Posts by Category

ict4d

Time to Ideate!

less than 1 minute read

Pivot-Twist-Dev takes the classic “pivot-twist” approach for idea pitches of taking a familiar concept and twisting it in a new way to the international deve...

Stop doing Technology for Good So Badly.

8 minute read

I’ve been reflecting on some of the challenges I’ve faced across multiple organizations trying to leverage the power of technology to create positive social ...

July 14: Citizen Media Day?

1 minute read

If May 3rd gets to be World Press Freedom Day, then after today’s events, July 14 (in addition to already being Bastille Day) should be Citizen Media Day.

ICT4D Happy Hour during SXSW

1 minute read

Register now at https://ict4dev.eventbrite.com/ - only 20 RSVPs available until we nail down a venue!

Nevermind: OLPC shouldn’t sell the XO laptop

5 minute read

OLPC News recently ran a (somewhat tongue-in-cheek article on How to buy an XO Laptop, which mainly pointed people to eBay. Which is sad, but eBay has long ...

SXSW 2010

2 minute read

I made it to South By Southwest this year, where I immersed myself in innovative ideas for open-sourced businesses, technology design for good, social media ...

ICT4D Meetup in Austin during SXSW

less than 1 minute read

In Austin for South By SouthWest? Join folks interested in ICT for development at the Gingerman (3rd and Lavaca) from 4-7pm on Sunday! I’ll bring my OLPC f...

Collaboration and the XO Mesh

6 minute read

Time to mesh XOs Unless you're lucky enough to live within mesh range of many other XO users (or are part of an XO deployment or an innovative classroom pro...

IP4D

14 minute read

Intellectual Property is an oddball in international development

Missing the point?

1 minute read

https://ictfordevelopment.wordpress.com/ provides a podcast on ICT issues in development

Defeating Ego in Development

6 minute read

I commented on NextBillion’s ongoing series responding to Michael Edwards’ new book, Just Another Emperor;<blockquote>I see the majority of this discus...

$10 laptop in India?

3 minute read

I’ll believe it when I see it, but the Times of India is reporting that the promised $10 laptop is closer to a reality, but right now it’s as real as the cra...

Small is bigger than big for OLPC deployment

5 minute read

Via Morgan Collett we learn that OLPC is discontinuing it’s “small” deployment support of 100-1000 XO laptop purchases:<div style="float: right; margin-l...

Holiday Computer Shopping

less than 1 minute read

People always come to me for advice on computers and technology options over the giftmas season. To head this off somewhat at the pass, let me remind everyo...

Drupal Mapping III.5 - moving up in the world

1 minute read

It's been a while since I posted on my Drupal Mapping project, and that's partially because I've been spending some time getting a great site that aggregates...

Microsoft, the “third world” and anti-virus

5 minute read

For the past year or so, I've repeatedly been trying to bring up what I see as a huge, gaping hole in any project which uses Microsoft products for an ICT4De...

Drupal and Maps III: Getting Dirty.

9 minute read

This is the continuation of my journal on getting mapping to work for Global Youth Service Day in Drupal, which starts with an overview of maps and drupal, a...

TCO for low-cost computing in Education

less than 1 minute read

The video archive of last Thursday's discussion at the World Bank on the total cost of ICT4E projects is now online at the Bank's eDevelopment thematic group...

Vote

less than 1 minute read

If you see irregularities, call 1-866-our-vote for help and to report problems, and follow the current reports at OurVoteLive. Text your zip to Twitter Vote...

Drupal and GYSD Maps II: Modules in Play

6 minute read

Series: Overview | Modules | Structure and Taxonomies | On Drupal 6 | Functionality Drupal by itself is pretty powerful, but where it really shines is when ...

The latest OLPC Upgrade

3 minute read

OLPC Upgrading - like an old defrag!Last Thursday, I upgraded my OLPC over some beers – sometimes, the best (and worst) ways to really test technology’s limi...

Linux Audio Server amusement

1 minute read

I'm currently using the laptop as the interim solution / testbed for the LAS idea. It's struggling to run amarok, but works nicely with qiv running a slides...

Social Media and ICT in Kenyan Agriculture

5 minute read

CropScience.org has a great paper on the potential use of social media and Internet access for rural farmers. What sets it apart from most Social Media for ...

A Linux Audio Server

3 minute read

I admit it. I have a Windows laptop at home. For a very long time, it was my primary system. For the past year or so, I've been using a Linux laptop as my...

What’s old is new again

4 minute read

Thin Clients - a.k.a. "dumb terminals" have a long history in computing, and tend to come up every few years (seems to be a ten year cycle) as the Grand Solu...

SMSing political questions

less than 1 minute read

This is pure brilliance, courtesy BoingBoing: This giant billboard, posing hard questions for Sarah Palin, was lit up across the road from her LA rally site...

The 3G OLPC Laptop

less than 1 minute read

That’s three grand, not third generation.

Tech Salon: Information Sharing and Development

2 minute read

This week's Technology Salon was on information sharing and ways to use social media and peer-generated content in international development. Less of a lect...

Microsoft4Dev Conference Wrap-up, Day 2

5 minute read

Day 2 was slightly less enervating regarding the blatant Microsoft plugs (only about 40 direct plugs, compared to the first day, where I lost count) Edward ...

ICT4D Conference Wrap-up - Day 1

6 minute read

The conference opened with presentations by three hard hitting visionaries -- Counsellor Lisa Chiles, the senior most career officer at USAID; Michael Rawdin...

Quick ways to go Mobile

less than 1 minute read

MobileActive has a great entry on a handful of low cost, low-barrier ways to go mobile, from Twitter to desktop "guerilla" SMS campaigns (best run in develop...

Rescuing the baby from the thrown-out bathwater

3 minute read

Worldchanging's Jeremy Faludi calls it "reverse-leapfrogging", but is looking for a better name. It's reviving or importing concepts that used to exist: Gre...

Social Media for Change

1 minute read

Ning, if you haven't heard of it, is a roll-your-own "web 2.0" platform, where you can combine blogs, videos, forums, and so on in seconds in a web interface...

My 5 Minute Rule for Documentation

3 minute read

I have a policy which I follow religiously regarding when to document something, which I promote to my co-workers when training them on the staff wikis I cre...

SuBtle tricks

3 minute read

I enjoy activities that put the 'b" in subtle. This Greasemonkey script for FireFox translates dollar figures in webpages you view into Oil Barrels:

NPR Covers the OLPC

2 minute read

OLPC fell short?Morning Edition’s Cyrus Farivar talks about the One Laptop Per Child project: One Laptop Per Child was an ambitious promise to children in t...

A Simple Social Media Analogy

less than 1 minute read

This quirky animation compares social media to ice cream to explain the value of basic customer generated content (uin the form of tagging, rating and commen...

Picking Nits with Microsoft over XP-on-XO

9 minute read

XP on the XOSo after the LaptopMag review of XP on the XO, the W2 Group (“a global marketing services ecosystem that helps CMOs in their new role as builders...

RSS is my favorite web magic

17 minute read

Note to techies - this article is intended for the nonprofit crowd and as such is basically an introduction to RSS. There's a few interesting things at the ...

One old OS per Child

7 minute read

I keep swearing that I’ll shift gears and focus more on the good parts of the One Laptop Per Child project like the fusion of public and private interests in...

The OLPC / OSS Dream

less than 1 minute read

The always-amusing XKCD webcomic illustrates the secret dream on the OLPC project in encouraging children to learn and, in doing so, learn programming:

Zero to Fame in Three Hours

2 minute read

Today, Twitter launched one person from their normal Internet life to getting news on the California-regional LAist and valleywag blogs, CNet, a top-rated d...

Slashdotted

3 minute read

I seem to be up at Slashdot.org again with the OLPC; this time with my OLPCNews piece combing through the video of Windows on the OLPC (also published on Jon...

OLPC GrassCon

less than 1 minute read

Watching the GrassCon Watch live video from GrassCon Channel on Justin.tv

mBanking: Fears and Promises

6 minute read

This morning's Technology Salon covered the legal hurdles facing mBanking - using your cell phone to interact with your bank account - in developing world sc...

OLPCs with CellModems

6 minute read

Someone's stealing my best ideas Wayan found a gem in the Times of India article on OLPC and World Bank funding:

eBay Market Data

3 minute read

In thinking about eBay in my post on tricky ways to "Give Many" OLPC XO laptops, I was reminded about something that has bugged me for a very long time about...

Could Many Give Many?

6 minute read

Peer networks of small schools, governments, and any other interested parties banding together to be able to meet the minimum order.

Simple Global Pleasures

less than 1 minute read

You might remember the Youtube video of this guy named Matt who did this silly dance and captured it on video everywhere he went a few years ago? Well.. h...

DC XO Chat Server

3 minute read

Join local activities!So, after xochat went into deep hibernation (though it’s back to stay and has its own regional servers), Wayan asked for friends to cha...

Turnabout is fair(-use) play

2 minute read

The Associated Press has been rattling sabers of bloggers quoting (even with credit and links) from AP articles, claiming that any quote longer than 5 words ...

Portability vs The World

less than 1 minute read

The DC area mailing list for nonprofit technologists has been alight with suggestions on what the best portable machine is this past week, debating screen si...

Twitter and Outreach

1 minute read

I'm sure you're tired of hearing me talk about twitter as an innovative and easy tool for outreach and engagement. So listen instead to Amy Gahran and her c...

On Hubris and the 1CC version of OLPC

7 minute read

Business Week has a good article summing up the recent history of the OLPC project and it's difficulties with sales numbers, fading promises, Intel, and its ...

SpaceWarp

less than 1 minute read

Some kids had train sets. Actually, I did but it bored me to death. One xmas I got a SpaceWarp. Sure, I started out building the basic design they gave el...

2.0 NonProfit Conference wrap-up and notes

4 minute read

While few of the concepts at the 2.0 nonprofit conference were hardly new to me (Use twitter! uh, ok.); it was good to see where other nonprofits were and w...

Windows Free

less than 1 minute read

No, not the OLPC, but here's a good story about a guy who's been MS-free for a year.

Vacation!

less than 1 minute read

Jon is on vacation this week on the west coast, so don't expect any insight (or email responses!)

Ultraportable Ubuntu?

4 minute read

Would you like an Ubuntu to go?A recent The Guardian interview with Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth reveals this gem: TG: Will you be coming out with a tail...

