Olympian Aftermath ~ Phelps vs Cavic !-)

It was Phelps' closest race. Check out this rare additional footage of the battle-royale with Cavic...

Al-Tall ~ The Burj Uberscraper in Dubai!

Whoa! This gigaproject nears completion!

Jose Gomez-Marquez of IIH.mit.edu on HighTechFever TV

I hosted multi-company entrepreneur Jose Gomez-Marquez on my HighTechFever TV show tonight. Jose co-founded both Aerovax and XoutTB prior to his most recent role co-founding and directing Innovations in International Health (IIH) @ MIT. The Aerovax Drug Delivery System is a device for mass delivery of inhalable drugs and vaccines to remote populations. The X out TB program aims to increase TB therapy adherence in developing countries using novel diagnostics and mobile technology. And IIH targets a growing portfolio of innovations spanning fields of work including Vaccines, DisabiliTech, Maternal & Infant Health, Diagnostics, Telemedicine, Therapeutics, Surgical Tools, ICT and more. Especially cool about Jose is the fact that he is a three-time MIT IDEAS Competition winner. And being from Honduras is really helping firm up the concentration of activities happening between MIT and Central America generally.

What's Really Real? ~ Lessons From The Street!

Cool Runnings ~ The Jamaican Women Sweep It!

Wow, I just watched three Jamaican goddesses sweep the 100m dash! Shelly-Ann Fraser first in 10.78 seconds with Sherone Simpson and Kerron Stewart in second, both at 10.98 seconds. This tiny island country has amazingly fast women!

More Urban Innovations ~ Traffic Solutions, Spot Markets, and Streetcars!

There's plenty of need for more urban innovations, as I've written before. Bryan Appleyard in the London Times reviews the new book Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt. Several interesting -- and counter-intuitive -- revelations therein, including the reduction in accidents when traffic signs, railings and "safety" features were removed! David Mehegan of the Globe invited Vanderbilt on a spin through Boston as shared in Going With The Flow: Bad drivers, poor signage, rotaries? No problem for 'Traffic' guru. Quothe he:

• Congestion is as old as cities.
• [...] one study analyzed crashes that happen between cars and trucks. In a majority of cases, the cars had more to do with it.
• [In Beacon Hill's] sort of narrow street, with a lot of obstacles and parking on both sides, is called a self-explaining road -- you don't need a speed limit.
• [Economist] Donald Shoup's argument is that if you raise the price of meters to the point where spaces are never more than 85 percent occupied, you'd eliminate a lot of bargain-hunting, meandering around, adding to the traffic with destinationless driving.

Hope Cohen, the deputy director of the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Rethinking Development, opines in the NYTimes No Parking, Ever encouraging the City to phase out curbside parking altogether and give it over to greenery, pedestrians, bikes, and vehicles which are actually moving. Very interesting since this would create market demand for parking structures and services, as well as transportation services, including properly priced and profitable mass transit. Who knows what other innovations might emerge once cities stop subsidizing personal vehicle parking. Perhaps parking "spot markets" or other uses? Here's one possibility ;-) Bob Driehaus from the NYTimes writes that Downtowns Across the U.S. See Streetcars in Their Future surveying trends in several dozen cities. Also online is a nice Desirable Streetcars slideshow, featuring examples like Portland... ...and New Orleans...

Recommended Readings 080817 ~ On Solar, Trash, China, Korea, Sudan, New England, Russia, Oceantech, Migrants, Mandela, Rwanda, and Neurotech...

Several readable morsels I recommend...

• Some sunny news this week, including Matthew Wald's NYTimes piece that Two Large Solar Power Plants Are Planned in California covering 12.4 square miles and generating some 800 megawatts of power. Also in the NYTimes, Stephanie Rosenbloom writes that Giant Retailers Look to the Sun for Energy Savings.
• Trash is becoming increasingly popular write Jill Sherman and Lewis Smith in the London Times in two pieces, Recyclers are reaping the rewards of the fortune in your dustbin and High plastic prices raise prospect of rubbish mining.
  
