Check out http://borninseptember.org Basically some guy decided that instead of getting birthday presents one year, he was going to ask people to donate $31/person so he could invest in wells in a bunch of villages in Africa. The OBA project coordinator in the Mbarara office showed me this link (ostensibly to illustrate to me the [...]
Posts under ‘Random’
My Secret Public Service to African Computers
Since I’m about to do this to my VMware installation of windows I thought it would be a good time to write a quick blog post on how to prevent your Windows computer from being infected by cds, dvds, and usb drives. Of course this means that when you pop in a cd/dvd, it will [...]
CFP: Telecommunications Policy Research Conference
– forwarded from my advisor – TPRC is an annual conference on communication, information, and internet policy that convenes international and interdisciplinary practitioners and researchers from academia, industry, government, and nonprofit organizations together with policy makers. The 2008 conference will be held September 26 – September 28, 2008 at The National Center for Technology & [...]
Under-reported humanitarian stories of 2007
NPR’s All Things Considered recently interviewed Nicholas de Torrente of Doctors Without Borders (the American branch of Medicins Sans Frontiers) about their recently published their top ten under-reported humanitarian stories of 2007: Displaced Fleeing War in Somalia Face Humanitarian Crisis Political and Economic Turmoil Sparks Health-Care Crisis in Zimbabwe Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Spreads As New Drugs [...]
ICTD2008/2009 – Argentina or Qatar?
So (one of my paper reviewers recently noted that one should never start a sentence with “so”) , at the end of the banquet on the first night of ICTD2007, Kentaro (the ictd superman) introduced the two bids for the next ICTD conference. The two candidates? Buenos Aires (aka tourist and salsa heaven) and Carnegie [...]
Free to be free?
I’ve been thinking about services and social entrepreneurship and all sorts of good things about making money in such a way that the public as a whole benefits. And really, that is what entrepreneurship (“social” or otherwise) is about – finding some way that makes things better for some set of customers. And in many cases, it is about making things free (or virtually so), sometimes by having someone else pay for the service (e.g Google with AdWords, or even Aravind Eye Hospital). It goes to say that “free” [...]
Finally! The Triple GPRS Crown
Admittedly, I had solved two thirds of this problem this past summer. But I think it speaks to the rapidity of mobile phone coverage expansion that solving the last third was much easier than I expected it would be. The problem: GPRS/Internet access on my various phones on all three of the GSM carriers in [...]
Epocrates for developing countries?
So I’m talking to my doctor about possible drug interactions between various prescriptions and he pulls out a… (drum roll) palm treo. Oh okay so that’s probably not a major revelation.. doctors love Palm devices and have loved them pretty much since 3COM started making them back in the 90s. (Can I say that yet? [...]
Where are we going with what we are doing?
Fulfillment Elusive for Young Altruists In the Crowded Field of Public Interest By Ian Shapira Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, November 2, 2007; Page A01 A friend pointed out this article for me. I have to wonder that if in our efforts to look at ICTD academically if we’re going to create another glut of [...]
Craig Newmark Speaks: we listen
Craig Newmark of Craiglist recently gave a talk as part of my Social Entrepreneurship class. I’ve attached my notes from the talk here (Notes: Craig Newmark on Craigslist), and you can listen to the audio on the ischool podcast. Craig, as a self-proclaimed-and-proud-of-it geek is a fun speaker with lots of interesting perspectives. As someone [...]
