Many people, including those in major outlets are voicing their criticism of the erosion of privacy and introduction of the inverse Beakon.  For example, the Washington Post ran a number of articles on this subject and is reporting on a bill for privacy online being drafted following this outcry, ars technica writes about complains filed against Facebook at the FTC, Huffington Post posted some visualizations of how more and more of our information is exposed to more and more people on Facebook, and the Wired has recently posted a very opinionated piece from Ryan Singer criticizing Facebook’s behavior and calling for an alternative.  What I find amusing in this situation is that all these major outlets (and many others) have wholeheartedly adopted the universal “Like” feature and other Facebook gadgets.  When you come to read their articles, you are welcomed by familiar faces of your friends through some Facebook social feature.

To me it creates a dissonance.

I realize that in many cases these are journalists reporting on a piece of technology-related news and I realize that the opinions of the columnists belong to them and not necessarily to the news outlet. I also realize that the news outlets are involved in financial survival battle and using Facebook advertising and social platform may be an opportunity.  I even appreciate the fact these discussions are taking place and that the mainstream media, the blogosphere, and  even Facebook itself are hosting this debate.  Nevertheless, when I see that Ryan Singer’s super critical piece has two “Like” buttons and almost 3500 likes on Facebook, I understand why over at Facebook they feel so confident and comfortable messing with the privacy of their users.

And what do you think?

Recent news related

Whether you like or hate online porn, you are probably aware of its existence and attempts to regulate it in one way or another.  One of the aspects of this debate, which has recently come back to the public attention, may have far reaching repercussions to the politics of the internet.  I am talking about the famous debate about .xxx top level domain.  The highlight is that an independent review panel at ICANN decided that this top level domain was denied in an unfair fashion (79 page long PDF; Guardian).  The question now is what will ICANN’s board decide to do about it.  In light of the panel’s decision, ICM, the registry pushing this domain name, claims that the domains will be available this year (more here), but others in the industry disagree.  Rod Beckstorm, CEO and president of ICANN, wrote a blog post praising ICANN’s accountability mechanisms.  Milton Mueller replied with a critical assessment of Beckstrom’s reaction and calling for acknowledging the mistakes of the past and fixing them.  I recommend reading the comments to both posts as well – very interesting (more related comments here).  The Internet Commerce Association, an organization that unites registrars and domainers, published an extensive post arguing against the idea of .xxx, because it views it as an attempt of ICANN to get involved in content regulation.

Another conversation that hit the news-wire recently was a discussion of internet and freedom in the US Senate.  Here are some snippets and reactions.  Google called to include internet freedom as a free trade condition.  Ryan Singel of Wired warns against “Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet” (an opposite opinion, also in Wired ).

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

“Measuring the Information Society 2010” – ITU has released a new report that shows some interesting numbers about adoption of information technology and its costs.

“Measuring Typosquatting Perpetrators and Funders” (PDF) – Some alternative titles of this post could be “Typosquatting is the 10th most popular site out there” or “Google makes almost half a billion a year from typosquatting.”

“Broadband adoption in America” – An FCC issued report showing the results of a survey about broadband adoption in USA (the link leads to the PDF); here is a NYT article about the study (thank you, Josh).  At the same time, the Social Science Research Council released another study, entitled “Broadband Adoption in Low-Income Communities,” which took a qualitative look into the same issues.  Over at the FCC blog, John Horrigan, the author of the first, quantitative study, reflected on the finding of both report.

“Four Ways of Looking at Twitter” – A blogpost and examples of various ways of visualizing information on Twitter.

“Study links violent video games to violent thought, action” – The Washington Post reports about a meta analysis of studies about video games and violence; the original analysis makes the statement in the title, but the article also includes references to some critique of the study; overall it reminds the early days of communication research.

Another interesting and rather broad resource about how young people interact with “new” media is the Good Play project (via Oya).

And if we are on Goolge, they have recently released “Google Public Data Explorer” – a tool that allows you to play with data from a number of sources and share it on the web.  The current list of sources includes: the World Bank, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau, Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), the California Department of Education, Eurostat, the U.S. Center for Disease Control, and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.  However there seems to be very few datasets available at the moment.