Project HA-T1093

9 minute read

No, it's not some early George Lucas film, it's the IADB project title for the "Pilot of the One Laptop per Child Model" in Haiti that Wayan gave a great ove...

MS on XO: It’s so bad you have to laugh

12 minute read

Check out this video of James Utzschneider from Microsoft's Unlimited Potential team walking us through Windows XP on the OLPC XO (Video via OLPCNews.com h...

OLPC Now Microsoft-only

less than 1 minute read

I hope it goes just as well as the Intel partnership. What a disaster. OLPCNews and the NYTimes have more information on the story.

Pots, kettles and OLPC fanaticism

5 minute read

Like most in the OLPC community, Ivan Krstić's discussion on the OLPC yesterday left me (almost) speechless, and even Wayan at OLPCNews left it mostly as a r...

Good will sharing

3 minute read

I read BoingBoing - it provides a steady stream of new and interesting things around the net, and the occasional IT policy tidbit. Lots of people read boing...

Scott McNealy video from CGD

less than 1 minute read

Unfortunately; this clip seems to focus tightly on his IP statements; leaving out some of his more relevant popoints on "sharing" - centric resource creation...

It’s full of stars….

less than 1 minute read

Somehow, this is exactly like what I expect it should look like: Courtesy of Nexus's Facebook plugin All I can say is wow.

Robert Strauss vs. Peace Corps: Round 2

12 minute read

You may remember Strauss from his NYT article damning the Peace Corps back in January. It made the point that the increasing numbers of volunteers is decrea...

Twittering for Global Youth Service Day II

1 minute read

Global Youth Service Day will be brought to you in live Twitter form with event updates (and locations, to broadcast on TwitterVision.com) throughout the day.

The Opposite of Schadenfreude

3 minute read

OLPCNews has been ripe with the continuing disintegration of OLPC, from Mary Lou Jepsen who got out just in time, then with Ivan's departure due to differenc...

Negroponte on the future of OLPC and Sugar

7 minute read

The Big NN sent out an email, reposted at OLPCNews.com, with the current status of OLPC and Sugar, it's UI, to address the issues finding their way out of th...

ICT4Dev Career Meetup Notes

1 minute read

Here is essentially a list of resources from the DC ICT4Dev Meetup on careers (you'll have to do the googling and hyperlinking yourselves. Email me at jon @...

Lower Your Eee-XPectations

3 minute read

APCMap has an insightful review of their experiences with Windows XP on the Asus Eee. This isn't (yet) any different version of XP than you'd have on a "nor...

Updating the XO

3 minute read

I updated my OLPC from the shipped build 656 to the release candidate for the muh-anticipated Update.1, here's what I did and what happened: from a root term...

How low-cost portables can compete

2 minute read

Wayan at OLPCNews.com has an article up on what he's terming "3P computing" (Power, Price, Performance). Some of the commentators and myself would also add ...

More on Low Cost Laptops

less than 1 minute read

Slashdot's wading in to the discussion on what is a low-cost laptop and what features should it have. At least this time no one's calling me a child hater.

DC International Development Events Calendar

less than 1 minute read

Big thanks to GWU's Organization for International Development for importing their events calendar into google calendars. I was getting pretty close to doin...

Innovation is not adding more of the same

2 minute read

You might say that I've at times been critical of the OLPC project, but rarely do I have anything bad to say about their actual technology. Intel has a new ...

Good People Day 2008

1 minute read

I like the good people day idea all about giving props where due. Since I'll be nose-down in work preparing for the upcoming Global Youth Service Day April ...

Twittering for Global Youth Service Day

2 minute read

So coming up on 25th-28th of April is the 20th annual Global Youth Service Day, and I'm trying to see if I can do something fun with Twitter; like having you...

I have to ask…

2 minute read

To reveal the fathomless depths of my geek depravity, one Friday a month I get together with fellow alumni and current students of my International Science a...

Using the OLPC - Day 2

3 minute read

Installing xo activities is a snap, up there with OSX's .dmg install process. Installing anything else can be a bit of a pain, as it's command line installa...

LiveBlogging my OLPC

1 minute read

So I got my OLPC around 11am Saturday morning. Finally. Note: the FedEx AltRefTracking never registered that it was on its way, and I never go to the Lapto...

Web 2.0 ‘08 Predictions Update

3 minute read

I predicted in January that Facebook would "hit its limit. I predict some more ad snafus a la Beacon, and the 3rd party apps become overwhelming and all-too-...

LOLPC - One LOL per OLPC

4 minute read

Disclaimer: If you take this post seriously, you need to relax. UPDATE:There are some LOLPCs hiding away at lolnptech!

Negroponte stepping away from the OLPC helm

4 minute read

Naturally, it failed. Nothing is that independent, especially an organization […] staffed by highly individualistic industry visionaries from around the worl...

Twittering for Good

2 minute read

There's increasing buzz on using Twitter for non-profit goals; from the familiar sources of Idealist, NetSquared and of course Beth Kanter. It seems mostly ...

Slacktivisism for Fair Trade (Updated)

2 minute read

My friend over at Esperanza en Accion in Nicaragua, has let people know that someone is attempting aland grab against a cooperative clothing factory, Nueva V...

The OLPC’s Stone Soup

5 minute read

Birmingham, Alabama has had possibly the first of many rude awakenings worldwide as they realize that the XOs don't come with an Internet connection included...

MS offers to buy Yahoo?

less than 1 minute read

Engadget is reporting that Microsoft has posted a formal offer to buy Yahoo (and by proxy, flickr, del.icio.us, and steer the development of Flock (...into t...

Rubber, meet Road…

5 minute read

The original goal for the G1G1 project was hoped to be around 40 million dollars, making for almost 200,000 "get one" laptops -- and they set that goal well;...

OLPC Learning Club DC: Tonight!

less than 1 minute read

Provided I can sneak out of work early enough to hit the gym and make it over; I'll be at Greater DC Cares tonight as they host an OLPC Learning Club event, ...

OLPC in the US

8 minute read

OLPC will now also be available to US schools:

OECD on Web 2.0 and Copyright

4 minute read

You normally don't expect such staid bodies as the OECD to go and start talking about Web 2.0 and user-created content (or "UCC" in their terminology), but t...

Inside the XO-1 Laptop with Bunnie Studios

5 minute read

Bunnie Studios (e.g. Andrew Shane Huang), who just finished his Ph.D at MIT's Project Ares group, has published an insightful review of the hardware design o...

More on Intel and OLPC

3 minute read

Even NextBillion.net has weighed in on the Intel/OLPC divorce and included the full interview with Negroponte, even as Slashdot dredges up last year's "scand...

OLPC Give One Get One: A Learning Experience?

1 minute read

Over at OLPCNews, Wayan's written a wrap-up of the Give one, Get one (G1G1) program by the OLPC Foundation to date, and its successes and shortcomings. Here...

Computer Choices FAQ

2 minute read

People often ask me, as a technology geek, what kind of computer they should get, so I'm putting this post together as a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) to ...

Web 2.0 ‘08

5 minute read

A few predictions for what we'll see online in 2008:

Other Web 2.0 resources

1 minute read

A recent thread of emails over on the 501 Tech Club DC email list brought more Web 2.0 resources to light. So in the spirit of sharing: NetworkForGood has a...

Google Maps Mashup

less than 1 minute read

Change.org has a wonderful mashup of 501 c 3 nonprofits arranged on a Google Map, as an example of a Good Idea (tm) for Google Maps usage. You can start at ...

Web 2.0 Guide for NonProfits

1 minute read

A quick rundown of my recent posts looking at the value of using Open Source in combination with Web 2.0 tools for non-profits / NGOs and the like: The Powe...

Write Once, Post Everywhere

2 minute read

I've been dancing around how open source software, strong standards, and the various web 2.0 technologies actually help your organization out. So let me sho...

Teens and Social Media

1 minute read

Pew Internet and American Life Project has a new report out on Teens and Social Media; finding that girls are the leading content creators (excepting video p...

Immigrants take all the best jobs

3 minute read

For example, I bet there's a long line of good ol' american workers who would love to have solid, agriculture jobs in Florida, like the one described in this...

Good thoughts on code bloat

2 minute read

Steve Yegge writes on code bloat: I recently had the opportunity to watch a self-professed Java programmer give a presentation in which one slide listed Pro...

Who’s to blame for a bad loan?

6 minute read

A good friend of mine has condensed a lot of good, critical thoughts on lending -- from the subprime market to the World Bank, into one good blog post, riffi...

A Better Browser II

2 minute read

Hopefully you're enjoying Flock now. If you already had accounts on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and/or del.icio.us, you've seen how amazingly easy i...

Vista Loses 2007

2 minute read

All I can say is ouch: It's just that Vista isn't all that good. Many of the innovations the operating system was supposed to bring--like more efficient fil...

A Better Browser

1 minute read

The problem I face most often when trying to show someone a new powerful open source tool is that they just can't believe that the things I tell them are pos...

Twitter Account

less than 1 minute read

In case you hadn't noticed, I now have a Twitter account which you can follow, have SMSed to your cell phone, and so on. I wrote a longer entry talking abou...

Off Topic: Torture

2 minute read

Salon.com has an exclusive article detailing the detainment of an innocent Yemeni citizen in CIA's black site prisons:

An Overview of Popular Web 2.0 sites

12 minute read

So far we've really been pushing the underlying concepts, with a few tips to actual websites, examples, and tools. Without further ado, I'd now like to jump...

Web 2.0 101: Speaking the Language

12 minute read

The last entry was the theoretical underpinnings of how this whole web 2.0 thing can work, so today let's get into some of the more common terms you've heard...

Twitter

3 minute read

This should come later in the F/LOSS and Web 2.0 101 series, but Twitter is a fun and simple tool with huge potential. I've begun using Twitter, and have it...

The Power of Open

6 minute read

I presented and later ran a roundtable discussion on using web 2.0 and open source software for service/volunteer organizations. I kept getting requests for...

Nicaraguan Artesania for Giftmas!

less than 1 minute read

Esperanza en Accion, a fair-trade, social justice organization working with Nicaraguan artisans, has a huge selection of items in their online eBay store, ju...

Repeat after me

4 minute read

"Buying falafel mix does not a terrorist make." The FBI might do well to write that in chalk 500 times, and hope that it sinks in, as they're wasting our mo...

