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2007-02-06T13:37:00.000-08:00

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Wal-Mart Aims To Sell 100 Million Compact Fluorescents In One Year

2006-08-29T11:52:00.000-07:00

Fast Company reports that, in the next 12 months, starting with a major push this month, Wal-Mart wants to sell every one of its regular customers--100 million in all--one compact fluorescent bulb. In the process, it may change energy consumption in the United States, and energy consciousness, too. Teaming up with General Electric, which owns about 60% of the residential lightbulb market in the United States, Wal-Mart wants to single-handedly double U.S. sales for CFLs in a year, and it wants demand to surge forward after that. (originally from treehugger)

Spare some change?

2006-08-10T14:12:00.000-07:00

Appearing across Japan recently is something called the "charity vending machine," which allows users to donate their change to such good causes as environmental conservation and child welfare at the push of a button. These machines have been well received by consumers, who enjoy being able to contribute to a cause that interests them when they buy a canned or bottled drink.

Contributing to the White Ribbon CampaignDrinks maker Ito En has linked up with the Japanese Organization for International Cooperation in Family Planning (JOICFP) and last year began setting up vending machines that dispense drinks with White Ribbon stickers attached. The machines are presently in use in eight locations, including in front of the building in Tokyo's Shinjuku district that houses JOICFP.

When a person buys a drink from one of these vending machines, a portion of the profits goes to the White Ribbon Campaign, which aims to protect the lives and health of pregnant women in developing countries. The prices of canned and bottled drinks are the same as those of a normal machine, but between ¥2 and ¥5 (a few US cents) per bottle is donated to JOICFP. In fiscal 2005 (April 2005 to March 2006), some ¥220,000 ($1,929 at ¥114 to the dollar) was collected and given to a project for maternal and infant health care in Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province.

Easy solution for clean water when you're in the middle of nowhere?

2006-08-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

The SteriPEN looks pretty clever, you pre-filter the water, then dip a UV light in to kill the bugs - $150-ish and it can do over 140 16 ounce water treatments -"SteriPEN is the only portable water purifier that uses ultraviolet (UV) light to destroy waterborne microbes. Whether your source is a woodland brook or an overseas hotel tap, SteriPEN sterilizes clear water by destroying viruses, bacteria and protozoa--including Giardia and Cryptosporidium--in seconds. Carry a SteriPEN to disinfect water wherever you travel, hike, camp or trek. It's the fastest route to pure, safe drinking water anywhere....SteriPEN has been shown to destroy in excess of 99.9999% of bacteria, 99.99% of viruses and 99.9% protozoa".(Found on Popgadget.net)

Cultures of Repair / Sustainability

2006-07-28T11:26:00.000-07:00

"All I told them to do was replace the oil filter" jokes Barry Coleman over lunch, and with that (and an innovative system of repairs / maintenance training) I learn that Riders For Health have managed to sustain the life of the motorbike out in Africa from 2 years to 8 years.

He goes on to explain that they've often seen a lack of sustainability and follow through when organizations donate vehicles to Africa. "Maintenance and training is needed to keep things running, rather than just giving people new equipment and expecting it to break. You have people giving brand new hospital equipment, but if it breaks one time and then it's useless because no-one knows how to repair it".

It's Thursday afternoon and I'm browsing the Free section of Craigslist Bay Area and it's amazing the items that are thrown out. A billion computer monitors, hot tubs, air conditioners, solar heating ... the list goes on and on. Ironically it's the same afternoon that I come across this blog entry:

"I've taken the time to explore local repair culture. The journey has taken me to cities such as Chengdu, Delhi, Ulan Bataar, Ho Chi Minh and Lhasa with recent brief stopovers in Kampala and Soweto.

What sets these locations apart from cities in more 'emerged' markets? Aside from the scale of what's on sale there is a thriving market for device repair services ranging from swapping out components to re-soldering circuit boards to reflashing phones in a language of your choice , naturally. Repairs are often carried out with little more than a screwdriver, a toothbrush (for cleaning contact points) the right knowledge and a flat surface to work on.