“The Internet of Things” (via @rsqr) – McKinsey report objects gaining connectivity and potential repercussions of this development.

“New gTLDs Will Cost Less than $.10 for Each Trademark Worldwide” (PDF) – A working paper by Minds + Machines, which looks at the cost of introduction of new TLDs; I think it’s an interesting insight for the ongoing debate on the subject.

“Capturing the promise of mobile banking in emerging markets” – McKinsey report about technology and finance for and among the world poorest.

“Internet and e-commerce industry in Lithuania” (via i-policy) – A brief about the state of e-affairs in Lithuania.

“China Global Investment Tracker: 2010” – It is hard to neglect the growing global role of China; the Heritage Foundation released a report with some fancy maps about the global Chinese investment; for example, Africa, is the single largest beneficiary of Chinese investments; you may also want to read the Foreign Policy commentary on the report.

“Ranking Web of World Universities” – An unusual ranking of the higher education institutions, this report attempts to capture the online visibility of various universities across the  globe.  I have not read their methodology in detail and I am not completely sure what is that they are trying to achieve with this metric, but I thought I’d share.

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

“The Digital Dictatorship” – Evgeny Morozov is in his usual role of critique of the revolutionary discourse surrounding social media and Rita King trying to debunk him – “The evolution of revolution.”  What do you think?  Who is making a better point?

“Media Development Needs Unified Research for Digital Age” (via Josh) – A review of a symposium about media based interventions and developmental efforts and how to study those; interesting piece to think about this field.

Stefana Broadbent of the University College of London gave an intriguing TED talk where she argued the media, information, and communication technologies are redefining and reshaping intimacy in our lives.  What do you think?

Also, the Internet got nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and there is a debate going on about it.  Some people argue that it is fullish.  Others argue that it deserves the prize.  What do you think?  And who will get the money if the internet wins?

Digital Divide

“First Solar Powered Rural Internet Kiosk installed in the South Coast of Kenya” – ISOC Community Grants in action.

The FCC and the Knight Foundation held America’s (read US) Digital Inclusion Summit.  Here are the highlights as presented by the organizers themselves:

FCC/Knight America's Digital Inclusion Summit from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.

MICT regulation

“Broadband carriers speak out against FCC regulation” – A brief nice update from the Washington Post on the state of debate between the FCC and the telcos; I think it is interesting because it is part of the struggle of defining internet as a medium and its outcomes can have long lasting repercussions.

At the same time “FCC Chairman Genachowski confident in authority over broadband, despite critics“.  There is also a video of him talking about the need for a broadband plan for the US, but I did not find that interview particularly informative.

“Court Finds Domain Names are Located Where Registry and Registrar are Located” – An interesting precedent in determining jurisdiction in online disputes.

“Apple pulls sexually explicit apps from iTunes” – The title is slightly misleading as this NYT article actually tackles the debate about content regulation online.

Berkman Center’s response (PDF) to the FCC’s Notice of Inquiry on “Empowering Parents and Protecting Children in an Evolving Media Landscape” (PDF) seems like a good resource on the subject.

MICT business

“Lessons for U.S. Media From European Paid-Content Plays” – Inspired by a recent decision of the NY Times to re-introduce a paywall, this article surveys various European models of paid content.

“New” media

“Understanding the Participatory News Consumer” (PDF) – New report from the PEW Internet and American Life project about how, where, and to what extend people in the US access the news and interact with it online.

“Just press print” – An article from the Economist about the blossoming industry of self publishing.

MICT and politics

“Social Networking and Constituent Communications” – A report of the Congressional Research Service about how the members of the house use Twitter (the link leads to a PDF).

“The cloud cannot ignore geopolitics” – An interesting analysis of the link between political realities and their impact on the cloud paradigm.  On a related note, you may want to check out this interactive data protection heat map from Forrester.

As if an intentional illustration to the article, the Open Net Initiative at Berkman, published the following findings about Bing filtering its search results – “Sex, Social Mores, and Keyword Filtering: Microsoft Bing in the ‘Arabian Countries’” – yes, its not just Google and Yahoo.

“The open society” – The Economist report about governments opening up their databases and letting people play with data.

