FrancisPisani Tumblelog: Archive

Al Jazeera's Laudable Embrace of Creative Commons | Citizen Media Law Project

While poking around their site and materials at the conference, I discovered that Al Jazeera has been offering up video, photographs, and even full-fledged blog articles for public use under Creative Commons (“CC”) licenses since January 2009.
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Sep 30, 20110 notes

“Dabbawallahs pick up the home cooked lunches in the suburbs, hop on trains, and deliver them, via bike, to Mumbai office workers. Later on, they pick up and bring back the same empty tiffins (the name for the metal containers used). Despite the lack of fuel, computers, or modern technology involved, a tiffin goes astray only once every two months. So for every six million tiffins delivered, only one fails to arrive. That’s why Forbes awarded the dabbawallahs a 6 Sigma performance rating (a term used in quality assurance if the percentage of correctness is 99.9999999 or more). Code The mostly illiterate crew of deliverymen relies on a color coding system to route lunches to the proper recipients.” —The incredible delivery system of India’s dabbawallahs - (37signals)

Andy Carvin: the man who tweets revolutions

Via Scoop.it - World of Social Media

When Libya’s uprising boiled over two weeks ago, Carvin surpassed even his own record by tweeting nearly 1,200 times in 48 hours. But that statistic is misleading, he explains. “If it’s a big story that’s playing out over a couple of days then those tweets are going to add up. But the number of words actually written is certainly less than you’d get on a live news broadcast.”
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Sep 05, 20111 note

“[Qui contróle l’internet?] En raison de sa nature décentralisée, Internet n’est pas “contrôlé” par un unique organisme, Etat, ou entreprise. Contrairement à une idée répandue, le réseau n’est pas non plus une “jungle” totalement libre : à tous les échelons, de nombreux organismes exercent ou peuvent exercer un contrôle ou une censure sur les informations qui y circulent.” —Qui contrôle Internet ? - LeMonde.fr

Sep 05, 20110 notes

“[Computers in the classroom] to many education experts, something is not adding up — here and across the country. In a nutshell: schools are spending billions on technology, even as they cut budgets and lay off teachers, with little proof that this approach is improving basic learning.” —Technology in Schools Faces Questions on Value - NYTimes.com

Sep 05, 20112 notes

'Twitter terrorists' face 30 years after being charged in Mexico

Via Scoop.it - World of Social Media

A man and a woman are facing 30-year prison terms in Mexico for allegedly using Twitter to spread panic over a series of child kidnappings. Gilberto Martinez Vera, 48, a private school teacher, and Maria de Jesus Bravo Pagola, a radio presenter, were accused of spreading false reports that gunmen were attacking schools in the south-eastern city of Veracruz. The resulting panic caused dozens of car crashes after parents rushed to save their children from schools across the city and jammed emergency telephone lines, which “totally collapsed” under the pressure. Gerardo Buganza, the interior secretary for Veracruz state, compared the ensuing chaos to Orson Welles’s spoof news broadcast War of the Worlds in 1938. The two are facing charges under terrorism laws.
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Sep 05, 20110 notes

FrancisPisani Tumblelog

September 2011

9 posts