News and Notes Roundup: Jan. 26

Submitted by esummers on Mon, 01/26/2015 - 17:48
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It's Super Bowl week...

The time has come for a Super Bowl week edition of the NDItech News and Notes Roundup. While blizzards blitz the Northeast and America begins to warm-up for its unofficial football-inspired holiday, we’ve been busy catching up on the latest news, notes, and quotes from the fields of tech, democracy, and development. As always, don’t just sit on the sidelines - feel free to tweet or email us (@nditech/[email protected]) with any tips for future roundups or if you think anything in this roundup is unsportsmanlike or worth of being flagged.

We kick off (football pun fully intended) this week’s look back into “Tech History” with perhaps the most famous inventor of all time - Thomas Edison. Almost 135 years ago, on January 27th of 1885, Edison patented the incandescent lamp. Sticking to the theme of firsts (and first downs, if you will), January 27th is also known as the day in 2010 when we all got our first look at the iPad. Given how widespread the iPad is today, it’s hard to believe it has been just 5 years since its rookie season. And of course we can’t mention firsts without highlighting ‘Elk Cloner’, oft-recognized as the first PC virus code, which was written on January 30th, 1982.

Now, time for the links:

Popular Tech News:

  • Twitter officially adds Bing tweet translator to website and mobile

  • Facebook complies with Turkish order to block page for ‘offending Prophet Muhammad’

  • Cablevision to introduce Wi-Fi-based phone plan

  • Microsoft teaching cybersecurity to cities around the world—for free

  • China blocks use of several popular VPNs

ICT and Development:

  • How does open data play out in fragile states?

  • What do South Africa’s 24.9 million internet users spend their time doing online?

  • Digital libraries provide books to resource-poor schools, changing old-school ways

  • Google reveals its ‘Government Innovation Lab’

  • Internews’ Humanitarian Information Dashboard to monitor and track information flows

Mobiles:

  • How is the mobile economy changing the global economy?

  • International Evidence Locker app - part of the tech challenge for atrocity prevention

  • The most disruptive technology over the next 5 years (hint: you are already using it)

  • Facebook testing a simple app for low-end android phones

  • Internet.org app now available in Ghana