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

“Ex-Africa” (via The Wadi) – An Israeli startup that aims to bring financial transparency to Africa and give Western investors tools to evaluate African bunsinesses; it is really interesting to see how financial and investment instruments of the West are finding their ways to the developing countries.

“Why the internet will fail (from 1995)” – A really fun piece to read in retrospective of15 years; made me wonder about some of my skeptical thinking.

“ViewChange.org” – Is an imitative in the making that seems to aim to do something similar to what Positive News in UK are doing, but in a more Web 2.0-ish way:

This is slightly old, but still cool – playing Guitar Hero using an actual guitar (via Veronica):

Enjoy!

Recent news related

Google’s confrontation with the Chinese government, Hillary Clinton’s speech that followed, and the somewhat anticipated reaction have been all over my RSS feeds, Twitter, and what-not.  Here are some of what I think the more interesting reactions, particularly to the later, diplomatic developments.  Evgeny Morozov of Foreign Policy was one of the first to post his rather critical comments and he has a few points.   Milton Mueller, over at the IGP blog, suggests that Clinton’s speech will backfire (or already is backfiring) in the way the Chinese government will act in the Internet Governance arena; he thinks the speech was an important event, but not in the mainstream view of it as a US stand for internet freedoms.  Finally, Aleks Krotoski, who is working on a BBC documentary about the history of the web, tries to draw a complex picture of opportunities as well as dangers that Internet brings with it; all this triggered by this recent clash.

Another topic that has been recently in the news is the new gadget from Apple – the iPad.  Leaving aside the humorous aspects of its design and name, there are some interesting discussions starting to emerge about the meaning of the direction Apple is taking to the future of our mediated experiences and perhaps the technology-based society.  Jonathan Zittrain published an opinion article in FT warning against Apple’s move towards a more closed and controlled platform.  He sounds both concerned and disappointed with this move from the open to the closed.  The comments on that article seem to disagree with Zittrain, but no so Rory Cellan-Jones who blogs for BBC.  Interestingly, the comments on the British website were not as defensive of Apple.  In another post, from David Parry of U. of Texas, is trying actively to discourage people from buying iPad because he argues it is a bad educational tool.  Finally, you may also want to watch a documentary about Apple fan-base I have posted a link to below – I found it to be really interesting.

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

“floatingsheep.org” – A blog of a research project that maps out and analyzes user generated information about places; pretty neat.  Here is an example of their “Great American ‘Pizza’ Map“.

“2009 Year in Review: Filtering, Surveillance, Information Warfare” – The OpenNet Initiative at Berkman Center put up a neat tool that allows you to browse through various instances of filtering, etc. that occurred in 2009.

“Review of 2009: Telecoms During Global Recession” (PDF; via InformationPolicy) – A review of the last year in telecom industry issued by TeleGeography.  They show that while the subscriber base continued to grow almost as during the pre-recession times, the revenue growth has slowed down.  The most interesting observation though is that the developed regions of the world were more affected by the recession compared to the less developed ones.

“More Data To Fuel Metered Pricing” (via @Norm_Lewis) – A summary of a report with some interesting numbers about wirless browsing bandwidth usage (for example, YouTube accounts for 10% of worldwide bandwidth use) which leads the authors to a conclusion that metered pricing is the future for mobile data; I am not a prophet by any stretch of imagination, but I think this signals a tendency towards more expensive mobile internet.

“P2P and Broadband Adoption” – A blogpost about an SSRC study that shows that P2P, and by proxy copyright infringement, is the main driver behind broadband adoption worldwide.

“Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds” (via holesinthenet) – An interesting survey about media consumption of the US youth (not just the internet); because of multitasking, they actually pack in more media than the nominal number of hours.  And another related report from PEW – “Social Media and Young Adults” – mobile is taking over blogging.

“How different age groups are using the internet” (via @Viil) – Somewhat convoluted graphic representation of the subject over time.

“The Future of ICT for Development” – The Global Voices host a collection of blogposts about the online discourse about ICT4D; quite interesting to browse through them.  This is part of a project Berkman Center runs together with Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC).  At the same time, University of Manchester’s Centre for Development Informatics has posted some stats about ICT4D scholarship on their blog – “ICT-for-Development Research: Size and Growth“.  Finally, and this may not belong to this section of the digest, Michael Best asks: “Do we have an ICT4D field? And do we want one?“

“The top 10 cleantech countries of 2009” (via @gbarzil) – Shawn Lesser of Sustainable World Capital posts brief profiles of a dozen of countries and what they do in terms of green policy and entrepreneurship.

