitor folder events and then play these MP3's as they came in. It mimicked a police scanner. A civil affairs soldier sitting in Baghdad could then hear the actual tactical communications as they came in from our exercise in Hawaii."

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 18:27:26 GMT

Virtual Research Associates (VRA): The VRA reporter is used by humanitarian agencies to record incidents and other information regarding the security of their field workers. It integrates information from wire services with direct reporting, and has a GIS function. An interface with Groove and other non-web-based tools is being explored. The company's other tools track international news of many types, with one product that "providies early warnings about potential international “hot spots”". The natural language processing comes from ongoing research project at Harvard's school of international relations.

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 01:14:34 GMT

Completing the Revolution: The Challenge of Rural Telephony in Africa: Report with brief summary online, on the most basic telecom need. "At present, the lack of rural connections is often hidden behind impressive overall figures for the growth of telephony. Important development Initiatives such as NEPAD and the World Summit on the Information Society focus on internet-based ICTs, and where they mention telephony at all it is in general terms."

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 01:09:01 GMT

Telecommunications market access regulation licensing and VSAT authorizations by Access Partnership: "We provide an experienced, multi-disciplinary, multilingual staff to devise and implement a strategy for resolving regulatory, technical, and other trade-related restrictions on five continents. "

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 01:05:04 GMT

ICT online course: "Information and Communication Technologies for Development," Instructor: Barbara Fillip, developed and taught through the USDA Graduate School from 1999 to 2003. It has been offered online since 2001.

The goal of the course is to familiarize participants with key concepts and issues related to the potential and real impacts of information and communication technologies on the social, economic and political development of the less developed countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America."

Sun, 25 Jul 2004 16:23:38 GMT

WIFI and Route Security: In Strong Angel 2, they tested use of WiFi to aircraft, and among cars in a convoy. The aircraft test had problems, but the car-to-car test worked over 1.5 miles, with streaming video and voice, all p2p with no servers. Interesting app for NGO and military supply convoys.

Sat, 24 Jul 2004 16:58:40 GMT

Global Relief Technologies: Combines GPS, GIS, and field data gathering on PDA's. "Global Relief Technologies’ integrated solution contains two basic service components – the SMART™; (Satellite Mapping and Rapid Telecommunications Software) and the Virtual Internet-enabled Network Operations Center (or VNOC) information management capability.The SMART™ software currently reflects humanitarian standards as established by the United Nations and the US Agency for International Development and can be modified to suit other field data collection requirements. "

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 07:59:28 GMT

Mysterian: Groove application developer, with a nifty telemedicine app to transfer and track xrays and other images from the field to specialists: "Radiology Manager, the first product from our Mysterian Medical Suite, brings the power of secure, flexible, collaborative working to the healthcare sector. .. “As Radiographers, it gives us the advantage of having a radiologist to back us up when needed as we are often without their physical presence”, says Malcolm. “Utilising Groove for image review can ensure patients are transferred promptly to the correct speciality unit or, indeed, save patients having an unnecessary trip to the mainland.”

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 07:43:50 GMT

Info-Share: This NGO's updated site contains a paper by Sanjana Yajitha Hattotuwa detailing how Groove was used in the Sri Lanka peace process and subsequent elections. Many illustrations. Great example of ICT to facilitate collaboration in a developing country. Inspiring work.

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 07:08:10 GMT

LocustWorld Mesh Access Points: "The MeshBox is a box about the size of a small video recorder. It has a number of ports for connecting other devices and one or more on-board WiFi radios. It is a multi-purpose device, but its core function is creating wide area wireless broadband. This means that each MeshBox communicates with other MeshBoxes nearby and the internet signal is passed from one box to the next, over the air, until it reaches the final destination. ..

There are no plans to commercialize the core LocustWorld MeshAP device, this will always be available to download from the website as an open product. "

It's a linux application. The standard box has Prism2 wireless, 32mb CF boot media, 128mb ram, 500mhz CPU. Small form-factor and battery-powered boxes available. Example hardware models: standard, outdoor (each about $400).

Thu, 22 Jul 2004 05:14:35 GMT

Strong Angel II: 17-22 July, Kona, Hawaii: Important experiment in integrating IT in disaster relief. "The event is designed to encourage the development and evaluation of tools designed for humanitarian information collection and use within an austere environment. We're particularly interested in proposed solutions that cross the civil-military boundary gracefully and reliably during a post-conflict reconstruction." Leader is Eric Rasmussen. Facts and links:

Coverage from the IT press, including Wired, with Dan Gilmor's weblog from 16-19 July, and a list of other articles
ARPA-funded, an extension of Strong Angel 2000
Blog with some daily updates
Daily photo galleries, like this from the 19th
TIDES World Press Reports: edited news feed production in the field
A tele-journalist, with realtime feed from the field (very cool), recorded interviews and meetings, and facility to chat realtime over the Internet to the journalist

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 21:26:07 GMT

InterAction Disaster Response Training Database: "AN INVENTORY OF COURSES AND TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE DISASTER RESPONSE COMMUNITY. .. The Disaster Response Training Database (DRTDB) is a response .. to the increasing need for highly trained disaster response personnel who are able to operate in some of the most complex and challenging environments imaginable. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the purpose of the DRTDB is to provide information on educational and training opportunities to the greater disaster response community as well as to bring together InterAction members and those professionals who have the skills and knowledge required to work in this field."

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 21:24:15 GMT

Submit a Volunteer Opportunity for Cisco Employees: Nonprofits can ask for Cisco employees to volunteer to help them. Cisco's "volunteer matching system matches individual employees and employee teams to philanthropic opportunities in their community. In addition, it also matches the core competency skills of our employees with nonprofit organizations that are seeking that expertise, including mentors for your organization or constituents.

Please register your organization in our Volunteer Connection Tool. Once you're in the application, your organization may request Cisco volunteers for your specific initiatives. (If an appropriate volunteer is matched at some point, you will be notified by email with instructions on how to proceed). We welcome one-time events as well as ongoing opportunities. We hope this system will give your organization access to more volunteers and will save you time in recruiting, tracking, managing and communicating with those volunteers."

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 21:19:52 GMT

Europe & CIS Regional Resource Facility: "A publication on UNDP Best Practices and Know-How in ICT for Development contains a collection of knowledge-based best practices accumulated by UNDP in Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). " Downloadable in whole or by country.

Fri, 02 Jul 2004 02:06:10 GMT

Digital India: Good Business Week review of many innovative uses of info tech for the poor in India. One example: "Five years ago, the Karnataka state government launched a program to computerize the land records of 6.7 million farmers in 30,000 villages. Two years later, all 20 million deeds had been digitized and filed along with information such as the land's productive capacity and any loans that use the property as collateral. Today, the information is available in Kannada, the local language, through 200 government-owned computer kiosks in administrative offices across the state. Muniratnama, a cheerful 45-year-old farmer, traveled 15 kilometers from her village to Bangalore for a copy of her land record so she could get a loan to replant her 1.6 hectares. The new system, she says, is far better than the old way. "The village accountant was corrupt," she says with disgust. "He'd delay making any changes, and he made mistakes, too." ..

With the number of success stories growing, though, Nasscom and the World Bank are planning a fund of up to $1 billion to support promising ideas"

Sat, 12 Jun 2004 08:24:58 GMT

CyberTracker: A PDA program designed for recording conservation data in the field, even by non-literate users.

Fri, 11 Jun 2004 16:47:24 GMT

UNOPS offers developing country satellite data: "Satellite Imagery Now Available to UN and NGOs: UN agencies and non-governmental organizations involved in humanitarian assistance, peace-keeping, and post-conflict reconstruction now have round-the-clock global Internet access to satellite imagery as the result of an initiative led by an international consortium that includes UNOPS."

Mon, 07 Jun 2004 17:34:04 GMT

Balancing Act: A UK company that does African IT media, policy and project consulting. Their African internet developments news service has current and detailed information on developments among carriers and governments.

Sun, 06 Jun 2004 06:58:16 GMT

N. Korea bans mobile phones: "North Korea has banned mobile phones only 18 months after allowing them to be introduced there, and the already isolated country is building a barbed-wire fence along its border with China to prevent smuggling, news reports said [3 jun 04].. There were some 20,000 mobile phone subscribers in November 2003, a year after the service began, Yonhap said citing a report in a pro-Pyongyang newspaper from Japan, the Chosun Sinbo. "

Fri, 04 Jun 2004 18:58:50 GMT

ICT Update: A publication of CTA, an EC institution with a long history of ICT efforts in the agricultural sector of the developing world. Example: A combined radio/satellite/internet service that supplies agricultural prices in East Africa called "FOODNET: information is changing things in the marketplace".

Thu, 03 Jun 2004 20:04:09 GMT

Towards a standardized relief comms kit?: Brief report on a panel discussion. "Nethope is developing a suitcase-sized NetReliefKit in a collaborative effort between Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and Inmarsat. The kit would integrate an RBGAN terminal, wireless and wired networking capability, IP Telephony and specialized relief applications. It would be available only to NetHope members."

Thu, 03 Jun 2004 16:57:54 GMT

i4donline.net - news on developing country IT: "The i4d (Information For Development) print magazine is one its kind, and is intended to provide a much-needed platform for exchange of information, ideas, opinions and experiences, both inside and outside the Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) sector. .. i4d encompasses the role and relevance of ICT in various development sectors such as Rural Development, Gender, Governance, Micro-finance, Education, Health, Wireless Communication, ICT For Poor, Local Content, Culture and Heritage.." The online edition has features additional to the print edition, with many categories of headlines. Sponsored by the Centre for Spatial Database Management & Solutions in India with another publication on GIS for development.

Thu, 03 Jun 2004 16:52:49 GMT

South Africa and VOIP: "SA is in danger of losing its status as Africa's technological leader, as other African countries -- notably in East Africa -- are moving to the forefront. Algeria, Mauritius, Mali, Nigeria and Kenya have all legalised VOIP and WiFi and it seems that these progressive governments are embracing new technologies in order to gain the long-term benefits of ICT, despite potential short-term losses in revenue as incumbent telecommunications providers restructure their approaches."

Wed, 02 Jun 2004 01:18:56 GMT

Sun offer cut price products to third world: "In an interesting move clearly aimed at expanding their market share in the developing world, Sun Microsystems have today announced a new pricing model for their Java Enterprise System for users in developing nations. The new pricing ranges from a mere 33 US cents per citizen per year, up to a larger but still incredibly low USD 1.95 per citizen per year. Prices are presumably based on licenses being bought for everyone in the country.

The exact price per country is worked out using two factors, the first being the number of citizens in the country, and the second being the stage of development of the country as defined by the UN's Department of Economic and Social Affairs classification." The idea is to allow blanket lisencing for applications, especially e-government, health, and education.

Tue, 01 Jun 2004 18:57:52 GMT

Virtual Academy for the Semi-Arid Tropics: "Our coalition aims to mobilize communities and intermediaries of the dry tropics by sharing information, knowledge and skills related to climate literacy, drought preparedness, and best practices in dryland agriculture and other relevant issues. We do this through the innovative interface of ICTs and distance learning." Consortium with many partners in Africa and elsewhere.

Tue, 01 Jun 2004 18:48:09 GMT

Berkeley TIER: Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions: "The aim of this project is to address the challenges in bringing the Information Technology revolution to the masses of the developing regions of the world. .. This project focuses on developing a hardware/software infrastructure explicitly designed for the physical, political and economic realities of developing areas. .. The other supporting partners are HP,UNDP, IIT Delhi and Grameen Bank.

A course ICT Framework for Developing Regions that is jointly taught by UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University and University of Washington is being offered in Fall 2003." See also the project description and current efforts pages.

Tue, 01 Jun 2004 18:40:52 GMT

Science and Technology Collaborium: An Italy-US collaboration on IT assistance for science in developing countries. "On January 1st, 2000 the S&T Collaborium started as a spin-off initiative of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy in collaboration with the International Institute of Theoretical and Applied Physics (IITAP), Iowa, USA." Projects include workshops on digital radio, the www4mail software suite (and server in Italy), VSAT demos, and training programs.

Thu, 27 May 2004 20:34:57 GMT

Codan experience in Guinea-Bissau Elections: "The National Elections Commission of Guinea-Bissau used new Information and Communication Technology tools to coordinate the legislative elections held March 28 and enable poll workers to verify names and identity card numbers on the voter rolls. .. The project was designed by Sila Technologies (SITEC), a private company, and funded by a grant from the European Economic Community.

About a week before the elections, SITEC had up and running high frequency (HF) radio units in all nine regional capitals of Guinea-Bissau and verified that they could communicate with each other via voice, fax, or data transmission over up to 200 kilometers. Fax transmission was reported to be flawless, and voice communication was functional. According to SITEC engineer Amidu Sila, some level of noise is to be expected in using this technology and frequency range for voice, though this never impeded communication. ..

The company chose radios made by Codan Ltd., model NGT SR, for the project, along with a system that automatically selects and switches between available frequencies to get the best transmission. The HF units reportedly cost around $7,000 each, and the additional link management system goes for about $1,200. Before beginning installation, SITEC had to be assigned twenty available HF-band frequencies, which they chose together with the regulatory agency. Half of the frequencies were for use during the day, and the other half for the different atmospheric conditions of nighttime. Sila thinks that the radio could work over distances as far as 1500 kilometers."

Thu, 27 May 2004 20:31:33 GMT

Information Technologies and International Development - The MIT Press: "Information Technologies and International Development will be the premier journal in its field, focusing on the intersection of information and communication technologies (ICT) with international development. " Sample papers online.

Thu, 27 May 2004 20:24:53 GMT

Relief Technologies: "Relief workers are often encumbered by poor Internet connectivity, fragile or expensive equipment, or security concerns associated with collecting detailed geographic data in areas recovering from conflict. As connectivity expands and the tools get cheaper and more diverse, the specific needs of relief workers in the field are increasingly being met. Companies such as Global Relief Technologies and Groove Networks appear to point the way."

Tue, 18 May 2004 00:27:01 GMT

NASA's Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS): 10 years old, the program continues to provide capacity and sometimes, people, to demonstrate new satellite applications. Education in developing countries is one ongoing area. "The Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS), a significant activity of the Space Communications Program, provided for the development and flight test of high-risk, advanced communications satellite technology. Using multiple spot beam antennas and advanced on-board switching and processing systems, ACTS pioneered new initiatives in communications satellite technology."

Sun, 16 May 2004 18:55:01 GMT

Map24: Nifty interactive international street mapper.

Tue, 04 May 2004 23:27:37 GMT

Lloyd's satellite constellations: "These pages form an index to useful web information discussing [Low Earth Orbit or LEO] satellite constellations. You won't gain a complete picture of what any proposed constellation is capable of, or really in-depth technical details, but you will gain an idea of what the developments in this area are, where the industry and technology is headed - and you will pick up background knowledge of satellites along the way. "

Mon, 03 May 2004 22:11:10 GMT

Smart Mobs: Phones, Radio, Elections in Ghana: "Ethan Zuckerman of Geekcorps notes at etcon panel that the last Ghana election "went considerably more smoothly than the last US national election" due to the use of cellphones and radio to report voting fraud: Whenever someone at a polling place reported fraud, the called the radio station, which broadcast it; the police had to check it out, not having the excuse that they didn't receive a report."

Mon, 03 May 2004 21:12:15 GMT

"Inverse Surveillance" -- What We Should Do With All Those Phonecams: Steve Mann's ideas of citizen "sousveillance" predated the cameraphone phenomena by nearly a decade. [He has] reknown as the longtime online cyborg. He started wearing computers and sent his "eyetap" camera images to the Web way back in 1994. His first reference to his activities as a new kind of newsgathering date back to the day in 1995 when he followed a fire truck to a fire and sent the pictures from his head-mounted camera to the Web ..

In 2000, Mann and his students streamed images directly to the Web when violence broke out at a demonstration by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. If you think about it, this kind of journalism is a breakthrough in at least one dimension: whenever police abused their power in past political demonstrations, they made a point of breaking or confiscating cameras. Whether you are a violent demonstrator or an abusive police officer, it doesn't do a lot of good to disguise your misbehavior by trashing a camera if it has already sent images to the Whole Wide World. ..

"Surveillance" is French for "watching from above," but Mann's ["sousveillance"] is French for "watching from below." If you think about it, there really is little that citizens can do at this point to prevent others from watching, listening, and tracking us – but we are beginning to get the tools to watch the watchers. Mann notes that surveillance is about authorities watching from on high, but sousveillance is a down-to-earth human's eye view; surveillance cameras are usually automatic devices statically mounted on the ceiling, but sousveillance is human-situated and eye-level; activities are surveilled by authorities but sousveilled by participants; surveillance is secret but sousveillance is public."

Here's a practical application: People For the American Way Election Protection: "Volunteer poll monitors make EP an effective advocate for voters and a powerful deterrent to those who would try to deny voters their rights. Trained by attorneys and armed with cell phones that connect them with a lawyers hotline, EP volunteers distribute the 'Voters Bill of Rights at the polls and identify and solve problems as they happen -- not after Election Day has passed." They say they will use cameras in cell phones when possible.

Mon, 03 May 2004 20:49:52 GMT

Nigerian Mobs Alerted By Texting: From Nov 2002 Howard Rheingold notes "the reported use of texting to summon rioters in Nigeria.

Ironically, the blasphemous story published against the prophet has tended to unite the nation's muslims who have not only been unanimous in their condemnation of the story, but have also been sending solidarity text messages on their GSM phones to alert one another on the blasphemy since last Sunday.
AbdulHameed Daramola, a Lagos Muslim told Weekly Trust that he alone alerted over seventy Muslims across the country about the blasphemy through text messages on his GSM since last Sunday when he became aware of the issue"

Mon, 03 May 2004 20:45:22 GMT

Electoral Smart Mobs in Kenya: "For the first time, we Kenyans have more or less agreed that this time we have had a fair election with the highest number of voters turning out to vote. One key instrument has been the mobile phone." Uses: Planning, Campaigning, and Results Dissemination.

"We in the ICT field know this is a best practice on how ICTs can help curb rigging, enhance transparency and keep people together. The two cell phone poviders were licensed less than five years ago and cover most of Kenya and have outstripped fixed lines government provider by more than 300% in that short period. Incidentally, no fixed lines were working in all the polling stations I visited further proving the maxim..Africa telecommunications development will be more wireless than fixed. "

Thu, 29 Apr 2004 01:22:48 GMT

Send Jobs to India? Some Find It's Not Always Best: Examples when programming work was returned the US after trying India. "Indian programmers required more detailed instructions to write the software code than would a programmer here, who would be more familiar with the customer's needs. This slowed the process, which was a major drawback because this technology is new and changing very fast. .. "Whenever the pace of innovation is very rapid," he said, "is when the work should be done closer to the client." .. [India's] Infosys announced that it would spend $20 million to set up a consulting company in the United States."

