Forum at Open Society Institute in NYC on new media in closed societies featuring John Kelley, Evgeny Morozov, myself and others.

Lovely piece on the need for local product design, focusing on a couple of notable case studies, like a Whirlpool washing machine that sold poorly in India as it had a disturbing tendency to shred saris. Some useful background on the rise of emerging markets and the challenges of selling to an extremely diverse range of "emerging market" consumers

OLPC lays off half its staff, announces a refocus on "no-cost connectivity", digital books and developing the next edition of hardware. Sounds like a bad omen for anyone doing tech nonprofits in this environment, and raises some questions about who's going to take on the really hard parts of OLPC - desiging educational uses, distributing and supporting laptops on the ground.

Excellent piece from Henry Farrell arguing that the rise of netroots around Obama suggests that we may be seeing a more involved citizenry, but that involvement may be around partisan lines, not the cross-partisan organizations Robert Putnam and others have hoped for.