And of course, some regional stats:

• Belarus – online marketing
• UK – SMS
• USA – Internet, broadband, and cell phones
• World – SMS

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

“Obama’s mixed record on tech policy” – An article, written by William Reynolds from Duke Law School;  it goes over some recent steps taken by the Obama administration, but mostly in the realm of copyright.

“Internet Self-Regulation and Fundamental Rights” (via @infopolicy) – An SSRN article discussion the use of ISPs as intermediaries in internet regulation.

“Clay Shirky, info overload, and when filters increase the size of what’s filtered” – David Weinberger from the Berkman Center shares some thoughts about information overload and the changing meaning of filters in this reality.

“Using Mechanical Turk to Crowdsource Humanitarian Response” – Some thoughts and observations from Patrcik Meier who is working on his PhD at Tufts on related subject; I would also recommend to take a good look at his website as he has some really interesting thoughts and observations there.

Digital Divide

“World Computer Exchange” – An interesting initiative that refurbishes computers from the ‘developed’ countries for continuous use in ‘developing’ countries; of course there has been criticism about the global dump for electronics from the global north, i think this project shows how it can be done well.

“UN telecom agency makes plans for Haiti’s present and future” (via @UN) – A plug about ITUs efforts in Haiti; as the amount of news from that region is going down, I think it is actually really interesting to see what grand problems remain to be resolved and what is done about that; there is also a bunch of numbers about the telecom sector in Haiti.

MICT regulation

“Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) and the Office” (via Information Policy) – Yes, there is a new European regulatory body on the block.

“UN chief calls for treaty to prevent cyber war” (via @ITU_News) – A scary article both in terms to the problems it raises and the solutions it proposes.

MICT business

“Mobenzi” – This is a South African company that basically allows crowdsourcing using mobiles; companies can submit any data-related tasks that require human intelligence and people perform them in a distributed fashion, while making some money; interesting idea.

“New” media

“Replacing your TV antenna with an Internet connection by using Boxee or Hulu” – We gave up TV and have been watching TV shows on computers for a while now; this is something that can make us reconsider getting a TV set I think.

“Facebook Largest News Reader?” – HitWise suggests that Facebook is becoming the largest RSS reader on the web.

MICT and politics

“Data.gov.uk versus Data.gov – Which wins?” – FollowingData analyzes the two websites and declares the UK site as a winner.

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

“Project H Design” – Sean pointed out this really interesting initiative that designs solutions to ease people’s lives in the challenging regions of the world.

“Real Lives” – A potentially interesting game that allow the participant to simulate life in anyone of the 192 countries based various statistical data about those countries; I have not tried it, but it sounds intriguing and the the demo downloadable from their website allows you to try tree different lives.

“Maga No Need Pay” – My friend ‘Gbenga, who is very much involved in the Nigerian internet-related matters, posted this video, which is a rather innovative way of raising awareness of anti-cyber-crime efforts in his home country.

“MacHeads” – Ever since moving to US I am surrounded by people using Macs and it is quite phenomenal; this is a full length (about an hour) documentary, trying to unpack the phenomenon of Mac users (or more precisely fans) and how it has been changing over the years.  I found it very interesting.

And for those of you who have ever doubted that engineering is cool, here is a reminder from the IBM folks (via Sadat):

This time there are some links related to the comments on the FCC stand on net neutrality, some stats summarizing 2009 as well as some regional stats, a number of provoking ideas on database security, digital collectivism, and more, a little bit on media and environment, and of course some fun stuff.  Enjoy!

Recent news related

One of the (not so) recent topics on the agenda of the US telecom industry is net neutrality.  Back in October the FCC proposed net neutrality rules and recently there was the deadline for submitting comments.  For example, the wireless carriers did their best to distinguish themselves from the wired networks operators.  Skype argued against allowing content discrimination, Amazon argued for allowing it as long as it does not harm other content (more on that).  A think tank Digital Society supported a more nuanced approach to net neutrality claiming the “smart” networks are at the basis of truly neutral web.  Nicholas Bramble of the Yale Information Society Project compiled a nice sample of comments from the various stakeholder.

