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Jason Krugman’s Firefly 870 LED Prototype.

Firefly 870 L.E.D. Prototype Promo Video from Jason Krugman on Vimeo.

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Che-Wei Wang’s 3.16 Billion Cycles – a stunning exploration of time:

3.16 Billion Cycles from che-wei wang on Vimeo.

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FormScreen by Minsoo Lee:

FormScreen from Minsoo Lee on Vimeo.

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Tom Gerhardt’s Mud Tub (http://dirtycomputing.com/) – an experimental organic interface that allows people to control a computer while playing in the mud.

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Bestiary by Caroline Brown and Bryan Lence:

Dynamically generated projections on an interactive book interface.

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Jackoon by Oscar G. Torres:

Jackoon Painting from Oscar G. Torres on Vimeo.

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Mechanical Wooden Face – Eun Jung Park:

Mechanical Wooden Face from Eun Jung Park on Vimeo.

When do you get to hear about life in Madagascar? Or those communities recovering from the war in Bolivia? or even about daily life in Iran. Rising Voices provides micro-grants to a chosen number of projects on a bi-yearly basis. All projects deal with one major topic – providing regular people around the world the knowledge and toolset to share their stories; amplify their voices.

Rising Voices seeks to empower under-represented communities to make their voices heard online by 1.) providing financial support to outreach projects, 2.) developing a series of participatory media tutorials, and 3.) cultivating a network of passionate citizen media activists to help encourage and support the replication of outreach trainings.

Below is a trailer highlighting several of the Rising Voices projects. David has challenged the GV community to translate it into over 50 different languages. I did my share – Hebrew text available (using the fantastic dotSUB service). I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to translate subtitles.

Keep up the amazing work David!

[tags]risingvoices, rising, voices, GVO, globalvoicesonline, citizen, journalism, third, world, citizen, media [/tags]

This summer, the Frugal Traveler is embarking on the Grand Tour, reimagining the classic European journey as a budget-minded, modern-day jaunt. Over 12 weeks and on less than 100 euros a day, Matt Gross will circle the continent in search of cool hotels, memorable meals and contemporary culture. New columns and videos will be posted every Thursday, with updates and frugal tips throughout the week. (link)

Another travel related endeavor which I am very excited about was created by the company I work for – Endemol. The GAP YEAR is produced by Endemol UK in collaboration with bebo. It follows six young British youth on their gap year adventures, documenting their adventures, thoughts and exciting moments. Fans are encouraged to vote on tasks for the contestants. In addition, produced videos are constantly released, while the travelers themselves update blogs and photo albums with their thoughts. An exciting project, extremely successful in the UK, with a real potential to get people excited about meaningful travel.

Gap Year HQ have sent six travellers – Amy, Andre, Cara, Dave, Lewis and Roxanne – around the world on a six-month trip of a lifetime. We’ll be bringing you a brand new video every single day of the week, giving you the latest exciting and memorable footage from every corner of the world. As well as this, the travellers will be sharing their own photos, blogs and videos on their individual profile pages, which you can check out below. (link)

[tags]travel,gapyear,nytimes,interactive[/tags]

This is a fashion store in Shenzhen, China. Lots of Hahley-Davidson fashion items for an L.A.BOY like me

Mobile communications change the way we lead our lives, yet have a substantially greater effect on third world users, where they serve as an introductory communications device. In the majority of these locations it makes more sense to implement mobile phone networks rather than a land-line alternative. It took about 20 years for the first billion mobile phones to sell worldwide. The second billion sold in four years, and the third billion sold in two. Eighty percent of the world’s population now lives within range of a cellular network, which is double the level in 2000. And figures from the International Telecommunications Union show that by the end of 2006, 68 percent of the world’s mobile subscriptions were in developing countries.

These numbers are just mind-boggling. And it is inspiring to see just how phones in developing nations are changing people’s lives for the better. It is remarkable that even very poor families invest a significant amount of money in ICT (information-communication technology). What they’re buying are cellphones and airtime, usually in the form of prepaid cards. Even more telling is the finding that as a family’s income grows — from $1 per day to $4, for example — their spending on ICT increases faster than spending in any other category, including health, education and housing. “It’s really quite striking,” Hammond says. “What people are voting for with their pocketbooks, as soon as they have more money and even before their basic needs are met, is telecommunications.”