Celebrate LOGO’s 40th Birthday

3 minute read

Originally published on OLPCNews The Logo programming language is 40 years old, writes WIRED. A Logo spiral

JWZ on backups

1 minute read

JWZ as usual offers good, if acerbic, advice; today on backups: I am here to tell you about backups. It’s very simple. Option 1: Learn not to care about yo...

DRM Redux

8 minute read

Back in the late 90s, as Napster was being circled by vultures, I dreamt of starting a consulting group which would seek out clients needing help and place d...

Firefox Addons

less than 1 minute read

You could probably guess that I love the Firefox web browser, right? I'm also naturally a big fan of the addons you can get to extend its power. I'm always...

World Bank Roller Coaster Press Release

2 minute read

Carrot: "The World Bank has promised to contribute a record $3.5bn (£1.7bn) to help the world's poorest countries. The figure is double what the agency init...

Proxies

1 minute read

The BBC has a story on the Burmese Monks and their cyberskills: The internet has also become a virtual space for political groups who could not openly expre...

India

less than 1 minute read

I'll be in India for most of the rest of September...

Going their own way

4 minute read

The WaPo has an excellent story of the New Latin Left movement, which has reduced their dependence on IMF and Bank loans (and their requisite policy prescri...

The OLPC and the Internet

3 minute read

Michael Bletsas stands ready to defend the OLPC The bitfrost specification indicates that perhaps some countries may not believe that the unique green bra...

Blasts from the Past

20 minute read

Remember our discovery over at OLPCNews.com of the proto-OLPC project in Senegal? Our insightful readers dug even deeper and found some more news articles f...

User Interfaces: Aero vs. Beryl

1 minute read

I don't have all the bells and whistles that the guy in this movie has running, but maybe it's time to suck it up and upgrade to the newest version. Aero is...

Vatican vs Amnesty International

1 minute read

The Vatican urges Catholics not to donate to Amnesty International (BBC): The Vatican also said it was suspending all financial aid to Amnesty over what it ...

Own your own number!

less than 1 minute read

Sure, you've named a star after yourself by paying some scammers lots of moolah, but now you can get your own 128-bit number!, just like the AACS-LA! Mine i...

Geektopia achieved

2 minute read

My geektopia has arrived: The fridge has now become aware of its contents; and it is capable of establishing direct contact between you and their producers....

Guess the Country

less than 1 minute read

From Development Gateway: X plans to offer 1.2 million of the country’s poorest citizens a computer with broadband Internet access for a daily fee of €1 (...

Let’s try this again

5 minute read

Here's a scenario. My company, who you'be never heard of before, has just created a revolutionary new car. It will run almost as well as a new "normal" car...

Library Grants, Laptop Gambles

7 minute read

James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds asks the simple question of the OLPC: "Will this laptop save the world?" in MIT's Technology Review.

OLPC Implementation Costs

less than 1 minute read

I'm now writing some OLPC posts for OLPCNews.com; my first post is uncovering some of the hidden costs in OLPC implementation - it turns out that the $100 ...

A Million Laptop Hangover

4 minute read

Over the next few years, ministers of education worldwide will be waking up from their celebratory launch parties announcing the agreements for the OLPC lapt...

World Bank and National Economic Models

1 minute read

I got to attend a lecture by William Easterly on his new book, focusing on whether or not foreign aid can affect world poverty (spoiler: the past 5 decades d...

OLPC now XO?

3 minute read

There's a developing thread at Engadget about the branding efforts on the OLPC, as well as some argument to its utility. I of course jumped in, responding to...

Copyright

less than 1 minute read

I used to use recipes as a good, non-new/Internet-y example of how you can still make profits (recipe books) with no attempt at copyright enforcement (who c...

Zimbabwe

less than 1 minute read

A lot more information about Zimbabwe, some history, and also a look at their draconian proposed wiretap law (it's possible even worse than in the US!)

The limits of ICT4D

1 minute read

Someone has to pay the 'net bill: Internet traffic in Zimbabwe has come close to a standstill after an international satellite firm slashed its bandwidth be...

Nica Tech Writeup: The importance of local

6 minute read

Sometimes, knowing the local context is not only important, but a stark requirement. Scratch that - always. In Managua, Nicaragua, this is point is driven ...

Morality of Development

4 minute read

Development, like politics, is a metaphorical room where you're amazed at just how many elephants can fit simultaneously, and yet be ignored. These elehpant...

The Economics of Free

less than 1 minute read

While not strictly dev/ICT related, this blog is tracking the economic implications of Open Source, (focusing on the university software development context)...

Technology and the University

less than 1 minute read

More tangentially related tech info, my former employers, The University of Texas' Office of Technology Commercialization are hosting their next big conferen...

Esperanza En Accion

less than 1 minute read

I'm on the technology committee of the Esperanza En Accion board, and as part of this, and in fulfilling a long-standing promise to EeA's director, I'm off t...

Net Neutrality

1 minute read

Dan Kaminsky is working on a software testing tool to check to see if your ISP is giving equal quality to all your traffic, or if they are favoring certain t...

IPR and … plants?

less than 1 minute read

Brazil is registering list of plant names to fight pharma companies from trademarking the names when using compounds extracted from these plants. India also ...

Blogreement

less than 1 minute read

Steven Johnson has a nice quick list of topics we can move beyond when discussing blogs: Mainstream, top-down, professional journalism will continue to p...

“Launch At” ?

1 minute read

Techsoup has a good interview with the Chief Connectivity Officer, Michael Bletsas, of OLPC. Unfortunately, it does nothing to quell my concerns about their...

The Dutch Boy vs. the Great Firewall

less than 1 minute read

a fascinating analysis reveals that for the keyword-blocking aspects of the Chinese firewall, there is a simple workaround where you can just ignore its effe...

Collective Action

6 minute read

Edge.org is running an article by Jaron Lanier on the current drive towards meta-content and collective-rule on the Internet (think Wikipedia, BoingBoing, Di...

Re-mapping development

less than 1 minute read

The WorldMapper remaps the globe according to various statistics gathered mostly by the Bank and the IMF. Particularly interesting are the maps for license ...

Wiki4Dev

less than 1 minute read

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 an...

OLPC redux

3 minute read

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 ...

Death by synonym

10 minute read

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 wh...

Sustainable…computing?

2 minute read

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

The myth of leapfrogging?

3 minute read

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

The Digital Ditch

2 minute read

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 ...

World Bank and ICTs

1 minute read

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) i...

Fostering Innovation

3 minute read

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 neolog...

Spimes and blogjects?

3 minute read

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 t...

Lo-Techs

1 minute read

… not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you’re crude, go technical; if they think you’re technical, go crude. I’m a ve...

ICT on the homefront

4 minute read

DC seeks city-wide wifi, and actually focuses on free access for the poor.

Censored Net Access?

2 minute read

With all this ire suddenly released against Google (have we been waiting for them to prove that they weren't perfect?) Yahoo (it's been a while since we got ...

Cultural eHegemony

5 minute read

Der Spiegel, as picked up in YaleGlobal and Eldis's ICT-for-Dev RSS feed reports a (French) worry about "the homogenization and commercialization of culture ...

Glocal Internet Freedom

less than 1 minute read

I think it's abhorrent that China is even sending uniformed patrols to local libraries to enforce what citizens can and cannot read on the often-already-filt...

Pringles Cans on the Saudi Border

4 minute read

In "Weaving the Authoritarian Web: Liberalization, Bureaucratization, and the Internet in Non-Democratic Regimes," Boas, details primarily Saudi and Chinese ...

Snails-Pace ICT Development

7 minute read

There’s an old adage among geeks that goes something like, Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon packed full of tape drives travelling at high...

3rd World Cyber Activism and the DOS

8 minute read

Electronic mobilization (as seen, for example, in the Dean campaign) is good at building a swarm of activity, but bad at moving to a more self-monitoring w...

Basics in ICT4Dev

6 minute read

So yeah, it's obvious that I like computers, and think that this whole "Internet" thing holds some transformative power for development

Web 2.0 + 10

3 minute read

So, I have a problem with the hype surrounding "Web 2.0" [1], which is mainly that it's not as new as everyone claims. Definitely, it's a new ballpark from ...

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olpc

OLPCs, Uruguay and Educational Value

less than 1 minute read

My recent blog post on Uruguay’s Plan Ceibal generated a buzz of discussion over at OLPCNews on the value of measurement, test scores, and updates from the f...

Another OLPC TCO study

3 minute read

1:1 Computing costs are a difficult thing to nail down, because there are so many factors that go into it. I worked with GeSCI’s Roxanna Bassi to create a w...

Hardware, Easyware, and Flow

2 minute read

Is hardware hacking becoming more accessible in the development context? A positive psychologist friend once explained the concept of (watch as I butcher th...

Social Change - to go, please

4 minute read

Cross-posted at the FrontlineSMS Blog The recent Technology Salons have been on local and sectoral implementations of mobile technology in development. Mob...

Nevermind: OLPC shouldn’t sell the XO laptop

5 minute read

OLPC News recently ran a (somewhat tongue-in-cheek article on How to buy an XO Laptop, which mainly pointed people to eBay. Which is sad, but eBay has long ...

ICT4D Meetup in Austin during SXSW

less than 1 minute read

In Austin for South By SouthWest? Join folks interested in ICT for development at the Gingerman (3rd and Lavaca) from 4-7pm on Sunday! I’ll bring my OLPC f...

The OLPC Vaporware Product Line Vs. the iPad

10 minute read

iPad or OLPC? Update: the EE Times has a great, similar article on the OLPC fantasy vs Apple reality. So, the XO-2 has moved from promise to hope to scrap,...

The OLPC Haiti Project Reports Back

12 minute read

When the IDB plans to “evaluate its performance from a quantitative standpoint,” it’s a good sign that they mean to do just that. The XO project in Haiti, d...

I’m Still Not Convinced

11 minute read

At the IADB seminar on ICT in the classroom, I asked Nicholas Negroponte why not sell the XO laptop – at or near cost – to anyone who wanted one? This gets ...

The Inter-American Development Bank and ICT4Edu

5 minute read

Today’s IADB event, Reinventing the Classroom, brought together thought-leaders, practitioners and government officials to discuss the role of technology in ...

In Defense of the Laptop

6 minute read

Reading Alanna Shaikh’s writeup on the OLPC Program as a failure in the UNDispatch and clicking through to Timothy Ogden’s harsh commentary, I began to feel ...

