The Practical Radical

From Kodak to the Mobile Phone: Urban Data and the Scientific Life

August 17, 2010
Leave a Comment

Mobile Power

This is a repost from the Polis blog with my comments (my comments first, polis blog From Kodak to the Mobile Phone below):

Thank you for this post. I think that the mobile generation with their ever more powerful mobile technologies are changing how we view, analyze and plan our cities. I work with youth in East Africa, and i have found that through the use of mobile phones, which are now prolific throughout the region, we have been able to not only capture images, both still and in video, but use these images to tell the rarely heard story of some of the poorest of the poor. (An example of such a project is http://mobilemovement.tv/)

I have as well found that “photovoice” is an excellent way to allow people to “map” their communities. I have used this technique with youth in North America, through the Growing up in Cities project , and more recently through work with UN-HABITAT on their community mapping project (you can check out a story a wrote for them titled Bridging the Digital Divide .

(more…)


Mapping the War in Afghanistan

August 5, 2010
Leave a Comment

This is an interesting map visualization of the presence of Taliban activity in Afghanistan from 2007 to August 2009. The maps are based on insurgent activity reports. They give a probable snapshot of “how things are going” in the war (not well me thinks). The use of maps combined with reporting is informative over time, though clearly there are possible issues with both data validity and overlap in time periods.

Areas of Taliban presence in Afghanistan during 2007 - November 2008

Areas of Taliban presence in Afghanistan between January and November 2008

Areas of Taliban presence in Afghanistan during January - August 2009

** Taken from the International Council on Security and Development website. The International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) is an international policy think tank working to combine grassroots research and policy innovation at the intersections of security, development, counter-narcotics and public health issues.


How Animals spend their tax refunds …

May 23, 2010
Leave a Comment

And yet some more funny quantification of our animal brethren … for me the animal would be a one-celled protozoa with the option “return – too small to spend”.

Thanks again to pleated-jeans for the great posts.


    Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 806 other subscribers

    Blog Stats

    • 5,664 hits

    Practical things that make me radical

%d bloggers like this: