Catholic Relief Services (CRS)

The Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) team at Catholic Relief Services (CRS), a humanitarian relief agency headquartered in Baltimore, had been collecting and compiling an impressive array of digital resources with the goal of creating an M&E Digital Library. The collection included articles, bibliographies, checklists, guides, surveys, and training materials in a variety of formats from PDFs to documents and presentations.

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Who has not heard of Grameen phone ladies? In 1997, GrameenPhone (a for-profit affiliate of Grameen Bank) piloted an innovative concept called the Village Phone Program. GrameenPhone would lend money to village women under this program. Women buy a cell phone and airtime from GrameenPhone to become phone ladies. They start a service business renting out their phone and airtime to other villagers. Villagers talk to their friends and family dispersed all over the world. Villagers pay money to phone ladies. Phone ladies make a handsome profit. Phone ladies buy more airtime from GrameenPhone. GrameenPhone makes a good profit. And everyone lived happily ever after. Read More »

This month’s issue of Baseline Magazine has an excellent overview of World Bank’s information and communication technology related activities, infrastructure, and budget. (Warning: Don’t blame me if your eyes pop and jaws drop at the numbers mentioned in there.)

The article spans about 12 pages, so for those of you who do not want to read it in its entirety, here is the gist: Read More »

Announcement at php.net
PHP 4 end of life announcement

Today it is exactly three years ago since PHP 5 has been released. In those three years it has seen many improvements over PHP 4. PHP 5 is fast, stable & production-ready and as PHP 6 is on the way, PHP 4 will be discontinued. Read More »

Information & Communication Technology (ICT) data from the survey of women business owners in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Responses based on interviews with 1,228 women business owners from five countries (Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, and UAE) between May-October, 2006. Read More »

Morocco broadband statistics: Read More »

An announcement in the Google Blog:
Easier IT for nonprofits

Since we first launched it in August 2006, Google Apps has become one of our most flexible offerings. It’s helping to meet the needs of family domains, businesses of all sizes, Internet Service Providers and universities. Starting today, we’re extending the Education Edition of Google Apps to registered nonprofits. Read More »

Telecom subscriber statistics and numbers for May 2007: Read More »

Broadband Statistics for 2006 from OECD Directorate for Science, Technology, and Industry: Read More »

I have just come back from the Games for Change Annual Festival. It was my very first. There were so many great panels from which I now have a ton of materials to check out and even more fodder for thought. I will dump all the links shortly so you can read, play, and generally have fun. But, before that, here is one snippet to think about. Read More »