ICTs in the Classroom: Next Thursday at the IADB

1 minute read

Next Thursday at the IADB is a huge event delving into the role of ICTs in the classroom, with heavy-hitters including Nicholas Negroponte of OLPC, Tabaré Vá...

OLPC TCO Deathmatch (2 of 4)

9 minute read

Let’s talk Total Costs of Ownership of One Laptop Per Child. Taking our set of different OLPC implementation cost calculators, as well as actual numbers tha...

Use the XO Chat Mesh, Luke.

6 minute read

I’ve updated my mesh post with new Jabber server info - click read more for the full scoop!

It’s Raining OLPC TCOs (1 of 4)

5 minute read

Update: Hello readers from Alanna’s post on the OLPC at UNDispatch - You should check my original article on the OLPC TCO - written back in 2006 - over at O...

A Tale of Two (or more) TCOs (3 of 4)

4 minute read

So based on your feedback, existing pilot data, existing TCO research and numbers, and limitations and suggestions from the TCO calculator tools themselves, ...

Collaboration and the XO Mesh

6 minute read

Time to mesh XOs Unless you're lucky enough to live within mesh range of many other XO users (or are part of an XO deployment or an innovative classroom pro...

Mobiles vs. Computers in Education

1 minute read

This is my response to the current EduTech Debate on the role of mobiles Vs. computers in education. Join the conversation and disagree with me! I’m sure I...

XP on the XO, round three.

2 minute read

Who's using XP? With a surprising lack of fanfare, OLPCNews recently revealed that Sugar is beating out Windows XP in XO deployments: Apparently the convers...

$10 laptop in India?

3 minute read

I’ll believe it when I see it, but the Times of India is reporting that the promised $10 laptop is closer to a reality, but right now it’s as real as the cra...

Small is bigger than big for OLPC deployment

5 minute read

Via Morgan Collett we learn that OLPC is discontinuing it’s “small” deployment support of 100-1000 XO laptop purchases:<div style="float: right; margin-l...

Microsoft, the “third world” and anti-virus

5 minute read

For the past year or so, I've repeatedly been trying to bring up what I see as a huge, gaping hole in any project which uses Microsoft products for an ICT4De...

TCO for low-cost computing in Education

less than 1 minute read

The video archive of last Thursday's discussion at the World Bank on the total cost of ICT4E projects is now online at the Bank's eDevelopment thematic group...

The latest OLPC Upgrade

3 minute read

OLPC Upgrading - like an old defrag!Last Thursday, I upgraded my OLPC over some beers – sometimes, the best (and worst) ways to really test technology’s limi...

The 3G OLPC Laptop

less than 1 minute read

That’s three grand, not third generation.

NPR Covers the OLPC

2 minute read

OLPC fell short?Morning Edition’s Cyrus Farivar talks about the One Laptop Per Child project: One Laptop Per Child was an ambitious promise to children in t...

Picking Nits with Microsoft over XP-on-XO

9 minute read

XP on the XOSo after the LaptopMag review of XP on the XO, the W2 Group (“a global marketing services ecosystem that helps CMOs in their new role as builders...

One old OS per Child

7 minute read

I keep swearing that I’ll shift gears and focus more on the good parts of the One Laptop Per Child project like the fusion of public and private interests in...

The OLPC / OSS Dream

less than 1 minute read

The always-amusing XKCD webcomic illustrates the secret dream on the OLPC project in encouraging children to learn and, in doing so, learn programming:

Slashdotted

3 minute read

I seem to be up at Slashdot.org again with the OLPC; this time with my OLPCNews piece combing through the video of Windows on the OLPC (also published on Jon...

OLPC GrassCon

less than 1 minute read

Watching the GrassCon Watch live video from GrassCon Channel on Justin.tv

OLPCs with CellModems

6 minute read

Someone's stealing my best ideas Wayan found a gem in the Times of India article on OLPC and World Bank funding:

Could Many Give Many?

6 minute read

Peer networks of small schools, governments, and any other interested parties banding together to be able to meet the minimum order.

DC XO Chat Server

3 minute read

Join local activities!So, after xochat went into deep hibernation (though it’s back to stay and has its own regional servers), Wayan asked for friends to cha...

Portability vs The World

less than 1 minute read

The DC area mailing list for nonprofit technologists has been alight with suggestions on what the best portable machine is this past week, debating screen si...

On Hubris and the 1CC version of OLPC

7 minute read

Business Week has a good article summing up the recent history of the OLPC project and it's difficulties with sales numbers, fading promises, Intel, and its ...

Project HA-T1093

9 minute read

No, it's not some early George Lucas film, it's the IADB project title for the "Pilot of the One Laptop per Child Model" in Haiti that Wayan gave a great ove...

MS on XO: It’s so bad you have to laugh

12 minute read

Check out this video of James Utzschneider from Microsoft's Unlimited Potential team walking us through Windows XP on the OLPC XO (Video via OLPCNews.com h...

OLPC Now Microsoft-only

less than 1 minute read

I hope it goes just as well as the Intel partnership. What a disaster. OLPCNews and the NYTimes have more information on the story.

Pots, kettles and OLPC fanaticism

5 minute read

Like most in the OLPC community, Ivan Krstić's discussion on the OLPC yesterday left me (almost) speechless, and even Wayan at OLPCNews left it mostly as a r...

The Opposite of Schadenfreude

3 minute read

OLPCNews has been ripe with the continuing disintegration of OLPC, from Mary Lou Jepsen who got out just in time, then with Ivan's departure due to differenc...

Negroponte on the future of OLPC and Sugar

7 minute read

The Big NN sent out an email, reposted at OLPCNews.com, with the current status of OLPC and Sugar, it's UI, to address the issues finding their way out of th...

Updating the XO

3 minute read

I updated my OLPC from the shipped build 656 to the release candidate for the muh-anticipated Update.1, here's what I did and what happened: from a root term...

How low-cost portables can compete

2 minute read

Wayan at OLPCNews.com has an article up on what he's terming "3P computing" (Power, Price, Performance). Some of the commentators and myself would also add ...

More on Low Cost Laptops

less than 1 minute read

Slashdot's wading in to the discussion on what is a low-cost laptop and what features should it have. At least this time no one's calling me a child hater.

Innovation is not adding more of the same

2 minute read

You might say that I've at times been critical of the OLPC project, but rarely do I have anything bad to say about their actual technology. Intel has a new ...

I have to ask…

2 minute read

To reveal the fathomless depths of my geek depravity, one Friday a month I get together with fellow alumni and current students of my International Science a...

Using the OLPC - Day 2

3 minute read

Installing xo activities is a snap, up there with OSX's .dmg install process. Installing anything else can be a bit of a pain, as it's command line installa...

LiveBlogging my OLPC

1 minute read

So I got my OLPC around 11am Saturday morning. Finally. Note: the FedEx AltRefTracking never registered that it was on its way, and I never go to the Lapto...

LOLPC - One LOL per OLPC

4 minute read

Disclaimer: If you take this post seriously, you need to relax. UPDATE:There are some LOLPCs hiding away at lolnptech!

Negroponte stepping away from the OLPC helm

4 minute read

Naturally, it failed. Nothing is that independent, especially an organization […] staffed by highly individualistic industry visionaries from around the worl...

The OLPC’s Stone Soup

5 minute read

Birmingham, Alabama has had possibly the first of many rude awakenings worldwide as they realize that the XOs don't come with an Internet connection included...

Rubber, meet Road…

5 minute read

The original goal for the G1G1 project was hoped to be around 40 million dollars, making for almost 200,000 "get one" laptops -- and they set that goal well;...

OLPC Learning Club DC: Tonight!

less than 1 minute read

Provided I can sneak out of work early enough to hit the gym and make it over; I'll be at Greater DC Cares tonight as they host an OLPC Learning Club event, ...

OLPC in the US

8 minute read

OLPC will now also be available to US schools:

Inside the XO-1 Laptop with Bunnie Studios

5 minute read

Bunnie Studios (e.g. Andrew Shane Huang), who just finished his Ph.D at MIT's Project Ares group, has published an insightful review of the hardware design o...

More on Intel and OLPC

3 minute read

Even NextBillion.net has weighed in on the Intel/OLPC divorce and included the full interview with Negroponte, even as Slashdot dredges up last year's "scand...

OLPC Give One Get One: A Learning Experience?

1 minute read

Over at OLPCNews, Wayan's written a wrap-up of the Give one, Get one (G1G1) program by the OLPC Foundation to date, and its successes and shortcomings. Here...

Celebrate LOGO’s 40th Birthday

3 minute read

Originally published on OLPCNews The Logo programming language is 40 years old, writes WIRED. A Logo spiral

The OLPC and the Internet

3 minute read

Michael Bletsas stands ready to defend the OLPC The bitfrost specification indicates that perhaps some countries may not believe that the unique green bra...

Blasts from the Past

20 minute read

Remember our discovery over at OLPCNews.com of the proto-OLPC project in Senegal? Our insightful readers dug even deeper and found some more news articles f...

Let’s try this again

5 minute read

Here's a scenario. My company, who you'be never heard of before, has just created a revolutionary new car. It will run almost as well as a new "normal" car...

Library Grants, Laptop Gambles

7 minute read

James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds asks the simple question of the OLPC: "Will this laptop save the world?" in MIT's Technology Review.

OLPC Implementation Costs

less than 1 minute read

I'm now writing some OLPC posts for OLPCNews.com; my first post is uncovering some of the hidden costs in OLPC implementation - it turns out that the $100 ...

A Million Laptop Hangover

4 minute read

Over the next few years, ministers of education worldwide will be waking up from their celebratory launch parties announcing the agreements for the OLPC lapt...

OLPC now XO?

3 minute read

There's a developing thread at Engadget about the branding efforts on the OLPC, as well as some argument to its utility. I of course jumped in, responding to...

“Launch At” ?

1 minute read

Techsoup has a good interview with the Chief Connectivity Officer, Michael Bletsas, of OLPC. Unfortunately, it does nothing to quell my concerns about their...

OLPC redux

3 minute read

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 ...

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web 2.0 and f/loss

From the Tusks and Safety Department

10 minute read

What security and safety tooling do we need to build now if Mastodon scales to tens or hundereds of millions of users.