Repair manuals (which appear to be reverse engineered) are available, written in Hindi, English and Chinese and can even be subscribed to, but there is little evidence of them being actively used. Instead many of the repairers rely on informal social networks to share knowledge on common faults, and repair techniques. It's often easier to peer over the shoulder of a neighbour than open the manual itself.

The informal repair services that are offered are quite simply driven by necessity - highly price sensitive customers cannot afford to go through more expensive official customer care centers and even if they could their phones are unlikely to be covered by warrantee - having been bought through grey market channels, been sent as gifts from friends and relatives abroad, or were locally bought used, second or third+ ownership. In many cases these users cannot afford to be without their mobile phone, not in the social sense of being out of touch (which is valid enough), but in many instances because their livelihoods depend on it."

Dongtan - China leading the way in eco-friendly cities

2006-07-19T17:25:00.000-07:00

(originally taken from EcoWorld)

The opening of the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai will mark the unveiling of the newly constructed eco-city of Dongtan. The first of four eco-cities to be built in China by Arup, Dongtan will be ecologically friendly, with zero greenhouse-emission transit and self-sufficient water and energy systems. The city is being designed around a series of village-style neighborhoods to make it pedestrian rather than car friendly. Dongtan will generate all of its energy needs from renewable sources, with zero emissions produced by the city's vehicles. An energy centre will manage generation via wind turbines, bio-fuels and recycled organic material. A majority of Dongtan's waste will be reused and organic waste will be composted or used as biomass for additional energy production. Human sewage will be processed for irrigation and composting, hence there will be no landfill waste sites. Phase one of Dongtan, a marina village with a population of 20,000, is scheduled for completion by 2010, while 80,000 people are expected to inhabit this bit of paradise by 2020.

Recycling 2.0

2006-07-13T13:15:00.000-07:00

It seems as though there has been somewhat of a boom in the coverage of recycling over the last few months. Several articles have focused on the increase and now even theft from recycling all kinds of materials driven from the construction boom in china and india.

Strange cases of metals theft are being reported around the nation: Bandits fled with the copper cables that pulled the vintage trolleys in Yakima, Washington. The streetlights went out in Tucson, Arizona, when someone ran off with eight miles of copper lines. A longtime Third World crime has suddenly become widespread here.

China is already the world's biggest consumer of aluminum, copper, iron, and steel. Its hunger for materials to erect its big new cities, seemingly overnight, has caused the market rates for metals to skyrocket toward historic highs. Aluminum, lead, silver, and platinum prices have all doubled in the past three years. Copper and zinc prices have tripled. Gold, that ultimate financial refuge, touched $730 an ounce, its loftiest price in a quarter-century. And while commodities prices recently tumbled, the building boom won't end anytime soon: Over this decade, the world's roster of megacities, with populations of 5 million or more, will grow from 41 to 59, with 48 of them in less-developed countries. All of this means that oil isn't the only vital natural resource in fierce demand. If you're already losing sleep about the "peak oil" problem, it's time to worry about "peak metals," too.

- Fast Company (Jul 2006).

Recycling and reuse also now employ as many people as the auto industry according to a recent US Economic Information Study.

“Recycling is not some feel-good activity; it is one of the backbones of global economic development.” - Says Jerry Powell, editor of Resource Recycle magazine.

To that very end, Seattly made recycling mandatory last January. You get three warnings followed by a fine if your garbage contains more than 10% of recycleable materials. San Francisco has a similar legal rule (much to my suprise ... since this was the first I had heard of it), where it is illegal to place batterys in the trash.

http://www.emagazine.com/view/?3172 has a great list of where / how you can recycle practically everything, but it struck me that it's an awful lot of disjointed seperate organizations and systems that are doing the work. Now if only we could find one unified system to recycle everything ..... that would be something I would use again and again ;)

p.s. Much has been writin about the disspointing recycle side-effects of giving computers to Asia / Africa. Visit www.ban.org/pledge/Locations.html for a list of organizations that have pledged to be good stewards so that your computer won't end up creating an environmental problem somewhere else.

