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CTA | ICT Update
DG | ICT
APC | News
iConnect online | News
IAALD | News
Information Policy | web log
DG | E-Government
UNDP | ICT for Development Observatory
Eldis | ICT for development
Thoughts About K4D | Web log
Digital Communities | Magazine | International News
AllAfrica | ICT and Telecom | News
InfoDev | Highlights
R4D | ICTs
TechSoup | Articles
Related Newsletters:
Mobile Phones
Connectivity
Information society
Tips for Standardizing Your IT Infrastructure
TechSoup | Articles 09 07 2008
INET Africa Speaks to Critical Need for African Interconnection
Digital Communities | Magazine | International News 09 07 2008
Rwanda: GTZ Donates IT Equipment to Prosecutor General's Office
AllAfrica | ICT and Telecom | News 08 07 2008
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CTA / ICT Update
A current awareness bulletin for ACP agriculture
Satellite solutions
06 06 2008 Getting precise information during a conflict or emergency means relief organizations can take quick and effective decisions. UNOSAT analyses satellite data to give disaster managers the details they need.
Window to the world
05 06 2008 The war in northern Uganda has driven thousands of people from their homes to live in camps. Now, after a lot of trial an error, BOSCO Uganda has brought the internet and low-cost phone calls to the camps, giving the people a chance to tell their own story.
From propaganda to peace
05 06 2008 Radio was used to incite hatred in the build up to the genocide in Rwanda. But today the medium promotes messages of reconciliation and peace to those still traumatized by the violence.
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DG / ICT
dgCommunities is both a place to find knowledge resources focused on development issues and an interactive space to share knowledge, participate in discussions and find people with similar interests.
'Computerizing agricultural cooperatives: a practical guide'
04 07 2008
NIST: Forensic Sciences
03 07 2008
Blogger Arrests
24 06 2008
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APC / News
Internet and ICTs for social justice and development.
South Africans against xenophobia, racism and tribalism assert themselves on Facebook
23 05 2008
JOHANNESBURG (FD for APCNews) - News reports from South Africa are shocking. Violence unseen in years was unleashed in the poorest districts of Johannesburg, a city where APC counts four of its member organisations and many staff. From neighbouring Pretoria, Tshepo Thlaku of member Ungana-Afrika decided to act, using what he knows best: technology. He started a group on the social networking website Facebook called South Africans Against Xenophobia, Racism & Tribalism. “The group is growing fast like wild fire and there is a number of people from NGOs and church groups sharing contacts and project ideas,” Tshepo declared.
The wireless school connectivity project... a concrete outcome
23 05 2008
HARARE (Muroro Dziruni for Connect Africa) - The wireless school connectivity project is an initiative that has connected a secondary school in a poor township of Harare to the internet, using wireless technologies. The genesis of this project was a result of the wireless skills training workshop, which took place in Pretoria, South Africa in 2005 and was facilitated by APC. Muroro Dziruni of Connect Africa in Zimbabwe tells the story of how wireless technology can work in Africa, when everyone joins in and cooperates.
South Africans against xenophobia, racism and tribalism take to Facebook
22 05 2008
JOHANNESBURG (FD for APCNews) - News reports from South Africa are shocking. Violence unseen in years was unleashed in the poorest districts of Johannesburg, a city where APC counts four of its member organisations and many staff. From neighbouring Pretoria, Tshepo Thlaku of member Ungana-Afrika decided to act, using what he knows best: technology. He started a group on the social networking website Facebook called South Africans Against Xenophobia, Racism & Tribalism. “The group is growing fast like wild fire and there is a number of people from NGOs and church groups sharing contacts and project ideas,” Tshepo declared.
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iConnect online / News
Information on the application of knowledge and ICTs in sustainable development.
