News and Notes Roundup - July 13, 2015
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The NDItech News and Notes Roundup is back! I’ll be keeping this tradition alive and I hope you all enjoy this week’s roundup. Feel free to tweet or email us with any scoops on the latest tech and ICT4D news!
First up, shout outs to our very own Jason Baumgartner who’s created a dataset of 1.65 BILLION Reddit comments, spanning October 2007 to May 2015 and weighing in at over 1TB. Not only can this corpus of human interaction prove invaluable for researching natural language processing and trend prediction, but AI as well. Just remember, Genisys is Skynet.
In a special highlight, the Internet Society released its Global Internet Report, highlighting Mobile Internet, which is essential for the Internet inclusion of the next 1 billion users worldwide. “The 2015 Global Internet Report presents data that shows it's not always a question of if it's available, but rather how cost and a lack of useful content are core to why people are not opting in.”
In social media, young Africans have taken to Twitter, YouTube, tumblr, and Instagram to show the world #TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou, focusing on positive, diverse images of African people and landscapes while highlighting academic, medical, and technological achievements in Africa. Check it out!
Today in Tech History:
- July 13, 2001 - The Afghan Taliban banned the use of the internet in Afghanistan, ostensibly to prevent access to obscene, immoral, and offensive material. Today, social media is empowering young Afghan women.
- July 13, 2009 - A Staten Island teen fell into an open manhole while texting on her phone. As we all know, mobile technology can be a powerful tool and catalyst for change, but as fellow New Yorker Uncle Ben once told Peter Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
Tech News:
- Hacking Team hacked: firm sold spying tools to repressive regimes, documents claim
- OPM Director Katherine Archuleta Resigns Amid Furor Over Data Breaches
- Top Security Experts Say Government Limits On Encryption Present Risks
- WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, iMessage, Snapchat, and other encrypted messaging apps could be banned in the UK under the “Snooper’s Charter”
- Here are EFF’s most influential cases from its first 25 years
- Rwanda launches East Africa’s first utility-scale solar energy project
ICT and Development:
- Why the #HackingTeam hack should be a wake-up call for the #globaldev community
- Big Data, Big Development?: New technologies open up new solutions to long lingering problems. Yet, this promise comes with risks of exclusion. How can big data be used responsibly?
- We need to stop talking about how mobile phones will save Africa and think bigger
- Africa Rising: How eLearning is Elevating Education in the World’s Fastest-Growing Market
- How Digital Volunteers mapped the Nepal earthquake
Mobile:
- Mobile is key to internet inclusion for the next 1 billion people globally - report
- For Homeless LGBTQ Teens, a Phone Can Be a Lifesaver
- Vodafone Egypt signs up 1 million mobile money users
- 3 Ways to Build Successful Partnerships with Mobile Network Operators
- A killer app for Africa's 'telephone farmers' - watch your plants grow, from your mobile or computer screen
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