Where there's nothing, you find innovation

2006-07-11T11:31:00.000-07:00

So there I was browsing one of my favorite blogs "Make Magazine" .. It's a blog full of things that I will probably never make, but that being said, it's nice to know that if I ever did need a personal submarine, I could make one out of a pig trough (no, I'm not joking).

Moving on though, one of their features was about an African mechanic who repairs automobile alternators with nothing more than bamboo, copper wire and a few other materials. It struck me that innovation is truely incredible in Africa, and that sometimes where you have the least ammount of resources to work with you can often find the greatest innovation. I can remember as a kid watching Clive James in Cuba, and being astonished as people made car oil out of old hair shampoo!

Anyway, as it turns out, there's an entire website devoted this African innovation. http://www.afrigadget.com/ I highly recommend people keeping an eye on this. One project that particularly caught my eye on the site was the "Playground Pump" ... a water pump that's generated from a children's playground merry-go-round, and then wouldn't you know but I found out the same day that a colleague just visited them in Africa.

Small world =)

Blogs and the homeless

2006-06-26T11:20:00.000-07:00

Interesting article featured in Wired and picked up by Slashdot today which talks about homelessness and how things have improved with the ease of access to technology. There are a multitude of famous homeless bloggers that probably most have read at some time.

(from Wired:) Many of those now living without a permanent roof over their heads have cell phones in their pockets or laptop computers at their hips. While people living in shelters and alleys have found it difficult to cross social divides, the digital divide seems to disappear on the streets. Nearly all homeless people have e-mail addresses, according to Michael Stoops, director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. "More have e-mail than have post office boxes," Stoops said. "The internet has been a big boon to the homeless."

Helping the homeless get e-mail addresses has been a priority for years at shelters across the country. And in an age when most every public library in the nation offers internet access, the net has proven a perfect communication tool for those without a firm real-world address.

"Because of technology, people are able to keep in contact with their families," Stoops said. And perhaps most importantly, they are able to get some footing in society regardless of how removed from it they may feel.

Reporting from the Online Community Camp

2006-05-22T12:19:00.000-07:00

This Thursday will mark the second Online Community Camp in San Francisco (hosted by Jim Cashel). I'll be reporting back from the event, as there's certainly an interesting list of attendees ranging from the nonprofit sector to media, to IT.

Topics we're covering this year include:
* Community Business Models
* Community Metrics
* Community Advertising
* Integrating Online / Offline Communities
* Community Marketing / Evangelists
* Using Communities for Market Research
* Future Community Tools / Trends
* Changing Community Platforms
* Community Management / Behavior Tactics
* Building Community Trust
* Promoting Social Causes
* Youth Communities
* Enhancing Community Participation
* Large Enterprise Communities
* Effective Use of Volunteers
* Establishing Web-wide Community Standards

... stay tuned =)

Site was down

2006-05-05T15:09:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

As some of you probably noticed, the social edge site was down over the weekend. This was due to transition of servers with our hosting company. However it appears as thought we're at the end of the process, so we're marching onwards! Feel free to contact us if you still have difficulty accessing any section of the site.

Lights ... check! Camera's ... check! Action ...ummm check!

2006-03-29T02:17:00.000-08:00

After a shockingly long departure from the tech portal (mainly due to setup and tasks related to where I am today) I am glad to say we're back! And what better way to get back in than to announce that we're streaming live from the Skoll World Forum in Oxford.

Over 14 hours of live coverage will be provided including keynotes from Al Gore, Jeff Skoll, David Blood, Ian Goldin and leading social entrepreneurs in the field.

(link for stream is here: http://www.socialedge.org/worldforum.html )

Streaming technology seems to have come a long way too. I managed to get a sneak preview of what our readers will see and the sound / video was crystal clear!

Moving to a slightly different topic, I've also picked up a lot of lessons from meeting some of the social entrepreneurs and other web people here in england. A big lesson for me? ... KEEP IT SIMPLE. I think the web (and even some of my own developments in the past) can suffer from a case of "too many whizz bang features" . Truth be told, it's far better to concentrate on one simple idea and do it well.

