Why WiFi in Africa?

Imagine an alternative history.  Imagine that in 1995, when Microsoft launched their walled-garden MSN service, which they fully expected would, for all intents and purposes, put the Internet out of business, imagine that they succeeded.

So today when you connected to the network, you connected to MSN’s custom portal which showed you all the sites that [...]

Mesh Potato gets cooking

Work has finally begun on the Mesh Potato. The Shuttleworth Foundation has completed agreements with David Rowe and Elektra and they are now hard at work on the production of a Mesh Potato proof-of-concept. David has just posted a fairly detailed kick-off post on his blog. A rough time-frame for the Mesh Potato [...]

Information and Communication Technologies for the Poor

Nokia 1100 – Courtesy Wikipedia

An ongoing conversation with a large foundation has inspired me to think more directly about what specific technologies stand the best chance of benefiting the poor.  Early on in the conversation, I made the point that “connectedness” alone actually counts for a lot.  Most people involved in information technologies over [...]