• Speaking of rubbish, China's Olympian dishonesty continues as told in both London Times and WSJ stories revealing that the supposedly "ethnic minority" Opening Ceremony performers were, in fact, all of the domineering majority Han race. This latest revelation plus the faked fireworks, Milli Vanilli-esque "solo" singing girl, Potemkin architectural practices, and other totalitarian propaganda efforts make a scandalous laughingstock of Olympic ideals. The authoritarians in charge should be ashamed and voted out of office by Chinese voters at the next elections. Oops, I forgot, that's impossible because there are no elections and therefore there will be no feedback since Chinese people have no political liberty. (But they do have a surplus of censorship, so these stories are only for us in the civilized parts of the rest of the world).
• Philip Auerswald opines in the Globe about China's quick fall, slow return to glory.
  
• There's no faking what Korean kids do to get into good schools, writes Choe Sang-Hun in the NYTimes piece A Taste of Failure Fuels an Appetite for Success at South Korea's Cram Schools.
• Fascinating to see that Sudan seeks $1bn to plough into farming, a piece written by Barney Jopson and Andrew England in the FT. Fellow FT writer Murithi Mutiga cautions Smallholders at risk in land scramble.
• Scott Kirsner writes in his Globe Innovation Economy column that Out-of-state deals stymie chance to build N.E. pillars.
  
• Challenges with resurgent Russia notwithstanding, I was delighted to see the NYTimes's Robert Reid write about Vladivostok in Extravagance at Russia's Edge.
• Marine technologies were in the news this week, including Bryan Bender's Globe piece For US, a terror threat lurks in drug smuggling subs. MIT spinoff companies Bluefin Robotics and iRobot are chasing this underwater security problem with robosubs. Frank Pope in the London Times writes that Robot sub discovers secrets of the deep that could predict a natural disaster, thus reminding us of the critical role oceanographic research can play for humanity. Finally, the NYTimes has a piece by Andrew Revkin about the importance of vessels for extreme conditions entitled Experts Urge U.S. to Increase Icebreaker Fleet in Arctic Waters.
• Migrants in the news: As Its Work Force Ages and Shrinks, Japan Needs and Fears Chinese Labor writes Norimitsu Onishi in the NYTimes. On the other end of the socio-economic spectrum, Tracy Jan writes in the Globe that Foreigners diversify face of BU: School sees record results from overseas recruiting. (This makes me wonder why MIT still has a boneheaded quota limiting the number of international undergrads to merely 8% thus allowing other schools to capture the best global talent.)
• Both the FT and NYTimes have reviews -- by Simon Kuper and Bill Keller, respectively -- of a very promising book by John Carlin entitled Playing The Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation.
  
• Stephen Kinzer opines in the Globe about France's role in the Rwandan genocide.
• Finally we have a survey by Susan Greenwood in the London Times of research progress in addressing motor neuron disease in her piece A prisoner inside his own body.
  

Galactic Beauty ~ Images by NASA's Hubble!

To quote from one of Robert Heinlein's great characters, Maureen Johnson Long, "I always wanted to live in a world designed by Maxfield Parrish." It turns out we do! Or at least part of the Universe is, as you can see from this image taken with the Hubble Telescope...

Smokin' Art ~ Capturing Gaseous Beauty!

Thanks to Paul from GeekPress for spotting these smokey beauties...

Britain From Above ~ Great Socioinformatic Data Visualizations!

This new BBC show Britain From Above has just lovely visualizations of socioinformatic data, including ship traffic in the English Channel... ...as well as air traffic in British airways... ...among others! This kind of imagery will become increasingly important in mining social systems at multiple scales from the small-group to corporations to cities to countries and ultimately the dynamics of humanity overall.

Olympic Anatomy ~ The Psychophysiology of Aquaman Michael Phelps!

The London Times has a nice piece by Craig Lord entitled Profile: Psychology and physiology make Michael Phelps a phenomenon featuring this image lifted from Leonardo!

Fab Labs ~ MIT's Neil Gershenfeld on DIY Kits

In a nice Forbes article, author Andy Greenberg writes about MIT Professor Neil Gershenfeld's Fab Life making Labs...

The Fab Lab (short for fabrication laboratory) is a package of tools designed to make essentially any object. The kits can include a laser cutter, computer-controlled wood router and a miniature mill for drilling circuit boards, all for around $50,000, including open-source software, batteries and micro-controllers. Those appliances and materials, Gershenfeld says, are all anyone needs to build whatever he or she can imagine. [...] Gershenfeld's project is focused on bringing an early version of that replicator to the masses: He's shipped 26 Fab Labs around the world since 2002. Shepherds in Norway have used a Fab Lab to create radio-frequency ID tags for tracking wandering sheep. The South African government is working with Sun and Cisco on building simple Internet-connected computers that hook up to televisions and cost just $10 each. The latest Fab Lab was shipped to Afghanistan in June, where it will fashion customized prosthetic limbs. Gershenfeld says he receives a lab request every day. "The Fab Labs tap into this wellspring of interest from ordinary people in getting the means to create their own technology," says Gershenfeld

Beyond the core Fab Lab concept are the new Fab Fund, a venture investment wing trying to prove a "micro venture capital" business model, and a Fab Academy, an educational wing.

