Friday, January 30, 2009
US RECESSION BUILDS.
The US Bureau of Economic Analysis reported "advance" estimates that real GDP declined in the fourth quarter of 2008 at an annual rate of 3.8%, compared to the third quarter. The decrease was attributed to negative contributions from exports, personal consumption expenditures, equipment and software, and residential fixed investment that were partly offset by positive contributions from private inventory investment and federal government spending. Real GDP declined in the third quarter by 0.5%. Real GDP for 2008 as a whole increased by 1.3%. -Stuart Whitaker
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
USAID ANNOUNCES WINNERS IN DEVELOPMENT 2.0 CHALLENGE
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) announced three mobile innovation winners, selected from 115 applicants, in its Development 2.0 Challenge. The objective of the competition was to encourage development of low-cost, high development impact services.
The first place winner was RapidSMS Child Malnutrition Surveillance, a service that enables health practitioners in Malawi to share and track children's nutritional information automatically at the touch of a cell phone button, significantly supporting efforts to enhance children's health and vastly reducing the time necessary to detect famines. Kirsten Bokenkamp, a graduate student at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), represented the group as three of her teammates built the project in Malawi.
ClickDiagnostics, one of two second place finishers, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, provides a mobile technology-based infrastructure to connect community-based health-workers to remote medical specialists.
Ushahidi, the other second place finisher, is a platform that crowdsources crisis information, allowing anyone to submit crisis information through text messaging using a mobile phone, email or web form. The system was originally developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi's roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. -Stuart Whitaker
The first place winner was RapidSMS Child Malnutrition Surveillance, a service that enables health practitioners in Malawi to share and track children's nutritional information automatically at the touch of a cell phone button, significantly supporting efforts to enhance children's health and vastly reducing the time necessary to detect famines. Kirsten Bokenkamp, a graduate student at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), represented the group as three of her teammates built the project in Malawi.
ClickDiagnostics, one of two second place finishers, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, provides a mobile technology-based infrastructure to connect community-based health-workers to remote medical specialists.
Ushahidi, the other second place finisher, is a platform that crowdsources crisis information, allowing anyone to submit crisis information through text messaging using a mobile phone, email or web form. The system was originally developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi's roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. -Stuart Whitaker
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