Heather Ford
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My story about the local chapter of OpenStreetMap for Brainstorm Magazine is now online. It was so much fun to interview this awesome little community of dedicated volunteers – especially since geospatial data is one of those areas where we’re hopefully going to see a lot of innovation in the future.
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Bezerkeley, California. Today marks my first week anniversary since I arrived. In that time, I have been called a dunce by a woman shouting at me in the street, I have been jeered at by a guy on the train, and I have been read sections of crazy books by a man in a hat…
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I’m a geek who loves words, so what better way to contribute on Mandela Day than by contributing to Wikipedia? Wikipedia is written almost entirely by volunteers from around the world. It is one of the most popular sites in South Africa – offered free and without advertising to anyone with an Internet connection. Whatever…
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Below is the first, unedited draft of an article for the next edition of the Rhodes Journalism Review. Chris Anderson’s new book ‘Free: The Future of a Radical Price’ has stoked the fire of a debate that seems to be never ending in media circles. In it, Anderson talks about how in the digital world,…
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The past few months have been an important story in soul-searching for me. After being shoved gently out of the international non-profit I helped build for three very long years in August, I looked beseechingly to my fellow South Africans. ‘Tell me you’re not as cruel as the rest of the world?’ I seemed to…
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From now until and August 15, 2009, Institute for the Future, Sun Microsystems, and Boing Boing invite young people from around the world, age 17 and under, to join us as we explore the frontiers of free and open innovation. The Digital Open: An Innovation Expo for Global Youth seeks projects in a variety of…
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Friends Jess Hemerly and David Evan Harris have asked Simon Dingle and I (from SA, at least) to be judges in this awesome competition/community initiative from BoingBoing, Sun and the Institute for the Future where they work. As always, the devil is in the detail, and I really love the details of this competition –…
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Awesome nerd merit badges!, originally uploaded by ten safe frogs. From BoingBoing – now they can award themselves the badge 🙂
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Ziphezinhle Msimango has written a great article for the Sunday Times (‘Surf and Strange Turf‘) about some of the ‘underground’ sites in SA that cover things like ‘boer fanaticism, black pornography and infidelity’. I often hear people of my parent’s generation talking about how ‘evil’ the Internet is, but sites like this show how the…
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‘In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven…
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