Evaluation of the Introduction of PDAs for Malaria Control in Maputo Province, Mozambique
07 07 2008 This evaluation study, written by Eng. Jamo Macanze, has as its objective to conduct a comparative study about theefficiency and efficacy of the data collection, sending and analyse between the manual process (based on the use of paper) and the automated (based on the use of PDAs). The same study will analyse the factor linked to the quality of the data, adequacy and data collection and transmission costs.
Mobile Cell Phones and Poverty Reduction: Technology Spending Patterns and Poverty Level Change among Households in Uganda
07 07 2008 This case study, by Ms Kathleen Diga from IDRC, examines the spending behaviour of households with mobile phones in rural Uganda and whether such strategies such as substitutions have affected the well-being of these community members.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Access to Learning Award (ATLA) 2009
07 07 2008 The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual Access to Learning Award is inviting applications. The Award recognizes the innovative efforts of public libraries and similar institutions outside the United States to connect people to information and opportunities through free access to computers and the Internet. The award is given by Global Libraries, a special initiative of the foundation’s Global Development Program.
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IAALD / News
Agricultural Information News from IAALD, the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists.
Tools and Methods for Sharing Knowledge: The CGIAR's Wiki Approach
03 07 2008 2008/07 - CGIAR ICT-KM Program Blog
Getting web 2 into use in agricultural research
03 07 2008 2008/07 - AgInfo News from IAALD
Text messages empower poor farmers
25 06 2008 2008/05 - BBC [The BBC's Damian Grammaticas sees how poor Indian farmers are using business text messages to get better prices for their goods.]
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Information Policy / web log
Olympic Games 2008: Biggest media centre opens
08 07 2008 Beijing Olympic organisers opened to journalists Sunday the Games media centre, the biggest in the history of the sporting movement, officials said. The Main Press Centre, near the Olympic Stadium, will be formally inaugurated by Liu Qi, head of the...
ICANN, IANA Websites Hacked
08 07 2008 The ICANN and IANA websites suffered hackers, with a Turkish group called "NetDevilz" claiming responsibility for the attack. The hack meant internet users were temporarily redirected from both sites last Thursday. http://technewsreview.com.au/article.php?article=5339
Net a key productivity driver: OECD
08 07 2008 Karen Dearne POLICIES affecting the internet can no longer be seen as narrow sectoral telecommunications issues, according to OECD secretary general Angel Gurria. "The internet has become a fundamental economic infrastructure, and policies affecting it are now mainstream economics," he...
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DG / E-Government
dgCommunities is both a place to find knowledge resources focused on development issues and an interactive space to share knowledge, participate in discussions and find people with similar interests.
Millennium Challenge Albania Threshold Agreement Public Procurement Component Fact Sheet
30 04 2008
Dutch Government Abandons e-Voting for Red Pencil
30 04 2008
The Swiss e-voting Experience
30 04 2008
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UNDP / ICT for Development Observatory
Issues For Developing Countries
Our Paradoxical Attitudes Toward Privacy
04 07 2008 Our privacy principles are wobbly. We are more or less likely to open up depending on who is asking, how they ask and in what context. The scientists conducted several surveys of college students, asking them to provide an e-mail address and then indicate whether they had ever engaged in a list of wayward, or in some cases illegal, activities.
Science Dissemination using Open Access
04 07 2008 Open Access means aims to remove restrictions that exist on the access to articles and knowledge to the world-wide scholarly community, in particular to those in developing countries. Scientists in these countries still have difficulty in publishing their work due to the lack of access to the network, to their institutional economic difficulties or to the lack of awareness of available Open Access solutions.
Seoul and New York Achieve Top Rankings in Municipal E-Governance in International Survey
04 07 2008 A global survey of city websites has identified Seoul, South Korea, as the top-ranked city in the performance of municipal e-governance. The research study was conducted jointly by the E-Governance Institute, School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University-Newark, USA and the Global e-Policy e-Government Institute at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), Korea.
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Eldis / ICT for development
Information strategic, policy or practical interest for development practitioners based in both the North and South.
