Aside

My Columbia classmate and pal Jaimal Yogis’ first book, Saltwater Buddha is out today. It’s been met with great reviews thus far. He’s been hit by the Monterey Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and San Francisco magazine. Congrats, Jaimal!

Here’s a quick list of my favorite four WiFi cafés in Lyon. At two of them (except Lipstick and Pamplune), you have to ask for the WiFi code at the bar, but it’s still free and it won’t expire after 30 minutes or anything stupid like that. Feel free to leave your favorites in the comments! 1) Le Voxx 1, Rue Algérie M: Hôtel de Ville Le Voxx (pictured above) is my favorite WiFi café in town. First it’s got…

So this is the math that’s wreaked havoc on the global economy. Wired’s got a great story about David X. Li, the Chinese-born mathematician whose formula (above) was largely responsible for the financial meltdown — or at least the global misuse and abuse of this formula and its dangerous assumptions. From the piece: [In 2000,] Li wrote a model that used price rather than real-world default data as a shortcut (making an implicit assumption that financial markets in general, and…

I had the honor of being interviewed (again!) by Jesse Brown on his CBC show, “Search Engine“, to talk about Iranian blogging and to (again) provide an update on the Hossein Derakhshan situation. You can download the podcast here.

Earlier this month, Egyptian blogger Abdel Rahman Faras was arrested in Cairo by Egyptian authorities. I checked in with Antony Loewenstein, author of The Blogging Revolution to check in to see what he could tell me about this. Our 12 minute conversation is here.

AP, April 25, 2009: TEHRAN, Iran – The American journalist convicted of spying in Iran has gone on a hunger strike to protest her imprisonment, her father said Saturday. Roxana Saberi, a 31-year-old dual American-Iranian citizen, was convicted of spying for the United States and sentenced to eight years in prison after a swift, closed door trial earlier this month. Saberi was arrested in late January and initially accused of working without press credentials, but earlier this month, an Iranian…

Estonia plans broadband for all by 2015: report (April 24, 2009, AFP): TALLINN (AFP) — Estonia’s government and telecom companies operating there announced on Friday a 283 million euro (374 million dollar) project to provide access to broadband Internet for all by 2015, a report said. “If the railway was developed in the 19th century and the electrical grid in the 20th century, then the 21st century is the era of developing communication networks,” Estonia’s Minister of Economy and Communications…

My presentation from the Engineers Without Borders Conference in Milwaukee (March 27-28, 2009) is now online. You can view it online here, or download the PowerPoint file (.ppt) here. Everything is made available under a Creative Commons license, naturally.

The Dodgers have an eight-game winning streak and have the second best record in the NL. What a great way to start the season!

I’ll be moderating this session on May 27 at the Global Health Conference in Washington, D.C. Transformations: Discovering New Strategies Using Proven Technologies 9-10:30 am The technology evolution is sparking a health-care revolution. The rapid adoption of mobile technology throughout the world, with more than 4 billion mobile phones alone, has resulted in a leapfrogging over the digital divide. Those in remote and resource-poor settings, without the infrastructure to support wired technology, now have the same access to information and…