What’s the solution to world poverty? Some might say food aid; others, training and investment. But, for a growing number of international philanthropists, the next big thing for the Third World might just be the same force that’s been reshaping the First: technology. It all started at the 2005 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, when Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, announced an ambitious plan to improve education and stimulate economic growth in the world’s poorest countries with the development of a $100 laptop. Just over a year later, One Laptop Per Child [...]
The Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which is already changing the way the U.S. Air Force does business, could undergo an evolutionary leap in endurance, or the time the aircraft can stay in the air, in the next few years. Global Hawk, produced by Northrop Grumman Corp., can fly autonomously for up to 35 hours at a time, at an altitude of 60,000 feet or higher, while scanning an area of some 40,000 square miles, according to the company. With a more advanced engine, however, Global Hawk could stay up far longer — weeks, even months at a time, [...]
Step aside MySpace, Facebook, and Xanga. A new social networking site has joined the ranks. You won’t find cursing here. Dating through this site is not permitted. And female members can only post photographs of themselves wearing a headscarf. Welcome to MuslimSpace.com, a new and rapidly growing social networking site catering to the 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide. MuslimSpace is the brainchild of Mohamed El-Fatatry, a U.A.E.-born Egyptian professional Web developer, designer and programmer living in Finland. A former MySpace user, El-Fatatry created MuslimSpace in March 2006 because he said he was tired of the un-Islamic content of popular social networking [...]