If you look at a lot of web2.0 sites, they usually have a great simple idea when they start:

Google = search
Flickr = upload and share photos
eBay = buy and sell

.... the problem that I see with a lot of these sites though is there's a tipping point whereby they start to add too many features and you sometimes lose the "fun" aspect and the ease of use that attracted users in the first place. Flickr was wonderful but it rapidly seems to be getting more in depth by the day. eBay was a simple buy and sell site, yet I found that it took me nearly 30 minutes just to list and sell an item =(

As I look at the structure of social edge, I start to wonder if we can learn some lessons and maybe keep ourselves from falling into the same trap.

... more to follow .. =)

blogger frustrations

2005-11-18T09:40:00.000-08:00

ahhhh... the joys of blogger. we've been having problems with trying to upload some of our feeds recently. hopefully all fixed now =)

The Diary of Angelina Jolie and Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa (Online Video)

2005-09-20T13:26:00.000-07:00

MTV recently followed Angelina Jolie's travels to Africa with Dr. Jeffrey Sachs as part of their "Diary" series.

If you missed it, you can actually view the entire show online as part of their Overdrive site. Link is: http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/player.jhtml?id=1509772

It's another great example of combining media with action similar to the New Heroes initiative whereby the idea is to both educate viewers and inspire them to give towards measurable outcomes. They talk about the basic needs in Kenya and how villages are able to turn their lives around when they're given basic supplies like water and soil.

Read more about the episode here: http://www.mtv.com/thinkmtv/features/global/diary/angelina_jolie/

What are your thoughts on this episode? Do you think this is an effective way to educate people about global issues? Any other ideas on driving viewing to action? =)

Top Tips for Search Optimization from SES 2005 Conference

2005-08-16T17:10:00.000-07:00

Below are some key points taken recently when I attended the Search Engine Strategy Conference, held in San Jose. Search optimization is becoming more and more important in the nonprofit field as organizations are not just trying to get their own message heard, but are also looking to expand across other related search terms. Hopefull you'll find these key points helpful.

Titles are very important, try to make them dynamic with content relevant to the page. Think of them as chapter titles from a book, ideally you don't want them to be over 50-75 characters.
Make sure you're site is being properly indexed (ie: how many pages are getting indexed when you do site:www.yoursite.com on a search engine). If it's 90% don't bother fixing urls or changing the site structure. If less, it might be your robots.txt file, a file located on most webservers that can tell the search engine where to look on your site.
Avoid using images for your page header
Avoid using javascript dropdowns for navigation because the browser wont be able to read it, using css styled links is a much better approach
Linking to others will help you, especially if they are considered hubs or key places of information. You won't be penalized for people linking to you, even if it's a bad site. http://www.teoma.com/ is a good site for finding those key sites.
Using named anchors can help (ie: history of blue widgits rather than click here for the history of blue widgets) because it will associate the word with the page it links to Link:www.youriste.com will list who links-in to your site
Be careful of using multiple domains, this is a spammers technique and may get you penalized http://www.seo-browser.com/ good to see what search engines see when they spider your site

New life in Africa for old PCs

2005-08-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

Computers donated from the developed world are both fuelling and feeding an appetite for computers in Africa where a new machine could cost more than a year's wages.
The story of how thousands of Africans are learning technology skills starts at a lock-up warehouse in North London.
It is the home of Computer Aid International, which gives old PCs a new life in developing nations. The man behind the project receives more than 2,000 computers a month, many of which might otherwise have been thrown away.
"We've reached the point where we've got more computers than we have organisations to distribute them to. " says Tony Roberts, head of Computer Aid International.
"We get donations of literally hundreds of computers at a time from universities, large corporations, right the way through to individual donations of a single machine that someone's brought from their home," said Tony Roberts, head of Computer Aid International.