Wingnut or Faithful ~ Is Violence Ever Right?

I have no agreement with this Christian preacher's rant -- see video below -- but the core fact remains he is exercising his freedom of speech, something we in civilized countries have grown to appreciate and are willing to protect even when we disagree with it. In this video, the Christian calls the Muslim prophet several blunt descriptive terms which refer to the prophet's dealings with villagers who disagreed with him, his role leading raids on trade caravans, and his engaging in marital "relations" with what we today would call an "under-age girl" whom he took as one of his several wives. In the video, some woman in the audience -- apparently a Muslim -- disagrees with him and first proceeds to violate the preacher's property rights, and then assaults him with punches, and threatens "don't talk about my prophet, I'll kill you." What I would like to know is:

• Do Muslims disagree with the facts as asserted? Even though they are rather well documented in the Hadith and by historians?
  
• Do Muslims agree with appropriateness of the woman's reactions? Even though violating property right and violence against speech is against every civilized code of law ever construed?
  
• Is violence ever the correct response against the exercise of free speech? Even though such freedom of speech is the core of laws in modern civilized society?
  

If the answer is Yes -- to any of these questions -- then it would seem there perhaps really is a Clash of Civilizations because facts are facts, and threatening violence against free speech is viciously evil, and actual assault should be punished severely, most especially a hate crime like this... I find myself in moral and political solidarity with Johann Hari, an opinion commentator in The Independent who opines that We need to stop being such cowards about Islam.

IDDS @ MIT ~ Solutions to Global Gigachallenges

MIT hosted the International Development Design Summit (IDDS) this past month as David Chandler writes in his piece Improving people's lives, one device at a time. IDDS was an amazing combination of nearly 60 designers, local activists, inventive students and others drawn from dozens of countries worldwide for an intense design-build experience. Check out the summary video...

Click To Play

Matt McGann of MIT Admissions on HighTechFever TV

I was very pleased to host Matt McGann, Associate Director of MIT Admissions, on my HighTechFever TV show tonight. I've known Matt since his own undergrad days at the Institute and it was eye-opening to learn about his current role. He and a dozen or so colleagues travel the US and world to spread the word about MIT, attract some 13,000 or so applications, and go through the daunting task of selecting some 1,500 for admission. Ultimately 2/3 chose MIT, leading to a class of about 1,000. And this year's crop -- the Class of 2012! -- are landing in Cambridge in about a week. Of course Matt and colleagues have moved on -- they're now thinking about the Class of 2013! Anyone interested in Matt's further opinion on things should check out his MIT Admissions Blog!

China's Fauxlympics ~ Channeling Milli Vanilli ;-)

In the artistic equivalent of drug doping, Mao's minions at the Politburo insisted that the "cuter" Lin Miaoke lipsync to the actual vocals of the "pudgier" Yang Peiyi at the opening ceremony of the ongoing unreality show in Beijing. The global news is all over this Milli Vanilli-esque scandal, including this withering NYTimes cover-story by Jim Yardley In Grand Olympic Show, Some Sleight of Voice.

Wizzit ~ South African Mobile "Pocket Bank"

Thanks to the Brand South Africa blog for spotlighting Wizzit in Have Cellphone, Will Bank. They point to Toby Shapshak's article in Vodaphone Receiver 'zine titled Mobile banking – the next phase in Africa’s mobile revolution. Says Shapshak:

Wizzit is a remarkable success story of innovative thinking, clever and appropriate solutions and satisfied customers. Most of its users have never owned bank accounts, but they have cellphones. Linking the bank accounts to the cellular subscriptions not only gives them an account, but use-anywhere, anytime mobile banking. [...] Wizzit is starting in the farming heartland of South Africa and in under-serviced urban areas [...] The principle difference between Wizzit and [Kenyan Safaricom's service] M-Pesa is that the latter works without a bank account. This payment model only allows payments to another cellphone user, without all the value-added benefits of banking services, but it allows person-to-person transfers, which is sorely needed in Africa with its massive migrant workforces.