Computerising agricultural cooperatives: a practical guide
03 07 2008 Agricultural cooperatives have been slow to computerise in least developed countries, but this fact is changing rapidly as computers become cheaper ...
Do internet and communication technologies ( ICTs) assist in development?
26 06 2008 This guide discusses the role of Internet and Communication technologies (ICTs) in development. It takes a particular look at the relationship between ...
E-government should support bureaucracy rather than reducing it
09 05 2008 E-government policies when designed along the line of New Public Management (NPM) ideology are aimed at reforming the organisation of the public administration, ...
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Thoughts About K4D / Web log
Dealing with Knowledge and Understanding for Development (K4D), especially in donor assistance policies and projects seeking to enhance knowledge systems in developing countries. Science and technology is a key concern as well as ICT in developing nations. From John A. Daly
What is patriotism?
08 07 2008 Over the 4th of July weekend I saw published interviews with Obama and McCain on the meaning of xx_quotation_xxpatriotismxx_quotation_xx. According to Answers.com:Love of and devotion to onexx_apos_xxs country.I donxx_apos_xxt see how the candidates were ever going to beat that definition.A better question might have been posed: xx_quotation_xxWhat should an American do now to best express patriotism?xx_quotation_xxI suppose the right answer for this country, with
Stove Technology
08 07 2008 Image source: The Bavarian kitchenI was thinking about stoves.It was Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, who got me to thinking about them. He is a fascinating character. A spy for the British, who went on to be knighted in England, lead the Bavarian army, introduce the potato to Bavaria, and marry the widow of Lavoisier, he was an important scientist. He was the man who successfully challenged
Who were the greatest presidents?
08 07 2008 I heard Joseph Ellis the other day considering who were the greatest American presidents. He chose Washington after saying that most historians agreed that Washington, Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were the three greatest presidents.Those three faced the greatest challenges -- the creation of the office (and of course leading the troops in the Revolutionary War), the Civil War, and the
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Digital Communities / Magazine / International News
Information technology (IT) case studies, applications, news and best practices by and for international, state, city and county government.
INET Africa Speaks to Critical Need for African Interconnection
09 07 2008 "Where countries and networks are separated by lack of interconnectivity."
Governments Around the Globe Have Become Early Adopters of Web 2.0 Strategies.
08 07 2008 Will e-government be replaced by Gov 2.0?
Offshore Call Centers Improve But Fall Short, As Language Barriers Affect Problem Solving
03 07 2008
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AllAfrica / ICT and Telecom / News
Nigeria: Chinese Firm to Build Computer Plant
08 07 2008 Chinese-based Information Technology Company, Spur Group is to establish a multi-million dollar manufacturing plant to produce computing hard wares and soft wares in Nigeria.
Nigeria: No Plan to Sell Sat-3-Transcorp
08 07 2008 Transnational Corporation (Transcorp) has said that it is not selling Sat-3 communication cables.The company's spokesman Dayo Ojo was reacting to speculation that Transcorp was planning to sell Sat 3.
Nigeria: Family Petitions Police Over MTN Base Station
08 07 2008 A prominent family in Ondo State has petitioned the state Police Command over an alleged trespass by one of the Global System of Mobile Telecommunications (GSM) providers in the country, MTN on its land in Owo Local Government area of the state.
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InfoDev / Highlights
World Bank Doing Business 2008 Report now available
03 07 2008 Co-published by The World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Doing Business Report 2008 is the fifth in a series of annual reports investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. In particular, it identifies countries where to do business, from the easiest to the most difficult places, through indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights.
infoDev announces awards for the establishment of Working Groups and Regional Networks on Business Incubation that promote South-South Knowledge Sharing
03 07 2008 Proposals were submitted in response to RFP "Promoting ICT-enabled Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries through Business Incubation"
infoDev Global Network of Business Incubators' member selected as finalist for the Development Marketplace 2008 awards
03 07 2008 Tiruchirappalli Regional Engineering College - Science & Technology Entrepreneurs Park (TREC-STEP) from India has been selected as a finalist among 100 candidates for the DM2008 awards. 1,768 proposals were submitted for this year's competition. TREC-STEP has been a member of infoDev's Global Network of Business Incubators since 2004.