On Twitter and Mastodon

5 minute read

Mastodon is not a drop-in twitter replacement. It shouldn’t be, and there is also such a vast opportunity in this moment.

Building Tools for Human Rights

5 minute read

It’s time to add formal requirements to our tool funding process to reduce risks while also contributing to building more inclusive tools

Goodbye, Drupal.md

5 minute read

This is (hopefully!) the last post on my joncamfield.com drupal instance and will be the first on my new jekyll-bases static site.

Into the fediverse

4 minute read

This is an experiment to be both more social, and less on "social media". I have created a personal and private account in what’s called Mastodon.

Centering Decentralization

10 minute read

“Oh great, another white dude from a western democracy going off about decentralization.” I promise that I will not be hawking a crypto-currency or even talk...

On Piracy

9 minute read

Software licensing limits are a bigger human rights problem than software piracy is a cost.

Of Tor and Condoms

10 minute read

I am far from the first to compare digital security practices to safer sex practices; Jillian York even rapped about it on stage at re:publica in 2014

Do you trust your tools?

7 minute read

Let’s actually talk about how you might have trust in a software project, using Tor as an example.

Stop doing Technology for Good So Badly.

8 minute read

I’ve been reflecting on some of the challenges I’ve faced across multiple organizations trying to leverage the power of technology to create positive social ...

The Anti-Halo Effect

3 minute read

Create pro-consumer mobile technology and open up a new market of multi-platform and platform-agnostic users who want the best devices.

Of Code, Free Speech, and Weapons

9 minute read

We are in a world where free speech (in the form of computer code) can create real world objects and actions that are themselves regulated or outright illegal.

Open Source Society

7 minute read

This is a rough summary of my talk Tuesday night at DCWeek’s Hot Tech Trends.

So - What Next?

5 minute read

The events in London over the past few days have been deeply interesting in the wake of last month’s conversation on mobile and online activism during and af...

July 14: Citizen Media Day?

1 minute read

If May 3rd gets to be World Press Freedom Day, then after today’s events, July 14 (in addition to already being Bastille Day) should be Citizen Media Day.

ICT4D Happy Hour during SXSW

1 minute read

Register now at https://ict4dev.eventbrite.com/ - only 20 RSVPs available until we nail down a venue!

Ubuntu 10: Worth the wait

less than 1 minute read

Just a quick note: Ubuntu 10 totally rocks. Better digital video and audio support (via HDMI and toslink) than Windows 7, slicker than Mac OSX with a great ...

Waiting for Ubuntu 10

2 minute read

I finally broke down and bought a laptop, as my existing bevy of half-working laptops is now seriously impacting my ability to actually get things done, as o...

Site Updates

less than 1 minute read

JonCamfield.com now has a mobile-friendly site at https://m.joncamfield.com -check it out on your computer or phone (it’s not WAP, just lighter and linear). ...

Beyond Crowdsourcing

5 minute read

I am weary of the term “crowdsourcing.” Now, I’m not against the concept

The answer for “I don’t get Twitter”

6 minute read

The next time somebody cracks wise about Twitter, points to the vast numbers of Twitter Orphan Accounts, or otherwise belittles it, I will point them to this...

XP on the XO, round three.

2 minute read

Who's using XP? With a surprising lack of fanfare, OLPCNews recently revealed that Sugar is beating out Windows XP in XO deployments: Apparently the convers...

Drupal Mapping III.5 - moving up in the world

1 minute read

It's been a while since I posted on my Drupal Mapping project, and that's partially because I've been spending some time getting a great site that aggregates...

Drupal and Maps III: Getting Dirty.

9 minute read

This is the continuation of my journal on getting mapping to work for Global Youth Service Day in Drupal, which starts with an overview of maps and drupal, a...

Drupal and GYSD Maps II: Modules in Play

6 minute read

Series: Overview | Modules | Structure and Taxonomies | On Drupal 6 | Functionality Drupal by itself is pretty powerful, but where it really shines is when ...

Tech Salon: Information Sharing and Development

2 minute read

This week's Technology Salon was on information sharing and ways to use social media and peer-generated content in international development. Less of a lect...

Social Media for Change

1 minute read

Ning, if you haven't heard of it, is a roll-your-own "web 2.0" platform, where you can combine blogs, videos, forums, and so on in seconds in a web interface...

A Simple Social Media Analogy

less than 1 minute read

This quirky animation compares social media to ice cream to explain the value of basic customer generated content (uin the form of tagging, rating and commen...

RSS is my favorite web magic

17 minute read

Note to techies - this article is intended for the nonprofit crowd and as such is basically an introduction to RSS. There's a few interesting things at the ...

Zero to Fame in Three Hours

2 minute read

Today, Twitter launched one person from their normal Internet life to getting news on the California-regional LAist and valleywag blogs, CNet, a top-rated d...

Twitter and Outreach

1 minute read

I'm sure you're tired of hearing me talk about twitter as an innovative and easy tool for outreach and engagement. So listen instead to Amy Gahran and her c...

2.0 NonProfit Conference wrap-up and notes

4 minute read

While few of the concepts at the 2.0 nonprofit conference were hardly new to me (Use twitter! uh, ok.); it was good to see where other nonprofits were and w...

Windows Free

less than 1 minute read

No, not the OLPC, but here's a good story about a guy who's been MS-free for a year.

Ultraportable Ubuntu?

4 minute read

Would you like an Ubuntu to go?A recent The Guardian interview with Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth reveals this gem: TG: Will you be coming out with a tail...

It’s full of stars….

less than 1 minute read

Somehow, this is exactly like what I expect it should look like: Courtesy of Nexus's Facebook plugin All I can say is wow.

Twittering for Global Youth Service Day II

1 minute read

Global Youth Service Day will be brought to you in live Twitter form with event updates (and locations, to broadcast on TwitterVision.com) throughout the day.

Twittering for Global Youth Service Day

2 minute read

So coming up on 25th-28th of April is the 20th annual Global Youth Service Day, and I'm trying to see if I can do something fun with Twitter; like having you...

Web 2.0 ‘08 Predictions Update

3 minute read

I predicted in January that Facebook would "hit its limit. I predict some more ad snafus a la Beacon, and the 3rd party apps become overwhelming and all-too-...

Twittering for Good

2 minute read

There's increasing buzz on using Twitter for non-profit goals; from the familiar sources of Idealist, NetSquared and of course Beth Kanter. It seems mostly ...

MS offers to buy Yahoo?

less than 1 minute read

Engadget is reporting that Microsoft has posted a formal offer to buy Yahoo (and by proxy, flickr, del.icio.us, and steer the development of Flock (...into t...

Web 2.0 ‘08

5 minute read

A few predictions for what we'll see online in 2008:

Other Web 2.0 resources

1 minute read

A recent thread of emails over on the 501 Tech Club DC email list brought more Web 2.0 resources to light. So in the spirit of sharing: NetworkForGood has a...

Google Maps Mashup

less than 1 minute read

Change.org has a wonderful mashup of 501 c 3 nonprofits arranged on a Google Map, as an example of a Good Idea (tm) for Google Maps usage. You can start at ...

Web 2.0 Guide for NonProfits

1 minute read

A quick rundown of my recent posts looking at the value of using Open Source in combination with Web 2.0 tools for non-profits / NGOs and the like: The Powe...

Write Once, Post Everywhere

2 minute read

I've been dancing around how open source software, strong standards, and the various web 2.0 technologies actually help your organization out. So let me sho...

A Better Browser II

2 minute read

Hopefully you're enjoying Flock now. If you already had accounts on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and/or del.icio.us, you've seen how amazingly easy i...

A Better Browser

1 minute read

The problem I face most often when trying to show someone a new powerful open source tool is that they just can't believe that the things I tell them are pos...

Twitter Account

less than 1 minute read

In case you hadn't noticed, I now have a Twitter account which you can follow, have SMSed to your cell phone, and so on. I wrote a longer entry talking abou...

An Overview of Popular Web 2.0 sites

12 minute read

So far we've really been pushing the underlying concepts, with a few tips to actual websites, examples, and tools. Without further ado, I'd now like to jump...

Web 2.0 101: Speaking the Language

12 minute read

The last entry was the theoretical underpinnings of how this whole web 2.0 thing can work, so today let's get into some of the more common terms you've heard...

Twitter

3 minute read

This should come later in the F/LOSS and Web 2.0 101 series, but Twitter is a fun and simple tool with huge potential. I've begun using Twitter, and have it...

The Power of Open

6 minute read

I presented and later ran a roundtable discussion on using web 2.0 and open source software for service/volunteer organizations. I kept getting requests for...

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hactivismo

Cyberpunk Standards

14 minute read

The future of technology requires a dramatic shift from the present to place ownership and control back in the hands of consumers

Power to the Users

5 minute read

Cross-posted from the USABLE blog <p>Three years ago, I led a digital security training for independent media in Kyiv during the peak of the EuroMa...

New GPG Keys!

4 minute read

I am transitioning both my professional and personal GPG keys.

Of Tor and Condoms

10 minute read

I am far from the first to compare digital security practices to safer sex practices; Jillian York even rapped about it on stage at re:publica in 2014

Do you trust your tools?

7 minute read

Let’s actually talk about how you might have trust in a software project, using Tor as an example.

The promises of a decentralized currency

14 minute read

I once rented a part of a house that had been, well, not fully cleaned out from the previous occupants… A bit of digging uncovered a fascinating tale of cros...

Kyiv on #Jan25

5 minute read

I spent this past week in Kiev. You may have heard something about the protests, and possibly even about some of the policy changes and new laws that sparke...

Jam Echelon Day, Redux

4 minute read

(Or, how to remind anyone snooping your email of your fourth amendment rights)

Of Code, Free Speech, and Weapons

9 minute read

We are in a world where free speech (in the form of computer code) can create real world objects and actions that are themselves regulated or outright illegal.

Against Appification

5 minute read

My wife and I bought a new TV that comes with, as most new TVs seem to, an app store. And it sucks. By gods, the offerings are horrible.

The Art of Failing

9 minute read

I have a critical flaw - not being able to say no to helping out worthwhile projects get their technological house in order.

Open Source Society

7 minute read

This is a rough summary of my talk Tuesday night at DCWeek’s Hot Tech Trends.

The robots are coming

1 minute read

A colleague and I have the first of two articles posted on FastCompany - discussing the role of automation in job creation – and destruction

July 14: Citizen Media Day?

