serendipityoucity

Wow!

A wonderful first mile solution for rural, remote and rugged areas of the world.  The Internet Village Motoman.

 

I came across this project in a New York Times video clip called Tools for Better Living associated with this story: Design That Solves Problems for the World’s Poor. The founder of International Development Enterprises, Dr. Polak works with designers at MIT and Standford to create products for the other 90% of the world’s population.  The challenge is to be ruthlessly affordable and to demonstrates how design can be a dynamic force in saving and transforming lives, at home and around the world. Their designs

help, rather than exploit, poorer economies; minimize environmental impact; increase social inclusion; improve healthcare at all levels; and advance the quality and accessibility of education. (1) 

The Internet Village Motoman was

launched for fifteen solar-powered village schools, telemedicine clinics, and the governor’s office in Ratanakiri, a remote province of Cambodia, using five Honda motorcycles equipped with mobile access points and a satellite uplink. Each of the schools can send and receive email and browse the Internet using a non-real-time search engine.(2)

You can read up on the full specs here. The Project connects villages in Ratanakiri in Cambodia that previously had no communication infrastructure, not a postal service nor a telephone sytem. It is connecting 15 solar-powered village schools, telemedicine clincs and the governor’s office.  This is a tribal area deep in the rainforest with 12 highland tribes the Khmer Loeu and one of the least developed areas in Cambodia.

Early every morning, five Honda motorcycles leave the hub in the provincial capitol of Banlung where a satellite dish, donated by Shin Satellite, links the provincial hospital and a special skills school to the Internet for telemedicine and computer training. The moto drivers equipped with a small box and antenna at the rear of their vehicle, that downloads and delivers e-mail through a wi-fi (wireless) card, begin the day by collecting the e-mail from the hub’s dish, which takes just a few seconds.

Then, as they pass each school and one health center, they transmit the messages they downloaded and retrieve any outgoing mail queued in the school or health center computer that is also equipped with a similar book-sized transmission box, and go on to the next school. At the end of the day they return to the hub to transmit all the collected e-mail to the Internet for any point on the globe. (3)

 

I am slowly learning about cables and I find them quite fascinating. Especially after reading Mother Earth Mother Board by Neal Stephenson. The article provided a context for me to grasp the magnitude of these artifacts in an accessible story telling type of language. 

SAT-3 is operated by a state-owned and private telecommunications providers consortium of 36 shareholders. It runs along the west coast of Africa which began operations in 2001 picking up from SAT-2. It is a submarine communications cable

linking Portugal and Spain to South Africa, with connections to several West African countries along the route. It forms part of the SAT-3/WASC/SAFE cable system, where the SAFE cable links South Africa to Asia. The SAT-3/WASC/SAFE system provides a path between Asia and Europe for telecommunications traffic that is an alternative to the cable routes that pass through the Middle East, such as SEA-ME-WE 3 and FLAG. (Wikipedia)

I came across it while reading an article in Science and Development Net entitled Scholars call for communications cable access which discusses the fact that the monopoly on this cable is over in June this year which could open access to the Internet to new players.

Apparently’

Africa has some of the highest costing international bandwidth on the planet. Building fibre connections should lower bandwidth costs. But despite the building of the SAT3/WASCSAFE fibre, the price of E1s on this route to the rest of the world remain at levels that are often above their satellite equivalents (MYADSL.co.ca).

These high cost are associated with

three recurring issues: the impact of the monopoly on landing stations; the monopoly on the sale of capacity; and the fact that shares in the consortium are not tradeable. In Europe, European Competition policy talks about fair access for all users. Unfortunately in Africa there is no continental competition institution and at present there is only competition legislation in South Africa. In other words except for South Africa it would be difficult to mount a competition challenge because the legislation does not currently exist.(MYADSL.co.ca)

The Ghana-based Association of African Universities (AAU) is requesting that a portion of the lines be given away at discounted prices to universities and that this should be part of the new licensing agreements.  According to the article, currently,

18,000 students and 1,000 teachers are using the same amount of bandwidth as an American household

The communication infrastructure involves so much geography, so many nations and tons of material. Mostly we do not think of all these cables, who builds them, who owns them, nor how licenses, regulation and the like are so extremely influencial in how access is distributed.  What is incredible, is that nations somehow are capable to work together and negotiate, pay for, build and maintain these complex socio-technological systems.  In this case not in a very clever way but agree they did! Infrastructures are more than just technology!

