Monthly Archives: October 2006

Ugandan microfinance on PBS

Posted on October 31, 2006 by Ethan

My friend Clark Boyd, who did a great deal of innovative work on the BBC/WGBH collaboration “The World”, has an amazing story airing on many PBS stations tonight. He began researching Kiva, a group that works to connect individuals in … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, Blogs and bloggers, Media | 5 Comments

Mapping land distribution in Bahrain

Posted on October 31, 2006 by Ethan

We’ve got Bahrain on the brain here at Berkman today – with Mahmood’s Den blocked, we’re all interested in precisely how the Bahrani government is going to block websites and whether the set of blocked sites will grow over time. … Continue reading →

Posted in Developing world, Human Rights, ICT4D, Media | 11 Comments

links for 2006-10-31

Posted on October 31, 2006 by Ethan

Online Dictionary for French English, Spanish English, Italian English, and more. Really lovely online dictionary, excellent for people translating from English into Romance languages or vice versa. Creates a version of a webpage where each word is a hyperlink to … Continue reading →

Posted in del.icio.us links | 1 Comment

A picture worth a thousand blogposts…

Posted on October 30, 2006 by Ethan

Mahmood Al-Yousif, the mastermind behind Mahmood.tv, is one of the bloggers I always point to when I try to explain the concept of “bridge blogging”. In an essay on his “about” page, dated June 1, 2003, he explains his motivations … Continue reading →

Posted in Developing world, Global Voices, Human Rights | 6 Comments

What Google Coop Search Doesn’t Do Well

Posted on October 27, 2006 by Ethan

Update: the Google custom search team has retuned their code and fixed most of the problems I outlined here. Very impressive. Here’s a new post on Google’s tweaking of their engine and my gratitude to them for solving this problem. … Continue reading →

Posted in Geekery, Global Voices | 13 Comments

links for 2006-10-27

Posted on October 27, 2006 by Ethan

Wikipedia Leader: I Want to Be Deleted | Workbench Interesting followup on article about Angela Beesley’s attempts to get her bio deleted from Wikipedia – is this an indictment against the appropriateness of wiki for bios? (tags: wikipedia) [WikiEN-l] Quitting … Continue reading →

Posted in del.icio.us links | 4 Comments

A bitter fight brewing: Ethiopia and Starbucks clash over coffee

Posted on October 26, 2006 by Ethan

Some readers have complained that I don’t pay enough attention to issues surrounding intellectual property. And it’s certainly true that I’m not as focused on these issues as some friends are. But every so often, IP in Africa makes the … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa | 17 Comments

Is $5m the cost of good governance in Africa?

Posted on October 26, 2006 by Ethan

Mo Ibrahim knows a few things about how money works in Africa. He built a hugely succesful mobile phone business – Celtel – in countries most companies would write off as impossibly poor markets: Chad, Niger, Sierra Leone, Malawi. He … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, Blogs and bloggers | 6 Comments

links for 2006-10-26

Posted on October 26, 2006 by Ethan

Global Voices Online � Blog Archive � Kenyan Blogosphere: Debate over social responsibility, freedom of speech, and censorship Ndesanjo's overview of the controversy in the Kenyan Blog Ring about the removal of a blog from the aggregator (tags: kenya weblogs … Continue reading →

Posted in del.icio.us links | 1 Comment

And people wonder why the US doesn’t trust the UN…

Posted on October 25, 2006 by Ethan

I got invited to participate in a post-WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society) poll organized by UNESCO to determine just what sort of online collaboration system the 40,000 who attended WSIS whould use to collaborate online. I know that … Continue reading →

Posted in ICT4D, Just for fun | 1 Comment