1 minute read

If May 3rd gets to be World Press Freedom Day, then after today’s events, July 14 (in addition to already being Bastille Day) should be Citizen Media Day.

The Jasmine Revolution

4 minute read

This is brilliant, and a bit funny. Until some innocent person taking a stroll is killed for insurgency. A long quote from this blog by way of Warren Ellis...

ICT4D Happy Hour during SXSW

1 minute read

Register now at https://ict4dev.eventbrite.com/ - only 20 RSVPs available until we nail down a venue!

Five thoughts on WikiLeaks

13 minute read

We are also supporting the development of new tools that enable citizens to exercise their rights of free expression by circumventing politically motivated c...

Social Change - to go, please

4 minute read

Cross-posted at the FrontlineSMS Blog The recent Technology Salons have been on local and sectoral implementations of mobile technology in development. Mob...

Development using SMS, not SMS4Dev

8 minute read

Cross-posted at TechnologySalon.org Where the last SMS4D Technology Salon reminded us of the unique gift of mobile technologies to be based where there impa...

Waiting for Ubuntu 10

2 minute read

I finally broke down and bought a laptop, as my existing bevy of half-working laptops is now seriously impacting my ability to actually get things done, as o...

SXSW 2010

2 minute read

I made it to South By Southwest this year, where I immersed myself in innovative ideas for open-sourced businesses, technology design for good, social media ...

In Defense of the Laptop

6 minute read

Reading Alanna Shaikh’s writeup on the OLPC Program as a failure in the UNDispatch and clicking through to Timothy Ogden’s harsh commentary, I began to feel ...

ICT and the Iran Election

2 minute read

The Daily Dish reposts a call to action from Twitter: ALL internet & mobile networks are cut. We ask everyone in Tehran to go onto their rooftops and sho...

XP on the XO, round three.

2 minute read

Who's using XP? With a surprising lack of fanfare, OLPCNews recently revealed that Sugar is beating out Windows XP in XO deployments: Apparently the convers...

Vote

less than 1 minute read

If you see irregularities, call 1-866-our-vote for help and to report problems, and follow the current reports at OurVoteLive. Text your zip to Twitter Vote...

SMSing political questions

less than 1 minute read

This is pure brilliance, courtesy BoingBoing: This giant billboard, posing hard questions for Sarah Palin, was lit up across the road from her LA rally site...

SuBtle tricks

3 minute read

I enjoy activities that put the 'b" in subtle. This Greasemonkey script for FireFox translates dollar figures in webpages you view into Oil Barrels:

Off Topic: Torture

2 minute read

Salon.com has an exclusive article detailing the detainment of an innocent Yemeni citizen in CIA's black site prisons:

DRM Redux

8 minute read

Back in the late 90s, as Napster was being circled by vultures, I dreamt of starting a consulting group which would seek out clients needing help and place d...

Proxies

1 minute read

The BBC has a story on the Burmese Monks and their cyberskills: The internet has also become a virtual space for political groups who could not openly expre...

User Interfaces: Aero vs. Beryl

1 minute read

I don't have all the bells and whistles that the guy in this movie has running, but maybe it's time to suck it up and upgrade to the newest version. Aero is...

Own your own number!

less than 1 minute read

Sure, you've named a star after yourself by paying some scammers lots of moolah, but now you can get your own 128-bit number!, just like the AACS-LA! Mine i...

The Dutch Boy vs. the Great Firewall

less than 1 minute read

a fascinating analysis reveals that for the keyword-blocking aspects of the Chinese firewall, there is a simple workaround where you can just ignore its effe...

Collective Action

6 minute read

Edge.org is running an article by Jaron Lanier on the current drive towards meta-content and collective-rule on the Internet (think Wikipedia, BoingBoing, Di...

Lo-Techs

1 minute read

… not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you’re crude, go technical; if they think you’re technical, go crude. I’m a ve...

Pringles Cans on the Saudi Border

4 minute read

In "Weaving the Authoritarian Web: Liberalization, Bureaucratization, and the Internet in Non-Democratic Regimes," Boas, details primarily Saudi and Chinese ...

Snails-Pace ICT Development

7 minute read

There’s an old adage among geeks that goes something like, Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon packed full of tape drives travelling at high...

3rd World Cyber Activism and the DOS

8 minute read

Electronic mobilization (as seen, for example, in the Dean campaign) is good at building a swarm of activity, but bad at moving to a more self-monitoring w...

The Trout Guerilla Consulting Group

30 minute read

Many years ago - decades - I dreamt of staring a small, rude consulting group, called the “Trout Guerilla Consulting Group.” These were its founding document...

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development theory

Building Tools for Human Rights

5 minute read

It’s time to add formal requirements to our tool funding process to reduce risks while also contributing to building more inclusive tools

Centering Decentralization

10 minute read

“Oh great, another white dude from a western democracy going off about decentralization.” I promise that I will not be hawking a crypto-currency or even talk...

Time to Ideate!

less than 1 minute read

Pivot-Twist-Dev takes the classic “pivot-twist” approach for idea pitches of taking a familiar concept and twisting it in a new way to the international deve...

The promises of a decentralized currency

14 minute read

I once rented a part of a house that had been, well, not fully cleaned out from the previous occupants… A bit of digging uncovered a fascinating tale of cros...

Stop doing Technology for Good So Badly.

8 minute read

I’ve been reflecting on some of the challenges I’ve faced across multiple organizations trying to leverage the power of technology to create positive social ...

The change economy

less than 1 minute read

Over at FastCoExist, my colleague and I are rolling out a series of big changes and ideas in economy

The Art of Failing

9 minute read

I have a critical flaw - not being able to say no to helping out worthwhile projects get their technological house in order.

Open Source Society

7 minute read

This is a rough summary of my talk Tuesday night at DCWeek’s Hot Tech Trends.

The robots are coming

1 minute read

A colleague and I have the first of two articles posted on FastCompany - discussing the role of automation in job creation – and destruction

Panels to support for an amazing SXSW 2012

1 minute read

It’s not to early to start making sure that your SXSW 2012 experience is fully awesome. How you ask? Why, by voting for awesome panels to attend.

Support Property Rights

1 minute read

Ashoka’s Changemakers is running a global competition with the Omidyar Network to source the most innovative approaches for providing property rights to thos...

Five thoughts on WikiLeaks

13 minute read

We are also supporting the development of new tools that enable citizens to exercise their rights of free expression by circumventing politically motivated c...

Soccer for Social Change

less than 1 minute read

One of the competitions we run over at Ashoka's Changemakers is now up for voting - it's focused on the use of Football (Soccer) for social change. The fina...

Development using SMS, not SMS4Dev

8 minute read

Cross-posted at TechnologySalon.org Where the last SMS4D Technology Salon reminded us of the unique gift of mobile technologies to be based where there impa...

Going Nuts over the Value of Local Production

3 minute read

For some background, I highly recommend Alanna Shaikh’s post here: https://aidwatchers.com/2010/04/the-plumpy%E2%80%99nut-dustup/ and follow-up here: https:/...

SXSW 2010

2 minute read

I made it to South By Southwest this year, where I immersed myself in innovative ideas for open-sourced businesses, technology design for good, social media ...

I’m Still Not Convinced

11 minute read

At the IADB seminar on ICT in the classroom, I asked Nicholas Negroponte why not sell the XO laptop – at or near cost – to anyone who wanted one? This gets ...

The Inter-American Development Bank and ICT4Edu

5 minute read

Today’s IADB event, Reinventing the Classroom, brought together thought-leaders, practitioners and government officials to discuss the role of technology in ...

In Defense of the Laptop

6 minute read

Reading Alanna Shaikh’s writeup on the OLPC Program as a failure in the UNDispatch and clicking through to Timothy Ogden’s harsh commentary, I began to feel ...

Social Networks (not Facebook) and Development

4 minute read

World-wandering BoingBoing editor Xeni Jardin writes about a video from the “What Would the Poor Say: Debates in Aid Evaluation,” NYU conference, where Leona...

Beyond Crowdsourcing

5 minute read

I am weary of the term “crowdsourcing.” Now, I’m not against the concept

ICT and the Iran Election

2 minute read

The Daily Dish reposts a call to action from Twitter: ALL internet & mobile networks are cut. We ask everyone in Tehran to go onto their rooftops and sho...

ICT4Dev Reading List

less than 1 minute read

Here's a hastily-constructed Amazon store of some of the books and essays I've read which provide great insight and contrarian positions to modern developmen...

What’s Next

3 minute read

Tonight’s <a href=”https://intlrel.meetup.com/76/calendar/9824817”“>ICT4D meetup</a> asks the question, “What’s Next?” While it’s always risky t...

Mobiles Vs Computers

5 minute read

Are Mobile Phones the Winner? February’s Technology Salon was on the (false) dichotomy of mobiles versus computers in development

Rescuing the baby from the thrown-out bathwater

3 minute read

Worldchanging's Jeremy Faludi calls it "reverse-leapfrogging", but is looking for a better name. It's reviving or importing concepts that used to exist: Gre...

Simple Global Pleasures

less than 1 minute read

You might remember the Youtube video of this guy named Matt who did this silly dance and captured it on video everywhere he went a few years ago? Well.. h...

Robert Strauss vs. Peace Corps: Round 2

12 minute read

You may remember Strauss from his NYT article damning the Peace Corps back in January. It made the point that the increasing numbers of volunteers is decrea...

DC International Development Events Calendar

less than 1 minute read

Big thanks to GWU's Organization for International Development for importing their events calendar into google calendars. I was getting pretty close to doin...

Good People Day 2008

1 minute read

I like the good people day idea all about giving props where due. Since I'll be nose-down in work preparing for the upcoming Global Youth Service Day April ...

Slacktivisism for Fair Trade (Updated)

2 minute read

My friend over at Esperanza en Accion in Nicaragua, has let people know that someone is attempting aland grab against a cooperative clothing factory, Nueva V...

Who’s to blame for a bad loan?

6 minute read

A good friend of mine has condensed a lot of good, critical thoughts on lending -- from the subprime market to the World Bank, into one good blog post, riffi...

Nicaraguan Artesania for Giftmas!

less than 1 minute read

Esperanza en Accion, a fair-trade, social justice organization working with Nicaraguan artisans, has a huge selection of items in their online eBay store, ju...