Nokia is making all the right moves. Learning from its potential users and seeing how their technology is adapted within foreign contexts. The company is also working feverishly on a 5$ handset, which is planned to hit the African markets very soon. It is obvious that such a device will have a substantial effect in many parts of Africa and Asia, and help register an even larger slice of users and behaviours. In addition to hardware design, Nokia needs to put much work into its UI. Nokia’s menu systems are still difficult to navigate, clunky and hardly intuitive. The S60 platform very heavy on the phone’s memory, making the overall experience excruciatingly slow.

I am still a big Nokia fan, not necessarily for the current experience on its phones, but for its support and dedication to provide an open mobile development platform. Lets hope it keeps making the right decisions, as the company grows larger.

Below are quotes from the NYT article:

Chipchase gives example upon example of the cellphone’s ability to increase people’s productivity and well-being, mostly because of the simple fact that they can be reached. There’s the live-in housekeeper in China who was more or less an indentured servant until she got a cellphone so that new customers could call and book her services. Or the porter who spent his days hanging around outside of department stores and construction sites hoping to be hired to carry other people’s loads but now, with a cellphone, can go only where the jobs are. Having a call-back number, Chipchase likes to say, is having a fixed identity point, which, inside of populations that are constantly on the move — displaced by war, floods, drought or faltering economies — can be immensely valuable both as a means of keeping in touch with home communities and as a business tool. Over several years, his research team has spoken to rickshaw drivers, prostitutes, shopkeepers, day laborers and farmers, and all of them say more or less the same thing: their income gets a big boost when they have access to a cellphone.

Robert Jensen, an economics professor at Harvard University, tracked fishermen off the coast of Kerala in southern India, finding that when they invested in cellphones and started using them to call around to prospective buyers before they’d even got their catch to shore, their profits went up by an average of 8 percent while consumer prices in the local marketplace went down by 4 percent. Public health workers in South Africa now send text messages to tuberculosis patients with reminders to take their medication. In Kenya, people can use S.M.S. to ask anonymous questions about culturally taboo subjects like AIDS, breast cancer and sexually transmitted diseases, receiving prompt answers from health experts for no charge.

“For the first time, there are more people living in urban centers than in rural settings,” Chipchase explained as we sat in the shade outside the studio. “And in the next years, millions more will move to these places.” At current rates of migration, the United Nations Human Settlements Program has projected that one-quarter of the earth’s population will live in so-called slums by the year 2020. Slums, by sheer virtue of the numbers, are going to start mattering more and more, Chipchase postulated.

How do you make a phone that can be repaired by a streetside repairman who may not have access to new parts? How do you build a phone that won’t die a quick death in a monsoon or by falling off the back of a motorbike on a dusty road? Or a phone that picks up distant signals in a rural place, holds a charge off a car battery longer or that can double as a flashlight during power cuts? Influenced by Chipchase’s study on the practice of sharing cellphones inside of families or neighborhoods, Nokia has started producing phones with multiple address books for as many as seven users per phone. To enhance the phone’s usefulness to illiterate customers, the company has designed software that cues users with icons in addition to words. The biggest question remains one of price

Motorola now provides free solar-powered charging kiosks to female entrepreneurs in Uganda, who use them to sell airtime. The company is also testing wind- and solar-powered base stations in Namibia, which could bring down the cost of connecting remote areas to cellular networks. “Originally mobile-phone companies weren’t interested in power because it’s not their business,” Banks says. “But if a few hundred million people could buy their phones once they had it, they’re suddenly interested in power.”

