Jon's blog

So, more as an elaborate bookmarking system than a full wiki (for now), I have installed the latest and greatest MediaWiki server here at JonCamfield.com and am populating it with some of my favorite resources. Check wiki4dev out! Heck, it's a wiki -- contribute!

The OLPC laptop is fading for me. Not only is it being a bit vaporware-y, they've dropped the hand-crank, and are planning on running it on WinCE, because Linux is "too bloated".

Excuse me?

Sterling (who's iron is in this fire, preferring his own neologism, "spime"), has linked to a compiled list of all the synonyms for "blogjects" -- objects which collect data and spew it out into the Internet that this guy put together (I'm betting his vote is for "Designed Objects" myself).

Computers aren't green. The article covers the market in computer scrap smuggling into China, for labor-intensive, environmentally-unfriendly scrapping and partial recycling.

Not to mention corporations sending their effectively remaindered PCs to LDCs as an act of charity -- because the manpower and skill to bring junky old, mismatched and undocumented 486s and Pentium Is to working functional order is just everywhere, twiddling their collective thumbs waiting for a shipment.

Kevin Kelly provides an excellent analysis of the rust beneath the chrome of leapfrogging:

The Digital Divide Simulator lets you select the website you want to test, then select the bandwidth you want to simulate, and click "simulate". You will be presented with two pages: one at full speed and one at the limited speed. You can then compare the two.", which options ranging from 0.3 Kbps ['Deep field' HF radio] to 128 Kbps[ISDN Connection; VSAT Downstream], 256 Kbps[ADSL Connection], and full speed.

So, between getting back from Peace Corps and coming to DC for grad school, I lived in a rather unique house, which fuels stories from cross-border under-the-wire monetary transactions using Final Fantasy XII codes, to City Council politics and communal living.

I think I'm pretty much obligated to talk about the World Bank's ICT data and report about "Investments in information and communication technologies (ICT) in developing countries will reach 100 billion dollars annually over the next five years."

Beyond validating my career path choice, it will hopefully get the mass statistical engines of the Bank brining in more data on ICT projects and success.

John Daly wins the award for insanely detailed blog entries with his blogel (my neologism for novel-length blogs, spread it!) on K4D, which is its own neologism for "Knowledge for Development" -- the "new" area of ICT and knowledge-economic stuffs and their role in development projects.

Well, here it is, post SXSW and I've been nowhere near Austin.

Not that, as a native Austinite, I really get hyped up about SXSW. All these people invade the city and make me wait Really Long Times to go to my favorite restaurants, and all the bars charge exorbitant amounts of cover for live music, which'd be different if they didn't normally have live music year-round.