Idea Lab

VLink Offers Robust, Low-Cost Internet Service for Rural Areas

by Aaditeshwar Seth
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

Internet penetration in rural areas, especially in developing countries such as India, is generally poor. Telecom companies do not find it economically viable to deploy wired broadband such as DSL; satellite connectivity is expensive and often slow; dial-up (if available) is always flaky; and cellular data services such as GPRS or EDGE are quite costly to use. Newer technologies for wireless broadband such as WiMax do promise higher bandwidth, but infrastructure costs for deployment in rural areas remain high. How then can Internet connectivity be provided in such areas in a robust and low-cost manner? One could, of course, ask...

• June 26, 2009
• 3 comments

Making Uruguay's 300,000 Laptops Count - Part I

by David Sasaki
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Engineering a single laptop to serve the educational needs of young students throughout the developing world is no easy feat. Designers at MIT's Media Lab needed to keep the cost of the machine well below $200, and yet it required many of the same features that owners of traditional laptops have come to expect: a wireless internet connection, USB ports, a color display, a built-in webcam, and a processor powerful enough to record and render video files. There were also special needs to take into account: a durable case that wouldn't crack when dropped, a waterproof keyboard designed for young...

• June 3, 2009
• 1 comment

Community Journalism in Times of Economic Crisis

by Todd Wolfson
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Media Mobilizing Project recently started a new initiative: Community Journalism in Times of Economic Crisis. The initiative is a response to both the economic crisis, which is hitting Philadelphians hard, and the growing problems with the for-profit journalism model, which is making it difficult for local newspapers to cover stories about the struggles of everyday people during the economic downturn. The goal of this project is to report on and collect the real stories of Philadelphia and beyond on MMP's community blog, so we can begin to get a picture of the economic crisis from the ground up. Here is...

• May 28, 2009
• 1 comment

Ethnic Hyperlocal News Network Launched in L.A.

by Paul Lamb
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

A project billed as the "first-ever online network of ethnic citizen journalists" was launched last week in Los Angeles. Called LA Beez, the effort is a project of New America Media with support from the Ford Foundation. It brings together six L.A.-area ethnic media outlets with the goal of providing a more diverse representation of views. The participating local publications include: Arab-American Affairs Magazine, Asian Journal, Carib Press, Impulso, Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, and the Los Angeles Watts Times. Despite a healthy appetite in general for locally relevant news and information in ethnic communities across the U.S., it will...

• December 22, 2008
• 2 comments

Language as a Bridge to Inclusion

by Brein McNamara
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

Deaf people can participate in citizen journalism through written language tools. Given this, why do I believe that using American Sign Language videos are an essential tool to provide them access to journalism? For those who are confronted by the 'digital divide' there are often seemingly hidden elements that cause their lack of access. With any technology or system, there are built-in usability assumptions, including those that are taken for granted so much that they are not even acknowledged. For deaf people, most digital technology remains accessible to them as sound is rarely used as a primary interface element. Yet...

• December 21, 2008
• 2 comments

The Includer
Episode 9
Africans Want to Chat With You

by Andrius Kulikauskas
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

Our scheduled chats are how we bridge single tasking and multitasking. ... Fred Kayiwa of Uganda staffs our chat room on Saturdays thanks to a $100 gift from St.Benedict the African's choir. We're taking our first steps to link Chicago and Africa with our chat room.

• November 5, 2008
• No comments

The Challenge of Bringing Net Access to Poorest Areas

by Jessica Mayberry
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

This week, I've given a lot of thought to how poor communities on the other side of the digital divide are able to connect. The Internet is now only accessible for a tiny portion of humanity. Probably less than 20% of humanity has regular internet access, and in rural India, where 700 million people live, it must be a far, far smaller number. When all of us English-speaking urbanites have forums to share and learn and grow, but vast numbers of people don't, it only increases the inequality of the poor. In addition to their financial poverty, they are becoming...

• November 3, 2008
• 1 comment

The Includer
Episode 0
Our Hero

by Andrius Kulikauskas
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

My story is real, except for the Includer, which may yet some day be real as well. The Includer is a device for Africans or anybody to read and write emails and other texts stored on their USB flash drives. Once a week they might walk the three miles or so to their Internet cafe to upload their emails and download more. The Includer is the hero of our every episode. I am simply the blogger for the Includer. I am real... so what. Yet I suppose that you matter. I will draw my characters and I will draw you...

• September 25, 2008
• 4 comments

Glimpsing the Worlds of Neighbors Online

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Over at TheRoot.com, Kim McLarin points out the ridiculousness behind the rumor that floating "out there" exists a tape of Michelle Obama using the term "whitey." McLarin does not base her argument on the fact that a Princeton and Harvard University graduate, married to a man with the political savvy to come from behind to be the presumptive Democratic nominee, is not likely to be guilty of such a political misstep. Nor does she argue that someone who has spent decades of her life navigating the racial fault lines is not likely to step on a cultural landmine by spewing...

• July 1, 2008
• 1 comment

'Digital New Deal' Needs Real Life Counterpart

by Paul Lamb
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

An interesting piece appeared in the Friday, April 11 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, calling for a New Deal-like investment by America in youth and technology. The basic argument is that a new generation of technology savvy youth could be put to work leveraging their digital skills to create socially useful tools and engage in 21st Century public service. The OpEd sites a study listing the US as much lower down in rankings for broadband penetration (24th among industrialized countries), and uses this as reason to put millenials to work bettering our nation's online offerings. What such studies often...

• April 18, 2008
• No comments

Early Adapters Don't Conform to Conventional Use

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

At a recent meeting, a representative from Verizon and a former BET executive were discussing the seeming contradiction between the fact that African American males were early adapters of mobile technology, yet have a very low rate of posting videos on internet sites such as BET.Com and Youtube. BET tested the waters with two experiments. One involved fashion/entertainment and the other involved politics. Neither resulted in a flurry of posts, such as the ones MTV receives when it puts out a call for videos. What makes this interesting is that by all accounts African American males are not only early...

• April 8, 2008
• 1 comment