Online Grantmaking

2005-07-12T17:47:00.000-07:00

In Ret Boney's recent article in Philanthropy Digest, Cristina Yoon, grants administrator for the Skoll Foundation, describes the benefits of online grant applications, including the self screening of applicants, which increase efficiency.

"Only five out of 315 applications for a recent program were not considered because they weren't aligned," says Yoon. "In the past, we received over 600 inquiries that were not aligned."

According to Yoon, the review process still happens offline, but acceptances and rejections occur by email. Active projects are tracked and managed online, yielding data that results in improvements to the process.

"It's easier to get comparative benchmarks and statistics," Yoon says. "We can better evaluate our activities and improve our programs."

Read the full article on Philanthropy Digest.

Craiglist-style marketplace develops online space to let sellers find charities in need

2005-06-09T12:32:00.000-07:00

(article courtesy of techsoup.org)
There’s a cool new website called Oodle. They are launching a free community service in several US cities to make it easier for people to find places to donate goods, such as clothing, furniture, computers, household appliances and/or vehicles. This is a great way for charities to let the local community know what types of goods they need, and a great way of getting donations of usable items to a good local charity.

Oodle currently has local editions in the following cities: (Just click one of the city links below and then "Suggest a Charity")

Free Webinar: Best Technology Practices for Nonprofits

2005-05-31T15:27:00.000-07:00

Everon Technology Services is hosting two free, one hour webinars on how nonprofits are planning, budgeting, buying and using technology.

Topics include:

Focusing on achieving your mission, not managing technology systems and paperwork
Taking advantage of all possible nonprofit discounts and exemptions when making technology purchases
Planing and budgeting for computer hardware, software, and services given limited budgets and complex grant cycles
Empowering employees to use technology to it’s full potential
Streamlining operations by choosing the right technology to meet your specific nonprofit business needs
Getting the most out of the technology you currently have

For more information and to reigster, visit Everonit.com.

A three-year project to improve blind access to the internet has started at Queen's University in Belfast.

2005-05-24T17:11:00.000-07:00

Researchers at the university are working to devise ways to guide the blind and visually impaired through the web, as part of the Enabled initiative. The EU has provided 3.8m euro funding for the project which 13 other bodies across Europe are taking part in.

"Through the web information can be accessed remotely; people can interact with friends and family; services such as online shopping, paying bills and distant learning can be provided to the public.
"However, people with blindness or other form of disability are not able to take full advantage due to the inaccessibility in the technology itself.
"If the problem of inaccessibility is not solved, the discrepancy, known as the digital divide, will become bigger as information technology advances," says Professor Alan Marshall.

Gmail for everyone!

2005-05-23T17:14:00.000-07:00

Looking for a gmail account? They used to sell them on ebay, now there are over 1 million free invites being given away here: http://isnoop.net/gmail/

Advanced Search Engine Searching

2005-04-22T14:54:00.000-07:00

Well... having wrapped up COF last week, it's time to share notes from one of the most useful sessions at COF this year. Hosted by Gary Price (new editor of searchenginewatch.com), the "effective web searching" seminar showed some new sites out there to help users find what they need from the web.
The biggest take always from the session for me were:
1. Not everything can be found with google
2. Not everything should be optimised for google.

Indeed, there were a whole host of sites that gave improved results when searching, but like anything... it depends what you're looking for. I was particularly impressed with www.exalead.com . Below are notes from the session, you can also view the handout from the session at: http://www.freepint.com/gary/2005cof.html

"there is a digital divide between those that can find the information and those that can't" (howard rheingold)
average search is 2.8 words and first 4-5 results. People need to learn how to search better using quotes and other Boolean symbols
resourceshelf.com + docuticker.com <-- useful for reports (full text) from various agencies and npo's
http://www.sfpl.org/sfplonline/dbcategories.htm full text library resources. Currently working with search engines for integration. Need library card but can send in drivers license info and they should give you number back
"virtual reference" a new instant messenger app that enables you to talk with librarian to help you with research
advanced searching methods: filetype:xls (searches for a particular filetype)quotes (searches for a phrase eg: "james bond")minus (excludes from the results eg: -roger -moore)
referring links (eg: links:http://www.skollfoundation.org shows number of people linking to a site)
www.searchengineshowdown.com -- great to keep tab on the search wars
terrafly.com good for local location information like keyhole/google maps but with statistics
local yahoo can text message info to bberrys and handhelds, indeed mobile browsing will be a huge part of the web in the next 3 years
tinyurl (www.tinyurl.com) useful resource for concatenating a long url