World Bank Roller Coaster Press Release

2 minute read

Carrot: "The World Bank has promised to contribute a record $3.5bn (£1.7bn) to help the world's poorest countries. The figure is double what the agency init...

Going their own way

4 minute read

The WaPo has an excellent story of the New Latin Left movement, which has reduced their dependence on IMF and Bank loans (and their requisite policy prescri...

Vatican vs Amnesty International

1 minute read

The Vatican urges Catholics not to donate to Amnesty International (BBC): The Vatican also said it was suspending all financial aid to Amnesty over what it ...

World Bank and National Economic Models

1 minute read

I got to attend a lecture by William Easterly on his new book, focusing on whether or not foreign aid can affect world poverty (spoiler: the past 5 decades d...

Morality of Development

4 minute read

Development, like politics, is a metaphorical room where you're amazed at just how many elephants can fit simultaneously, and yet be ignored. These elehpant...

Re-mapping development

less than 1 minute read

The WorldMapper remaps the globe according to various statistics gathered mostly by the Bank and the IMF. Particularly interesting are the maps for license ...

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human rights

From the Tusks and Safety Department

10 minute read

What security and safety tooling do we need to build now if Mastodon scales to tens or hundereds of millions of users.

On Twitter and Mastodon

5 minute read

Mastodon is not a drop-in twitter replacement. It shouldn’t be, and there is also such a vast opportunity in this moment.

Building Tools for Human Rights

5 minute read

It’s time to add formal requirements to our tool funding process to reduce risks while also contributing to building more inclusive tools

As they say, some personal news.

3 minute read

After a decade advancing digital rights and resilience work at Internews, I’m excited to start a journey in the private sector.

Centering Decentralization

10 minute read

“Oh great, another white dude from a western democracy going off about decentralization.” I promise that I will not be hawking a crypto-currency or even talk...

Censorship and Centralization

2 minute read

We also cannot cede the digital public square to private corporations which do not, at their core, serve the public interest.

De-platforming is censure not censorship.

14 minute read

Not being able to find a company to make your presence on the Internet easy is fundamentally different from having a government actively blocking access to y...

Re-factoring the Crypto Debate

7 minute read

Backdooring crypto debates are dangerously US-centric; ignoring the role of authoritarian states and how even this tightly scoped debate would put human righ...

New GPG Keys!

4 minute read

I am transitioning both my professional and personal GPG keys.

On Piracy

9 minute read

Software licensing limits are a bigger human rights problem than software piracy is a cost.

Encryption saves lives

3 minute read

There are many great arguments to protect truly private communications from a human rights perspective, and specifically through a Constitutional lens

Let’s talk about Organizational Security.

1 minute read

SAFETAG is a project that myself and another colleague have spent countless hours building out to really focus on working with small non-profits on assessing...

Updates

1 minute read

You know what hasn’t gotten an update in a while? This blog! What else? The cute kittens of digital security over at icanhazdigitalsecurity

Of Tor and Condoms

10 minute read

I am far from the first to compare digital security practices to safer sex practices; Jillian York even rapped about it on stage at re:publica in 2014

Do you trust your tools?

7 minute read

Let’s actually talk about how you might have trust in a software project, using Tor as an example.

Kyiv on #Jan25

5 minute read

I spent this past week in Kiev. You may have heard something about the protests, and possibly even about some of the policy changes and new laws that sparke...

Jam Echelon Day, Redux

4 minute read

(Or, how to remind anyone snooping your email of your fourth amendment rights)

Stop doing Technology for Good So Badly.

8 minute read

I’ve been reflecting on some of the challenges I’ve faced across multiple organizations trying to leverage the power of technology to create positive social ...

Of Code, Free Speech, and Weapons

9 minute read

We are in a world where free speech (in the form of computer code) can create real world objects and actions that are themselves regulated or outright illegal.

A shallow alcove on the left.

3 minute read

“The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound […] would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision ...

Open Source Society

7 minute read

This is a rough summary of my talk Tuesday night at DCWeek’s Hot Tech Trends.

The robots are coming

1 minute read

A colleague and I have the first of two articles posted on FastCompany - discussing the role of automation in job creation – and destruction

So - What Next?

5 minute read

The events in London over the past few days have been deeply interesting in the wake of last month’s conversation on mobile and online activism during and af...

July 14: Citizen Media Day?

1 minute read

If May 3rd gets to be World Press Freedom Day, then after today’s events, July 14 (in addition to already being Bastille Day) should be Citizen Media Day.

The Jasmine Revolution

4 minute read

This is brilliant, and a bit funny. Until some innocent person taking a stroll is killed for insurgency. A long quote from this blog by way of Warren Ellis...

Support Property Rights

1 minute read

Ashoka’s Changemakers is running a global competition with the Omidyar Network to source the most innovative approaches for providing property rights to thos...

Five thoughts on WikiLeaks

13 minute read

We are also supporting the development of new tools that enable citizens to exercise their rights of free expression by circumventing politically motivated c...

The answer for “I don’t get Twitter”

6 minute read

The next time somebody cracks wise about Twitter, points to the vast numbers of Twitter Orphan Accounts, or otherwise belittles it, I will point them to this...

ICT and the Iran Election

2 minute read

The Daily Dish reposts a call to action from Twitter: ALL internet & mobile networks are cut. We ask everyone in Tehran to go onto their rooftops and sho...

Guatemala and Citizen Media

1 minute read

You might have heard about the posthumously released video by a Guatemalan lawyer accusing his president of assassination in the event of his death, for not ...

Immigrants take all the best jobs

3 minute read

For example, I bet there's a long line of good ol' american workers who would love to have solid, agriculture jobs in Florida, like the one described in this...

The Trout Guerilla Consulting Group

30 minute read

Many years ago - decades - I dreamt of staring a small, rude consulting group, called the “Trout Guerilla Consulting Group.” These were its founding document...

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mobile4dev

Stop doing Technology for Good So Badly.

8 minute read

I’ve been reflecting on some of the challenges I’ve faced across multiple organizations trying to leverage the power of technology to create positive social ...

Choice is the Challenge - Mobiles for Data

1 minute read

You might think that the topic of collecting data via mobile devices would be a rather dry discussion of data management and statistical methodology. You wou...

The Art of Failing

9 minute read

I have a critical flaw - not being able to say no to helping out worthwhile projects get their technological house in order.

So - What Next?

5 minute read

The events in London over the past few days have been deeply interesting in the wake of last month’s conversation on mobile and online activism during and af...

The Jasmine Revolution

4 minute read

This is brilliant, and a bit funny. Until some innocent person taking a stroll is killed for insurgency. A long quote from this blog by way of Warren Ellis...

ICT4D Happy Hour during SXSW

1 minute read

Register now at https://ict4dev.eventbrite.com/ - only 20 RSVPs available until we nail down a venue!

mHealth: Tending the garden of 1000 flowers

4 minute read

At #mHS10, we heard funders talking time and time again for letting “1000 flowers bloom” in mHealth pilots, and programs talking about pilots leading to more...

Maptivism is my new favorite portmanteau

1 minute read

Through the magic of technology, this post at CrissCrossed.net from January just popped up on my radar, covering examples of using the one-two visual and dat...

Hardware, Easyware, and Flow

2 minute read

Is hardware hacking becoming more accessible in the development context? A positive psychologist friend once explained the concept of (watch as I butcher th...

Social Change - to go, please

4 minute read

Cross-posted at the FrontlineSMS Blog The recent Technology Salons have been on local and sectoral implementations of mobile technology in development. Mob...

Development using SMS, not SMS4Dev

8 minute read

Cross-posted at TechnologySalon.org Where the last SMS4D Technology Salon reminded us of the unique gift of mobile technologies to be based where there impa...

SXSW 2010

2 minute read

I made it to South By Southwest this year, where I immersed myself in innovative ideas for open-sourced businesses, technology design for good, social media ...

The Inter-American Development Bank and ICT4Edu

5 minute read

Today’s IADB event, Reinventing the Classroom, brought together thought-leaders, practitioners and government officials to discuss the role of technology in ...

Mobile Social Networks

5 minute read

Something is still missing in the world of mobiles and social networks. I strongly believe in the power of social networks in development, be they online or...

The answer for “I don’t get Twitter”

6 minute read

The next time somebody cracks wise about Twitter, points to the vast numbers of Twitter Orphan Accounts, or otherwise belittles it, I will point them to this...

ICT and the Iran Election

2 minute read

The Daily Dish reposts a call to action from Twitter: ALL internet & mobile networks are cut. We ask everyone in Tehran to go onto their rooftops and sho...

Mobiles vs. Computers in Education

1 minute read

This is my response to the current EduTech Debate on the role of mobiles Vs. computers in education. Join the conversation and disagree with me! I’m sure I...

Blue-skying Mobile Apps: Common Forms

3 minute read

I missed the recent Technology Salon on Mobiles for Development (I was kind of busy with Global Youth Service Day), and was already scheduled to make it to t...

After the SMS honeymoon? (Updated)

11 minute read

Check out some updates – props to @MobileActive! During the last breakout at the Mobile for Change (#m4change in twitter, a good writeup by Development Seed...

What’s Next

3 minute read

Tonight’s <a href=”https://intlrel.meetup.com/76/calendar/9824817”“>ICT4D meetup</a> asks the question, “What’s Next?” While it’s always risky t...

Mobiles Vs Computers

5 minute read

Are Mobile Phones the Winner? February’s Technology Salon was on the (false) dichotomy of mobiles versus computers in development

Quick ways to go Mobile

less than 1 minute read

MobileActive has a great entry on a handful of low cost, low-barrier ways to go mobile, from Twitter to desktop "guerilla" SMS campaigns (best run in develop...

mBanking: Fears and Promises

6 minute read

This morning's Technology Salon covered the legal hurdles facing mBanking - using your cell phone to interact with your bank account - in developing world sc...

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ict policy

Censorship and Centralization

2 minute read

We also cannot cede the digital public square to private corporations which do not, at their core, serve the public interest.

De-platforming is censure not censorship.

14 minute read

Not being able to find a company to make your presence on the Internet easy is fundamentally different from having a government actively blocking access to y...

Cyberpunk Standards

14 minute read

The future of technology requires a dramatic shift from the present to place ownership and control back in the hands of consumers

Encryption saves lives

3 minute read

There are many great arguments to protect truly private communications from a human rights perspective, and specifically through a Constitutional lens

Kyiv on #Jan25

5 minute read

I spent this past week in Kiev. You may have heard something about the protests, and possibly even about some of the policy changes and new laws that sparke...

