We move to West Africa for our second story. You have doubtless received an email which starts "I am a manager at the Bank of Nigeria," and then goes on to entice you with promises of millions. It's lovingly referred to as a 419 scam. It's named after the Nigerian law governing this kind of fraud. Despite all the warnings against answering such emails, many folks are duped into replying. West Africa has gotten a reputation for being a hotbed for Internet scams, but this week, computer experts gathered in Ivory Coast to discuss ways to the tackle the problem. We speak with the BBC's John James in Abidjan.

Then, we have an ever-so-brief item on a new Google Earth project called Virtual Rome. Too freakin' cool.

Our next story is the latest twist in the increasingly strange tale of Hossein Derakhshan, or Hoder as he's known to the blogging world. Hoder's widely regarded as the "Blogfather" of the Persian blogosphere. Back in 2000, he was one of the first to launch a blog in Persian. He even wrote a how-to guide for other would-be Iranian bloggers. His blogs, both in English and Farsi, covered a wide range of topics. His posts, however, made it clear that he was a critic of the Iranian government. Then things changed, and Hoder started siding with the Iranian government, and attacking dissidents. Not long ago, he moved back to Tehran from Canada. And now, this week, news has trickled out that he may or may not have been arrested. We get an update from Cyrus Farivar, who leads us through the twists and turns of Hoder's blogging career.

Then, we wish Happy Birthday to the International Space Station. Ten years ago this week, the first module lifted off, carrying the first module, a Russian one named "Dawn." It was soon joined by an American module called "Unity." Ten years later, it's still not finished, and it's way over-budget. Critics contend that it's not worth the money. Supporters say the ISS is proving a valuable teaching tool and training ground for future long-duration missions, possibly even to the Moon and Mars. We hear from smart people on both sides of the argument.

And speaking of the ISS...there was a spacewalk on the station that went, well, slightly awry this week. Here's the video I promised, and bear in mind...this HAS happened to you, too, just not in space.

We then switch into "science mode" for a bit, and hear about an amazing medical breakthrough in Spain. Doctors in Spain removed the windpipe of a woman with respiratory disease, and replaced it with a new airway created, in part, in the laboratory using adult stem cells. Read the write-up in The Lancet. See a video depiction of the process here. We hear from Barcelona, where the surgery took place.

And we end...with a tribute to that incredible piece of Eastern European automotive technology -- the Yugo. Didn't you know that it's production run is ending? I'll miss the jokes.

(Both photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

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JPL officials are calling this the first step in creating an "interplanetary Internet." At its heart, this system uses software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN. It's the brainchild of NASA and Vint Cerf, now VP at Google. Cerf and NASA partnered a decade ago to start work on DTN, which differs from the normal 'net protocol (TCP/IP) used here on Earth. Think about it -- all those little flying packets of information have to find a way around the delays and disruptions of space, such as when a spacecraft moves behind a planet or a solar storm kicks up. JPL notes that the delay in sending or receiving data from Mars, for example, can take between three and half to 20 minutes...at the speed of light.

DTN uses "nodes" to pass the information along. These nodes store all the data, and then pass it along when they can safely communicate with the next node. It's a classic "store-and-forward" method that NASA likens to basketball players "safely passing the ball to the player nearest the basket."

So how does DTN differ from how information is currently passed along from, say, a Mars orbiter? Leigh Torgerson, manager of the DTN Experiment Operations Center at JPL, says: "In space today, an operations team has to manually schedule each link and generate all the commands to specify which data to send, when to send it, and where to send it. With standardized DTN, this can all be done automatically."

OK, so standardization is still a long way off. In this week's test case, the only "node" that was off-planet was the Epoxi spacecraft, which is on a mission to encounter Comet Hartley two years from now. NASA already uses Epoxi as a relay for data from spacecraft currently at Mars. The other nine nodes were here on Earth, serving as stand-in simulators for a series of landers, orbiters and operations centers.

The DTN test, though, managed to successfully transmit dozens of images to and from Epoxi -- which is currently more than 20 million miles from Earth. NASA hopes that in the next few years, DTN will start to make it easier to plan and support complex missions, and maybe even a Moon base.

Personally, I can't wait for the first spam email sent from a far-off Martian colony.

But the word on some British streets is that Voice Search is having trouble with versions of the Queen's own English. The Daily Telegraph reported that one Scot (this would be a "not for work" link, if only your boss had a chance in Hades of understanding what Ewan McGregor and his pals are saying) who spoke "iPhone" into Voice Search was rewarded with a porn site. Apparently the app thought he said, "sex." Hmmm...a Welsh person got "gorrilas" and "kitchen sink" when asking for "iPhone." And a user from Surrey (south of London) was rewarded with "Einstein" when he queried for iPhone.

