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Another OLPC TCO study

Posted on Tue, 08/24/2010 - 09:55

1:1 Computing costs are a difficult thing to nail down, because there are so many factors that go into it. I worked with GeSCI's Roxanna Bassi to create a worksheet to help guide cost calculations. I took a first stab four years ago, and came out with a $972/laptop cost over a 5 year program. To say that that cost estimate was not popular at the time would be an understatement.

Soccer for Social Change

Posted on Tue, 07/27/2010 - 12:22

One of the competitions we run over at Ashoka's Changemakers is now up for voting - it's focused on the use of Football (Soccer) for social change. The finalists are an amazing bunch, and thanks to a consortia of amazing developers from enomaly and We The Media, there's an equally amazing voting widget!

embed_gamechanger_widget("http://cm.wtmworldwide.com/main/embeddable_widget?lang=en");

Innovation and Cell Phones: It's not happening at Apple

Posted on Mon, 07/26/2010 - 11:53
Or Google. And certaintly not at any of the carriers. The real innovation and hacking is on the streets of Ghana, India, China, Egypt and more, as Jan Chipchase reveals in Icon Magazine: http://www.iconeye.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=443&id...: "In any cluster of mobile phone shops you find someone who offers repair services. This typically starts out as people fixing displays and speakers, which tend to break first. People then come asking if other things can be fixed, and over time there’s an increased awareness of how to fix different models.

The Missing Middle

Posted on Fri, 07/23/2010 - 13:51
Too big for microfinance, but not big enough for traditional investment? Perhaps the ideas that come out of this can fix that. In case you don't follow the Whitehouse blog http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/07/22/sme-finance-challenge-supporting-sm...

I Write Like...

Posted on Sun, 07/18/2010 - 16:52

I guess I shouldn't be too terribly surprised?

I write likeCory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Maptivism is my new favorite portmanteau

Posted on Fri, 07/16/2010 - 12:51

Through the magic of technology, this post at CrissCrossed.net from January just popped up on my radar, covering examples of using the one-two visual and data-rich impact of maps for activism. His examples cover pollution reporting in China, community mapping in Brazil and others.

Hardware, Easyware, and Flow

Posted on Wed, 07/14/2010 - 09:18

Is hardware hacking becoming more accessible in the development context?
A positive psychologist friend once explained the concept of (watch as I butcher the terms and descriptions) "flow" to me. I understood it as working on things which are interesting, difficult, but not so overwhelmingly difficult that you can't make clear progress on. Importantly, also not so easy that you just breeze mindlessly through. Good logic puzzles, programming, and such things are often found on this razor's edge between too difficult and too easy.
Hardware hacking has long been a task which only a small, geeky set of people can really enjoy a flow state while exploring the dark magics of hardware.

Social Change - to go, please

Posted on Thu, 07/01/2010 - 09:50

Cross-posted at the FrontlineSMS Blog
The recent Technology Salons have been on local and sectoral implementations of mobile technology in development.

Tech4Dev: What's in your backpack?

Posted on Tue, 06/01/2010 - 13:04

Inveno's ICT_Works blog recently advertised their awesome addition to the ICT4D world - a solid toolkit to carry to the field.
I made a much lower-tech personal version many years ago, as an IT Peace Corps volunteer. Mine of course was (a) very low cost and (b) designed to travel stuck in side-pocket of a backpack on a crowded country-bound bus. OK, it was really just a few screwdrivers, a 3-2 prong electrical adapter, and a flashlight.
I also always carried around:
1 ~3' crossover cable or crossover adapter (no faster way to test networking!)