#OSE Open Source Everything – Page 132 – Public Intelligence Blog

Inferring International and Internal Migration Patterns from Twitter

My QCRI colleagues Kiran Garimella and Ingmar Weber recently co-authored an important study on migration patterns discerned from Twitter. The study was co-authored with Bogdan State (Stanford) and lead author Emilio Zagheni (CUNY). The authors analyzed 500,000 Twitter users based in OECD countries between May 2011 and April 2013. Since Twitter users are not representative of the OECD population, the study uses a “difference-in-differences” approach to reduce selection bias when in out-migration rates for individual countries. The paper is available here and key insights & results are summarized below.

Read full post with graphics.

2014/02/052014/02/05

Jean Lievens: What Is P2P? An Introduction

Money, P2P / Panarchy, Resilience

“We can’t continue with a system that creates wealth, but that’s also destroying the planet and creating so much social inequality. I think that after 400 years of this, we know it doesn’t work. We need a new system to reclaim all these communal values”

Julie Tran from MakeChangeTV interviews Michel Bauwens

What would a post capitalist economy look like? Julie Tran from Makechange TV interviews Michel Bauwens to inquire on the particulars of P2P or “Peer to Peer” philosophy. Bauwens gives clear, direct answers to questions such as: “What is a P2P economy?”, “How does it differ from Communism or Capitalism?”, “Is it the same as collaborative consumption or crowdsourcing?”, “Will it be become a main trend of the future?”.

To round out the video, we also include a short text below, written by Bauwens for Open Thoughts dealing with value, sustainable commons-based production and how P2P works within society.

Openness, a necessary revolution into a smarter world

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: What Is P2P? An Introduction”

2014/02/042014/02/04

Robin Good: Academic Torrents = Big Data + Open Access

Access, Advanced Cyber/IO

Big Data: Large Dataset Curation & Sharing with AcademicTorrents

AcademicTorrents is a new web service which allows any organization owning large datasets (no size limits) to easily distribute them without needing a dedicated infrastructure. The brainchild of Joseph Cohen and Henry Lo, two PhD students working at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, Academic Torrents facilitates the job of researchers, journalists and information analysts in finding, accessing, curating and downloading large-size datasets. Technically-speaking AcademicTorrents is a bittorrent-type redundant high-speed network and a full distributed system for sharing enormous datasets. As a P2P system it doesn't require intermediate servers, is also fully scalable, secure, fault-tolerant and can act as a reliable repository for data allowing fast downloads. Users can also search the full index, and can create curated datasets collections containing any kind of files and which can be downloaded as a full bundle. This type of system could prove to be an excellent resource for libraries storing digital papers as they would store books, and for simplifying the distribution requirements of any organization needing to publish, curate and share large datasets. “A robust distributed replication design allows libraries to utilize this system as their backbone. Providing fault tolerant hosting of curated data for a university, research lab, or home library. …Also, this system can be used as the foundation of a new open-access publishing system where libraries manage data instead of licenses for external data sources.”

Find out more: http://academictorrents.com/

More info: http://academictorrents.com/about.php

Browse Datasets: http://academictorrents.com/browse.php?cat=6

Browse Papers: http://academictorrents.com/browse.php?cat=5

Browse Collections: http://academictorrents.com/collections.php

2014/02/04

Patrick Meier: Using UAVs for Search & Rescue

Geospatial, Innovation

Using UAVs for Search & Rescue

UAVs (or drones) are starting to be used for search & rescue operations, such as in the Philippines following Typhoon Yolanda a few months ago. They are also used to find missing people in the US, which may explain why members of the North Texas Drone User Group (NTDUG) are organizing the (first ever?) Search & Rescue challenge in a few days. The purpose of this challenge is to 1) encourage members to build better drones and 2) simulate a real world positive application of civilian drones.

Learn more.

2014/02/032016/03/26

Reflections on the Future of Information Technology – An Open Letter

#OSE Open Source Everything, All Reflections & Story Boards

SHORTCUT: http://tinyurl.com/2014-Open-Letter

This started out as an a letter to the collective leadership of a very promising open source software company, took a side step toward Microsoft, and finally made the leap here as a general open reference.

Earth Intelligence Network, A Virginia Non-Profit (501c3) Corporation, is seeking endowed alliances that might wish to advance the craft of public intelligence in order to create a prosperous world at peace.

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Click on Image to Enlarge

For a quarter century I have been a proponent for intelligence reform – for a revolution in the I of IT that moves beyond the industrial era commoditization of humanity toward the information era actualization of humanity's full potential to create infinite wealth, a prosperous world at peace. Peter Drucker called for this (a focus on the I instead of the T) in Forbes ASAP on 28 August 1994.For the past decade I have been immersed in the possibilities of collective intelligence applied with integrity. I believe many paths are converging. Here to the side is the latest depiction of our larger vision for integrating education, intelligence (decision-support) and research.

This open letter outlines seven goals and seven actions bracketing my explicatory vision with graphics. I invite one and all to consider this. My email is at the end of this post. St.

Continue reading “Reflections on the Future of Information Technology – An Open Letter”

2014/02/022014/02/02

Berto Jongman: The Year the USA (Courts, NSA, Google) Broke the Internet

#OSE Open Source Everything, Advanced Cyber/IO, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, IO Impotency

2014: The Year America Broke The Internet

A recent decision by a US Appeals court ended the regulation of the internet as we know it. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was deemed to have created a framework for ensuring the concept of “net neutrality” out-with the remit for the organisation it created itself. Now, a former FCC chairman has called for a “nuclear option” to reclassify Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as common carriers.

Doing so would force ISPs to be treated more like public utilities and subject them to FCC regulations over issues such as rate setting and universal service obligations. There has already been a lot of commentary and speculation about what the ruling means for the average user, and I don't want to add to the hyperbole all ready out there, but I think it is important to clarify a few things.

Net neutrality, or the end of it, has the potential to bring about the end of the internet as we know it. In a practical sense, it opens the doors for companies to manage the traffic across the network as they see most profitable, which means these companies can take measures that not only affect content creators, but end users. The ruling overturns the 20 years of treating the internet as a ‘dumb' network that processed packets of information without prioritising them.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: The Year the USA (Courts, NSA, Google) Broke the Internet”

2014/02/02

Jean Lievens: BITCOIN – How It Works And Why It Could Threaten Legacy Payment Tools (e.g. Credit Cards)

Money

BITCOIN: How It Works, And Why It Could One Day Threaten Legacy Payments Tools Like Credit Cards

Bitcoin is most often discussed as a volatile digital currency, beloved by some, derided by others. But where Bitcoin's real value lies is as a payments technology that has the potential to revolutionize the legacy payments industry.

Bitcoin offers merchant and individuals an extremely low-cost, virtually frictionless payments system. Value can easily be transferred around the world without transmitting sensitive information that could be used for fraud, and without forcing merchants to pay extortionate transaction fees.

But, while the emergence of Bitcoin brings with it numerous advantages, it also faces incredible hurdles.

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we explain how Bitcoin works, from the moment when local currency is exchanged for bitcoins, to the moment when it reaches the electronic wallet of a receiving party. We look at the key advantages of Bitcoin compared to the legacy players in the payments industry and examine the challenges that Bitcoin faces as a payment network.

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Here are some of the key elements from the report: