News and Notes Roundup: Dec. 22

Time for a festive Christmas-time edition of the NDItech News and Notes Roundup. In a holiday season often consumed by empty offices, slow work weeks, and travel delays, hopefully this edition of our roundup can help you fill some of that down time. As always, tweet or email (@nditech/[email protected]) with any tips for future roundups.

Unsurprisingly, this week’s “Tech History” feature has a decidedly holiday feel to it - beginning with December 22nd’s 132nd anniversary of the first electric Christmas tree lights. Sticking with the holiday theme, Christmas day in 1987 witnessed the world’s first “widely disruptive computer worm.” The bug, cleverly named CHRISTMA EXEC, affected IBM mainframe computers across the globe. And going back to another piece of 19th century greatness, the world-renowned Parisian frères Lumière debuted their Cinématographe during the world’s first projected movie screening on December 28th, 1895.

Now, time for the links:

Popular Tech News:

• Tracking the news that China blocks: a ProPublica investigation

• 10 tech products that we lost in 2014

• North Korea threatens US as row deepens over the Sony hack

• South Korean nuclear firm to hold cyber-attack drills after hack

• Top data visualizations of 2014

ICT and Development:

• An instant digital revolution in Cuba?

• Crossing the digital divide to protect the environment

• Hungary softens its stance on Internet levy

• Misunderstanding data: the problem with the sustainable development data revolution

• Africell to launch high-speed internet services in the DRC in early 2015

Mobiles:

• Donating your smartphone’s idle time to help cure Ebola

• Jakarta hopes citizen-reporting platform can help solve some of city’s biggest problems

• How mobile phone data reveals food consumption patterns in Central Africa

• Are smartphones the key to achieving the goal of universal internet access?

• Can cell phones help farmers grow perishable crops?