Check out this Wizzit promo where CEO Brian Richardson (and colleagues) describe the Wizzit model, including tackling the "Three A's = Affordability + Accessibility + Availability" to give millions of previously unbanked individuals access to a bank account...

Clever Foods ~ Micronutrients, Macro-Impact

I was hanging earlier with my entrepreneur friend Manish Bhardwaj, co-founder of MIT spinoff Innovators-in-Health, when he mentioned Copenhagen Consensus founder Bjorn Lomborg's Global Priorities. Specifically Manish spotlighted the disproportionate potential of micronutrients, those "dietary minerals needed by the human body in very small quantities". I'd known this, of course, in the abstract, but Manish pointed out how enormous the numbers are for iron-deficiency anemia -- and the disastrous consequences of this easily-remedied ailment. This is what kills me: we know today how to deal with this issue; it is quite literally "easily remedied" -- micronutrients have macro-impact. Like Plumpy'nut. Well, Lomborg, et al, know this too, and strongly recommend prioritization. My bias, naturally, is that Developmental Entrepreneurship solutions are called for!

Post-Imperialism ~ The Urgent But Volatile Sharp-End of Post-Nationalism

Macro-nations of the modern era sometimes emerged from a process of Mostly-Democratic Federation -- e.g. United States, Canada, Australia, EU, and somewhat Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, to name the biggest -- but sometimes were the Inheritors of Empire -- e.g. Russia, China, India, Indonesia, to name the biggest. In China, the unsurprising consequences of unchosen, violent imperial assimilations include ongoing separatism in the south and east, for instance in Tibet and Xinjiang. In Russia, similar separatism thrives especially on the edges, mostly the south and west, for instance in Chechnya. Other imperial agglomerations have fragmented -- e.g. Yugoslavia, the non-Russian SSRs of the Soviet Union (heir to greater Imperial Russia), Arabia (splitting into KSA, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon & Iraq), and post-partition Pakistan (forking off Bangladesh). What's especially curious about the remaining heirs of empire is how jealously they guard against interference in their own internal affairs -- e.g. witness Russia demanding immunity over slaughter and oppression in Chechnya or China demanding immunity over slaughter and oppression in Tibet -- but how also they brazenly meddle externally and interfere in the affairs of their near-neighborhood -- e.g. China historically in Vietnam and Russia today in Georgia. Stupid. Sad. Unnecessary. I seriously think Asimov is right and we need to urgently think about a post-nationalist future, most especially a post-imperialist future. And the United Nations alone doesn't cut it as vehicle for this venture. That unfortunate edifice reinforces and allows starkly authoritarian neo-imperialist nations -- including so-called Security Council members -- which outrageously oppress their citizenry while self-righteously claiming sovereign immunity from outside interference. What we really need are for the Free Peoples of Earth to unite into a new kind of polity, one ensuring inviolate individual rights and securing for each and every citizen their sacred spheres of personal sovereignty. And, who knows, perhaps in the eventual future, we'll indeed become part of a larger federation Beyond Our Cradle...

Nabuur ~ Volunteering From Behind Your PC

Thanks to Geekcorps founder Ethan Zuckerman for ask-answering “How do I help?” - Introducing Nabuur...

Read Ethan's post for more details; I especially resonated with his contrasting Nabuur as the "polar opposite model" from Geekcorps, as well as the Nabuur focus on "breaking projects into bite-sized chunks." Very interesting.

Potemkin Olympics ~ The PRC's Unreality Show

While I'm a huge supporter of the Chinese people and ancient civilization, the authoritarians in charge leave much to be desired. As IHTribune's oped piece noted, The world will be watching China's unreality TV.... This past Sunday, the Globe's Patricia Wen wrote an embarrassing cover story about China's Vanishing Act, where "Beijing's rundown storefronts are concealed behind walls as China puts best face on for the Games"... That's actually been tried before, by "Russian minister Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787" with this fraudulence immortalized as Potemkin Villages. So now we have the Potemkin Olympics in Beijing 2008.

Learning From The Street ~ Nokia's Jan Chipchase

Nokia user experience researcher Jan Chipchase speaks at TED on mobile phones and how people use them. Core message: learning how to listen. Note especially his sections on Sente in Uganda and Street-up Inspiration...

