Baba Ramdev, the Yoga Guru Who Is Now On an Anti-Corruption Crusade
BY Lisa Goldman | Friday, August 10 2012
For years, Indian yoga guru Baba Ramdev was famous for his teachings on meditation, Ayurvedic healing and yoga asanas. His followers liked his Facebook page, followed his Twitter timeline and watched his Youtube videos. Now he has leveraged his social media fame as he turns to political activism, fasting to protest government corruption. And the mainstream media is paying attention. Read More
Iranian Government Plans to Disconnect Government Agencies from the Internet
BY Miranda Neubauer | Wednesday, August 8 2012
Iran plans to move several of its ministries and state agencies offline as a way of protecting them behind a secure computer wall from what it sees as online threats, the Telegraph reported. An Iranian official also said the measure is the first step in the launch of a long-rumored domestic intranet system set to start in 18 months, per the Telegraph. Read More
In the Philippines, Coordinating Flood Rescue Through Google Docs
BY Miranda Neubauer | Tuesday, August 7 2012
The government of the Philippines is using Google Docs and promoting the use of Google Crisis Response tools as it responds to massive floods that have submerged a third of the country's capital city, Manila, and have killed more than 50 people in the past week, according to New York Times reports. Read More
Vietnamese Blogger's Mother Sets Herself On Fire Ahead of Daughter's Trial, Reports Say
BY Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya | Monday, August 6 2012
Three political bloggers will be brought to trial tomorrow in Ho Chi Minh City on charges of "distorting the truth" and "denigrating the part and state," AFP reports. If convicted the bloggers could serve up to 20 years in jail. Read More
Bringing News to Sub-Saharan Africa Via SMS and Dial-to-Listen Programs
BY Lisa Goldman | Friday, August 3 2012
Deutsche Welle has figured out how to disseminate the news in developing regions with low literacy rates and little access to electricity. The German media group launched a project that takes advantage of the high penetration of mobile phones in rural sub-Saharan Africa to delivers news via over-the-phone voice technology. All it takes to access the news programs is a simple mobile phone - no Internet access necessary. Users call a number to access Learning by Ear, an education show that broadcasts 10-minute segments on a variety of subjects ranging from health to politics. The cost is less than an ordinary phone call. Read More
Is This the Rise of the Civic Hacker Hub?
BY David Eaves | Thursday, August 2 2012
The tech startup space has a long history of creating work spaces that bring together the various players — VCs, ideas people, business types and developers – necessary to launch new projects. Some of these spaces — the iHub in Nairobi strikes me as the most powerful example — have served as hosts to hackathons and sessions that bring together a similar set of actors in the open government and civic hacking space. It will be interesting to see if efforts to transfer that model to the opengov space develop. Read More
With Text Messages, Saving Lives Through Timely Words
BY Lisa Goldman | Thursday, August 2 2012
Sometimes all it takes to save lives is the right words at the right time. That's what researchers are finding as they explore two projects to use text messages in an effort to influence people's behavior. Early intervention specialist Patrick Meier describes how this knowledge was used in conflict resolution — specifically in a project called CeaseFire Chicago, which reduced dramatically the number of shootings in the city's marginalized neighborhoods. Now a Kenyan NGO is employing the same methodology to reduce conflict in the slums of Nairobi. And this is all based on earlier work that a World Health Organization found used text messaging to improve treatment results for patients with HIV in Kenya. Read More
Ukrainian Civic Movement Unveils Online Tool to Monitor Parliament Members
BY Antonella Napolitano | Monday, July 30 2012
A new tool for monitoring parliament members' activity is now available online, the Kyiv Post reports. The tool has been created by Chesno (“honest”), a civic movement founded a year ago by a group of civil society organizations with the aim of empowering citizens with information tools and improving their knowledge and political choices. Read More
In Rural Developing Regions, Free Software Turns Simple Mobile Phones into Tools of Advancement
BY Lisa Goldman | Friday, July 27 2012
A simple open-source telephony platform offers to bring communications networks to developing nations where literacy is low and Internet access limited. Freedom Fone is free software that enables organizations to create voice-activated communications networks. In regions where simple mobile phones are more common than toilets, let alone Internet access, Freedom Fone can be used to access, share and report information. Read More
Succeeding Means Letting Go: A Response to David Eaves
BY Tom Steinberg | Thursday, July 26 2012
Responding to David Eaves, mySociety Director Tom Steinberg pulls the lid off of a project in the works: a new open-source component for civic hackers, built by Chile's Ciudadano Inteligente, that will fit into mySociety's new Components framework. "It's because we believe," Steinberg writes, "that the only way that the Components can really thrive beyond our organizations is if they are truly interoperable over the web, truly owned by different people, and if they can handle massively varying political and cultural contexts. It is our goal that in the future any of the Components being used to underpin a website or app can be out and replaced by a clone that speaks the same API, but which may be built by a different group, in a different language. Interoperability and flexibility are everything." Read More