via @whiteafrican

Nominate projects by 9/14; winners get $5k or a 3 year Ashoka Fellowship.

I would *love* to go to this.

Nice collection of Africa ICT stats (via @ethanz)

"If I'm applying the First Amendment, I have to apply it to a world where there's an Internet, and there's Facebook, and there are movies like ... The Social Network, which I couldn't even understand." Oof.

In other words, Cory Doctorow's Makers is coming true: http://craphound.com/makers/download/

I used to think PlayPumps were awesome. I was wrong. But here's how we can do better.

Erik Hersman on how tech can address a host of election monitoring issues.

"The new meme of Africa is unfolding in front of us. Technologically and culturally the future of Africa is absolutely refreshing."

"What do Hillary Clinton and Hu Jintao have in common? Check your mobile phone for the answer."

"computer users are worried that Cyrillic domains will give rise to a hermetic Russian Web, a sort of cyberghetto, and that the push for Cyrillic amounts to a plot by the security services to restrict access to the Internet"

The history of the Internet. Illustrated!

"Attention can be gauged in many ways: investment dollars, number of organizations, or even by bandwidth. Curious to see how well-represented individual African nations are in the ICT progress game, I, however, turned to Google News for a quick analysis."

"As trained observers of how people in a society live, ethnographers can help companies figure out what people need and then work with designers to meet those needs with new (or more often tweaked) products and services. In a world in which ever more people are using technology products on a daily basis, such skills are increasingly in demand."

follow-up on this summer's SAT-3 cable outage

"It was scary, it was fun, it was deadly, it was beautiful. It was in essence, a coming of age. We were seeing technology in Uganda rise up to fill a gaping void and empower social change. It was the start of something wonderful, amazing, and big."

TechMasai gives Ugandan netizens a C-

Jon's thoughts on how to improve the flow of data during crisis, based on the Kampala riots.

"Samuel Mwaura of Ting’ang’a village just outside Kiambu town, has been drawing eager crowds to watch his gadget open his door, switch on the lights and even start an electric kettle that makes tea and pours it into a flask."

"What do they call ICT4D in developing countries? ICT?"

SAT-3, Seacom and SMS raise questions for Google and governments in Africa

undersea cables your thing? this is for you.

REALLY should have used the "back up everything locally" tip when I was designing for NUPI/USAID

Clinton responds by talking about peanut butter

"To my surprise, the model's output led to a prediction entirely different from my personal judgment. In any event, my personal opinion turned out to be wrong and the model's prediction turned out to be correct."

my grandfather worked with von Braun in the 1950s. would love to read his notes online.

thoughts on twitter, africa, and refurbished computers

summer reading.

"Several news site and blogs such as 3vomiband209 report [fa] that a few hours before Iranian presidential election SMS is blocked in country and several political blogs are not available."

"70% of commenters mention that "Facebook Username" can be abbreviated "FU", and each thinks he is the first to think of it.... #FUFacebook becomes a Trending Topic on Twitter."

"Whoever wins on Friday, it appears inevitable that in elections to come, the mouse will be even more predictive of the ballot box pen."

The basics, and elves.

"The creation of the cyberczar’s office inside the White House appears to be part of a significant expansion of the role of the national security apparatus there. A separate group overseeing domestic security, created by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks, now resides within the National Security Council. A senior White House official responsible for countering the proliferation of nuclear and unconventional weapons has been given broader authority. Now, cybersecurity will also rank as one of the key threats that Mr. Obama is seeking to coordinate from the White House."

"There is a man who said that Africa was sleep when The West was revolutionizing the machinery and mechanization industry and that Africa should not be sleep again with this new revolution in ICT. This is really a great thinking but there still much a lot to change for achieving this kind of dream."

badass.

wondering why I haven't seen this until now

Thoughts from Erik Hersman on citizen media in "hot-flash" conflicts

Help Google create better maps of Africa.

Does anyone else find this creepy and potentially scary?

whoah.

Totally creeped out by this.

"technology transfer is much more complicated than bringing tools to people who previously lacked them"

Nietzsche: “...our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.”

new favorite web site