Tue, 06 Apr 2004 01:51:06 GMT

New Guide to Rich Opportunities with World's Poorest Customers: An updated view of bottom-of-the-pyramid opportunities. "In Doing Business with the Poor: A Field Guide, by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the guide advises companies to stick to core business, while finding innovative ways of marketing, distributing and billing when doing business with the poor -- which it defines as “sustainable livelihoods.” "

Fri, 02 Apr 2004 16:28:43 GMT

BBC NEWS | Technology | Simputer for poor goes on sale: "The Simputer was officially launched on Friday and the basic model costs around $240. .. Branded as the Amida Simputer, the handheld comes in three versions. The basic model has a monochrome screen, a 206MHz processor and 64MB of memory. It also has an internal microphone, speakers and a battery that lasts for six hours." Its site promotes it as both a personal device and a business application platform. There are 3 Models, $240/300/480, from stripped down to one with a color screen. Features in the mid and high models:

Linux based, with support for a few Indian scripts built in
integrated SmartCard reader/writer
3 USB 1.1 ports (eg, for flash memory, or GPS), one as slave (eg, peripheral to a PC, for synching or whatever)
infrared interface , serial interface, mic and speakers
Amida Alchemy, an application development suite with a text-to-speech engine
an accelerometer that senses the wrist motion of the user, so that a flick of the wrist can advance pages in an online book, and rotating the device can change the aspect ratio from portrait to landscape
support for CDMA data networks (and bundles that include internet access packages from an Indian ISP)

Fri, 02 Apr 2004 01:18:13 GMT

Canada Unveils Tell-All, Online Expenses Policy: "Canada took its bid to clean up politics to new levels on Thursday, publishing details of expenses claimed by ministers, ambassadors and other senior officials on government Web sites. .. The measures were announced last year after it emerged that former privacy commissioner George Radwanski and his press aide had racked up C$510,000 ($390,000) on travel, meals and hotels in just two years. He was forced to resign over the affair. Federal institutions will have to update figures for travel and hospitality expenses every three months. "

Thu, 01 Apr 2004 21:46:51 GMT

VOYAGE: "VOYAGE is a movement of young people working to inspire a globally engaged America. We envision an informed U.S. public that voices solidarity with our global community and acts to alleviate suffering across the world. VOYAGE pursues this vision through public outreach and grassroots networking, creating a variety of forums for youth to enrich the debate on America's role in the international community." Endorsed by Gary Hart; active in small development projects and media outreach.

Wed, 31 Mar 2004 23:44:30 GMT

UN CONFERENCE ON WIRELESS INTERNET INITIATIVES: "The 'Wireless Internet for Underserved Populations and Local Communities' programme had been designed to achieve one of the leading development goals of our time -- universal connectivity. The initiative involves all key stakeholders, from government and civil society to the private sector and field practitioners. Among global partners participating in the programme, are IBM, Intel, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships, the European Commission, the World Bank and regional and local professional organizations. Speakers emphasized that wireless Internet had the potential to bridge the digital divide by providing low-cost broadband Internet connectivity to underserved areas and communities"

Wed, 31 Mar 2004 05:32:11 GMT

Indian Lake Unwired: Dal lake in Srinagar, Kashmir, now has WiFi service available for the houseboats.

Wed, 24 Mar 2004 01:28:28 GMT

Cuba restricts Internet to those with hard currency: 2004/01/30 "The Cuban government plans to prohibit access to Internet from telephones paid for in local currency, a move seen as directed in part against the Church. Since January 14, access to Internet from phones is only allowed for lines paid for in dollars. Generally, only businesses and foreigners can pay for such lines."

Wed, 24 Mar 2004 00:58:04 GMT

Key stats on development: ' "Madness is running over our planet" [said] World Bank President James Wolfensohn addressing students at Stanford University.. World development help is running at about $56 billion a year, he said, while military expenditures are almost 20 times higher at more than $900 billion. Subsidies and tariff protections for world agriculture, including large commercial interests, reach about $350 billion a year. "This is a huge frustration. We have to find a way to focus on poverty and development ... but the big issue is indifference. People don't care. Money is not flowing to where it is needed," Wolfensohn told the students. '

Mon, 22 Mar 2004 06:09:34 GMT

Combining Renewable Energy With Information And Communication Technologies: a New Solution to Rural Poverty And Global Competitiveness: Nice to see a UN panel endorsing the concept: "Combining the use of renewable energy, such as solar power, with wireless technologies and energy efficient computers should be a key strategy for developing nations in addressing the rural development crisis and in improving global competitiveness. This was the central conclusion of the Task Force for ICT Applications of Renewable Energy for Sustainable Development (IRESD), initiated two years ago in Paris, where the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Division of Technology Industry and Economics is headquartered.

The Task Force found a number of successful renewable energy and ICT projects in rural areas around the world, but points out that a variety of issues still need to be addressed in order for these examples to become more generally adopted. In particular, the group says that governments need to create incentives for using renewable energies, reduce the regulatory barriers for private networks to obtain connectivity, such as through tax incentives, and sanction the use of license-free radio spectrum. ..

Members of the Task Force [include] energy, ICT and development experts and include representatives from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Switzerland; Winrock International, USA; Massachussettes Institute of Technology (MIT), USA; Kumasi Institute of Technology and Environment (KITE), Ghana; United Nations Industrial Development Organization; an independent consultant Mark A. Foster (MAFA), USA; and Mike Jensen, South Africa."

Fri, 19 Mar 2004 10:45:43 GMT

Microsoft goes even more global: "The latest versions of the company's dominant Windows computer operating system and popular Office software will soon be available in languages ranging from Ethiopia's Amharic to Inuktitut of the Arctic's Inuit, under a project between Microsoft and various local governments and universities. The Local Language Program has already resulted in a Hindi version of Microsoft's software, and there are plans to make Windows and Office available in a total of nine languages spoken in India by the end of the year. The software maker hopes the program will soon double the roster of languages available for Microsoft products, from 40 to 80. Hundreds of millions of people speak the languages that will be offered, but it's unclear how many of them have access to computers right now."

Fri, 19 Mar 2004 10:17:21 GMT

WiFi paid hotspots disappoint: Hotspots worldwide generate $80m/yr, in the US $28m -- "what Verizon Wireless generates every 12 hours" with cell phones. Analysts expect that no hotspot provider will make money before the end of 2005. Cometa has built only 230 hotspots and won't say how many of the original 20,000 planned will actually get built.

In Asia, providers are selling access at lower prices. In S Korea, one provider offers unlimted wifi for $13/mo, or only $1/mo additional for home broadband subscribers. They have 360,000 subcribers. Similar Hong Kong providers have 40,000. Last year, 4.7m Asians used a hotspot, compared to 2.7m Americans and 1.7m Europeans. Resistance to $6/hr or $10/rates is high.

Thu, 11 Mar 2004 17:34:15 GMT

Radio E-mail in West Africa: IRC uses a Codan-based HF radio email network, using Qmail and other open-source packages on salvaged computers. "The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has one of their largest operations in Guinea, providing services and support to a population of up to 200,000 refugees quartered in many camps established throughout the country. I became involved with IRC when my wife accepted the position of Country Director for the program in the summer of 2001. ..

The current result of our own Radio E-mail project is that we are now serving mail to over 50 desktops and 150 staff in four offices throughout Guinea. The entire wide area network is serviced behind a single public IP address, at a total ISP cost of $150(USD) per month. Based mostly on existing hardware, the Radio E-mail project has leaped boundaries and opened dialogs for its users that were previously not possible. Best of all, the system has deployed standard network and internet technologies throughout the organization and throughout Guinea utilizing the freely available, best of breed, borderless open-source technologies." Reference is also made to MAFlink, a Christian missionary networking organization with HF, Satphone, and dialup services. They operate HF email networks in Congo, Mali, Haiti, Ecuador and West Papua.

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 01:37:56 GMT

Mobiles 'narrow information gap': "The Washington-based Worldwatch Institute says that in developing countries, the proportion of people with access to a phone has grown over the past 10 years by more than 25%. One in five of the world's population had used a mobile phone by 2002, it reports - up from one in 237 in 1992. In 2002, for the first time, the number of mobile phone subscribers (1.15 billion) was greater than the number of fixed-line connections (1.05 billion). The report says phone access in Africa has grown "dramatically" on the back of the growth of mobile phone technology. In 1992, just one in 778 of the world's population had used the internet. By 2002, one in 10 had. "

Fri, 27 Feb 2004 20:16:35 GMT

HP-led group sets up transaction system in Africa: "A public-private consortium that includes Hewlett-Packard has started a pilot program in Uganda to test a technology that promises to improve delivery of small loans to remote locations. The program will involve installation of an electronic transaction system designed to collect loan payment and savings information, to replace the existing manual system. The experience gained in Uganda could be useful in other similar settings, HP said. The group, the Microdevelopment Finance Team, has committed to invest over $2.3 million in the pilot. The team includes microfinance and technology experts as well as business thinkers. "

Thu, 19 Feb 2004 19:06:37 GMT

Wi-Fi HotSpot International Directory: Certainly not the only directory, but a useful one. Currently lists 44 countries with public hotspots, including many developing ones.

Tue, 17 Feb 2004 23:41:58 GMT

Gapminder world statistics: Interesting source of software, data, and documents on international development, including income distribution and historical trends.

