New features could make a Web tool that has helped track events in Japan and the Middle East even more useful.
Monday, March 28, 2011, By David Talbot
MIT Technology Review
EXTRACT: The new feature is known as “check-in,” also used by social sites like Foursquare—in that case as a way of alerting friends to your presence at a particular location.
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For Ushahidi, this is “a pretty powerful step forward,” says Ethan Zuckerman, a board member of the nonprofit, and a senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. “Adding check-in to this equation allows me to pull my data apart from the whole. That makes maps usable for multiple purposes—group reporting as well as tracking of my own movements.”
Enabling such tracking simply requires a GPS-equipped phone to allow a quick log-in to record whereabouts
GM Suspends Shreveport Truck Output on Japan Parts Shortage
Bloomberg March 17, 2011, 4:13 PM EDT
By Craig Trudell
March 17 (Bloomberg) — General Motors Co., the largest U.S. automaker, will suspend production at its Shreveport Assembly in Louisiana for the week of March 21 because of a parts shortage resulting from the crisis in Japan.
Phi Beta Iota: Chernobyl and Bho Pal did not have the same cascade effect as today's nuclear events (five of them) in Japan. The global supply chain vulnerability has grown to the point of severe dysfunctionality in the face of a major disruption. Rising oil prices may also change the affordability of out-sourced parts, one reason we are so interested in the Open Farm Technology initiative. Despite over a decade of recommendations to be more thoughtful about this, entire industries continue to ignore both “true cost” information and supply chain choke point information.
OCHA, UNOSAT and NetHope have been collaborating with the Volunteer Technical Community (VTC) specifically CrisisMappers, Crisis Commons, Open Street Map, and the Google Crisis Response Team over the past week.
The CrisisMappers Standby Task Force has been undertaking a mapping of social media, news reports and official situation reports from within Libya and along the borders at the request of OCHA. The Task Force is also aiding in the collection and mapping of 3W information for the response. UNOSAT is kindly hosting the Common Operational Datasets to be used during the emergency. Interaction with these groups is being coordinated by OCHA’s Information Services Section.
The public version of this map does not include personal identifiers and does not include descriptions for the reports mapped. This restriction is for security reasons. All information included on this map is derived from information that is already publicly available online (see Sources tab).
Click for Live Map with Substance Links
In the midst of this transition in Libya, one of the most devastating earthquakes in centuries hit northern Japan, causing one of the most destructive tsunamis in recent memory. Just hours after the earthquake, a member of Japan's OpenStreetMap community launched a dedicated Crisis Map for the mega-disaster. A few hours later, Japanese students at The Fletcher School (which is where the Ushahidi-Haiti Crisis Map was launched) got in touch with the Tokyo-based OpenStreetMap team to provide round-the-clock crisis mapping support.
Over 4,000 reports have been mapped in just 6 days. That's an astounding figure. Put differently, that's over 600 reports per day, or one report almost every two minutes for 24 hours straight over 6 days. What's important about the Japan Crisis Map is that the core operations are being run directly from Tokyo and the team there is continuing to scale it's operations. It's very telling that the Tokyo team did not require any support from the Standby Volunteer Task Force. They're doing an excellent job in the midst of the biggest disaster they've ever faced. I'm just amazed.
Tip of the Hat to Patrick Meier and Team at iRevolution.
Peter Morville, whose books provide deep human insights missing from a great deal of what passes for information technology “design,” has posted a new briefing that he has entitled:
The term “learning styles” refers to the concept that individuals differ in regard to what mode of instruction or study is most effective for them. Proponents of learning-style assessment contend that optimal instruction requires diagnosing individuals' learning style and tailoring instruction accordingly. Assessments of learning style typically ask people to evaluate what sort of information presentation they prefer (e.g., words versus pictures versus speech) and/or what kind of mental activity they find most engaging or congenial (e.g., analysis versus listening), although assessment instruments are extremely diverse. The most common—but not the only—hypothesis about the instructional relevance of learning styles is the meshing hypothesis, according to which instruction is best provided in a format that matches the preferences of the learner (e.g., for a “visual learner,” emphasizing visual presentation of information).
Phi Beta Iota: Advanced Information Operations (IO) will see the blending of Cognitive Science with Collective Intelligence inside the IO Cube. While the World Brain and Global are the final outcome, Advanced IO concepts and doctrine are possible now–they merely require the robust integration of intelligence and integrity in tandem, leading to the identification and pursuit of the right things–and recognize that information is a substitute for time, space, capital, labor, and violence. Sun Tzu meets John Boyd. Arugah.
When you think about who might topple a software giant like a Microsoft or a Google, you might be inclined to think of Goliaths like, well Google and Microsoft. The same is true of any industry, you probably think of a company of similar size or larger as being the type of company that would win a battle, or a war.
Actual battles and wars end up being an interesting analogy. If you think if big battles like World War I and World War II, that’s exactly what happened – giants fighting giants from big, knowable centralized points of command. But there are some other wars that have been fought where the little guy won (or hasn’t lost in the case of one ongoing war) and there’s a common element in all of them. No centralized physical location to “take out” to win. When everything is dispersed and there isn’t any one thing to take out, it’s hard to really know how big or how small opposing force is, and they can be substantially more agile. In this situation, an organization of any size can pose a major threat to an enormous organization. The war on terror is an ongoing war that fits this profile – it’s virtually impossible to know how big or small the opposition is, or where they are at any given time, so it’s very hard to be ready for an attack from them. Viet Nam was a tough one for the US to really stand a chance in because it was in unfamiliar territory and there was no central location to take out to declare victory. One could even make the same argument (at a high level) for why the British lost the American revolution.
So if you don’t know who Rovio or CCP are, I have already made significant progress on the path of making my point.
Collaboration is never easy, particularly when dealing with complex issues like development. So imagine an attempt at galvanizing an entire continent to collaborate for societal change and innovation and the task seems daunting, difficult, if not impossible. Well turns out it's always worth trying and that the results can be greatly inspiring.
I'm talking about The Open Innovation Africa Summit (OIAS) I recently attended, hosted by Nokia, The World Bank and Cap Gemini. Over the course of three days, 200-plus leaders and innovators convened in the Rift Valley of Kenya, Africa to share, connect, and take action toward fostering innovation in and from Africa.
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Facilitated by Cap Gemini's exploratory process, this remarkable body of people broke out into working groups to focus and dive deep into four specific areas:
