Tech in Far-Off Lands

This one came in before the one this morning: Hello, My name is Samir Raiyani and I am a Senior Scientist at SAP Research in Palo Alto. I really liked your article on Slate about Negroponte’s $100 computer idea. I had written exactly along the same lines on my blog – even pointing to the silly Simputer idea. My angle was slightly different and would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks, Samir > Samir, > > Thanks so much for…

A reader named Trent Krupp left this comment on my blog this morning: I read your article on Slate today and felt that it was poorly researched with a fundamental lack of understanding as to what the $100 laptop is meant to do. While there are numerous errors of reasoning, a few that you should personnally look into are the real purposes of the WIFI adapter (hint: Ad-hoc networks are what is envisioned, not infrastructural networks). Also the mention of…

DigiTimes (via Lee Thorn of the Jhai Foundation) : Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics, and Inventec, which are reportedly bidding to manufacture the world’s cheapest notebook distributed to schools directly through large government initiatives, consider that meeting the volume shipment schedule for the US$100 notebook would be “unlikely” given the current technical hurdles that need to be overcome.

Over the weekend, I did an interview with Cyrus Irani (who is of Parsi/Indian origin, not Iranian, despite his name) of Strix Systems. They’re building WiFi in Macedonia. It “aired” today on The World’s Technology Podcast: Download it here. I’ll have a piece on The World (broadcast locally here on KQED every weekday at 2 pm) coming up in the next couple weeks. Thanks to Clark Boyd for making this possible.

Slate: By Cyrus Farivar Posted Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2005, at 3:31 PM ET At the World Summit on the Information Society two weeks ago, MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte unveiled the laptop he believes will digitize the developing world. The cute green computer sports a WiFi card, a 500 MHz processor, a 1 gigabyte flash drive, and a novel power source—a 6-inch hand crank that juts out from the side. It will run free, open-source software, most likely some derivation of Linux.…

AFP: November 15, 2005 JOHANNESBURG — A giant underwater cable network connecting Africa to Europe and Asia provides Internet access to the planet’s poorest continent but only a handful of countries seem to be enjoying its benefits. The 28,000-kilometer (17,500-mile) optical fiber cable, named SAT-3/WASC/SAFE, brings the Internet to Africa but seems to be giving an unfair advantage to coastal countries. Its first segment, in the Atlantic Ocean, leaves Portugal and goes down to the Cape in South Africa. In…

Hats off to my co-worker Curt Poff and my editor Jason Snell for telling me about Sealand. The Principality of Sealand is a micronation (a self-declared, unrecognised state-like entity) that claims as its territory Roughs Tower as well as territorial waters in a twelve nautical mile radius. Roughs Tower is a former Maunsell Sea Fort located in the North Sea six miles (10 km) off the coast of Essex, United Kingdom, at 51° 53′ 40″ N, 1° 28′ 57″ E.…

For those of you who have been following this blog for awhile now, may remember that I was going to be a book editor back in December 2004 for a new book about Persian blogs. My editorship ended up not working out, as the publishing house had their own. However, the book is going to be coming out in a few months under the name We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs. Pre-order the book here. Congratulations to Nasrin!

Ed: Big ups to G. Pascal Zachary, whom I knew from my Business 2.0 days, who just published this piece called The African Hacker in the IEEE magazine, Spectrum. “Saviors” are common in Africa, and they usually come in the form of demagogues or rebel leaders, missionaries or medical doctors, peacekeepers or refugee-camp managers. Rarely are they Birkenstock-wearing engineers or software programmers. That’s why Chinery-Hesse is worth getting to know. Because if Africa has a sunny future, Chinery-Hesse will be…

Chicago Tribune, via Slashdot: Like many African nations, this modest country has struggled economically as the industries that underlie its economy–particularly sugar production and textile manufacturing–have run into tough global competition and declining prices. Looking for alternatives, the government has settled on a new and ambitious vision: Turning sleepy Mauritius with its endless sugar cane fields and tourist beaches into a high-tech computer and telecommunications center. “It is our vision to transform Mauritius into a cyber-island,” said Deelchand Jeeha, the…