Archive for the ‘research’ Category
GIS & Mapping Resources
Resource list from ICT for Development Learning Network’s August event on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in Development: Experiences from the Field. The event was co-hosted by AED and Appropriate IT. Carmen Tedesco, Program Officer and Geospatial Coordinator at AED, moderated the panel discussion and also contributed to the resource list below.
Email Adventures: Setting up an SPF Record to Combat Domain Spoofing
Our domain got spoofed. The first indication was a ton of auto-responders in the past week that all got delivered to our catch-all email account. Most of these auto-responders were supposedly in response to our emails. But looking at the message header revealed a ton of emails with our domain name but unknown user names. TerimaddoxSilver@appropriateit.org, JennaeconometricGalindo@appropriateit.org, HenriettasuperstitiousLin@appropriateit.org, and so on and so forth. This is just a sample. We had 70+ such unknown users on one single day.
Setting up a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record is one way to prevent domain spoofing.
Mobile Applications of the Future
A while ago Google’s Android Developer’s Challenge announced the first round of winners for creating cool mobile applications. The competition elicited 1,788 submissions, of which a panel of judges picked 50 winners who each won a $25,000 award.
Reviewing the Top 50 mobile applications slideshow (pdf) gives us a good sense of the reach of mobile applications in the future and how the NGO sector has and can continue to benefit from these developments.
Technology Transformations for the Base of the Pyramid (BoP)
Appropriate IT sponsors the Information & Communication Technologies for International Development (ICT4ID) learning network. June’s ICT4ID meetup topic was Technology Transformations for the Base of the Pyramid (BoP). A few additional research resources on the topic:
Dialing for Development
A benefit-feasibility quadrant from the December 2007 working paper on “Going Wireless: Dialing for Development. How Mobile Devices are Transforming Economic Development at the Base of the Pyramid” by David Lehr, Acumen Fund.
Facebook User Statistics (Nov 2007)
Overall country rank, user numbers, and gender break-down of Facebook users (as of Nov 2007)
- 42,966,780 total users
- 15,521,660 (36.12%) male; 18,118,600 (42%) female; 9,326,520 (21.71%) unspecified.
Statistics on the Gender Digital Divide
Gender-disaggregated statistics on information, communication, and technology (ICT) access and penetration:
- Gender digital divide is prevalent across countries and continents.