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Monthly Archives: September 2008

Moving Data

Moving data into South Africa is expensive, but moving it around inside the country doesn’t have to be.
Freedom toasters are a great way to move data inside the country, but there aren’t enough of them to go around. This is probably because they cost about R 39 000 each.
One alternative is a cheap Network Attached [...]

Blorg Money

The Blorg are a bunch of exocortex wearing neohippie infoanarchist hackers who go around liberating information, and sampling all the nootropics in the world. Their motto is “Free love and information, dude.”
One fine day, you help one of them out a tight spot. “Thanks man. The collective owes you one. Any time you need a [...]

A Rose Of Glass And Metal

I’m working late again tonight.
I have a hot date tomorrow evening, and I don’t want to leave the project unfinished. So instead of going home, I pop out quickly to buy an unhealthy dinner.
When I climb out of the car, a man approaches me.
“Would you like a flower?”, he says. He is holding out a [...]

The Blorg

Most people know about network effects. You know, the value of a network (to its users) increases with the number of users on that network.
The same is true of information. Look at Wikipedia and Linux.
Millions of users added an article or two each to Wikipedia, and now everyone has a whole encyclopedia. (Actually, most of [...]

Africa Is Big

Africa is larger than China, the USA, Western Europe, India, Argentina, and the British Isles… combined!

Source: White African Via Strange Maps Via Scarlett Lion Via Chris Blattman Via Lane Kenworthy Via Jeff Weintraub Via Norman Geras Via @Joburg

How To Solve The Housing Problem

Simply print them.

University of Southern California engineer Behrokh Khoshnevis and colleagues are developing a 3D printer for houses.
Source: Printable Housing (Via BoingBoing)

Education Meets Social Media - School of Everything

The School of Everything is a site that connects people who want to learn with people who want to teach.
It is one of those fantastic ideas that seems so obvious in retrospect that it’s hard to believe that nobody’s actually done it before.
You can get more details at the source.
Source: School of Everything: eBay for [...]

Experimental Media

I like blogging, because it’s still so experimental. Internationally, they might be talking about traditional blogging, but in South Africa we probably don’t even have a thousand serious bloggers.
New media is so new here that we’re still experimenting with “traditional” new media. I want wilder experiments.
Take podcasts for example. Nic Haralambous has tried to [...]