One user from Kent in southeastern England told the AFP that "I asked it to find my nearest pizza take-away and it came back with something about volcanoes." All this to say that if you're walking down the street in the UK, and you see and hear Brits yelling at their iPhones in poorly executed American accents, you'll know why. And bearing film history in mind, maybe...just maybe...we had it coming, right Dick Van Dyke? Chitty, no?

"Och, aye," as my Glaswegian flatmate used to say. I think.

(Screengrab from App Store on iTunes)

Then, we turn to a new wrinkle in the US Army's recruitment efforts. You may have heard this week about TroopTube, the military's answer to YouTube, which, along with other social networking sites, have been put in the brig by the Pentagon. That's not the only on-line effort. We hear about a new Army website designed to answer questions from both recruits and their parents about service in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Switching gears a bit, we return to Pop!Tech 2008, and a conversation that was recorded in a fish restaurant. The interview's not with a fish, but it is with a guy called Chip. Go figure. Chip Ransler is one of the crew behind an outfit called Husk Power Systems. The whole idea is to provide a low-cost way to turn discarded rice husks (at right) -- and if you listen to the interview you'll find out just how much goes to waste -- into electricity in rural areas in India. It's not the only effort in this regard, but Husk Power's bringing an interesting business model to the mix. Essentially, the idea is to eventually franchise small power generation plants to local towns and businesspeople.

Next up, a quick look at the situation in Burma. You might remember that bloggers were crucial in getting information to the outside world during the crack-down against monk-led protests. Now, news comes that harsh sentences have been handed down to a number of dissidents, including Nay Phone Latt, whose Burmese language blog was one of the main sources of information during the protests of December, 2007. He was sentenced to more than 20 years for "creating public alarm." More via the Committee to Protect Bloggers here.

And finally, an audio extravaganza related to a story I blogged earlier this week about an English gentleman who is blogging his grandfather's letters home from the trenches of World War I. You get the two previous pieces I did on Bill Lamin and his grandfather, Private Harry Lamin. And we also hear from a colleague of mine about how Bill's blogging inspired her to do something similar with her own grandfather's letters from World War I.

(Flu photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; Rice Husk photo by ark via Everystockphoto)

The best way to begin to tell you about this game is to show you what it isn't. Sorry, you don't get to play a hired gun, you don't get to invade a country in Latin America, and you don't get to leave a trail of utter devastation in your wake. Instead, Global Conflicts let's you be...wait for it...a journalist! (Now you see why I'm really writing about it...).

But seriously, you play an investigative reporter who is trying to uncover some deep, dark secrets. As you work to get the story straight, you get a very clear sense of just how difficult life can be for people. I lived in El Salvador for a time, and the themes explored in the game really hit home. You can play a demo online here. And, although you're armed with a pad and paper instead of a gun, you do get to meet some heavies as the game unfolds (see screenshot!).

By the way, this isn't the first game in the Global Conlficts series. The original game tackled nothing less than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yesterday, I spoke with one of the games' creators, Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen. I asked Simon what a video game can bring to the table in helping people understand a given conflict situation. He said:

"The way the games are designed, they very much let you see things from different perspectives, engaging people more deeply, and really using and facing up to what's going on. Instead of just being told what's going on, or hearing about it, with the game you have to act on it. Should I ask this or that? Should I talk to this or that person? Should I quote this or that? So you become an active participant much more than in other media forms. And that's what we want to do -- to get people closer to the conflict."

I, as the cynical journalist, also had to ask Simon the tough question -- how does it possibly compete with all those first-person shooters? He just laughed and said, "very badly." But then, he reminded me that serious games are still a relatively new genre. Both audiences (and publishers), he said, are now beginning to see the value in expanding the idea of what a game can be.

Global Conflicts: Latin America is available in most European countries already, and will go on sale in the United States soon. Next up, says Simon, is a game that looks at the plight of child soldiers in Uganda. Serious, indeed.

Obviously, Harry's words have hit a chord worldwide. Bill puts that down to Harry being "an ordinary man living through an extraordinary situation," and for conveying so well in his letters all that is most horrific and mundane. Readers have been following along, day to day, wondering what will happen to Harry. Will the letters suddenly stop, possibly meaning the end of Harry? Or, will the letters carry on and follow Harry back to England, and home? The blog format nicely augments this kind of narrative tension. Many days, my first stop on the old RSS feed is to check to see if there's an update from Harry.

Answers of a sort can be found in the piece I filed today.

Much has been written of late about the death of the blog. Maybe, maybe not. Harry's letters wouldn't really work as tweets on Twitter, although some of George Orwell's diary entries might. By posting Harry's letters as a blog, Bill's managed not only to re-create the past, but also create a legion of readers; readers who have taken inspiration from Bill's example, and have, in turn, helped him answer nagging historical questions and fill in gaps in the record.

