Entries from December 2007 ↓

One of our 1st graduates from the GLOW telecentre project in Manila won an award at the GK3 Knowledge event held in Malaysia in early Dec 07. Christine Lopez of the Phillippines - MobileTelecenters.com became the 1st 2008 inductee into the the Young Social Entrepreneurs program with her Mobile Telecentre project. Christine and her team will receive up to USD$15,000 in grant financing and 12 months of mentoring as part of the YSEI Innovators 2008 program.

From smartphones to handheld gadgets, the tech tools listed here enhance productivity for mobile professionals

These tools help make you more productive at performing your job remotely. Some of these items can used in unexpected ways like the e-book reader with access to 1000’s of electronic books or the The new waterproof SANYO Xacti E1 camcorder that you can use on land and underwater!

3 Skypephone

You don’t need a computer to make free calls anymore. Use 3 Skypephone instead. It’s a stylish mobile phone that calls, texts and takes pictures like you’d expect it to – but wait, there’s more – you can also use it to call and instant message your friends, free, wherever they are in the world.

Here is Tim Ferris talking about the “Low-Information Diet” at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Other keynoters included Eric Schmidt of Google and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. He was invited to speak after winning an audience vote at the “Ignite” competition a few nights earlier. The rules? The presentation had to be 5 minutes long, and you needed to have exactly 20 slides, which advanced automatically every 15 seconds. That explains why he’s speaking so quickly. Ferris is the author of the 4 hour work week.

Our outsourcing company already has customers from New York to New Zealand and combined with my non profit work I’m going to be on the road more than ever before next year. I estimate I’ll probably be in at least 20 countries over at least 3 continents from Jan - Dec 08. That’s on planes, motorbikes, boats, jeepneys, trains, horses, trikes and all other kinds of transport you can possibly imagine. ie I’ll be pretty much in the ‘field’ so to speak! Seeing as I chew through laptops every year I’ve finally taken the plunge and bought a full-assault, rugged laptop from Panasonic. It’s called a TOUGHBOOK…and that’s exactly what this thing is TOUGH…TOUGH….TOUGH! It kicks ass and I’ve been bush-testing it in the Noosa hinterlands over Christmas.

Well several years on from the launch of the Philippines 1st Telecentre (GLOW) by our non profit OrphanIT.com we’re now ready to launch the first jobs platform for small businesses wanting to outsource to telecentres (like computer schools) in developing nations. The new platform will be hosted at www.SolvePoverty.com

I gave a presentation to about 200 people at the GK3 explaining Social Outsourcing and ways it can be better utilised. The PowerPoint on social outsourcing is here.

Summary. Social outsourcing and Fair Trade in IT, by Dr. Richard Heeks

I’ve just read a cool blog about a guy called Gary Scott, who’s also in the trading and investment game and travels a lot like I do. I get the feeling he owns a little more than me but hey he’s got 20 + years of experience on me as well. He has a farm in Virginia USA and a hotel in Equador. I have a farm in Byron Bay and I’m looking for a hotel in Siargao (Cloud Nine, Philippines). I’m finding getting the hotel on Siargao Island is still a little way off but it’s not going anywhere.

Kuala Lumpur, 14 December 2007: Well we’ve just wrapped up 5 days of non-stop activities at one of the world’s largest ICT 4 development conferences here in KL, Malaysia. It’s been a whirlwind of a week.

This was the 3rd Global Knowledge Conference I’ve been to over the last 5 years and probably the best in terms of outcomes as we raised over USD$400,000 for our Youth Entrepreneurship Initiative www.YSEI.org

The Global Knowledge Partnership’s Event on the Future, the Third Global Knowledge Conference (GK3), was opened on the 11th of December in Kuala Lumpur by Deputy Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib Tun Abdul Razak, and addressed the challenges of sustainable and equitable development through Knowledge and Information and Communications Technology (ICT).