Dritte

Kenneth Keniston is scheduled to give the keynote address at NSDR this year. The keynote will focus on key issues like lessons learnt from previous efforts e.g., in India, understanding the current ICT4D boom, and future directions for ICT professionals and researchers. Kenneth Keniston is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Human Development at MIT and Director of the MIT India Program. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College. He received his D. Phil. from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He has taught at Harvard, Yale, and MIT. He is the author of nine books including IT Experience in India: Bridging the Digital Divide and The State, IT, and Development.

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The Development Gateway Foundation is calling for nominations from around the globe for the third annual Development Gateway Award. The award recognizes outstanding achievement in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to improve the lives of people in developing countries. More details here.

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2006 brings new technology jumps in hardware for sensor network nodes. Sun released their SUN SPOT system (image on the left). It uses a 32-bit processor and IEEE 802.15.4 compliant radio. See their June 2005 white paper for details. Intel Mote 2 is also a 32-bit sensor platform using the PXA271 INTEL XScale Processor and 802.15.4 radio.

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"Wireless Networking in the Developing World", a free book released under a Creative Commons license. They also have a Wiki for case studies, useful-sites, and translations.

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Some interesting bed-time readings (mainly by Kenneth Keniston): The Four Digital Divides IT for the Masses: Hope or Hype?

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After some discussion on the name - I finally went ahead with "Dritte".

Dritte is German for "Third" and Dritte = Development and Research of Internet Technologies for Third-world Economies

The other choice we considered was Styx. In greek mythology Styx is the name of a river which formed the boundary between earth and the underworld, Hades..Some refer to Styx as the "healing river" and it divides the "real world" from the "under-world" - I thought that we could derive some connotation of the name Styx to bridging the gap between the first and the third world while providing some "healing" to the later. But Styx.org was not available

I hope this resolves the name issue :-)

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