Tue, 17 Feb 2004 21:45:47 GMT

wire.less.dk "is a highly specialized independent team of experts in wireless and internet technology, working with business customers as well as non-profit projects, e.g. community networks and ICT initiatives for the developing world. " They offer the autonokit: "the idea of the autonokit is, to bring together affordable, available wireless and solar standard technology, (hardware and software) test and optimize it for usage under adverse mobile conditions in order to produce a kit for inexpensive and autonomous internet access. "

Mon, 09 Feb 2004 01:40:52 GMT

Brazil takes lead role in move to all-digital cinema: "Using the latest technology, Brazil plans to open in May the largest network of digital movie theaters in the world.. The hinterlands of South America's largest country are virtually inaccessible by roads, and copying and transporting hundreds of reels of film is expensive. [A] low-cost distribution system, with built-in antipiracy measures, with 100 theaters - the largest digital network in the world - [is] scheduled to be projecting pixels by May. ..

Although it is considered a developing nation, Brazil's long-standing tradition of openness, coupled with its sheer size, means that there are tens of millions of well-educated techies eager for cutting-edge gadgets and devices. Brazil has one of the highest rates of Internet use in the developing world, with 95 percent of taxpayers using the web to make their annual income-tax declaration. The country's voting system is fully electronic and its banking software is among the most advanced in the world. Even Brazil's computer hackers are so skilled that a leading expert recently warned, "Brazil is both a laboratory for cybercrime and also its largest exporter worldwide."..

The MPEG-4 software can squeeze a feature film onto a file of just five gigabytes, 15 times smaller than the MPEG-2 technology presently used. The films are then beamed by satellite to picture houses across the country. Depending on bandwidth, it can take as little as 20 minutes to send a 90-minute film to a theater. By eliminating celluloid and transport costs, distributors can quickly and cheaply beam blockbusters to distant towns the same day as they première in London, Los Angeles, or Sao Paulo. They can offer a wider range of films and even live broadcasts. [Thanks to high transport costs] Brazil has one of the lowest density of screens per person in the world, an average of one screen per 105,000 people, far fewer than in the United States (one per 9,000), or even Mexico (one per 35,000)."

Sun, 01 Feb 2004 07:30:57 GMT

SourceForge.net: Project Info - pennylender: Some programmers are planning a global micro-lending system: "PennyLenders goal is to create a service that will allow any individual to loan/borrow money in a self-contained community-based network, irrespective of economic status, location, or age and without the interference of a central controlling Bank." No working code yet.

Sun, 01 Feb 2004 06:39:08 GMT

Wireless Networks as a Low-Cost, Decentralized Alternative for the Developing World: "Krag's presentation describes the Wireless Roadshow plan: "By teaching the skills with hands-on training, and at the same time building wireless networks in the countries we visit, we hope not only to raise awareness and heighten skillsets, but also gain the experience necessary to build a central repository of documentation and tools, targeted specifically at the developing world." Tomas Krag and Sebastian Büettrich wrote an O'Reilly introduction to Wireless Mesh Networking .

Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:30:03 GMT

Project 25 (P25): Standards For Public Safety Radio Communications: "TIA is acting as a catalyst for the wireless industry to develop and maintain Public Safety standards for digital equipment and systems that will assist the life-saving and damage-control activities of first-responders at the scene of an emergency or disaster situation. This activity, known as Project 25 (P25), is supported by Industry, Government Agencies and Public Safety Communications Officials alike; including the Department of Homeland Security's National Communications System (NCS), the Department of Defense and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). ..

Recognizing the need for common standards for First Responders and Homeland Security/Emergency Response professionals, representatives from the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials International (APCO), the National Association of State Telecommunications Directors (NASTD), selected Federal Agencies and the National Communications System (NCS) established Project 25 (P25), a steering committee for selecting voluntary common system standards for digital public safety radio communications. TIA TR-8 facilitates such work through its role as the ANSI-accredited Standards Development Organization (SDO), and has developed in TR-8 the 102." Many links to documents and discussion groups on that page and here. Many other groups and projects are easy to find.

Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:26:41 GMT

Project MESA - Mobile Broadband for Public Safety: "Project MESA is an international partnership producing globally applicable technical specifications for digital mobile broadband technology, aimed initially at the sectors of public safety and disaster response."

Thu, 29 Jan 2004 23:54:13 GMT

UNAMSIL: On The Edge Of Peace: "Remote personnel, incompatible computer gear, unreliable power and communications lines, and equipment-disabling lightning strikes are just some of the obstacles confronting the technology managers supporting the United Nations' peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone. Yet U.N. specialists in this rugged, war-ravaged land have found ways to keep the field reports, threat assessments and supply requests flowing between Freetown headquarters and the mission's most remote outposts. " PDF with many pictures, sidebars, and tables available upon registration at the site.

Thu, 29 Jan 2004 23:51:58 GMT

FITTEST - WFP Fast IT & Telecommunications Emergency and Support Team: "ICT is the backbone of modern humanitarian work. It is important that all humanitarian workers in Iraq are aware of how to make proper use of radio telecommunications, particularly for organisational and personal security. The United Nations has a common services approach to this issue which includes all UN agencies and is extended to the NGO community." This is the forward edge of the WFP FieldComms group. HIC - Photo Gallery of Iraq work and brochure online.

Thu, 29 Jan 2004 20:11:57 GMT

Africa: The Next Wide-Open Wireless Frontier: "Sub-Saharan Africa -- home to more than 650 million people, three-quarters of whom live on less than $2 per day -- has become the world's fastest-growing market for mobile-phone service. Last year alone, the number of mobile subscribers in the whole region shot up 37%, to 34.4 million, compared with a 32% rise in Eastern Europe, the No. 2 growth region, according to researcher Gartner Dataquest. ..

What makes Africa's mobile revolution especially significant is its potential economic impact. The World Bank forecasts sub-Saharan gross domestic product growth at 3.7% this year, and as much as a quarter of that could come from rising telecom penetration, says Leonard Waverman, an economics professor at the London Business School. Adds Pierre Guislain, a manager at the World Bank's Global Information & Communication Technologies Dept.: "Mobile has become a tool of economic empowerment." A classic example: Farmers in Senegal used their one mobile phone to find eggplant buyers in Dakar willing to pay three times the rate offered by local middlemen.

Vodacom CEO Alan Knott-Craig [says] Within five years wireless networks in Africa will be as able to provide Net access as their wired cousins. And to get people linked to the Web, says Knott-Craig, "the cell phone will be Africa's PC."

Thu, 29 Jan 2004 01:13:23 GMT

UNDP and Microsoft Announce Technology Partnership in Developing Nations: "The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Microsoft Corp. today announced a technology partnership to create and implement information and communications technology projects that will help developing countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals. ..

The alliance will draw on the resources of Microsoft's Unlimited Potential program, the company's global initiative to deliver computer literacy and job skills training to underserved communities. .. In addition, Microsoft and UNDP have agreed to work together in support of UNDP's Southern Africa Capacity Initiative (SACI). In this sphere, Microsoft and UNDP will explore innovative opportunities to use technology to build capacity, facilitate e-government initiatives,and improve the delivery of basic services in countries most adversely affected by the HIV and AIDS pandemic. ..

Microsoft and the UNDP have already collaborated on a pilot project to provide technology access and skills training at 16 regional centers in Afghanistan, in the aftermath of the country's military and political upheaval. The training centers, located in Kabul and surrounding areas, will help build a skilled pool of IT professionals in a country where Internet skills and services technology had once been suppressed. It is projected that the centers will provide training to nearly 12,000 Afghan citizens annually. ..

Microsoft has committed $1 billion in cash, software, curriculum and technology assistance over the next five years to Unlimited Potential and other efforts to help reduce the global digital divide. Since May 2003, the company has made grants of cash and software totaling nearly $50 million to more than 150 programs in 45 countries."

Wed, 28 Jan 2004 20:38:08 GMT

Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "Dutch firm Philips Electronics said on Monday it was preparing to mass-produce a slim, book-sized display panel onto which consumers could download newspapers and magazines -- then roll up and put away. The 5-inch display, which can show detailed images, can be rolled up into a pen-sized holder. .. Philips said it had created the displays using electronics circuits made of plastics, which power a monochrome display created with technology from E Ink, a privately-held U.S. company from Cambridge, Massachusetts. "We can produce this in batches. It's no longer a research project. We're going to build a pilot line that should be ready in 2005 to make one million displays a year," a spokesman at Philips Research said. Europe's largest maker of consumer electronics and lighting has already shown prototypes of a glass-based E Ink display which will be in the shops later this year. That sort of screen, used in pocket computers, can cost tens of dollars apiece." E-Ink has been under development for years. It requires much less power than LCD panels and works better outdoors or using ambient light, so it's likely to have wide application where power is short. Black and white only for now.

Mon, 26 Jan 2004 23:44:32 GMT

Bhutan VoIP Project Report: "A pilot project to use wireless and VoIP technologies to deliver communication services to rural areas in Bhutan, a small Himalayan Kingdom, was completed with encouraging results. Once initial problems with radio interference from other sources were solved the 802.11b radio network became reliable. This allowed the VoIP equipment to be tuned to accommodate the more variable nature of a wireless network as compared to a wired one. International calls through the PSTN were hampered by a slightly non standard R2 protocol spoken by the local switch. This underscores the importance of adhering to open standards when many subsystems must work together."

Sat, 24 Jan 2004 08:54:31 GMT

BlogAfrica: Interesting effort to teach and spread blogging in Africa, with a companion site as a Catalog for blogs in action.

