Culture and Tech

Help Fund Bold Initiative to set up Hackerspaces Across Middle East

My close friends are behind the project.  They are tal­ent­ed, enthu­si­as­tic and com­pe­tent.  There is only one day left to fund this kick­starter, so please chip in and spread the word on your net­works! The link to the full kick­starter is here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bilal/baghdad-community-hackerspace-workshops

Would you Fund a Mercenary / Documentary Film Maker?

Matthew VanDyke with the PKT machine gun he used in com­bat in Sirte, Libya “Have you want­ed to do some­thing to help the Arab Spring but weren’t sure how? This is your chance. In Sep­tem­ber, 2012 two famous free­dom fight­ers from the Libyan rev­o­lu­tion, Amer­i­can Matthew VanDyke and Libyan Masood Bwisir, will trav­el togeth­er to Syr­ia and join the rebels on the front line against the dic­ta­tor Bashar al-Assad. ” “What is the pur­pose of this project and what will VanDyke…

Open Source Map for Nangarhar

Jalala­good Geek Squad worked on this open source map of Nan­garhar for about sev­en months start­ing from June 2011. I am not brag­ging but Jalal­abad is the most detailed city on open street map. A lot of aid work­ers and those who are new in town use this open source map to get around in Nan­garhar. If you are using it on a smart phone it has nav­i­ga­tion as well. NGOs and health work­ers use it to plan their human­i­tar­i­an projects.…

Google Contractor Accused of Vandalizing OpenStreetMap

Bust­ed! Some­times, when they try to win the com­pe­ti­tion they com­mit crimes against human­i­ty. Mil­lions of peo­ple use the open source maps of Open Street Map for human­i­tar­i­an projects. For full sto­ry, link here.

Crowd Sourcing: Reporting and Mapping Incidents

Crowd sourc­ing tools and appli­ca­tions that are used to report inci­dents and map them: they can be used in dis­as­ter response and relief, elec­tion mon­i­tor­ing, report­ing human right vio­la­tion inci­dents, cre­at­ing a detailed visu­al report of an orga­ni­za­tion’s projects, etc. Fol­low­ing tools and appli­ca­tions are inte­grat­ed for the above men­tioned tasks: Front­li­neSMS: to col­lect raw data and inci­dent reports Face­book, Twit­ter, E‑mail, phone calls, a GPS for exact loca­tions and oth­er means can be used to col­lect data as well. Ushahidi…

Nangarhar Media Office: Collecting and Disseminating Information

Nan­garhar Gov­er­nor’s Media Office uses sim­ple tech­nol­o­gy to gath­er infor­ma­tion and secu­ri­ty updates and to dis­sem­i­nate that, if/when need­ed. Nan­garhar province in the east­ern Afghanistan has 22 dis­tricts and every morn­ing, the media office calls the dis­trict gov­er­nors and get updates on secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in their dis­tricts. They use a notepad to jot down any notes dur­ing their tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with the dis­trict gov­er­nors. They always check with the provin­cial direc­tor of Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Direc­torate (NDS) to make sure that…