This post is not about what to do to avoid having your backpack stolen in China. Although scare stories about criminality abound in China, I think it’s a lot better than most other places - especially for foreigners. There is undoubtedly a huge amount of scams going around, especially involving cell phones, but that’s a […]
One of the most striking things in China, and a very important feature for foreigners, is the ubiquitous cybercafes. I made heavy use of them the first time I was living in China, in 2000-2001, when I had no internet at “home” (in the student dormitory). The second time, when I was living in Hangzhou, […]
I have mentioned my Wikipedia Offline project before (here and here), not to mention it its previous, very different, incarnation. The project is 95% functional, but is still waiting for assistance for someone who is better at Ruby or Python than me. Today I wrote up a number of bullet points, and posted a brief […]
I am currently finishing up my research on community libraries in Indonesia, and one of the interesting aspects is how they name themselves - very few choose to call themselves libraries, with Taman Bacaan (reading garden) being the most common, but far from only appellation. I thus wanted to find some statistics, and decided to […]
I’ve posted some great Amharic dance videos earlier, and today I came across Ethiotube.net, a Youtube clone started in February this year and describe themselves in this way:
Founded in February 2007, EthioTube is the leader in Ethiopian online video, and the premier destination to watch and share original videos related to Ethiopia worldwide through a […]
Hybrid models
The new tools available for connecting us and sharing text, video and audio has made it possible to put online many of the interactions and events that used to require moving many people physically to the same place. There are many ways of attempting to do this, more or less successfully. I think hybrid […]
Google Books vs OCA
We’ve heard a lot about Google Books, whether it’s Google’s grand plans or them getting sued by publishers, as well as various complaints about quality control (see this First Monday article). There have also been discussions about the terms of use (many books that are clearly in the public domain show up […]
I have had a weird on and off relationship with Ruby for the last few years, since I learnt it one very long night in Hangzhou a few years ago. I played with it on and off during the first year in Toronto, doing tutorials and thinking about neat apps, but never really coming up […]
I love Wikipedia (despite the occasional problems, unreasonableness, problems of governance and growing pains). One of the reasons I’ve always enjoyed contributing is that you are guaranteed an audience. Writing on this blog, for example, I never really know if anyone is reading. I can see my website statistics, but they are notoriously fickle - […]
When I was dabbling in QBasic and Visual Basic a decade ago, I never thought about using version control. Later, I learnt about CVS and SVN and thought it was a neat way of enabling lot’s of people to collaborate online. I used it so I could access cutting edge open source software, but never […]