Wed, 21 Jan 2004 18:29:21 GMT

First Mile Solutions: An MIT spinoff using roving wireless internet access points. The "Internet Village Motoman" project operates today in Cambodia.

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 07:20:49 GMT

Internet Users in China Number Nearly 80 Million; there were only 620,000 Chinese Internet users in 1997. These numbers are from the China Internet Network Information Center. Pew says the US has 126 m users; other put Japan at 100m. A Frost & Sullivan analyst thinks the China figure is reasonable, and the Chinese market has the potential to displace both Japan and the United States, which are reaching their limits in terms of possible new users. "If you are looking at a 10- to 15-year time frame, I would say China and India are probably going to account for half of all Internet usage in the world."

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 06:05:01 GMT

Poor Nations Eye Western Outsourcing: "The tech research firm Gartner Inc. predicts that the offshore outsourcing trend will result in at least one in every 10 U.S. technology jobs moving overseas by the end of this year.

India gets a huge amount of that work but also has set up so-called centers of excellence in Mongolia, Mauritius and Nepal to help those countries develop software skills, understand international business practices and enhance education. At the Hyderabad summit, Kamal Thapa, Nepal's minister for information technology and communication, said the Himalayan kingdom is laying fiber-optic cables along highways and liberalizing investment rules to attract foreign companies. Mongolia's infrastructure minister, Byamba Jigjid, said a software park has been built in the capital, Ulan Bator, to house companies that provide services to Western firms .. "We are small. But we have a young work force well skilled in information and communication technologies," Abdul Moyeen Khan, science and information technology minister for Bangladesh"

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 05:56:21 GMT

Information Patterns - Toucan Navigate: "Toucan Navigate is the Geographic Information System (GIS) for users of Groove Workspace, the desktop collaboration software." Integrated with GPS, with its own collaborative viewer and data entry engine. Looks very powerful. Michael Helfrich discusses potential applications for NGOs.

Tue, 13 Jan 2004 07:11:32 GMT

BP donation to India via BASE: "BP Solar USA is donating over $1 million worth of solar modules to BASE (Basel Agency for Sustainable Energy), who in turn are dispatching them to rural and semi-rural areas of India where over 60 per cent of the population is without electricity. The solar systems will be used for water pumping, lighting and for powering telecommunications services including cyber cafes." Contact info for BASE director provided in the article.

Tue, 13 Jan 2004 06:20:36 GMT

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY APPLIED TO THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS: Useful essays by John A. Daly that include an inventory of IT applications in development, specifically linked to Millenium Goals. Especially useful for its summary of MDG and the specific measurements associated with each Goal. "The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) provide a vision of development: one in which development reduces the number of poor in the world and specifically targets the worst aspects of poverty. The Goals were set forth in the Millennium Declaration of the United Nations, and increasingly influence the policies of governments and development assistance agencies."

Tue, 13 Jan 2004 06:15:30 GMT

World Bank ICT Toolkit: A checklist for project structures when getting multilateral grants. "This toolkit directly addresses the basics of planning, designing and supervising "e" (or ICT) components of WBGroup projects in other sectors and discusses good practices for project management, procurement (goods and services); and implementation. At a time when the average investment lending operation in all sectors includes an ICT component of at least 10% of the total loan (much higher figures for HD and PREM projects where ICT can make up to 60% of some projects); the Toolkit's objective is to raise awareness, increase design and output quality; and enhance the monitoring and evaluation of ICT components in our portfolio."

Tue, 13 Jan 2004 06:13:39 GMT

Global Philanthropy Partnership: "The following summary is an initial attempt to identify and describe the range of organizations and activities currently promoting and supporting global social investing. We consider this draft a 'living document' that will evolve and grow with the field." Lists many international private donors.

Tue, 13 Jan 2004 05:32:23 GMT

Creative Commons: Useful site for selecting appropriate lisencing for created material (e.g., requiring attribution, no derivative works, but otherwise open to noncommercial use).

Mon, 12 Jan 2004 17:13:21 GMT

Digital Business Ecosystems in Developing Countries: Brief summary of key concept in development of advanced industries. "In biological systems some capabilities cannot emerge prior to others.. Biologists sometimes call the rules governing such relationships “assembly rules,” that is, the rules affecting the assembly, in sequence and over time, of ecosytems. This notion of assembly rules has just begun to be applied to economic development, but it holds great promise. ..

In our study in Ghana, the ground of the digital business ecosystem was fertile with well-educated entrepreneurs—most of whom had studied and lived abroad for some time—who were willing to return to Ghana after the establishment of a democratic government—the first in more than two decades—in 2001. Once in Ghana they were able to connect to a highly competent dial-up ISP, which in turn was connected to the worldwide Internet by a reasonably high-speed satellite service, funded in part by the US government development assistance. Working with this base, and in a legal climate that allowed for the introduction of a variety of digital businesses—most without specific licensing hurdles—a small but thriving digital business community established itself.

The excitement and vitality of this community attracted international notice. This community, however, is only the pioneering phase of what could be a much larger and richer digital ecosystem in Ghana. However, the next phase in succession requires a number of capabilities that are not now present—ranging from reliable electric power, to affordable high bandwidth interconnection both within Ghana and across the seas. In addition, Ghana has limited expertise in financing and coaching the leadership of digital businesses.. The banking culture oriented to lending based on physical assets—and little experience with equity investments in knowledge-based businesses. Finally, the government has dabbled in digital policy making and telecommunications reform, but has not made either clear strategies nor appointed leaders who have the respect of the digital business or investor community. The result is a high level of uncertainty about the policy and legal environment. All of the above limitations were tolerable by pioneering businesses—but they make it difficult for those enterprises and others like them to scale up, expand, and diversify. " More by these authors on this topic is online. Also, there are additional perspectives on IT, development, and politics in a recent Harvard Law course syllabus.

Sun, 11 Jan 2004 16:14:38 GMT

Social Capitalists: List of "top 20" social enterprises, including Benetech and Room to Read.

Sun, 11 Jan 2004 07:43:17 GMT

GRANT-MAKING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FOUNDATIONS IN DEVELOPING NATIONS: Interesting list of institutions sponsoring research and innovation in places like Brazil, India, etc., including some bilateral or multilateral-sponsored ones.

Wed, 07 Jan 2004 15:46:20 GMT

Global Information Internship Program: UC Santa Cruz undergraduate program seeks NGOs to work with: "The Global Information Internship Program is an innovative undergraduate initiative sponsored by the Center for Global, International, and Regional Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. GIIP's objective is to raise the capacity of community, civil society, and non-governmental organizations to maximize the use of Internet-based information and communication technologies. "

Mon, 05 Jan 2004 15:59:07 GMT

Bridging Digital Gap To Alleviate Poverty: Nice coverage of Digital Vision Fellow Rajeswari Rao Pingali and her ongoing project in India.

Sun, 04 Jan 2004 16:36:59 GMT

Indian Soybean Farmers Join the Global Village: NYT front-page article summarizing the ITC e-choupal network: "E-choupals were born in 2000 from ITC's determination to capture more of the soybean crop, which it turns into oil to sell in India and into animal feed to export. In purchasing soya, it has long been dependent on a static, archaic system: Farmers sold to village traders or went to government markets, settling for whatever price was offered. ITC then had to buy from the traders or markets, with little quality control and high transaction costs.

The idea of the e-choupals was to allow the company to buy more directly from farmers; e-choupals allow farmers to check prices the night before, and then decide whether they want to sell directly to the company the next day... Eventually the company expects to sell everything from microcredit to tractors via e-choupals — and hopes to use them to become the Wal-Mart of India, Mr. Deveshwar told shareholders this year. "We are laying infrastructure in a sense," Mr. Deveshwar said. Sixty companies have already taken part in a pilot project to sell services and goods, from insurance to seeds to motorbikes to biscuits, through ITC...

David Upton [is] co-author of a case study of e-choupals for Harvard Business School."

Mon, 22 Dec 2003 18:19:04 GMT

Info-Share - Collaboration software for conflict management in Sri Lanka: More details on the Sri Lanka peace process use of Groove called Info-Share, with contacts provided. Collaboration spaces listed:

Track One, a "one text" negotiation space, where "a third-party facilitator draws out the stakeholders' underlying interests, help them create a series of proposals and ultimately assist them in selecting one."
Conflict Transformation Library, containing 400 MB of "documents and texts ranging from studies on child soldiers to handbooks on conflict resolution to a comprehensive audio-visual compilation of documents related to the on-going peace process"
Peace Partners, with a database of people in government and non-governmental agencies involved in the peace process, guides for donor support, and shared calendar
Peace Tools, "developed by experts in conflict resolution," with "a comprehensive way of mapping Sri Lankan peace process activities"
- A map of conflict and analysis assessment;
- A framework for conflict transformation and peace building;
- A Sri Lankan multi-sector reconstruction framework;
- A peace stakeholders framework

Sat, 13 Dec 2003 20:40:28 GMT

Information and Communication Technologies, Poverty and Development and Lessons Learned from Seventeen infoDev Projects : Two long and well-researched papers produced by the World Bank InfoDev program for the 2003 WSIS.

Wed, 26 Nov 2003 23:52:35 GMT

DIY Solar Electricity: Kits of micro-PV for battery charging and operating electronics in developing countries. Used by micropower advocates in India.

