Snowpocolypse 2010: A Taxi Dog Delight

What happens when you mix 30+ inches of snow and one Taxi Dog? You get happiness that can only be expressed with a yelp of delight. That’s how “Snow Dog” Taxi greeted the great Snowpocolypse 2010 in Washington DC.

First out the door as the snowflakes started, Snow Dog Taxi is in love with the white fluffy stuff from above. She knows it means extended exploration of the neighbourhood as her owner shovels the sidewalk. She can also cross streets without care, as cars are rare, and when present, slowing to a crawl to keep control.

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Driving 35 Hours with 1 Year Old Hanalei

Just think about this for a minute – driving 35 hours with a 1 year old daughter. Any parent starts to cringe, preparing for a tale of crying, seat-kicking, marriage-ending woe. You’ll read about that in some other place, for here, I have only happiness to report.

Amy, Hanalei, Dog Taxi and I – that’s 2 parents, 1 child and 1 dog, drove from Washington DC to Atlanta, to Vero Beach and back to Washington DC over Christmas without a single scream, tantrum, or pork rind. Yeah, I’m in shock too.

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How Donors Can Expand National Health Information Systems

Vital Wave Consulting has asked my opinion a very simple, yet profound question:

What should the donor community do to expand national health information systems in the developing world?

Speaking as a technologist on a mission to change the way international development employs information and communication technology (ICT) to reach its aims of economic and social development, I am honored for the opportunity to present the key activities I believe donors need to engage in immediately to better implement national HIS.

Recognize Problems Are Human, Not High-Tech

In Washington DC, I convene the Technology Salon a monthly conversation between international and technology professionals, and recently we tackled the barriers to effective deployment of national health information systems. After a hour of debate, we came to the conclusion that the key national HIS success technology is change management.

That is deploying a national health information system successfully does not necessarily require the high-end technology resources available to richer countries. The major hurtles to successful national health information systems are human, not high-tech.

Having a clear goal of improving data quality, and a solid change management approach to achieve is the critical success factor. And this can be accomplished in countries as varied in resources as Belize, India, and Sierra Leone, regardless of what technology or technical approach is used.

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Facebook Welcomes Wayan Vota to World’s Largest Social Network

Washington, D.C. — December 1, 2009 — Facebook today announced that Wayan Vota, the last social networking expert without an active Facebook account, has finally acquiesced to the need to be “friended” by those known and unknown to him through the world’s largest social networking site. See Wayan Vota’s Facebook here

“We are honored that Wayan Vota got off his high horse and accepted the reality that Facebook is driving adoption in Africa. To continue to lead an exploration at the intersection of technology and international development, he needed to have a presence with us,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.* “We’ve worked hard to bring more than 200 million people – 70 percent outside of the U.S. – onto Facebook to share with friends, family and co-workers. Wayan Vota represents the pinnacle of that effort.”

Wayan Vota concours, “It was time that I entered the Facebook. I am excited to expand its ability to connect and share with thought leaders in both the information and communication technology (ICT) industry and the international development community. This will be a wonderful voyage of discovery for both initiatives.”

Wayan Vota will continue his work with Inveneo – a social enterprise that puts the tools of ICT (like Facebook) in the hands of those who need it most in the developing world. In fact, he’s already developed the ICTworks presence on Facebook to empower Inveneo’s Certified ICT Partners in 21 countries across Africa and South Asia.

About Wayan Vota
Wayan Vota starting blogging from before it was a word and now publishes seven different websites and commands LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter from his world headquarters in Washington DC.

About Facebook
Founded in February 2004, Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment. Facebook is a privately held company and is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif.

*To the best of Wayan’s knowledge, Mark Zuckerberg has no clue who Wayan Vota is.

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RTFail Manifesto: Use New Retweets, We Unfollow You!

At the end of November, Twitter came out with a new retweet feature that supposedly solved a number of problems with the usage of retweets (RT) on Twitter

It is our stated option that the new RT is service degradation. So we hereby issue the #RTFail Manifesto:

That’s right – if we follow you, and you use the auto RT function 3 times (you will be warned) then you’re unfollowed. Love ya, but no exceptions. The new RT’s are Twitter spam, and until they are fixed, they shall be scorned in streams and in apps (looking at you Tweetie2).
For those that agree – join us in the #RTFail Manifesto in these simple ways:

• Get at RTFail Twibbon
• Issue your own #RTFail Manifesto warnings
• And of course, RT the #RTFail Manifesto, but only with a classic RT:
  -your snippet here- RT #RTFail Manifesto http://bit.ly/RTFail

We are the Twitter RT’ers and we demand annotated RT’s

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