 

Ile Sans Fil and ogWiFi collaborated on a small experiment yesterday to report directly from a major international sports event using the ISF community wireless infrastructure.  You can read up all about it on my club’s blog Takahashi Dojo Judoka Blog.

Wholly schmokes!

Data in the format you want, at no cost and an rss feed to let you know when some new stuff has arrived! 

In your dreams Canadians in your dreams! 

This is a US program! Cost recovery impedes access to our Census and therefore impedes the creation of knowledge by citizens! And lets say the Treasury Board ain’t as savvy as these folks are in terms of sharing and how they share!

 

Wow!

FRB: Data Download Program - Learn more
Things you should know

The Data Download Program is designed to allow flexible access to data produced by the Federal Reserve Board.  Data associated with the statistical releases listed are currently available.  Data from other releases will be added in the future. 

There are a few other general points about the application to keep in mind as you use it.

• Designed for customized data downloads
  The application was not designed for large data transfers.  Downloading a large number of series may affect performance.
  
  
• One frequency per download
  To limit download time and ensure usable output formats, the application will only allow users to download data of a single frequency (daily, monthly, quarterly, etc.) in a single output file.
  
  
• Data are only available as currently published
  There are no reporting, graphing, or analytical tools available in the application.  All data are reported as currently defined.  Pre-revision or real time data are not available.
  
  
• Large files may cause problems for Excel
  Excel has a limit of 256 columns.  If a file downloaded in either the Excel 2003 or CSV (comma-separated values) file type exceeds 256 columns, it may not open correctly in Excel.
  
  
• Package creation may take time 
  The application may require several minutes to create custom data packages.  In general, the more data you request, the longer it will take the application to create your package.
  
  
• RSS feeds are available for announcements about the Data Download Program 
  Data are not being distributed via RSS but announcements about data and the DDP application are available in RSS 1.0 feeds for subscribers. To subscribe to a feed, please visit the main RSS feeds page. The phrase "To subscribe to a feed" should be a link to the feeds page.
  
  
• Accessibility
  The application is designed to be compatible with screen readers and includes navigation that does not require the use of a mouse or monitor.

Oh My! This is really nice! Thanks to Hugh who posted this on CivicAccess List.

The OpenNet Initiative has produced 4 thematic maps on the topic of Internet Filtering.  The themes include political, social, Internet tools and conflict/security.  There are also some excellent regional overviews on the topic.  The MIT Technology Review article Internet Increasingly Censored refers to a report by ONI released today and I am guessing it is this one called Access Denied:The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering. This is fascinating research and great to see IDRC supporting the creation of the maps and the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto as one of the 4 leading academic institutions involved in ONI.

 

Click on them to find out! Astonishing! Images taken by a QuickBird satellite, owned by DigitalGlobe.  DigitalGlobe is the main supplier of satellite imagery, perhaps the exclusive supplier 1 for Google Earth (We will discuss the concentration of satellite media and infrastructure some other day!).  The satellite captures

0.61-meter-resolution panchromatic imagery, and 2.4-meter multi-spectral imagery. It produces 11 x 11-km snapshots to 11 x 225-km strip maps. In addition to green, red and near-infrared wavelengths, the multi-spectral image sensor can also process a blue channel, enabling true color imaging from space. (ITT)

 

 

Here is the song authored by ma 12 year old son!

 

All the nerds are coming out!

and the hackers

ma mama is the mastermind of wireless

coming up with twists and turns that make ottawa learn with rhymes of cables and buttons

so please haters and dial up connectors lay off! Cause u no can’t step to these real geeeeks.  What!

They just sexedup posts in Parkdale

Yalla heard Tracey and tha gang are making me rhyme out words

so anya ther fakas get ready cause you know Tracey and ogWiFi ain’t frail!

My boy had this on my bed when i came back from a day of ogWiFi’n at Parkdale park for mother’s day.  Right beside a whole pile of folded clean clothes! I am going to get him chocolate now!

Block Party! Yooppie!

 

ogWiFi in cooperation with Cube Gallery and Creative Neighbourhoods made Parkdale Park Wireless for Mother’s Day, Art in the Park and the opening of the Parkdale Vegetable Market. Around 5000 people made their way through the park on Sunday.  We set it up like an outdoor cafe and had people come by, have a seat, blog comments and chat. We moved with the sunshine. I talked to at least 4000 people! Okay! Maybe 400! Overall it was a lot of fun!

What do you think about no fee wireless internet access in the Parkdale Park?