January 2011
115 posts
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WatchTonight ”60 Minutes” travels to the Brazilian jungle in search of the most elusive of all of nature’s big cats, the jaguar. Who best to lead the way? Our dear friend, Alan Rabinowitz.
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A gap year need not break the bank →
Global Citizen Year was cited as an example of how a gap year between high school and college doesn’t need to break the bank by offering scholarships to help defray the cost. And there are other perks, too. “What we’ve seen so far is our kids after this year are hungry for college,” explained CEO Abby Falik. “They have a skill set that will help them be much more self-directed.”
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WatchRiley Crane, a postdoctoral fellow at the MIT Media Lab, found out about the DARPA Red Balloon Challenge four days before it started (find ten balloons placed in ten different locations around the country). Four days, eight hours, and 52 minutes later his team had won the competition. Watch him talk about how they did it and the challenges they encountered in the process.
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“One interesting impact of Crisis Mapping that hadn’t occurred to me two years...”
– Patrick Meier, What is Crisis Mapping? An Update on the Field and Looking Ahead
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Mother Jones: What's Happening in Egypt, Explained... →
This is an incredibly useful guide. Give it a read.
(via theatlantic)
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“Dear GVer friends..
I just wanted to note that tomorrow is a big day in Cairo,...”
– This email is from one of the GV authors to our internal listserv. We wanted to share it with you.
More of our Global Voices coverage from local bloggers in the region is here. Please help us spread the word.
(via globalvoices)
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Social Animal →
We are living in the middle of a revolution in consciousness. Over the past few decades, geneticists, neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and others have made great strides in understanding the inner working of the human mind. Far from being dryly materialistic, their work illuminates the rich underwater world where character is formed and wisdom grows. They are giving us a...
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Four members of the West Philly Hybrid X Team... →
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WatchSimon Hauger and Azeem Hill on building bad-ass hybrids
The West Philly Hybrid XTeam came this close (thumb and forefinger ever so narrowly spaced) to winning the Progressive Automotive XPRIZE’s $10 million prize this year. Simon Hauger, who came to teaching from a career in engineering, started the team as an afterschool project for students who wanted a hands-on science experience. Hauger and...
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Syyn Labs' Chief East Coast Geek Builds Scrappy... →
Syyn’s usual performances on film are, by nature, misleading. It’s easy to mistake the single shot of continuous action in Syyn’s Google, Disney and OK Go machines as the norm. In fact, the OK Go device required 85 takes before the entire series of interactions made it to the end without failing. A rolling billiard ball would miss its target. A chair wouldn’t tilt over....
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Kenya's Banking Revolution →
To meet the future of retail banking, cross Moi Avenue into the rougher part of downtown Nairobi, pass the Chicken Spot restaurant and squeeze between four stalls selling counterfeit mobile phones, and you’ll reach a door — and behind it a tiny room containing a hat stand, a wall calendar, a strip light and a desk.
Patrick Maina’s offices don’t look like a bank, his bank —...
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India to plug in solar-powered telecom towers →
The high-powered schmoozing at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has yielded a project to install solar-powered cell phone towers in India.
Vihaan Networks Limited (VNL) and lithium ion battery maker Boston Power today announced that the two companies have successfully developed the small-scale telecom stations which VNL plans to roll out this year.
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“Today’s videogames are increasingly created on an epic scale, with...”
– Jane McGonigal says that videogames make players feel like their best selves, so why not give them real problems to solve?
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Stephanie Coontz: Gay marriage isn't... →
nprfreshair:
A Washington Post op-ed on gay marriage by tomorrow’s guest, Stephanie Coontz. (More from The New York Times)
Stephanie Coontz, a professor of history and family studies and author of “Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage,” says that marrying for love is a radical idea. Ironically, as marriage is becoming a more emotionally satisfying relationship, it is also becoming...
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Clay Shirky on Brian Lehrer →
Listen to Clay Shirky, author of “The Political Power of Social Media” (Jan/Feb 2011), discuss social media and Tunisia on the Brian Lehrer Show.
(via foreignaffairsmagazine)
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WatchHeather Knight and her colleagues at Syyn Labs got their big break when they masterminded the Rube Goldberg device for OK Go’s music video, This Too Shall Pass. We asked Heather and her crew to create a Rube Goldberg to kick off PopTech 2010. And with bated breath, we watched the apparatus come to life – with a little help from some friends.
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It's Tumblr Tuesday and we're crushing on...
The Future Journalism Project, a documentary initiative exploring disruption and opportunity in journalism.
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WatchIBM Centennial Film: 100 X 100 - A century of achievements that have changed the world
The film features one hundred people, who each present the IBM achievement recorded in the year they were born. The film chronology flows from the oldest person to the youngest, offering a whirlwind history of the company and culminating with its prospects for the future.
(via smarterplanet)
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Why Africa is Open for Business →
Recently, I was asked to present the business perspectives in Africa to students of one of the top business schools in the US. When I asked the students at the beginning of my presentation if they would be interested in doing business in Africa, the great majority didn’t raise their hands. When I asked the few who raised their hands what type of business they would engage in Africa, their...
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“For robotics-assisted surgeries, the surgeon has no sense of touch right now....”
– Howard Chizeck, a professor of electrical engineering at University of Washington. Chizeck is part of a group at UW that has hacked Microsoft’s new Kinect gaming technology for an inventive new purpose: surgical robotics.
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“With the growth of the Web and social networks, the potential global audience...”
– Luis A. Ubiñas, president of the Ford Foundation announcing Just Films, a five-year initiative to pour $50 million into documentaries -– defined broadly, including online-only efforts -– that are focused on social issues. (via NYT)
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Watchfuturejournalismproject:
While crowdfunding site Kickstarter may not have a business model to resurrect the publishing industry, it shows promise, and has managed to channel boatloads of money to a cast of worthy recipients.
Words Without Borders is a Brooklyn-based online magazine that hopes to unlock the power of foreign literature by translating works into English. Through Kickstarter, Words...
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WatchBrian Elliot founded Friendfactor to unlock the power of friendship to accelerate legal freedoms for LGBT people. Friendfactor’s innovative social networking platform shifts the focus of gay rights from ideology towards a far more personal concept: friends making a difference in their gay friends’ lives.
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