Archive for May, 2008

Intel partners with micro-credit organization

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

Intel has announced a partnership with the Grameen Trust, the organization that offers micro-credit loans in developing countries. The Grameen Trust founder Muhammad Yunis and his organization were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for their groundbreaking work with micro-credit in Bangladesh. I should mention that Grameen Bank is not ...

Web standards body gets involved in social development

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the international body charged with managing the standard file formats and protocols that make the web work, has formed a group to look into connecting people with mobile phones. The Mobile Web for Social Development interest group (or MW4D, they really like acronyms) will ...

Share your Internet Connection Safely with DD-WRT

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

There are many ways you can share your Internet connection to neighbors over WiFi. Disable security on your wireless network, or check out one of these organizations: Open-Mesh, Meraki or FON. One of my favorite open source projects is DD-WRT. It is a software package that can be installed on many ...

Broadband in rural Pennsylvania

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

A report was released this week by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania about the state broadband access in Pennsylvania's less populated areas. With data collected in 2005 and 2006, the project looks at how healthcare, local government, education and business in rural Pennsylvania are using high-speed Internet. Some quotes from the ...

In depth look at a mobile device in the classroom

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

The teachermate is a handheld computer, like a Nintendo Gameboy or a Sony PSP, and they have been in use in Chicago public school classrooms for the past school year. The Teachers' Podcast did a review of the device last month. A couple weeks ago I got the opportunity to see ...

Got e-learning? How about m-learning?

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

I wrote a month ago about a school district in North Carolina that is using smart phones in class as a platform for learning. Mobile devices could be a great way to integrate technology into the classroom. They are inexpensive, ubiquitous, and are designed for communication. A lot of kids have ...

Not everybody has the latest Macbook Pro

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

In response to the recent Parks Associates study that said that around one fifth of American heads-of-households had never used email, the Next Web Blog put up a post with some comments from Amazon's CTO Werner Vogels. Amazon focuses on keeping prices low, and so naturally attracts lower income individuals. Vogels ...

ITU in Honduras, connecting communities

Monday, May 19th, 2008

The ITU, or International Telecommunication Union, has produced another video about their efforts to connect  a remote and impoverished area of Honduras. They sent out a technician to install a wireless telephone that locals can use to communicate. This kind of thing can make a big impact in communities, allowing ...

One in five Americans have never used email?

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

A recent survey from marketing firm Parks Associates has found that around one in every five American house-holds have never used email or any other Internet service. So potentially one in five Americans have never used email. The survey interviewed heads-of-households and found that of those that had never used email, ...

The hyperconnected and the rest of the world

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

Source: IDC/Nortel White Paper - The Hyperconnected: Here They Come! A post by Steve Rubel up on his site Micro Persuasion, points at a gap between the hyperconnected and the rest of the world. The term comes from a recent IDC/Nortel study that surveyed people for the number of communication devices and ...