[tags]mobile,jan,chipchase,design,third,world,development,phone,nokia[/tags]

Hong Kong is a bubble in every sense – geographically, politically and socially. A unique gem in the heart of the South China Sea, strategically located short distances from all major East Asian destinations. The city calls itself a ‘World City’, a sarcastic label for this detached metropolis in my eyes. If it WERE a world city, its people would truly care about the consequences of their actions – the unfolding environmental disaster which they breath in every day, their apathetic approach and acceptance of Mainland China’s injustices and their lack of interest in world news.

Wealth in this city was historically connected to the rise in the manufacturing industries of Guangdong region. Up until the nineties, Hong Kong served as the main gateway into and out of China. It’s phenomenal wealth multiplied exponentially during the colonial times. But Hong Kongers are paying the heavy price now. As China opens its gates to the world, Hong Kong loses its competitive advantage. It is no longer the base for managing manufacturing and production lines. While the current generation does not receive as many financial benefits as their predecessors, they are paying the high price with their lungs. Until China is pressured to regulate its manufacturing etiquette (a term that doesn’t really work in mainland China), we are all to blame for this constant gray that hovers over the city. We strengthen the smog with every single Made-in-China product and material that we purchase.

As clean as this city tries to be (and post-SARS it is SUBSTANTIALLY cleaner), pollution levels are alarming. I saw the sun probably twice during my two week stay. A constant gray covers the city, as pollution streams come in from Guangdong. Sure, when I lived in Hong Kong I had gotten used to the gray, but coming from sunny California was difficult this time. A local restaurant owner in Causeway Bay once told me about his days growing up in Hong Kong some fourty years ago – clear blue skies and daily swims in the Victoria Harbour. These days are long gone. I would dare even dip a finger in the victoria harbor. Why are the people of Hong Kong so apathetic to these so-called externalities which directly affect their environment? Why do they not come together against the environment hazard unfolding in the Mainland?

Oiwan Lam, Global Voices Online Editor explained just how difficult it is to motivate Hong Kong youth towards activism. They don’t see the point. Hong Kong has never really had wars, nor an army. A space in-between. A bubble.

However, one thing I’ve always appreciated about expat life is how integrated different age groups are. It is common to hang out with a variety of people, from younger to older, it doesn’t matter in Hong Kong. This trip, however, I felt different. Maybe its because I’ve spent too much time in the States, but this time I started noticing things I could not excuse. For instance spotting a colleague from the past (probably in his 50’s) flirting and dancing real close to a 20 year old young Eurasian girl. Something I would have easily let pass by while living there, but could not this time. It just wasn’t right. Neither were the young Thai girls getting it on with fat old white businessmen.

Perhaps I’ve grown up, or maybe I finally feel I’ve left this city for good. This visit, I kept my eyes wide open. Constantly comparing, and noticing little faults I’d never seen before. I used to love living inside this perfect shielded world. Now am on the outside looking in. Realizing it is about to burst.

[tags]hong kong, HK, travel [/tags]

…500 monks emerged in rows four across. They carried flags and overturned alms bowls. When the first group stopped and chanted a prayer, some people in the crowd dared to clap. It was timid at first, but as more monks emerged to begin their protest, the clapping grew louder until the whole crowd seemed overcome by it. A Burmese man leaned toward me. “They have never done this before“, he said. “They clap for freedom“.

The faces in the crowd were excited, part bliss, part terror…

…I noticed that CNN was scrambled. A veil was being lowered between Myanmar and the rest of the world. The Internet was cut, and soldiers from the country moved into the city. The morning I left, I heard that my young guide was looking for me. I can’t be certain why. But a few days later, back in New York, as I was scouring blogs for news of the crisis, I saw his picture. The junta had finally lashed out against the protesters. His forehead was bandaged. His white shirt was spotted red. I have no way to ask him what happened. He’s inside a country a tourist was never meant to see.

These are the words of a tourist who happened to be in Burma during the recent October protests.

