Stories from Quick Reads and Technology
Keeping Minors Safe Online Is Everyone's Responsibility
We live in an age in which dizzying technological advances sometimes put minors in danger. In a post on blog Mujeres Construyendo (Women Building), Gloria Serrato delves into society's responsibility to protect them and teach them the appropriate use of new technologies: Diferentes organismos han emitido iniciativas para defender a los menores de...
A Chilean Real-Time Video App Launches at the Boston Marathon
The application RhinoBirdTV, developed by the Chilean Felipe Heusser, who founded the NGO Ciudadano Inteligente, allows users to share video experiences in real time. The makers of RhinoBirdTV hope their product will help facilitate a more democratic world by breaking down boundaries and connecting people through simple-to-distribute live videos. RhinoBirdTV chose to launch its Android version on...
Colombia's Festival on the Value of Data in Development
The Cartagena Data Festival has just wrapped up in Cartagena, Colombia. The festival is an international event committed to discussing data deployment for human development and related topics, like open data, data journalism, big data, and other analysis tools. The festival, which ran from April 20 to April 22 and took place in...
Protecting Personal Data in Argentina Is a Work in Progress
In an article for online magazine Digital Rights: Latin America & The Caribbean, No.21, Argentinean lawyer Valeria Milanés explains that even though the United States is a world leader in data processing, it does not have legislation for the protection of personal data. The US is also considered to have “an inadequate level of protection...
Caracas #SmartCityHack Proposes Solutions to People's Problems
The Venezuelan edition of the Hackathon Smart Cities took place in Caracas from 6 to 8 March, 2015. Don't you know what a hackathon is? If so, read this post! The #SmartCityHack event was simultaneously organized in 27 cities by Global Datafest. “@forummedia: 5historias de querer es poder detrás del...
Finally, a Mobile App for Geolocated News in Latin America
FACTICO is the first mobile media designed in Latin America to geolocate information. But, what is app all about? FACTICO es la aplicación de noticias e información más innovadora y atractiva de América Latina. Nuestras notas son compactas y fáciles de leer, y todos nuestros contenidos están georreferenciados. La información más importante del...
Iran's Minister of ICT Suggests Instagram Will Not Be (Completely) Blocked Until an Alternative Is Found
Iran's leading reformist newspaper, Shargh, ran an article this past Sunday entitled: “The promises of the Minister of ICT to clear the problems of mobile social media.” The focus of Iran's Minister of Information and Communication Technology Mahmoud Vaezi was the filtering status of popular mobile applications, with a particular...
Voting Underway in Kenya Blog Awards 2015
The voting phase of the Kenyan Blog Awards is ongoing and will continue until April 30, 2015: The Kenyan Blog Awards seeks to reward bloggers that post on a regular basis, have great and useful content, are creative and innovative. These awards represent BAKE’s efforts in the promotion of quality...
How a Celebrity's Facebook Check-In Brought Down a Brigade in Taiwan
After the photos of the unauthorized tour to Apache helicopters AH-64E were posted on Facebook, 18 militant officials were disciplined.
Are Zuckerberg and Internet.org Genuinely Good for Panama?
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg took advantage of his invitation to attend the Summit of the Americas in Panama City and met with his CEO counterparts in the region to promote Internet.org, a partnership he initiated between big business, non-profit organizations, and communities, the goal of which is to connect more...
Meet Mexico's Crowdfunding Campaign Against Censorship and Bots
A developer behind the crowdfunding project says the proposed software "would have the ability to analyze millions of messages and could also measure various parameters such as geographical origin."
Bolivia to Host First International Community Radio and Free Software Conference
The first international conference on community radio and free software will be held in Cochabama, Bolivia from June 11-13, 2015. So far, the community radio stations from Spanish-speaking countries that have confirmed their assistance are: Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, and of course, the host, Bolivia. The preliminary agenda...
Mapping Vietnam's Socio-Economic Indicators
The World Bank has launched mapVIETNAM, an interactive map that shows various socio-economic indicators in Vietnam such as poverty rates, employment, and electricity connectivity. The photo above shows the number of households living on $2 dollars a day. Using the map, we can see that poverty rates are high in...
#HackEC15 — An Open Data Challenge in Ecuador
As part of the Second International Conference on Democracy and Digital Government 2015 (ICEDEG 2015), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is hosting Hack Ecuador Challenge 2015 (HEC'15). The event welcomes Ecuadorians with open-data apps that promise to deliver needed services in local communities, improving the nation's online ecosystem, especially in the...
Watch Out for MozFest East Africa 2015
MozFestEA will take place from July 17th – 19th 2015, at Victoria University, Kampala, Uganda under the theme,“Building solutions for Africa's challenges, together on the web”: MozFest East Africa is an annual event that brings together educators, innovators, learners and makers from East Africa and beyond to share experiences and...
Real Goats. Real Stories. Bangladesh Delivers.
Read the full interview here at Scroll.in. Bangladesh has now a satirical Facebook page much like Pigeons of New York, which is itself a parody site of the famous Humans of New York project. Goats of Bangladesh is only about six months old, but it boasts of almost 10,000 followers. Sahil Bhalla of Scroll.in interviewed one of the...
Spain and Latin America Celebrate Open Data Day
One again, bloggers, hackers, designers, experts, as well as citizens interested in open data and transparency will meet to celebrate International Open Data Day 2015 all over the world to promote the opening of government data. The event is expected to have online meetings but also in-person activities all over...
Here Are Kenyan Technology Companies That Were Funded in 2014
Do you know Kenyan technology companies that got funded in 2014? Erik Hersmann lists them in this blog post: Early stage capital Angani – Public cloud computing provider BRCK – Rugged, wireless WiFi device CardPlanet – Mobile money payment system aimed at business and NGOs iProcure – Software for optimizing...
14 Open Source Products Based in Africa
Despite many problems facing the African continet, African open source innovators are not lagging behing. Here is a list of 14 open source projects coming out of the continent.
Smart Cities Hackathon in Venezuela
Global Datafest is organizing the Smart Cities Hackathon, held simultaneously in 27 different cities around the world. The Venezuelan edition of the Smart Cities Hackathon calls on programmers, big data experts, urbanists, public officers and communications specialists who have an interest in developing technological solutions for issues related with the...
Malawian Student Makes His Own TV Station
Chisomo Daka, a student at the University of Malawi’s chancellor college, has created his own TV station, Paul Ndiho reports: Innovation is happening across Africa, in all different sectors, from education to energy, banking to agriculture and in television broadcasting. In Malawi, a university student has created a community TV...