Recommended Readings 080810 ~ On Universities, Laptops, Tools, TinyTech, Economies, Health, God, Dogs, Flying, Poverty, Explosions, Censorship, New...

Intellectual eye-candy of the week...

• Newsweek's Stefan Theil writes about The Campus Of The Future: To better compete, a few bold leaders are rethinking their schools from the ground up.
• Bryan Appleyard writes in the Sunday Times how Fat-Cat Multinationals Got Scared [and broke the $100 laptop].
• Jessica Bruder in the NYTimes covers powertool drag races in My Belt Sander Can Beat Your Circular Saw.
• David Rejeski of the Projct on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars opines on Big questions on tiny, tiny technology in the Boston Globe.
• Niall Ferguson of Harvard comments in the FT about How a local squall might become a global tempest.
• Marcus Leroux in the Times describes the amazing story Built in the garage: how kidney doctor put together home-made dialysis machine to save a baby.
• The Times features excerpts from Brian Kolodiejchuk's collection of Mother Teresa's writings entitled 'I feel unwanted by God'.
• Boston dogs rent-a-dog writes Anjali Athavaley in the WSJ article entitled An Idea Whose Time Has Come: The Time-Share Dog: Monica Had 2 Families, 2 Names, Much Love; Boston Bans Short Pooch Leases.
• John Schwartz checks out cool gadget flying machines in NYTimes article From Comics to James Bond To a Liftoff in the Backyard.
• It's expensive to be poor writes Kevin Lewis in his Globe Uncommon Knowledge Ideas column.
• USA Today's Gary Strauss writes 'Mythbusters' hosts relish blowing up stuff on TV.
• Speaking of blowing things up, Asra Nomani writes in the WSJ that You Still Can't Write About Muhammad about Random House canceling a book about the prophet's underage wife for fear that it would "incite acts of violence". Right, that's modernity and civilization for you.
• Another installment in the How to Get the Biggest Bang for $10 Billion series in the WSJ.
• Interesting to read Carol Hymowitz's piece in the WSJ that IBM Combines Volunteer Service, Teamwork to Cultivate Emerging Markets.
• Finally, Nicholas Kulish writes in the NYTimes from Friedrichshafen that In Germany, a City's Famed Industry Now Helps Keep It Afloat about the renewing zeppelin industry.
  

The Innovation Epicenter ~ CIC at Kendall-MIT

Very nice article today in Globe by Robert Weisman entitled The Idea Factory spotlighting the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) in Kendall Square's One Broadway building just next to MIT... Founded by MIT Sloan alumnus Tim Rowe and colleagues in 1999 at the height of dot.communism, this space for startups and emerging growth companies endured and has thrived through flexibility and friendliness and mostly through extremely competent and creative execution. Various Boston-metro spinouts from MIT got their start in CIC, including ThingMagic, Ember, Mok3, and dozens more. Among the compelling aspects of the space are sharable conference rooms across multiple floors, centrally managed IT and infrastructural support, and well-maintained and attractive kitchen areas which help orchestrate serendipity by maximizing the odds that interesting people from the CIC venture community connect with one another... Weisman's article mentions a few more tenants, including InVivo Therapeutics, born of MIT Sloan Fellows collaborating with biotechnologists. Bigco's like Google started their local presence in CIC and other key members of our larger venture community have had a presence there, including various law firms, venture funds, and even swissnex, the pioneering technology-business consulate which hosts entrepreneurial visitors and special events... As I wrote about recently, the Technology Venture Zone surrounding MIT is the result of the tremendous economic and urban regeneration of the near-neighborhood around the Institute (partly seeded by MIT itself, as I noted in an Xconomy article entitled How Kendall Square Became Hip: MIT Pioneered University-Linked Business Parks). Take a look where CIC fits into this larger mix... Despite these business parks all competing for clients, the CIC really stands out for its focus on young ventures, university spinouts, and a commitment to the ultra-innovative. It is truly the Innovation Epicenter of Kendall Square, Cambridge, and for that matter, Massachusetts.