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R4D / ICTs
Up-to-date information on DFID’s current research portfolio
Human impact of climate change highlighted through Google Earth
05 07 2008 Climate Change in Our World shows global temperatures over the next hundred years, along with stories of how people in some of the world's poorest countries are already being affected by changing weather patterns
Sharing Research Agendas on Knowledge Systems
05 07 2008 A call for Research Summaries for the Global Research Seminar, UNESCO, Paris, 28-30 November, 2008
Joint IDRC-SciDev.Net Science Journalism Award
05 07 2008 SciDev.Net has announced its second joint IDRC-SciDev.Net Science Journalism Award and seeks applications from journalists in developing countries
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Mobile Phones
From the newsfordev database of articles
Is It Safe?
Reason magazine | All articles 09 07 2008 Gmail announced on its blog yesterday that it has upgraded its privacy settings to allow users to sign out of their accounts remotely, as well as track who has signed in under their name:
The top table, under "Concurrent session information," indicates all open sessions, along with IP address and "access type" -- which refers to how email was retrieved, for example, through iGoogle, POP3 or a mobile phone. The bottom table, under "Recent activity," contains my most recent history along with times of access. I can also view my current IP address at the very bottom of this window, where it says "This computer is using IP address..."

With this information, I can quickly verify that all the Gmail activity was indeed mine. I remember using Gmail at the times and locations listed. Being extra cautious, I can also click on the "Sign out all other sessions" button to sign out of the account I left open at home.
Scott Loganbill at the tech blog Web Monkey wrote about the privacy upgrades like a gleeful, paranoid voyeur, and calls the new application features an opportunity "to turn the table and spy on the spies"—proof that even innocuous geeks suspect that someone, somewhere, is reading their email. And now, Marathon Man:
 
 
PCCW makes pitch to keep iPhone from luring customers to Hutchison
Moreover | Internet | International News 08 07 2008 at 10:12am By Gaurang Donovan Hong Kong mobile-phone operators have launched bargain offers hoping to prevent customers switching to Hutchison Telecom for the Apple iPhone 3G due to launch on Friday, according to the . PCCW Mobile yesterday introduced a
Noise cancellation for mobiles
The Engineer | News 08 07 2008 Edinburgh-based Wolfson Microelectronics has started sampling an active noise cancellation chip specifically designed for mobile phone applications.
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Connectivity
From the newsfordev database of articles
OLPC Oceania's Lessons Learned for XO Laptop Expansion
One Laptop per Child News 08 07 2008 As David Lemming explained to us in describing OLPC Oceania's participatory development model, the area colloquially referred to as "Oceania" is really a scattering of small countries, many with populations less than half a million, scattered across the Pacific Ocean. They may be beautiful tropical islands, but their remote locations mean Internet costs and quality of service can be shockingly poor. Which makes the progress of OLPC Oceania all that more impressive, and I believe a model for how a one laptop per child program should be implemented in resource-poor countries.
OLPC Oceania
Small classes of small XO users
Start Small First, OLPC Oceania started small - just 50 XO laptops in a Solomon Islands pilot. That allowed the implementing team to take it slow, building XO cultural integration, which can be even more important that technological integration. Even now, backed by a 5,000 XO laptop donation from OLPC itself, the program is taking measured steps to roll out programs in small doses. The team handed out 53 XO laptops in Papua New Guinea, a manageable size when:
None of the children have any experience of computers before. Of the teachers, only the Principal and one or two others are computer literate.
