The World's Technology Podcast (WTP 249) starts off with updates on two stories we've been following closely in recent weeks, Iran and China. First, an update on the use of social media tools in the wake of post-election violence in Iran. Twitter might be enabling the flow on information into and out of the country, but can you trust what you're reading? Cyrus Farivar explores that question. Also, the Chinese delay a plan to require every PC sold in China to come loaded with a piece of Internet-filtering software called Green Dam, Youth Escort. Human rights groups have criticized the software, and so too have security experts who say it's so full of holes that hackers could turn China into one huge zombie computer network.
Fighting between the Pakistani Army and Taliban forces in the Swat Valley has created nothing short of a humanitarian disaster. More than two million people have been forced to flee their homes, becoming what the aid business calls Internally Displaced Persons, or IDPs. United Nations groups such as the World Food Program have been on the ground for weeks now, trying to get aid to where it is most needed. Those groups can't get that done without modern, secure communications. And that means two-way radios, laptops, GPS, and satellite data uplinks. And that's where people like Dane Novarlic come in. He's an emergency response coordinator for the World Food Program. He and his team go into areas affected by natural disasters and wars, and help aid groups get connected to each other, and to the rest of the world.
OK, there's no messing about with Technology Podcast 240 from PRI's The World. We know what you've come here for -- robots. The BBC sent me along to the RoboBusiness 2009 Conference and Expo here in Boston recently. There were some fascinating 'bots on display, including this little number, which is called a WAM arm. There was a lot of talk at the conference about the markets that are driving robotic advances. The first is an aging world population that will need extra care, the kind of care that maybe only robots will be able to provide. The other big market driver, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the military. Robots are already seeing action in Iraq and Afganistan, and by all accounts there will be more 'bots seeing even more action in the coming years. The podcast includes an audio segment I did for The World on the conference. But you want to see the robots, don't you?
This week's podcast also includes an in-depth look at a Swedish court's decision to jail and fine the founders of a website called The Pirate Bay. We start with an explainer on what, exactly, the Pirate Bay website does and does not do, and then have analysis on the global implications of the court's decision.
And somewhere in there we also talk about President Obama's pick to be the government's Chief Information Officer. His name is Vivek Kundra, and his appointment did not come without a touch of controversy. The conversation also strays, strangely enough, into politics. Obama depended heavily on tech tools during the campaign. Now that he's in Washington, he's set up a White House blog and Twitter account. But are these technologies really making a difference when it comes to ways US citizens communicate with their leaders? We include a couple of very good clips from Phil Noble, founder of a website called Politics Online.
OK, I love a good taco, especially one served up by a mobile taco truck in SoCal. I also love Korean BBQ. And while I have not yet consumed the Twitter Kool-Aid, I can definitely see the micro-blogging service's appeal. So, just imagine my surprise and delight when a story pitch that combines all three of these marvelous things crossed my desk a couple of weeks ago. There's no question that the Kogi Korean Taco Truck is the undisputed champion segment of this week's Technology Podcast (WTP 233). But kimchi quesadillas can't just be heard...and so here's a nifty audio slideshow for you:
Right, well you're probably too hungry now to read about the rest of the podcast, but here goes anyway. We start this week's show with a very interesting interview about how the technologies used to capture and distribute photographic images of the war dead have changed over the decades. The idea for this segment was sparked by last week's announcement that the Pentagon is reversing a ban on news media publishing pictures of the flag-draped coffins of soldiers. It will now be left to the families to decide whether the pictures can be published. We speak with documentary photographer David Perlmutter.
We also take an in-depth look at some potentially big news from Iran. The Iranian government allowed reporters inside Bushehr, the country's nuclear facility. The reporters were given a guided tour designed to showcase the beginning of some critical testing of the facility. Iran says its for energy purposes only, while many in the West aren't so sure. We hear from a reporter allowed inside the facility, and hear analysis from Ben Rhode of the International Institute of Strategic Studies.
And it's been kind of a roller-coaster week and a half for the social networking site Facebook. It all started when the massively popular service announced a few "tweaks," to its terms of service. Some felt the tweaks amounted to something quite sinister, claiming that the changes meant that anything anyone posted to Facebook would be owned, well, by Facebook. In perpetuity. Even if you deleted your account. Whew. The Electronic Privacy Information Center was only one of many organizations that threw a fit. Fittingly, Facebook groups against the new terms of service formed, and quickly. Facebook then countered by revoking the new terms of service, and has opted for a more community based approach to how the site is managed and governed. We get a much-needed reality check on the Facebook about-face.
Oh, and by the way, one of the UK's leading neuroscientists, Susan Greenfield, takes a swipe at Facbook and other social networking sites, claiming that they may in fact be bad for kid's brains. Is this just the old "video games are bad for you" argument, only for the Web 2.0 set? You can decide for yourself. I offer you Greenfield's argument in the podcast, but you can get more analysis here and here.
Fittingly, you can find WTP on Facebook and Twitter. Fry your brain along with us. You can hear all of WTP 233 by just clicking below!
Sure, it's a northern elephant seal, but it's doing a passable imitation of yours truly on the day after Turkey Day, otherwise known in the shopping world, apparently, as Black Friday. Luckily, I was too stuffed to even go looking for the 52-inch plasma screen television I don't need. Which meant that I, again luckily, did not suffer this ugly and ignominious fate, which was grotesque beyond words. Instead, I went trolling for something to blog about. And that's when I find this oily-skinned delight to the left, on a website called Encyclopedia of Life (EOL). EOL is, as billed on the site, "an ambitious, even
audacious project to organize and make available via the Internet virtually all
information about life present on Earth." Ambitious indeed, when you consider that means EOL is trying to create websites for each of the 1.8 million known species on the planet. And not just websites with a bit of text. We're talking rich, detailed pages, with full taxonomies for the specialists, and lots of great photos and videos for anyone, old or young, who wants to explore the vastness of life on the earth.
The man behind EOL is none other than Edward O. Wilson, Harvard biologist extraordinare and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for his non-fiction writing. I had the good fortune to listen to Professor Wilson speak about his work a couple of years ago as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. I remember his quiet, thoughtful passion for his work, and I remember how excited he was when, just at the end of the seminar, he briefly mentioned the EOL project.
The best part of the EOL project is that there are many cool ways you can help. My personal favorite is a Flickr page where you can upload photos that EOL can then use as part of their web pages on various species. OK, so now I'm thinking I should have braved the crowds, and bought that fancy dSLR camera on Friday...
What's a technology correspondent to do when he's left off the Election Day broadcast? Why, do a special Election Day podcast, of course. Here's WTP 217, which focuses on how technology has shaped, and been shaped by, the seemingly endless campaign for the US presidency.
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.
I'm not big on conferences, tech or otherwise. There's never a coherent story that comes out of most conferences. And if there's no coherent story, then I can't deliver the goods. And that means I don't get paid. Bummer. However, here I sit in Camden, Maine at Pop!Tech '08. Why? Well, first of all it's not that far from Boston, where I'm based. And second, there are some interesting global tech stories being featured here that are just on the cusp of being worth covering. Some of them I've already written about, either on the blog, or on the radio. At left is Ken Banks, the man behind FrontlineSMS, a system that combines cell phone text messages (SMS) and the web to do things like monitor elections, or improve health care. I bumped into Ken on the street last night. It was the first time we'd ever met in person, despite having carried on a virtual correspondence for months now. The picture of Ken was taken by Erik Hersman, one of the driving forces behind two projects that are getting alot of play here at Pop!Tech: AfriGadget and Ushahidi. Follow the links and you'll see that, for once, I was ahead of the curve.
The theme of this year's Pop!Tech conference is "Scarcity and Abundance." Ken and Erik work on projects that embody one half of that theme: scarcity. Neither one of them has much money to carry out their respective projects. At the same time, each of them have created tools that are proving useful in climates of scarcity, economic and otherwise. Just check out some of the things people are doing with FrontlineSMS, and then click on over to AfriGadget to readjust your notion of what it means to recycle.
If you dig around on the FrontlineSMS and AfriGadget websites long enough, you'll realize that the solutions they highlight (be they high-tech, low-tech or in-between) have their places not just in the developing world, but all over the world. And while I often get accused of working on tech stories that are too "worthy," in this case, I embrace the accusation.
After all, given the current economic crisis, we might ALL have to know how to build a house out of food bags. And soon. Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. And I guess that's why I'm here in Camden.
Even if you're not here, you can join in. Pop!Tech is being streamed live on the Interwebs.
How does the typical ending to that postcard quip go? "Wish you were here?" "Wish you were too?" Well, how about "I might have given you a sexually transmitted disease." Yeah, not typical, but potentially a real benefit to public health. An outfit called inSPOT has been trialing an Internet-based service that allows someone to send anonymous electronic postcards (e-cards) to sexual partner(s). The message, as you can see, is straightforward: I may have given you an STD, and you should get checked out. A new study detailing the efficacy of the project has just been published in PLoS Medicine.
It's fairly simple -- go the site, choose an e-card, type in the recipients' e-mail addresses (up to six), and then select an STD from a drop down list. You can opt to include your own e-mail address, and/or a personal message. The recipient receives the card, and a link to a page with disease-specific information. Syphillis, gonorrhea, chlamydia and HIV topped the list of e-cards sent, by disease, in 2006-2007.
inSPOT grew out of survey data that showed more patients would be willing to inform sexual partners of potential disease transmission via e-mail and other new technologies. The study quotes a California man: "For some partners, all I had was an email address. After sending inSPOT cards, I got some backlash, but the ending was always, 'I'm glad you told me.'"
The San Francisco Department of Public Health worked with a non-profit called Internet Sexuality Information Services to launch inSPOT four years ago. The original idea was to target gay men and other men who have sex with men, because, according to the report, "surveillance data showed that this population used the Internet to meet increasingly to meet sex partners, and such partnering was associated with increases in disease transmission."
In 2006, inSPOT expanded to include all audiences. The report says that since 2004, more than 30,000 people have sent close to 50,000 e-cards. The authors of the report say that they don't have data on the number of site users who ultimately access STD testing as a result of receiving an e-card.
The service is now available in more than a dozen cities and states in the U.S., and has now expanded internationally to include Romania, Ottawa, and Toronto.
As you ready yourself for tonight's final debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, I'd like to draw your attention to...wait for it...the Presidential election in Azerbaijan. Azeris went to the polls today to, well, give the incumbent Ilham Aliyev (son of the previous leader) yet another term in office. Expect a landslide; all of the major opposition groups boycotted the election. But one candidate didn't. Take a gander at Shiraslan Qurbanov, straight out of the Azeri heartland, according to his bio. My Azeri is a bit rusty, but I'm assured that the slogan reads, "The People's Candidate." Uncle Shiraslan, as he's known, just happens to be 70 years old today...on election day of all days. Again, according to his official bio.
But don't let Shiraslan's age fool you. The man seems to be an online whizkid. He's got lots of Azeris on his email list, not to mention his own slick website, his own Facebook page, and his own channel on YouTube. No wonder the younger generation is excited about Shiraslan's candidacy, no?
Bakhtiyar Hajiyev is the "political director" of Shiraslan's campaign. He told me in an interview today that "young Azeris are looking for new faces, new actors in Azerbaijani politics. Shiraslan is a very positive politician." Hajiyev pointed out as plusses not only his candidate's rejection of negative campaigning, but also his strong foreign policy.
Sounds too good to be true, right?
"It sounds like a paradox, but the only real opposition candidate in this election...is a virtual candidate," says Hajiyev.
Yep. Shiraslan only exists online. Hajiyev, who is a student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, worked with some other Azeri expats to create their own opposition candidate. At first, real opposition groups in Azerbaijan laughed Shiraslan off as a joke. But when they saw the success the virtual candidate was acheiving, they quickly started web sites and YouTube channels for their own, real candidates.
"We want to send a message that if there is no platform to discuss and reach people offline, you can at least try online. You can reach some voters, and create momentum," Hajiyev told me.
As for Shiraslan, no, he's not actually on the ballot. A cell phone text message campaign today urged those disinclined to vote to head to the polls, and scrawl Shiraslan's name across the ballot. Sure, that negates the ballot under Azeri law, but at least, the thinking goes, you might actually feel like voting.
And if all else fails, you can enjoy the Shiraslan rap. I'm pretty sure you can learn some useful Azeri swear words in here...but don't quote me on that.
Despite my best efforts, I realize that I am becoming an old fogy. And, as an old fogy, I want to comment on what those meddling kids are up to these days. Actually, I want to pass along information on a great example of a project designed to get kids interacting with technology. And by interacting, I don't mean playing video games. I mean making games. At left are some of the budding young game developers behind Hurricane Katrina: Tempest in Crescent City.
The game puts you in the shoes of Vivica Waters, a young girl from New Orleans who is forced to leave the city after Hurricane Katrina hits (the game has been released to coincide with the third anniversary of the storm -- August 29, 2005). Vivica moves to New York City. The game is essentially a dream that Vivica is having. She's been separated from her mother in the wake of the hurricane. She must find her mother, and, along the way, rescue trapped and injured survivors.
The release of the game is made even more timely and relevant as Gustav bears down on the Gulf, and New Orleans residents ready themselves yet again.
Tempest in Crescent City an excellent example of persuasive gaming -- games that are designed to be fun and challenging to play, while at the same time putting anyone who plays it in someone else's shoes. In other words, gulp, a game that's educational,that has a purpose.
The young people behind Tempest in Crescent City are part of something called Global Kids, a New York based nonprofit dedicated to educating urban youth about civic engagement and international affairs.
The first I came across the group was when I attended a showcase in New York City a few years back. The kids had just developed a game called Ayiti: The Cost of Life, which is meant to educate kids about the obstacles young people around the world face in getting an education. Ayiti's been played more than a million times by kids around the world, according to Global Kids.
Tempest in Crescent City is the second game developed by Global Kids, who worked in conjunction with an online gaming outfit called Game Pill, and with funding from Microsoft and AMD. I leave with you this great little video which takes you behind the scenes in the making of the game:
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