Legalizing Incompetence ~ MBTA Shafts Students

In the Gross Stupidity department, we have Exhibit A: MBTA suing MIT students Zack Anderson, Russell Ryan, and Alessandro Chiesa to stop these hackers -- i.e. academic researchers -- from speaking... ...about the shockingly weak and lame-ass MBTA security and the completely bone-headed equipment choices that allow anybody to readily crack the CharlieCard system... In an unconstitutional and CYA move, some politically-compliant technophobe Judge allowed the injunction, thus Legalizing Incompetence on the part of the morons in charge of the T. Because who else would specify and purchase such a weak and easily-compromised system? And, by the way, all the essential information about the insecure system is: (a) already distributed, (b) knowledge widely available, including to the MBTA long-ago, and (c) now even more widely known because of the publicity surrounding this ill-considered lawsuit. Maybe the MBTA officialdom should focus on competently engineering a proper payment system instead of seeking legal protection for their incompetence.

Plumpy'nut ~ A Lifesaving Therapeutic Food

I was hanging with Jock Brandis -- of the Full Belly Project -- who reminded me of Plumpy'nut, a peanut-based therapeutic food used as a treatment for emergency malnutrition since it helps children regain weight rapidly, making the difference between life and death. Plumpy'nut is the brainchild of Frenchman André Briend, a pediatric nutritionist working with the WHO. CBS's 60 Minutes spotlighted Plumpy'nut recently...

Ominous Parallels ~ Olympic-Size Propaganda

I'm not the only one who sees the spectacle in Beijing 2008 mirroring a similar situation in Berlin 1936...China's "Peaceful Rise" is great propaganda, but it is an inescapable fact that the current leadership in the Middle Kingdom are the direct political descendants of Chairman Mao, whose mad dictatorial policies murdered as many people as all the combatants of World War II did -- combined. And people in Communist China today are as oppressed and un-free as anyone in Nazi Germany back then, consumerist and capitalistic trappings notwithstanding. Bottom line: there's something unseemly and outrageous about dignifying dictatorships with Olympic hosting rights.

Just Three Words ~ Queen Rania's Spotlight!

Jordan's Queen says: Share your story! In Three Words...

Paris for President! ~ Beyond Republicrats...

McCain used Paris in an ad to slam Obama. Paris pays back... Her energy policy makes more sense than either of the Republicrats!

King to Joker ~ Por Que No Te Callas !-)

Yes, it's old news, but still hilarious! Spanish King pwnz Latin Joker... Supposedly they've kissed and made up since then despite Chavez nationalizing yet another Spanish asset.

IDDS Design Summit Finale ~ 4-6p Wed 8/6/2008 @ MIT Media Lab

Everyone's invited to the Finale of the second International Development Design Summit (IDDS) at the MIT Media Lab's lower-level and Bartos Theater this Wednesday afternoon-evening, August 6th, from 4-6pm! The summit has brought 60 participants to MIT to spend a month learning about design and creating technologies to improve the lives of people in the developing world. This year's projects include:

• a device for decreasing the transmission rates of HIV/AIDS from mothers to their babies
• a charcoal crushing machine to help make charcoal briquettes from corn cobs
• a ropeway system to help craftswomen in the Himalayas get their products to market.
• a pearl millet thresher
• an incubator for low birth weight babies
• a super low-cost computer for educational programs
• an interlocking stabilized soil block maker
• a pico-hydro electric generator
• a hand-held tool for isolating DNA for improving diagnostic capability
• a device for generating electricity from a treadle pump

Plus, you can learn about Public Service Center funding resources that may enable graduate and undergraduate students to work with the participants in their communities. Representatives from the MIT International Development Network and the MIT International Development Initiative will also be their to discuss other opportunities for getting involved with international development at MIT. Tasty hors d'oeuvre (both veggie and carne) will be served towards the larger goal of helping connect people from throughout MIT and the greater-Cambridge international development community with one another and with our visiting IDDS participants. Please spread the word about this Finale event and feel free to invite friends and colleagues!

Pimp My T ~ Hacker Mods of Ford's Model T!

A month ago, I mentioned Lindsay Brooke's NYTimes piece about the Centennial of the Model T entitled Mr. Ford's T: Mobility With Versatility, spotlighting the hundreds of add-on and specialization kits reinforcing the value of the Model T core-platform. This reminded me of mobile phones as the platform of today. And some people still think the whole Pimp My Ride movement is novel!-) Steve Lohr wrote more recently in NYTimes Ideas & Trends that A Souped-Up Model T May Have Been the First Mash-Up about the role of user innovation, since people who use the product have the best info and motive to mod it for the better. Definitely checkout the online photo slideshow of Model T variations, including these delighters...