Wed, 26 Nov 2003 23:48:31 GMT

Wireless Freedom! - Radiophony: "Welcome to Radiophony, innovative audio solutions in communications for ordinary people. Our aim is to promote ways to make the Internet accessible for everyone. We have recently helped set up a community audio center in a village in Andhra Pradesh." Includes neat functional diagram comparing FM radio and telephony.

Wed, 26 Nov 2003 23:48:00 GMT

Tue, 25 Nov 2003 05:28:33 GMT

Dell Closes Overseas Call Centers: "After an onslaught of complaints, direct sales computer king Dell Inc. has stopped routing corporate customers to a technical support call center in Bangalore, India. ..

"Customers weren't satisfied with the level of support they were receiving, so we're moving some calls around to make sure they don't feel that way anymore," Weisblatt said. He would not discuss the nature of the dissatisfaction, but some U.S. customers have complained that Indian support operators are difficult to communicate with because of thick accents and scripted responses. ..

Corporate customers account for about 85 percent of Dell's business, with only 15 percent coming from the consumer market. Consumer callers won't see a change in technical support, Weisblatt said, and Dell has no plans to scale back resources at the Bangalore call center. Worldwide, Dell employs about 44,300 people. About 54 percent are located abroad. ..

Among Dell customers dissatisfied with the company's use of overseas labor is Ronald Kronk, a Presbyterian minister in Rochester, Pa., who has spent the last four months trying to resolve a miscommunication that has resulted in his being billed for two computers. The problem, he says, is that the Dell call center is in India. "They're extremely polite, but I call it sponge listening—they just soak it in and say 'I can understand why you're angry' but nothing happens," Kronk said."

Mon, 24 Nov 2003 18:06:55 GMT

Developing Nations Begin to Embrace Internet Commerce: NYT has a few random notes on developing country developments. Two interesting points:

Thailand has focussed policy and investments on increasing Internet penetration; it has now reached >50% outside of Bangkok.
"Everest S.A., a family-run business in San Salvador, sold a 69-kilogram lot (152 pounds) of coffee beans in an Internet auction from one of its five farms for a record price of $14.06 a pound. .. [They] entered the Cup of Excellence competition, which included 335 of the country's roughly 23,000 farms, and in early May received first prize for beans from the family's Kilimanjaro farm. Cup of Excellence then arranged an online auction featuring lots from the competition's finalists.. The auction put her company in direct contact with buyers. In the past, she said, local mills would buy the farms' beans and sell them to distributors. "We've now taken the middleman out, which is huge," she said. .. Ms. Batlle said she had maintained a relationship with the Norwegian coffee distributor that bought her beans as well as a Japanese distributor that bid $3.20 a pound for coffee from another of the family's farms in a July auction. That change, she said, will help the farm lift average prices above the 30 cents a pound it received last year." They now pay their laborers 4 cents instead of 3 cents per picked pound.

Sat, 22 Nov 2003 00:23:59 GMT

Sri Lanka: As Peace Falters, Activists Turn to ICT to Build Bridges: "In December 2002, the Sri Lankan government's Peace Secretariat invited the Colombo office of the AED [USAID contractor for Education and Development] -- one of the coordinators of the peace process -- to set up a data-sharing software to network their office staff. While an AED team including Hannes, who is a consultant to them, was working on the project, the hit upon the idea of creating a similar, though infinitely more sophisticated software, for the entire peace process.

In April this year, just as the team was discussing the concept with officials of the Peace Secretariat, local NGOs and media groups involved in the peace process, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels suspended talks. Recalls Hannes, "At that moment we realized we should not wait any longer. Although there were emissaries conveying messages from the government to the LTTE and vice versa even after the suspension, the impact of the communication breakdown between the two parties was apparent." In the aftermath, a clutch of parties - including peace promoters attached to the premier local NGO - Center for Policy Alternatives, Young Asia Television and the Peace Secretariat joined the AED team to conceive and execute the project. ..

The pilot project which was initiated on September 1 this year, is funded by Groove Networks which is co-owned by Information Technology giants Microsoft and Intel, the Appeal for Nobel Peace Laureate Foundation, AED, and USAID. " I believe the software is based on Groove.

Thu, 13 Nov 2003 18:53:28 GMT

ExpLAN Computers Ltd - Solo computer project: "The Solo is an ultra-low power, transportable computer designed to operate from a number of different power sources including solar panels and lead-acid vehicle batteries. Its ultra-low-power design enables it to be used indefinitely away from sources of mains electricity. Solo is a transportable rather than a portable computer. The entire device can be solid state, having no disc drives or moving parts. .. It uses a TFT Liquid Crystal Display, which may optionally be touch sensitive, removing the need for a separate keyboard and mouse. It may be supplied in a variety of configurations and screen sizes depending on the location of the manufacturer and their intended market.

The Solo is designed to be assembled and supported by manufacturing companies based within Third World countries thereby offering employment within a high-technology industry without moving to an advanced westernised city. ExpLAN Computers Ltd is the coordinator of this project and is working with potential manufacturers, investors and government representatives who will license the rights to produce this innovative computer in their own country. " Pilots in use in Nigeria.

Wed, 05 Nov 2003 23:33:04 GMT

Linking Everest: The story of how volunteers from four continents assembled donated equipment to combine VSAT, WiFi and VOIP in the high Himalaya. Once again, Dave Hughes was involved! The popular press (CNN, NYT) carried articles about the Everest Base Camp cyber-cafe, but this longer article talks about the intention of the project to reverse brain drain and raise educational opportunities. Great photo gallery also online.

Sat, 01 Nov 2003 17:52:41 GMT

PCASTRD-DOST: Review of ICT development in universities and local software development in Cebu, Philippines (now second to Manila in ICT activity).

Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:25:19 GMT

Wireless on a bike: "a recently launched wireless project brings e-mail to 13 villages in [northeastern Cambodia]. Early every morning, five motorcycles leave Banlung, the provincial capital. Each has a wireless device and antenna on the back. Before the motorbikes leave Banlung, they download e-mail messages for the remote regions from a central server.

The cycles then fan out to remote towns where solar panels on the roofs of schools provide enough power to run a computer for six hours a day. As they pass each remote location, messages are uploaded using a Wi-Fi connection built into the device on the back of the motorcycle. Similarly, outgoing mail is retrieved from the school or hospital and stored on the device. At the end of the day, the couriers return to Banlung and transmit all the collected e-mail to the Internet."

Thu, 23 Oct 2003 07:52:39 GMT

CSIR Launches New Open Source Centre: "The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) on Friday launched an Open Source Centre as part of broader endeavors aimed at stimulating the adoption of Open Sources Software Technologies in Africa. The center will be operating from CSIR in Pretoria. The CSIR, the largest scientific and technological research, development and implementation organisation in Africa, has been operating for more than 50 years."

Wed, 22 Oct 2003 00:19:59 GMT

Tectonic -- Linux and open source news: "Africa's weekly open source news leader "

Wed, 15 Oct 2003 17:05:58 GMT

V O X I V A: Company builds integrated telephone/internet solutions for data gathering and dissemination. Initial applications in developing country health care, including in Iraq.. "In an age defined by SARS, BioTerror, and growing Healthcare costs, Voxiva is pioneering phone/internet technology approaches that radically improve information access, data collection, communication, data analysis, and response in global health and safety."

Mon, 06 Oct 2003 10:56:46 GMT

Korean Housewives Want Speedy Net: "Most [S Korean homes] pay about $33 monthly for an 8 megabit-per-second connection. Wireless access, which allows subscribers to access numerous public Wi-Fi networks, costs an extra $8.50 a month. Koreans spend an average of 16 hours a week on the Internet -- compared to 10 hours for Americans and four hours for the British ..

Such broadband vitality didn't come out of nowhere. The Korean government sank over $1.5 billion into helping create the world's most advanced telecommunications network, according to a report from Britain's Brunel University. The government also offered a range of "soft loans" -- very low-interest loans -- to operators ready to build out infrastructure. ..

"Initially Internet traffic went overseas, 98 percent of it," Son said. "There was no Korean content. But this has changed completely. Domestic traffic is now about 85 percent, and overseas, 15 percent. However, this does not mean that overseas traffic has decreased. Instead, domestic traffic has increased." ..

"So many people are trying to see first what the killer application will be for broadband. In our experience, broadband itself is the killer application," Son said"

Thu, 02 Oct 2003 17:42:07 GMT

Collaboration tools for conflict resolution: "The Virtual Negotiation Table in Southern Asia/New York/Helsinki: Groove was used less than eight weeks ago to broker peace in a nation in southern Asia. .. Groove was embraced by both constituencies because of the virtual nature of the shared space. While one shared space served as the meeting place for the factions, each had separate spaces to discuss their positions and provide context for the negotiators."

Thu, 02 Oct 2003 01:32:28 GMT

Internet & ICTs for Social Justice and Development News - APC: "The majority of the community development workers (CDWs) interviewed were found to be accessing a wide range of development information disseminated through the WorldSpace from the C-MAD (Community Mobilization Against Desertification) offices. They shared the information with local communities mostly through listening to the audio channels and downloading."

Thu, 02 Oct 2003 01:29:41 GMT

bridges.org - case studies and bridge builders: "ICT-Enabled Development Case Studies Series: Africa ." 9 case studies so far.

Tue, 30 Sep 2003 06:09:26 GMT

Buddhist Economics by E. F. Schumacher: Classic 1966 essay, later collected into the 1973 "Small is Beautiful."