Also, a lot has been written about the role of technology in Haiti relief efforts, so here is my very small contribution to this discussion – a collection of post disaster shelter solutions published by the MAKE magazine.

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

“Internet 2009 in numbers” (via @rafik) – Spam, webpages, and much more… enjoy :)

“BuddeComm’s 2010 Global Telecoms Industry Snapshot” – Usually I don’t like posting forecasts here, but this one contains some interesting numbers about the past decade, so here it is.

“International Phone Traffic Growth Slows, while Skype Accelerates” – A blurb of a report from Telegeography (you need to buy the complete report).

“Evolution of Storage” (via Bob) – A nice visualization of how far we have gone in terms of storage for music, photos, and data.

“Report: 44% Of Google News Visitors Scan Headlines, Don’t Click Through” (via Tech.Blorge) – I think the title speaks for itself; it is an interesting observation in light of all these debates about the relationships between the “old” and the “new” media.

“Heritage Foundation: Index of Economic Freedom 2010” (via @infopolicy) – I have not read the entire analysis in depth, but I think there is not much revolutionary in it; what I found particularly valuable is that they make their dataset publicly available.

Some location-specific stats:

• Asia – Mobile broadband
• Belarus – Twitter usage (in Russian)
• Russia – Search queries
• South Africa – Internet penetration
• Switzerland – Broadband
• USA – Broadband speed
• USA – Seniors online

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

I think many have heard about Apple and AT&T not allowing VoIP in their environment and about the broad criticism of this move.  So, it was interesting to see some alternative views as well: “The iPhone & the Lack of Voice Over 3G: Alternative Theory” and “More level headed analysis of VoIP over 3G“.  Unfortunately I don’t think I have enough technical knowledge to judge these stands, so I would love to hear from those of you who can do that.

“Large databases can never be secure” – An opinion article from Guardian, which is particularly interesting to me in light of the biometric database debates in Israel.

Tarleton pointed out an interesting discussion about “digital collectivism.”  On the one hand we have Jarod Lanier who, in clearly a PR act for his forthcoming book, makes an argument against web 2.0-ish digital collectivism.  On the other hand, we have Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and now Hatch, defending the collaborative spirits of netizens while making a plug for her companies.

Speaking of Tarleton, he just gave an interesting talk at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society on the “politics of platforms“.

“The Future of Communication: Theory and Methodology?” (via @JamesShanahan) – Dietram Scheufele shares some thoughts about the field of communication at the crossroads raising more questions than providing answers, as its title may suggest.  What do you think?

Digital Divide

“Framing the Digital Divide in Higher Education” – Ismael Peña-López publishes a monograph summarizing some recent thought on the digital divide.  I have not read the entire thing, but it seems like an interesting read.

MICT regulation

“Hungary introduces mandatory open standards for public institutions” – I think this is interesting and also important development for encouraging competition in the MICT industry and accessibility to information.

MICT business

“The New York Times to start charging for online content, again – this time, metered” – I am sure there will be much more information about this as the implementation time approaches, but the move itself is interesting.  Here is Guardian further speculating about what it may look like: “How will a New York Times paywall work?“

“Rock Band opens to user-created songs” – This is quite an interesting move in the 2.0-ish direction.  I wonder if it will take off.

“New” media

“Environmental impact of media” (via @JamesShanahan RT @mediatwit) – An interesting conversation about the environmental impact of “old” mass media vs. “new” mass media, specifically print vs. digital; the overall gist is that print can be actually more environmentally friendly compared to the digital publishing.

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

“Lego router” (via Sean) – A guy built a case for Linksys router out of Lego.  He also built a computer case in a similar way.  It all is probably useless, but really cool.

“The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures” – If you are in the online dating scene, this may actually be useful.

“Linux-powered digital guitar with touch screen interface” – MAKE magazine has some really cool projects published on their blog.  I think this one is a nice example:

And finally, a tribute to Veronica:

:)

So, should I continue with these?