The Anti-Halo Effect

3 minute read

Create pro-consumer mobile technology and open up a new market of multi-platform and platform-agnostic users who want the best devices.

ICT and the Iran Election

2 minute read

The Daily Dish reposts a call to action from Twitter: ALL internet & mobile networks are cut. We ask everyone in Tehran to go onto their rooftops and sho...

ICT4Dev Reading List

less than 1 minute read

Here's a hastily-constructed Amazon store of some of the books and essays I've read which provide great insight and contrarian positions to modern developmen...

Vista Loses 2007

2 minute read

All I can say is ouch: It's just that Vista isn't all that good. Many of the innovations the operating system was supposed to bring--like more efficient fil...

Repeat after me

4 minute read

"Buying falafel mix does not a terrorist make." The FBI might do well to write that in chalk 500 times, and hope that it sinks in, as they're wasting our mo...

JWZ on backups

1 minute read

JWZ as usual offers good, if acerbic, advice; today on backups: I am here to tell you about backups. It’s very simple. Option 1: Learn not to care about yo...

Geektopia achieved

2 minute read

My geektopia has arrived: The fridge has now become aware of its contents; and it is capable of establishing direct contact between you and their producers....

Guess the Country

less than 1 minute read

From Development Gateway: X plans to offer 1.2 million of the country’s poorest citizens a computer with broadband Internet access for a daily fee of €1 (...

The Economics of Free

less than 1 minute read

While not strictly dev/ICT related, this blog is tracking the economic implications of Open Source, (focusing on the university software development context)...

Technology and the University

less than 1 minute read

More tangentially related tech info, my former employers, The University of Texas' Office of Technology Commercialization are hosting their next big conferen...

Net Neutrality

1 minute read

Dan Kaminsky is working on a software testing tool to check to see if your ISP is giving equal quality to all your traffic, or if they are favoring certain t...

Censored Net Access?

2 minute read

With all this ire suddenly released against Google (have we been waiting for them to prove that they weren't perfect?) Yahoo (it's been a while since we got ...

Cultural eHegemony

5 minute read

Der Spiegel, as picked up in YaleGlobal and Eldis's ICT-for-Dev RSS feed reports a (French) worry about "the homogenization and commercialization of culture ...

Glocal Internet Freedom

less than 1 minute read

I think it's abhorrent that China is even sending uniformed patrols to local libraries to enforce what citizens can and cannot read on the often-already-filt...

Pringles Cans on the Saudi Border

4 minute read

In "Weaving the Authoritarian Web: Liberalization, Bureaucratization, and the Internet in Non-Democratic Regimes," Boas, details primarily Saudi and Chinese ...

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tinkering

The Anti-Halo Effect

3 minute read

Create pro-consumer mobile technology and open up a new market of multi-platform and platform-agnostic users who want the best devices.

The robots are coming

1 minute read

A colleague and I have the first of two articles posted on FastCompany - discussing the role of automation in job creation – and destruction

#Ubuntu Tips: Amazon MP3 Downloads

1 minute read

So, Amazon now forces you to use their download tool. Which seems silly. But they offer a Linux version, which is nice. But it only is built for 32 bit ar...

Ubuntu and HDMI

3 minute read

Lazywebs, here is an answer.  Having problems with a black/blank/undetected screen on your HDMI out in Ubuntu?  Using x86_64 and Nvidia?  Here...

Tech4Dev: What’s in your backpack?

2 minute read

Inveno’s ICT_Works blog recently advertised their awesome addition to the ICT4D world - a solid toolkit to carry to the field. I made a much lower-tech pers...

Ubuntu 10: Worth the wait

less than 1 minute read

Just a quick note: Ubuntu 10 totally rocks. Better digital video and audio support (via HDMI and toslink) than Windows 7, slicker than Mac OSX with a great ...

Waiting for Ubuntu 10

2 minute read

I finally broke down and bought a laptop, as my existing bevy of half-working laptops is now seriously impacting my ability to actually get things done, as o...

In Defense of the Laptop

6 minute read

Reading Alanna Shaikh’s writeup on the OLPC Program as a failure in the UNDispatch and clicking through to Timothy Ogden’s harsh commentary, I began to feel ...

Being the IT Guy

1 minute read

While I want to quickly and decisively move away from being “The IT Guy” in my career, I must admit that at some level I fear losing that control over my own...

Holiday Computer Shopping

less than 1 minute read

People always come to me for advice on computers and technology options over the giftmas season. To head this off somewhat at the pass, let me remind everyo...

Linux Audio Server amusement

1 minute read

I'm currently using the laptop as the interim solution / testbed for the LAS idea. It's struggling to run amarok, but works nicely with qiv running a slides...

A Linux Audio Server

3 minute read

I admit it. I have a Windows laptop at home. For a very long time, it was my primary system. For the past year or so, I've been using a Linux laptop as my...

eBay Market Data

3 minute read

In thinking about eBay in my post on tricky ways to "Give Many" OLPC XO laptops, I was reminded about something that has bugged me for a very long time about...

SpaceWarp

less than 1 minute read

Some kids had train sets. Actually, I did but it bored me to death. One xmas I got a SpaceWarp. Sure, I started out building the basic design they gave el...

Computer Choices FAQ

2 minute read

People often ask me, as a technology geek, what kind of computer they should get, so I'm putting this post together as a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) to ...

Good thoughts on code bloat

2 minute read

Steve Yegge writes on code bloat: I recently had the opportunity to watch a self-professed Java programmer give a presentation in which one slide listed Pro...

Firefox Addons

less than 1 minute read

You could probably guess that I love the Firefox web browser, right? I'm also naturally a big fan of the addons you can get to extend its power. I'm always...

Blogreement

less than 1 minute read

Steven Johnson has a nice quick list of topics we can move beyond when discussing blogs: Mainstream, top-down, professional journalism will continue to p...

Death by synonym

10 minute read

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 wh...

Spimes and blogjects?

3 minute read

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 t...

ICT on the homefront

4 minute read

DC seeks city-wide wifi, and actually focuses on free access for the poor.

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citizen journalism

Kyiv on #Jan25

5 minute read

I spent this past week in Kiev. You may have heard something about the protests, and possibly even about some of the policy changes and new laws that sparke...

So - What Next?

5 minute read

The events in London over the past few days have been deeply interesting in the wake of last month’s conversation on mobile and online activism during and af...

July 14: Citizen Media Day?

1 minute read

If May 3rd gets to be World Press Freedom Day, then after today’s events, July 14 (in addition to already being Bastille Day) should be Citizen Media Day.

Beyond Crowdsourcing

5 minute read

I am weary of the term “crowdsourcing.” Now, I’m not against the concept

Guatemala and Citizen Media

1 minute read

You might have heard about the posthumously released video by a Guatemalan lawyer accusing his president of assassination in the event of his death, for not ...

In Defense of Twitter and #swineflu

4 minute read

Everyone from XKCD to NPR has been blaming Twitter for spreading panic about the Swine Flu: Who knew that swine flu could also infect Twitter? Yet this i...

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ipr

On Piracy

9 minute read

Software licensing limits are a bigger human rights problem than software piracy is a cost.

ARRRR: More on Piracy and HBO

3 minute read

Sorry, but you must play in the market - you must offer a price; merely saying it’s too expensive is not acceptable

SOPA

1 minute read

Look. I’m going on vacation tomorrow. I have promised myself to keep my stress levels down, so this is as much as you’ll hear from me about SOPA

Going Nuts over the Value of Local Production

3 minute read

For some background, I highly recommend Alanna Shaikh’s post here: https://aidwatchers.com/2010/04/the-plumpy%E2%80%99nut-dustup/ and follow-up here: https:/...

ICT4Dev Reading List

less than 1 minute read

Here's a hastily-constructed Amazon store of some of the books and essays I've read which provide great insight and contrarian positions to modern developmen...

IP4D

14 minute read

Intellectual Property is an oddball in international development

Turnabout is fair(-use) play

2 minute read

The Associated Press has been rattling sabers of bloggers quoting (even with credit and links) from AP articles, claiming that any quote longer than 5 words ...

Good will sharing

3 minute read

I read BoingBoing - it provides a steady stream of new and interesting things around the net, and the occasional IT policy tidbit. Lots of people read boing...

Copyright

less than 1 minute read

I used to use recipes as a good, non-new/Internet-y example of how you can still make profits (recipe books) with no attempt at copyright enforcement (who c...

IPR and … plants?

less than 1 minute read

Brazil is registering list of plant names to fight pharma companies from trademarking the names when using compounds extracted from these plants. India also ...

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crypto

Encryption saves lives

3 minute read

There are many great arguments to protect truly private communications from a human rights perspective, and specifically through a Constitutional lens

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comedy

Time to Ideate!

less than 1 minute read

Pivot-Twist-Dev takes the classic “pivot-twist” approach for idea pitches of taking a familiar concept and twisting it in a new way to the international deve...

Updates

1 minute read

You know what hasn’t gotten an update in a while? This blog! What else? The cute kittens of digital security over at icanhazdigitalsecurity

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networks

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socent

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privacy

Encryption saves lives

3 minute read

There are many great arguments to protect truly private communications from a human rights perspective, and specifically through a Constitutional lens

A shallow alcove on the left.

3 minute read

“The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound […] would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision ...

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ict4edu

Mobiles vs. Computers in Education

1 minute read

This is my response to the current EduTech Debate on the role of mobiles Vs. computers in education. Join the conversation and disagree with me! I’m sure I...

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1984

A shallow alcove on the left.

3 minute read

“The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound […] would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision ...

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freespeech

Of Code, Free Speech, and Weapons

9 minute read

We are in a world where free speech (in the form of computer code) can create real world objects and actions that are themselves regulated or outright illegal.

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digisec

Kyiv on #Jan25

5 minute read

I spent this past week in Kiev. You may have heard something about the protests, and possibly even about some of the policy changes and new laws that sparke...

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floss

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tor

Do you trust your tools?

7 minute read

Let’s actually talk about how you might have trust in a software project, using Tor as an example.

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security

Encryption saves lives

3 minute read

There are many great arguments to protect truly private communications from a human rights perspective, and specifically through a Constitutional lens

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decentralization

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