PRI's The World: Technology Podcast 216

November 03, 2008

This was supposed to be your Special Election Podcast. We were going to dive into where McCain and Obama stand on a whole host of technology issues: H1-B visas, net neutrality, and even spectrum. But, stuff happens. Still, given the amount of campaign coverage you have consumed during the past two years, and the absolute overload that the next few days will bring, maybe you won't miss it if we, as they say, give it a miss. And so, without further ado, here's Technology Podcast 216 (WTP 216). It's still a killer lineup.

We start with more on a story I blogged about earlier this week, The Global Network Initiative. The podcast includes reaction from a Yahoo lawyer, as well as an extended interview with Colin Maclay and Caroline Nolan from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

Next up, "clean" coal. Both presidential candidates have been talking about it, but what is it? And what companies, globally, can produce it? Excellent questions! We'll try to answer them for you with a report from a coal plant in West Virginia. Also, as promised, we put together a slide show to help explain:

PRI's The World: Clean Coal from Clark Boyd on Vimeo.

Then, we move to the Indian Ocean, where we'll hear about some new research on the tsunami that hit the region in 2004. We have a piece based at the University of Washington, which was responsible for a big chunk of the research. The big question for countries and governments that might be affected: if a massive tsunami only comes along once every 600 or 700 years, then is planning for one to happen tomorrow the best idea? Listen in!

We continue to bring you conversations recorded at the Pop!Tech conference in Camden, Maine. Normally, we speak with Erik Hersman about his really cool blog called AfriGadget. But in this check-in with Erik, we talk instead about another project, the one that brought him to Pop!Tech. It's called Ushahidi, a free and open source project that allows anyone to gather distributed data via text messages, email or the web, and then visualize that data on a map or timeline. The idea is to aggregate information in times of crisis or emergency. Here's a neat vid that captures the idea in 40 seconds:

And we finish off with a segment that I did for another BBC outlet, called Science in Action, earlier this week. They sent me over to George Whitesides' lab at Harvard to find out more about some low-cost technologies they are using to bring better disease diagnostics to the developing world. Here's a hint, it involves a combination of filter paper and an eggbeater:

You can follow WTP on iTunes, Twitter and Facebook. Happy Halloween!

Comments

[Robot]

"clean" coal. Both presidential candidates have been talking about it, but what is it? And what companies, globally, can produce it?.....