Blogs blogs and more blogs

2005-04-12T10:53:00.000-07:00

So having safetly arrived in sunny San Diego, it was time to switfly check out the first session of the day "Blogs and Newsfeeds" with Mark Bolgiano, CIO @ Council on Foundations and Steve Rubel, VP of Client Services at CooperKatz & Company.
I met Mark about 2 years ago at the TAG Conference in Washington D.C so it was great to connect again and I must commend him for really having his finger on the pulse of what seemed to be the hot issues in NPO and Foundation Technology.

The session was designed to give an overall view of the blogersphere, explaining "what are blogs", trends in blogging, rss, and various tools for blogging. Unique to this (and indeed all the tech sessions at COF) was the integration of several computers so that you actually had a "hands on" experience with the topic. In this case it was creating a blog through www.blogger.com . Overall I thought the hands on was useful (especially in the sharepoint discussion that I attended later).

Anyways .... Below are the main points I took home from the blog and rss session. Feel free to discuss more by clicking on the "read full article" button below.

BLOGS AND RSS

Definition of a blog -- a hybrid of "Web" and "Log" = BLOG
Blogs turn the source of news back to the public rather than the traditional "old media" style which was top down, expensive to set up, hard to distribute
Regular media now regularly gets it's news from blogs and even quotes from reputable blog sites. Blogs are normally the first to pick up and publish about a story or hot topic
Corporations and individuals have started to pick up on this eg: Bob Lutz, CEO of GM http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/ . By doing this you can give a personal voice to a company which has often led to positive media exposure and a buzz in the blogersphere.
Blogging can be also be damaging eg: the "fake" Captain Morgan blog generated a lot of criticism because it was purely used for promotional purposes and there was no "real voice" behind it. http://www.thecaptainsblog.com/home.php .
Another example was the rise and fall of the Kryptonite bike lock. The company was forced to do a $10 million recall on it's bike lock after a popular gadget blog posted how to crack the lock with a ball-point pen. The story was subsequently picked up by the New York Times.
SO... you should be as interested in what people are saying about you in their blogs as you are in creating your own blog. A great tool for this is www.blogpulse.com where you can search blogs for instances of your name or org. You can also click on the "trend this search" button and it will show you a very impressive graph displaying the popularity of the search.
RSS = Tivo for the web ... Basically rather than visiting multiple sites (or even remembering to visit those sites) you can get all your news at one source (called an aggregator)
Several online aggregators such as www.bloglines.com (my personal favorite) or net newswire
more and more non-profits have started to integrate RSS as a way to keep people up to date, and it dawned on me that this could become a replacement for an enewsletter once RSS becomes widespread
Finally, the question was asked "What makes a good blog"? A good blog is one that's updated often, on topic (ie: don't try and cover too much) and contributed to by multiple writers (ideally six or more).

And that's the end of our first session at COF! May I also give a shameless plug to point out that people can subscribe to our RSS feed by clicking on the "Site Feed" buttons at the top of each portal on Social Edge! =)

Social Edge goes to COF!

2005-04-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

Here in the Technology portal of Social Edge, we'll be reporting live from the annual Council On Foundations meeting between the 10th and 12th of April.
Session we expect to cover this year are:

Blogs and Newsfeeds (Sunday April 10th)
Team collaboration with SharePoint (Sunday April 10th)
Innovative Ways to Leverage Technology for Your Foundation (Monday April 11th)
Effective Web Searching (Monday April 11th)

Feel free to check back daily as we report "whats hot" in Foundation technology.

Goodbye Computer! Hello World!

