africa
Toys
UNICEF’s Toy Soldiers To Help Real Kids
12:00PM Rosa Golijan | UNICEF’s direct mail campaign has put a teary smile on my face. They’re sending out baggies of what appear to be lil’ plastic toy soldiers, but are in actually playing children, reminders of young’uns forced into battle in Africa. More »
Cameras
4:00AM Jack Loftus | “Bob, I wish the damn elephants were closer. This new telephoto lens is amazing, but the extra weight is killing me!” More »
Behind You!
4:00AM Jack Loftus | “Bob, I wish the damn elephants were closer. This new telephoto lens is amazing, but the extra weight is killing me!” More »
Science
Green Erg Generator: An Energy Tail That Harnesses the Power of Walking
10:40AM Sean Fallon | In rural Africa, electricity is hard to come by. That’s why Dr. Cedrick Ngalande has developed the Green Erg Generator—a dynamo that produces electricity from friction generated with the ground while walking. More »
Weapons
In Mozambique, Rats Make Good Mine Detectors
5:40AM John Mahoney | Finding humans to clear minefields is hard. So in Mozambique, they’ve trained rats to sniff out unexploded ordinance, single out its location by pawing at the ground (careful!), and de-mine the field. More »
Computers
OLPC Ad Goes For the Jugular With Child Labourers, Child Prostitutes, Child Warriors
10:00AM John Mahoney | I like this move: The OLPC folks, tired of their message being co-opted by geeks worrying about what operating system to install, have raised the stakes in a new web video. More »
Random Stuff
Text Messaging Is Saving Kenyan Elephants From Themselves
4:00PM Gizmodo US Edition | Elephants are text messaging themselves out of trouble, thanks to an SMS system implemented in a Kenyan nature reserve. The gentle-ish giants are outfitted with SIM cards in their collars, which automatically alert wildlife rangers if they get too close to nearby farms. Rangers can then shoo them away before they do damage to interspecies relations by, say, eating the season’s harvest. More »
Networks
Google and Friends to Bring Satellite Internets To 3 Billion People in Africa, Third World
9:00AM John Mahoney | Today Google, along with HSBC and a few other investors, helped place an order for 16 low-orbit Thales Alenia satellites to begin the push for a massive broadband deployment in equatorial Africa that it hopes will help connect 3 billion people in the world who are currently webless. It’s a noble plan, with quite a long ways to go. More »
Phones
Smart Green Cell Station Makes Africa a Cleaner Place To Ask “Can You Hear Me Now?”
3:00AM Gizmodo US Edition | In an effort to clean up Africa’s dirty and diesel-reliant mobile network, Swedish start up Flexenclosure has designed a green version of a cellular base station. Called the E-site, it runs primarily on wind and solar power and utilises an intelligent operating system that adapts to local conditions. More »
Online
Globalisation and Its Malcontents: Mexico, India and Africa Will Be New Epicenters of Internet Crime
1:45AM Wilson Rothman | Computer viruses no longer come from the US or Europe; the hottest hotbeds of hackerdom may be in China and Russia now, but even that will shift. Soon, the most dangerous internet criminals might hail from Mexico, India and Africa, says a new study. Shouldn’t somebody call Nick Negroponte? More »
Gadgets