Crowd-sourced history, right before your eyes. I'm glad the Harry survived the war, and I'm glad Bill didn't decide to kill his blog...

(Photo courtesy of Bill Lamin)

Anyway, to the barricades. We begin with some interesting news that started surfacing on Wednesday, courtesy of Newsweek. The magazine's reporters got incredible behind-the-scenes access to the campaigns, but could only publish details after the election was over. Turns out that both the Obama and the McCain campaigns were hacked this past summer by what's descibed as a "foreign entity," apparently intent on getting a handle on future policy positions. We have an interview with Matthew Bevan (pictured at left), who knows a thing or two about getting into US government computer systems. Matthew widens the discussion beyond this incident to talk about the general dangers all computer users face.

Then, it's back to the future with CNET's Declan McCullough. Declan got the jump on everybody with his article on what to expect from the Obama administration when it comes to tech policy. I got Declan on the line to run through some of the big issues, including copyright, broadband access and net neutrality. One interesting thing: Obama's called for a Chief Technology Officer for his administration. We also talk about how Obama's campaign success online may or may not translate when it comes to governance.

And speaking of that campaign success...it turns out that some of the folks behind it, Blue State Digital, have already gone and set up an office in Britain. But will what worked here in the United States work overseas, given the very different ways candidates run their campaigns? Listen in and find out. This was also a big topic under discussion at the O'Reilly Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco today.

Finally, we speak briefly with The World's Jeb Sharp about how tech figured into her five-part series (now available for download here) How Wars End.

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

I've covered the last four elections, and I've never, ever seen the kind of global interest in US politics in general, or in a specific candidate, as I have this time around. That's why the results here are not surprising, but interesting none-the-less. Just look at what happens when you gauge the global search interest in "Obama" over the past seven days.

That's right -- eight out of 10 are countries on the continent of Africa. Kenya is no shocker as the leader, considering Obama's family ties to the country.

So what do these results tell us? First, they don't imply that more Kenyans are searching for Obama than Americans. They just mean that a greater percentage of Kenyans (and Ethiopians, and Ugandans, and Cameroonians) who are online and searching are looking for information on the US President-Elect. Also, this has been the case not just in the last seven days. African nations have, according to this article, led the world in the concentration of "barack obama" searches for the past year.

Well, if you're going to name your child after the man, I guess it makes sense to know a little bit about him. For their part, the Obama team seems eager to feed its online supporters. Less than 48 hours after winning the election, Obama's transition website was up and running.

Oh, and just for fun and comparison, here's the global Google Insights results for "palin."

We begin with a report that examines how both the McCain and Obama campaigns have tried to harness the power of on-line tools such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The report includes a couple of great clips from Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post.

From there, we try to get a handle on which camp better harnessed technology in pursuit of victory. We speak first with Phil Noble, founder of a website called Politics Online. Phil told me that he's been amazed at what the Obama campaign has managed to do on-line, both from a fundraising point of view, and an organizational point of view. He looks back to 2004, and Howard Dean's failed campaign for the Democratic nomination. Noble quoted veteran 'net campaigner Joe Trippi: "The Dean Campaign was the Wright Brothers. The Obama Campaign is the Apollo moon shot."

Then, we broaden it out by turning to Andrew Rasiej at the non-partisan group blog techPresident. Andrew also has praise for the Obama campaign when it comes to using not just the web, but also cell phone text messages. The interesting question for Andrew is what happens to the online communities Obama has created after the election. He told me:

"Win or lose, it's very clear that politics is going to be completely changed, not so much as battles between two parties, but between generations over the future of the country in relation to how much information is available, when decisions get made, who makes them. This is a new vanguard of citizen activists that this technology has enabled, and every administration going forward is looking at a new 21st century democracy."

Next, we hear from a San Francisco based mobile phone company called Credo. It's a full-service company that's doing some very interesting free projects around social causes in general, and around this election in particular. They're offering a web and text message service that allows you to send friends and family an SMS reminder to go and vote. You can also send a text message to 69866, with your street address and zip code, and you will receive back, in short order, your polling location and a Google map to help you find it. And finally, Credo's implemented a Mobile Action project. Some 12,000 poll watchers worldwide will be monitoring polling locations, and using texts and calls to alert folks to potential problems at polling stations.

I find this use of mobiles and texts fascinating, and familiar. Familiar because I've reported on it before, and fascinating because it's usually in the context, not of developed democracies, but in emerging democracies. Phil Noble cites The Orange Revolution in Ukraine. See also great blog posts on this by Ethan Zuckerman of the Berkman Center at Harvard, and Erik Hersman, blogging at White African.

Happy Voting!

Oh, almost forgot. The Onion has already called the election. The winner? The voting machines.

Thank you, Onion, for some much needed, semi-comic relief.

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:

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