2005-03-16T10:01:00.000-08:00

So much has been written recently in the technology sector about how Microsoft and Google are working toward an internet based operating system. For those scratching their heads, the idea behind an internet based operating system is that all of your everyday applications (word processing, email, etc. etc. ) are run from a hugely powerful server owned by google for example. All of your data is also stored on their servers, therefore, they take care of the backups, making sure everything runs etc. etc. And I for one, am all for it! There has always been a problem with three main issues of IT in a workplace:

1. Backup
2. Speed of Computing
3. Storage

.... by having an internet based operating system, not only do these issues become a non-issue but it opens up all countries to a level playing field. A common complaint with organizations in the sector or an underdeveloped nation, is that they're trying to do world-changing ideas, or yesterdays technology and budget. An internet based OS, requires very little from a computer in terms of power, storage or ram. This in turn would also reduce on computer waste, because people won't need to upgrade their computer just to run the applications or get the storage they need.
The only thing I see being an issue is bandwidth but you have to think that by the time an internet OS rolls around, wi-fi will also be around us in any country.

You can read more on the article here: http://www.cnet.com/4520-6033_1-5759958-1.html?tag=nl.e501

BBCNews covers a story on fifth-graders in Kenya who will be using "E-slates" from EduVision.

2005-03-01T11:17:00.000-08:00

Found an interesting article on the BBC about the integration of handheld in Kenyan schools, where textbooks have been digitised. It's appears to be a pilot project from EduVision. http://www.eduvision.or.ke
The system is apparently cheaper than installing and maintaining an internet connection and conventional computer network. But Mr Herren of EduVision says there are both pros and cons to the project.
"It's very simple to set up, just a satellite antenna on the roof of the school, but it's also a one-way connection, so getting feedback or specific requests from end users is difficult."

Interesting since we were just talking about low cost laptops being used in Cambodia. Is anyone else familiar with EduVision?

Discuss on Social Edge here: http://www.socialedge.org/?13@@.3c417f4f/2

The 2005 Wired Rave Awards

2005-02-25T11:31:00.000-08:00

March 2005 issue of Wired Magazine features The 2005 Wired Rave Awards announcements.

The 15 categories include Films, Business, Science, Architecture, Medicine, Games etc. Of note is the inclusion of:
Shigeyuki Hori for developing the Toyota Prius which has been a phenominal success as a hybrid vehicle. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/rave.html?pg=2

Robert Lanza for stem cell research http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/rave.html?pg=4

and Kevin Sites for pioneering the new new journalism of war-blogging from Iraq http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/rave.html?pg=8

New proof that man has caused global warming

2005-02-18T12:29:00.000-08:00

(from The Times Online)
The strongest evidence yet that global warming has been triggered by human activity has emerged from a major study of rising temperatures in the world’s oceans.

The present trend of warmer sea temperatures, which have risen by an average of half a degree Celsius (0.9F) over the past 40 years, can be explained only if greenhouse gas emissions are responsible, new research has revealed.

The results are so compelling that they should end controversy about the causes of climate change, one of the scientists who led the study said yesterday.

"The debate about whether there is a global warming signal now is over, at least for rational people," said Tim Barnett, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. "The models got it right. If a politician stands up and says the uncertainty is too great to believe these models, that is no longer tenable."

(photo credit:MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images)

Tech Museum Awards

2005-02-11T17:13:00.000-08:00

The Tech Museum Awards recognize innovators from around the world who use technology to benefit humanity in the areas of education, equality, economic development, the environment and health. Each year, 25 Tech Laureates are honored and one Laureate in each category is awarded a $50,000 cash prize. Individuals, nonprofit organizations, and companies are all eligible.

The 25 Laureates are recognized at a gala dinner, invited to participate in press and media coverage, and introduced to a network of advisors. The awards will be held this year at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California, on November 9, 2005.

More information and a simple nomination form can be found at www.techawards.org. Self-nominations are accepted and encouraged. Program details, including judging criteria, can be found at The Tech Museum Awards website listed above.