Tourism in Burma has been controversial ever since the Jounta’s military coup. There are may ways to maximize one’s positive influence while visiting Burma – from staying in locally owned guest houses, to bringing needed medicine to local communities. A worker gets $1 a day while a tour guide can make $50 a day. Money from tourism trickles down and benefits a larger number of people within local communities. However, I strongly believe that the most important reason to visit Burma is information: it is a closed country from which information hardly escapes. Tourists are usually the only link local people have to the outside world. By visiting, one has the power to make these stories visible, surface local information that has no other way to leave the country.
Thank Myint-U’s thoughts on the tourism boycott campaign: (he is the author of “River of Lost Foot Steps”)

Isolation is the regime’s default condition. It is what fuels the present system. Burma might not become a democracy overnight, but it will certainly improve with more outside interaction. Would Indonesia
be better off if no one had visited during its 30 years of military rule?

Through traveler’s eyes and experience, Burma becomes less isolated. Journalists and foreign aid workers are usually not allowed to work inside the country, but tourists are more than welcome. By taking advantage of this already existing stream of people that visit, experience and return to their homes I see the potential to create a constantly updated pool of information coming behind the country’s closed doors. The tools need to be developed, but the technology exists.

Here is some of what I saw, my stories through the lens, to which I will someday add words:

Beneath the surface, tourism also has its dark side, as Paul Strachan states:

‘the sad fact is that the bulk of Burma’s tourism revenue comes from gambling and prostitution, both controlled by drug cartels and their attendant mafias.’ He mentions that there are specialist travel agencies set up which offer sex package tours for Thai, South Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese groups of men. The girls ‘supplied’ to them have been sold by their destitute and starving families into white slavery. It is claimed that some can be as young as twelve or thirteen years old.

Another tourist describes what he saw while in Burma during the October ‘07 protests:

AN AMERICAN tourist has told of seeing children and pregnant women among the families of pro-democracy supporters, chained together and under heavy guard on a river ferry deep inside Burma.

The encounter indicates for the first time that a crackdown on dissidents now probably extends to their relatives and is being carried out in a thorough and ruthless fashion by the ruling military junta, even in remote parts of the country.

Tourist Scott Herbstman, 41, from New York, said: “These were the families of people who had been arrested during the protests in Yangon. They were in fear for their lives. From the look on their faces and their frequent tears, it was clear that they believed they were travelling to almost certain death.”

One of the shackled women was nine months pregnant, he said. Another prisoner indicated through hand signals that she, too, was pregnant. Four children were among those chained, he added. A two-year-old child and the wife of one young prisoner, whom he believed to be a democracy activist, accompanied the group, free of handcuffs. (source)

[tags] burma, myanmar, travel, protests [/tags]

So I’m heading out to Mexico for thanksgiving break with a group of friends. We’ll be in Tulum for a couple of days, but have a few days to venture inland into Yucatan, and possibly Chiapas / Tabasco. I am sure there are so many things we could bring along with us and leave there: medicine and clothes. It wouldn’t take much for me to fill up part of my bag with some extra clothing and pills. If all ten of us (going to Mexico) do that, we can essentially have quite a large package of extremely useful items. The big question is WHERE do we bring this to? I’m browsing online, looking for information, but as expected, its either in Spanish, or non-existent!

** UPDATE **

Through a flickr account I found a link to someone who might be able to provide me with useful information. In his blog, Root Coffee, there’s a lot of information coming from his relatives in villahermosa.

***********

The wikipedia entry with lots of information.

Here is a link to a youtube video report on what’s happening in the region.

An enormous humanitarian crisis continues to unfold south of the border. Since the beginning of November, the state of Tabasco, Mexico has been hit by widespread flooding due to steady rains – currently, more than 80% of the state is completely flooded, leaving thousands homeless.

Recent reports from the Red Cross indicate:

- The evacuation phase of the operation has ceased
- Over 1 million people have been affected in Tasbsco and neighboring state, Chiapas
- Mexican officials estimate it will be another two to three weeks before water levels recede
- An estimated 70 percent of Tabasco’s capital city, Villahermosa, remains under water
- An estimated 80,000 people remain in 365 official and unofficial shelters
- The flood has resulted in widespread destruction of homes, building, infrastructure, agricultural crops and livestock.
(source: shalomrav)

And here is HJ’s in-depth article from Global Voices, including translations from local Mexican blogs.