Sat, 27 Sep 2003 01:23:10 GMT

WorldWater Inaugurates Solar Municipal Water System in Cebu, Philippines: "WorldWater the Municipality of Ronda, Cebu, Philippines, will inaugurate the world's first solar powered, prepaid municipal water distribution system on September 27 in Ronda. Former Philippines President Fidel V. Ramos will be the keynote speaker. Ronda is located on the southwest coast of Cebu, an island in the middle group of the Philippine archipelago.

For the first time, a municipal water distribution system utilizes smart card technology as a financing solution for community water production and to remove problems associated with the payment collection process. The Ronda system uses WorldWater's proprietary AquaCard(TM) (Smart Card) debit card system, which operates directly with WorldWater's AquaMeter(TM) solar pumping stations throughout the community. The project was made possible by a commercial loan from the Philippine National Bank (PNB), and required no special subsidies or grants. "

Sat, 27 Sep 2003 01:18:45 GMT

No electricity? Use a wind-up phone charger: "Japan's Fuso Rikaseihin Co. Ltd, which makes the charger. Priced at $42, the hand-held generator is quite noisy and not cheap, although it comes with a built-in flashlight. It can be used with phones from Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and NTT Docomo. " 5 minutes of winding gives 20 mins of talk time. Motorola came out with its own winder earlier this year.

Tue, 16 Sep 2003 19:03:11 GMT

Opening up the BBC archive: "Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, has announced plans to give the public full access to all the corporation's programme archives. Mr Dyke said on Sunday that everyone would in future be able to download BBC radio and TV programmes from the internet. The service, the BBC Creative Archive, would be free and available to everyone, as long as they were not intending to use the material for commercial purposes, Mr Dyke added. " More interpretation from a blogger: "While the commercial companies fret over the dangers of P2P and zero-cost replication, the BBC has realised that this is its greatest opportunity. Not to beat commercial media concerns, but to finally stop mimicking them. It's heartening to see how quickly the BBC spotted this. From the first informal conversations at the lowest levels, to the acceptance by the most cynical realists at the top of the corporation, it took just 18 months for the BBC to get it. Compare that to the tardiness of the supposedly fast-thinking commercial companies. .. There are some big questions. Sorting out the contractual issues with anything but completely internally produced content will be difficult. There are artist's residuals (payments made to actors for repeat showings of their work), external commercial content, and international rights to consider."

Tue, 16 Sep 2003 18:18:33 GMT

Update on MIT Everyware (Sept 2003): "MIT announced to the world in April 2001 that it would be posting the content of some 2,000 classes on the Web.. MIT would make everything, from video lectures and class notes to tests and course outlines, available to any joker with a browser. .. here was the pinnacle of technology and science education ready to give it away. Not the degrees, which now cost about $41,000 a year, but the content. No registration required. .. The idea quickly attracted outside funding. The William and Flora Hewlett and the Andrew W. Mellon foundations ponied up a total of $11 million for the first two-year phase. .. [This year OpenCourseWare has] 500 courses, offerings like Nuclear Engineering Course 22.312: Engineering of Nuclear Reactors, and Political Science 17.251: Congress and the American Political System. The school expects to add the remaining 1,500 courses over the next three years. ..

One of the most popular offerings turned out to be Laboratory in Software Engineering, aka 6.170, a tough requirement for electrical engineering and computer science majors. Lam Vi Quoc, a fourth-year student at Vietnam's Natural Sciences University, relied on 6.170 lectures to supplement a software lab he was taking, and Evan Hoff, a software developer in Nashville, followed the course to improve his coding skills. In Karachi, Pakistan, a group of 100 students and professionals met weekly to study 6.170. In Kansas City, five members of the Greater Kansas City Java Professionals Association gathered monthly to take the course. In Mauritius, a tiny island nation in the Indian Ocean, Priya Durshini Thaunoo used 6.170 to prepare for a master's degree program at the University of Mauritius. Saman Zarandioon, an Iranian refugee living in Vienna, studied it to continue an education that was stalled by the Iranian government. And software developer Rahul Thadani in Birmingham, Alabama, took it to sharpen his skills. ..

In addition to students, the material appeals to countless educators at other universities. Zhivko Nedev, a computer science professor at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, turns to 6.170 material to help him prepare lectures for his programming course. "It is the best thing I have ever seen in computer science," he says. Ludmila Matiash, at the Kyiv Mohyla Business School in Ukraine, draws on OpenCourseWare to design educational and training programs. Kathy Mann, manager of the biology lab at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada, uses Biology 7.012: Introduction to Biology to teach students how to create lab reports and record information from science experiments. "It's really well done," she says. "Why reinvent the wheel?" The Fulbright Economic Teaching Program at the University of Economics in Ho Chi Minh City makes its own content available online to any interested learners - and indicates on its site that it is taking a cue from OpenCourseWare. ..

MIT is working hard on other ways to extend OpenCourseWare's reach. In January, Universia, a Madrid-based consortium of universities, approached MIT about translating the material into Spanish and Portuguese. MIT signed a deal to authorize and vet the translations, and the first 25 courses will be available this month. The university has received similar requests from the Middle East, Ukraine, and Mongolia, but it won't forge any more official partnerships until it sees how the Universia deal goes.

Ultimately, MIT officials know, OpenCourseWare's success depends on the emergence of online communities to support individual courses. Margulies says MIT is eager to find third parties to create tools that would enable learners or educators to easily organize and manage discussion groups using OpenCourseWare content. "We'd like to see self-managed OpenCourseWare communities," says Margulies. "Our vision is to have this open source software on the site, as well as information that helps people build a learning community, whether it's in Namibia, Thailand, wherever."

Tue, 16 Sep 2003 01:46:29 GMT

Invention for Sustainable Development: "The Lemelson Foundation Invention for Sustainable Development Program fosters and unleashes human creativity and invention to meet basic human needs and build sustainable livelihoods for the world's poor people. " Advisory board members include Ashok Gadgil.

Mon, 08 Sep 2003 20:10:37 GMT

Solar Energy ICT Project in Nigeria: "The Minister of Science and Technology, Professor Turner Isoun, has said that the federal government has developed solar energy pilot project in Bayelsa State. The pilot solar energy project he said was developed to supplement the unsteady power supply to improve performance of Information Communication Technology (ICT)development in Nigeria. The move, the minister said, was the beginning of vigorous efforts channelled towards strengthening solar energy which is needed to support ICT equipment throughout the country, adding that more states will soon be provided with solar energy and ICT facilities."

Fri, 05 Sep 2003 20:03:14 GMT

A 'Tale of Two Cities': Bridging the Digital Divide: Speech in India by president and CEO of Philips promotes Bottom of the Pyramid markets: "Let us see how widening access to technology for these people – by far the largest “new growth market” in human history – will in turn affect developed markets and perhaps solve some of the problems we face there. ..

A good example is the “Health Truck” developed by Philips and now in use in Argentina. In order to meet the health needs of impoverished areas of Argentina we provided a state of the art diagnostic clinic on wheels providing free CT scans that tours rural Argentina. This initiative brings advanced medical diagnosis to thousands of patients who would otherwise have no access to such benefits.

In the field of connectivity and consumer electronics, let me tell you about another initiative specifically designed to bring the urban poor of shantytowns and even more isolated rural areas into the digital community. Almost three billion people in these situations – many of them illiterate -- need to be able to communicate with family, employers and friends even though fixed line or wireless phones are way beyond their economic reach. Our solution is called “Voices in your Hand.” This project is already being tested in Recife, Brazil .. Using modified existing MP3 players that support voice recording and playback and carry a text free user interface, people can listen to personalised webcasts of audio information offline in their homes, talk back and use voice email. Then they visit a public utility point to link their sets to the Internet via USB. It’s not real-time or on-line, but remember you can buy 40 units for 40 families for the price of even the cheapest PC.

The availability of clean, safe drinking water is identified by the World Bank as the largest single factor affecting the health, wealth, and possibly the peace of humanity. .. it’s possible to have affordable, effective, small-scale water treatment at the astonishingly low cost of 10 US cents per villager per year using the Ultra Violet Waterworks (UVW) technology. The secret is to combine solar power, direct current and UV purification on a decentralised basis. Philips has all these technologies. Already, UVW systems are being tested around the world and one Indian organisation -- Ashok Gadgil – has shown the potential. ..

For those less wealthy, the model based around service rather than ownership is highly important whenever huge numbers of people require access to technology – not the device itself. In fact it’s probable that a ‘pay per use’ basis for technology will become just as common as “owning the box” and this will be the future business model for our industry.

A perfect example is the successful program of internet kiosks for rural areas here in India: it’s not necessary to own a computer to stay in touch. Likewise hospitals here in India (such as the facilities at and near Hyderabad and at Bangalore) have shown they are able to utilise diagnostic equipment such as CT scanners at very high rates, which make their use financially viable. .. Another important area in emerging markets is distance learning. .. Half of all households in India – that’s 100 million families - -do not yet have access to radio. We are already the largest suppliers of branded radios in the country. But if Philips could develop a radio that could be marketed for around R$s 200 – that’s around US$5 – we could enable huge numbers of people. "

Tue, 02 Sep 2003 18:15:32 GMT

Blogging for Development: Article on World Bank Development Gateway reviewing blogs and ICT for development. The author, John Daly, has a number of articles on the Gateway, plus a blog of his own.

Sat, 30 Aug 2003 01:10:56 GMT

GOVCOM.ORG: "A Narrative of the Software Project, IssueAtlas.net." Richard Rogers does interesting work on mapping people and ideas on the internet. This project is funded by the Soros Open Society Institute with OneWorld.net support.

Tue, 26 Aug 2003 00:29:57 GMT

Gyandoot: Community-Owned Rural Internet Kiosks: Worldbank report on Indian network of rural single-computer entrepreneurs.

Sat, 16 Aug 2003 01:47:49 GMT

Reporters sans frontières - Iraq: Interesting review of press developments, with a note on cybercafes and satellite dishes: "one shopkeeper in Baghdad's Karradeh Karej Street, where business is booming for him and dozens of others selling receiver dishes. "Even shoemakers are selling them," said one. They cost between $150 and $220, about the same as the fine you would get in Saddam's time, when they were illegal. If the police found one at the bottom of your garden or hidden in a cardboard box on the roof, it would be immediately seized and if you were caught out a second time, you risked up to a year in prison. When the regime was particularly worried about foreign influences, helicopter patrols would go looking for the dishes. In November 2002, when the threat of a US invasion was growing, the authorities reiterated that they were banned. "

Mon, 04 Aug 2003 05:56:44 GMT

In DSpace, Ideas Are Forever: "A number of universities, from the California Institute of Technology to M.I.T., are creating ''institutional repositories'' designed to harness their own intellectual output. M.I.T.'s archive, perhaps the most ambitious, is called DSpace (www.dspace.org). "

Mon, 04 Aug 2003 05:34:34 GMT

World Officials Agree to Share Ecology Data: "Officials from more than 30 countries agreed today to expand monitoring of the atmosphere, the oceans and the land and to create a system for sharing the resulting data. At a meeting here organized by the Bush administration, the officials said the goal of the 10-year effort was to fill in big gaps, primarily in developing countries, in the network of instruments recording earth's vital signs. The resulting benefits, like better crop and weather forecasts, are to be shared by rich and poor countries alike. .. At the meeting here, administration officials said Mr. Bush had committed $25 million as a matching contribution to help developing countries link up to the global network for tracking what Donald L. Evans, the commerce secretary, called "the heartbeat of Mother Earth.""

Fri, 01 Aug 2003 01:54:52 GMT

Philanthropist and scholar George Kozmetsky makes $6 million gift to Stanford: "George and Ronya Kozmetsky have donated $6 million to Stanford to establish the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory, a joint project with the University of Texas at Austin that will seek new ways to use technology to enhance shared global prosperity.. funding will [also] support the Real Time Venture Design Laboratory (ReVeL) in the Department of Communication. According to Nass, ReVeL will conduct research on how technology can be used to create business ventures rapidly, particularly in developing countries."

Mon, 28 Jul 2003 20:01:03 GMT

Indian Railway Internet Cafes: "The Union Minister of Railways Shri Nitish Kumar inaugurated a Cyber Express Café at Platform 12 of New Delhi Station at a function here today. .. The Minister announced that RailTel would establish such cafes on all railway stations gradually to provide internet and other telecom connectivity to passengers, industries and market places as ‘A’ category Internet Service Producer licensee. The Minister also announced that RailTel would introduce soon Internet facilities in one of the trains buoyed by its recent successful experiment, which would be extended to other trains later.

This is the first of its kind on a railway platform. It is a next generation café with facilities for web browsing, e-mailing, gaming, Internet telephony, scanning, printing, photocopying, faxing and Video-Conferencing-all under one roof. The café has provision for 12 flat screen LCD based computer terminals, two IP phones and two video conferencing set ups. The Café is fully air-conditioned and is powered by a broadband internet connectivity of 256 kbps. Browsing is based on pre-paid billing through pin billing coupons of three denominations of Rs. 15/- for 15 minutes, Rs. 20/- for 30 minutes and Rs. 30/- for 60 minutes. [RS46=$1] The Internet Telephony can be used with the ease of a normal telephone call and is aided with the bill printing machine used in the normal PCOs. This facility shall be open 24 hours to travelling public."

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 17:03:49 GMT

Internet Booms in Baghdad with Phone Lines a Mess: "The local phone system in Baghdad is a mess, with only half of the lines working and international calls impossible more than three months into the U.S.-led military occupation. But the Internet business is booming. Since U.S.-led forces ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in April, dozens of Internet cafes have sprouted across Baghdad and more are on the way. Cafe owners connect via satellite in the absence of working land lines.

"This shop was a cafeteria supplying food -- sandwiches, pizza, fish and chips. That was before the war," Kattan said, pulling out a bright yellow menu with a picture of a hamburger on the cover. "After the war, nobody could stop us from opening an Internet cafe." "

Tue, 22 Jul 2003 01:42:28 GMT

Engineers Without Borders - USA: Building a Better World One Community at a Time: "The mission of Engineers Without Borders is to help disadvantaged communities improve their quality of life through implementation of environmentally and economically sustainable engineering projects, while developing internationally responsible engineering students. " Canada has 21 Chapters. EWB doesn't have a digital development focus yet, but culd benefit from one.

Tue, 22 Jul 2003 00:27:46 GMT

Falun Gong's on TV: "MILLIONS of Chinese television viewers got a shock this week [June 2002] when Falun Gong propaganda was beamed into their living rooms as members of the banned sect hijacked one of China's main television satellites. And in Beijing, surprised residents answered their phones this month
to find a recorded Falun Gong message, up to five minutes long, attacking the Government's anti-Falun Gong claims point by point. The hacking incidents highlight Falun Gong's sophistication and audacity as the group attempts to fight back in China and overseas.

The satellite broadcast, in which a banner reading "Falun Gong is good" replaced normal TV viewing in Shandong province on Sunday night and again in prime time on Tuesday, is among the group's most daring moves since it was banned in 1999...

A news blackout was enforced on the mainland and security officials and TV stations denied all knowledge of the incidents yesterday. ..

Officials are reportedly perplexed as to how Falun Gong had the knowledge and equipment needed to intercept a satellite broadcast. There was speculation sect followers had equipped a vehicle to avoid notice. A human rights and democracy centre said an antenna with a diameter of 3m could disrupt reception for hundreds of kilometres. ..

Falun Gong's recorded telephone message -- sent to an unknown number of Beijing residents, and probably further -- claimed the Government had fabricated the incident in which three Falun Gong supporters set themselves alight in Tiananmen Square in January 2001. The recording also said sect followers were beaten and tortured in prison, and invited listeners to follow prompts to hear more information or Falun Gong songs. "

Sat, 19 Jul 2003 05:35:06 GMT

Bridge gives new lustre to the city of gold: The rivival of Johannesburg: "Most guidebooks have yet to register the fact, but South Africa's sprawling metropolis is in the process of transforming its core into a commercial and artistic hub..

In fact the entire continent is pressing into Johannesburg in the form of refugees and economic migrants from Zimbabwe, Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria and Mozambique, hustling a living whatever way they can and turning it into one of the world's most populous cities. With parliament in Cape Town, the embassies in Pretoria and businesses following the stock exchange's exodus to Sandton, a new financial citadel to the north of the city, many thought Johannesburg's modern infrastructure swamped forever by a tide of poverty.

Several things are changing that perception. Some 200 cameras in the city centre have cut crime by 80%, according to Business Against Crime, which operates the cameras from the sixth floor of the Carlton Centre. Uniquely, the cameras can track suspects and a police unit is on standby to respond within 60 seconds of an incident. By the end of the year there would be 360 cameras and eventually 3,500 across the city, said John Penberthy, the managing director. "The pied piper of Hamelin has walked through the place and taken the rats out of town."

Some of the crime has been displaced to other areas, he acknowledged, but some of those who previously engaged in spontaneous crime were now finding jobs as businesses returned, boosting occupancy in some buildings from 15% to 95%. ..

The Johannesburg region accounts for 20% of GDP of entire continent, arguably making it capital of Africa. "

Thu, 17 Jul 2003 18:20:12 GMT

DOT-COM Alliance Newsletter: Regular USAID newsletter concerning telecenters and other digital divide projects.

Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:01:26 GMT

World's poor to get own search engine: "Let us assume you are in Malawi," explained Prof Amarasinghe, "and the computer lab does not have access to the telephone line all the time." "If you want to find some new information about malaria, you are prompted with a message that says 'we are going to send a query through e-mail, it is OK?'. "At night, when the phone line is available, the teacher can dial out and send the queries." The request is sent to computers at MIT in Boston, which then search the internet and gather webpages. To avoid a glut of information, the software then filters the results and chooses the most relevant. These are then sent back to the computer in Malawi so that they can be stored in the machine's internet cache. "Next morning the teacher can connect, download that e-mail and when the students arrive, they can browse through those pages the way they would if they had full internet connectivity," said Prof Amarasinghe. The program keeps a record of all the information sent to avoid wasting bandwidth by re-sending the same webpages."

Wed, 09 Jul 2003 23:41:52 GMT

Solar Rural Telephony in Tibet : There will be "satellite-connected public payphones in more than 1,300 Tibetan villages by the end of 2003. Kyocera is working with Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. to provide the systems to China Telecom Tibet. Approximately 3,500 Kyocera KC-80 photovoltaic modules will be used to power the systems, which will vary in size from 240 watts to 1,200 watts, depending on individual requirements. Kyocera Solar and Gilat have been providing solar-powered communications systems to China since 1998, when more than 1,000 systems were delivered to Xinjiang Province. "

Tue, 08 Jul 2003 23:33:27 GMT

Searching for a Dial Tone in Africa: review of resistance to VOIP by ghana's telephone company, listing several companies using private satellite internet.