Build Local Alliances OLPC Oceania understood from the beginning that they needed to get buy-in from local leaders, and make technology relevant to the entire community - not just XO laptops for children. While parents love to see kids with computers, it takes a village to make learning happen, as a practice and a priority. Just listen to how Ian Thompson describes his efforts in XO laptop distribution:
OLPC Oceania
Making new OLPC-enabled friends
"I feel like Father Christmas! I get to give out laptops to children-who could say no to that? Not only will it help them learn, but it will also help all community members to engage with Internet technology and get connected to the global network. I am also excited about setting up RICS sites around the region like the one launched recently in Gaire, in Papua New Guinea."
Build on Complimentary Activities Note that Ian has linked OLPC with both Improvement of Rural Primary Education Facilities (IRPEF) and RICS, the Rural Internet Connectivity System - 16 sites across Oceania that will provide Internet access to rural and remote Pacific communities that are currently not serviced by commercial operators. By linking XO sites to these complimentary services, all three projects are strengthened through interdependence and shared infrastructure. Of course these efforts build on earlier activities like PFnet and DLCP which introduced information and communication technologies to remote Oceania communities and taught the project staff valuable implementation lessons.
OLPC Oceania
Teachers - in the picture
Learn Lessons Now guess who was the PFNet Technical Advisor and now is OLPC Oceania's Project Manager? David Lemming, who has worked in ICT for Solomon Island development since 1996. OLPC Oceania activity reflects the collective leaning of ICT experts like David, who I see taking recommendations from his PFNet evaluation report and incorporating them into OLPC Oceania. And that may be the greatest determinant of success for OLCP Oceania - its leaders are open to learning from previous activities, and actively incorporate those lessons into the next program. May David, Ian, and the whole OLPC Oceania team be successful yet again. PS: Jim Gettys has a great write-up of OLPC Oceania's PNG rollout in this week's Community News.
[Ecology] The stochastic nature of larval connectivity among nearshore marine populations
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | recent issues 08 07 2008 Many nearshore fish and invertebrate populations are overexploited even when apparently coherent management structures are in place. One potential cause...
[Neuroscience] Endocannabinoid signaling controls pyramidal cell specification and long-range axon patterning
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | recent issues 08 07 2008 Endocannabinoids (eCBs) have recently been identified as axon guidance cues shaping the connectivity of local GABAergic interneurons in the developing...
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Information society
From the newsfordev database of articles
ITU Asks Countries To Set Up Global Child Helpline - Bernama
Google News | World Summit on the Information Society | News 08 07 2008

ITU Asks Countries To Set Up Global Child Helpline
Bernama, Malaysia - Jun 19, 2008
The importance of child helplines was endorsed at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in November 2005. "We encourage countries, and all ...
Resolutions on global press freedom issues - Scoop.co.nz (press release)
Google News | World Summit on the Information Society | News 08 07 2008

Resolutions on global press freedom issues
Scoop.co.nz (press release), New Zealand - Jun 19, 2008
... state control of the information and programming of the media, a doctrine that was not admitted by the World Summit on the Information Society - WSIS. ...
Cyrillic names many enlarge number of Russian Internet domains - ITAR-TASS
Google News | World Summit on the Information Society | News 08 07 2008

Cyrillic names many enlarge number of Russian Internet domains
ITAR-TASS, Russia - Jun 22, 2008
... both the principles and the international multi-stakeholder model successfully applied also during the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). ...
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TechSoup / Articles
TechSoup.org offers nonprofits a one-stop resource for technology needs by providing free information, resources, and support.
Tips for Standardizing Your IT Infrastructure
09 07 2008 Minimize costs â€' and help-desk requests â€' by keeping technology consistent across your org.
Uninterruptible Power Supply Options for Nonprofits
30 06 2008 We'll answer common UPS questions and explore the systems that may best fit your organization's needs.
A Few Good Web Hosting Providers
10 06 2008 Find out what nonprofits should look for when selecting a Web hosting provider.
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