Recent news related

One of the biggest recent news in the domain of this site was the new agreement between the US Government and ICANN.  I wrote about it before and here is a collection of other reactions (blogs and media) on this announcement.

“ICANN, Dept. of Commerce sign historic agreement” (via @RodBeckstorm) – A conversation with Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s CEO, at Federal News Radio; the hosts expressed a lot of naivety/lack of knowledge on the subject matter or that was they way to be really nice to Rod.

“France Statement” (via IGP; French here) – The French Government has issues a response to the Affirmation of Commitments applauding the new agreement; one point that stood out to me is that they emphasize the need “to enhance the role of governments in the current Internet governance mechanisms, and particularly within ICANN” – I wonder what role do they actually envision for the governments and what does the technical community think about this.

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

“A special report on telecoms in emerging markets” – The Economist is doing a good job presenting the various aspects of the phenomenon with a clear message that mobile is the king.

“What to Measure? Only 16% of the Web Is Clicking Display Ads” (via Twitter) – The online advertisers are looking for alternative ways of measuring effectiveness of online ads.  What would you measure?

“Global Broadband Quality Study” – The Oxford Business School releases its second report on the quality of broadband worldwide; overall there is better connectivity, but the inequalities persist.

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

“Is Online Privacy a Generational Issue?” (via Twitter) – A Wired article raising the question of generational differences in perceptions of privacy.

“The rise of telecom diplomacy” (@evgenymorozov) – Evgeny Morozov notes in Foreign Policy that he has spotted some links between telecom investments and diplomacy in the case of Russian investments in Nicaragua and potentially Venezuela; while interesting I wonder if he is not reading too much into and I am curios about the proportion of telecom in the international trade between Russia and those countries; it seems more reasonable to me that the telecom investments are only part of package, but not the only component.  What do you think?

“Under the Influence: Chinese Colonialism Works Without Ideas” – More of a book review of “China’s Safari: On the Trail of Beijing’s Expansion in Africa,” from World Politics Review; I found it thought provoking; the key idea is probably: “Unlike the Americans, with their sermons on free markets and good governance, or the imperial British before them, the Chinese come bearing little else than the pursuit of profit. In a sense, it’s leave your ideology at the door.”.  The article is behind a pay-wall, but you can register for 4 months trial period.

Digital Divide

“Cuban post offices OK’d for Internet access” – We don’t hear much about internet on Cuba, so this is interesting (and I hope not to get sued for referring to an AP article).

Talking about internet access, here is a really smart conversation between David Weinberg and John Horrigan, the authors of numerous reports from the PEW Internet and American Life project (via Diplo IG community):

“Can a laptop change the world?” – A BBC review of the OLPC project, drawing a beautiful picture of its ups and downs and trying to get at the idea of their education philosophy.  And on the same subject, the Telegraph has run a long story on OLPC in Rwanda – “One laptop per child” – the only thing I could not figure is the subtitle of that article, which claimed that “One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) movement have become key factors in Rwanda’s economic growth” without providing any evidence for that in the body of the article itself… weird.

MICT regulation

“FCC Endorses Network Neutrality” – Another break in the discussion about Net Neutrality in the US.   You can also listen to Siva Vaidhyanathan discussing this development.

MICT business

“Twitter.org?” – Bo Peabody’s op-ed in Washington post questioning applicability of advertising as a the main business model for social media.  The core of the argument is that social media/networks are not media business, but communication business, and as such require a different approach.  Ethan Zukerman published a very thoughtful response to this article in his blog – “Twitter.org? and building models for social media“.

MICT and politics

“China Yearns to Form Its Own Media Empires” (via Twitter) – This is actually a rather interesting development and it is clearly labeled as a “soft power” diplomatic effort; i like this complexity of politics, business and diplomacy.

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

“Teen’s DIY Energy Hacking Gives African Village New Hope” (via @OLPC) – A pretty amazing and inspiring story of William Kamkwamba from a village in Malawi, who on his own learned how to build windmills and generate electricity for his family and more; today he has a lot of support (and PR) behind him and there is a book coming out.  Here is a video with his story:

Equally cool is this new gyrowheel, which can totally change the experience of learning riding a bike.  Thank you, Veronica, for the video!