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“All The News That’s Fit To Print”
Here?s the skinny on BOP news in the Blogosphere:?Nicholas Deleon of Gizmodo.com writes about a $150 laptop that will soon be sold in rural China and South East Asia. Unlike Negroponte?s version, the personal computer discussed here will not have a hand crank but will be powered by a...
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Can Those $100 Laptops Be Recycled?
?Closing the digital divide? has become a mantra echoed throughout the development community. And for good reason; the most innovative technologies like solar panels, cell phones, and computers have been utilized by the BOP to generate greater income and economic opportunity. But as...
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Review: The Giving Back Awards
As I waited for my bagel to toast yesterday, I noticed the latest Newsweek perched in the WRI magazine rack. Normally, I flip to the Perspectives page, then to the Last Word column, and I?m done. Not this time. The cover story, ?The Giving Back Awards,? piqued my interest and won out,...
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- Education
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- academia
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Great Innovation: The Brazilian Waterless Car Wash
? If you have ever?gotten service at a car wash?in Brazil, you know that many of them make up the phenomenon Hernando DeSoto calls dead capital. They operate outside of the formal economy, paying low wages off the books, skipping out on taxes and side-stepping regulations. This is the...
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- Education
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- academia
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Microsoft Extends a Helping Hand to India’s Salt Miners
In an earlier post I made the point that technology alone will not lead to moral progress.? Indeed, it takes the proper set of social institutions and cultural practices for technology to be leveraged to achieve just ends.? In Kharagodha, a small and arid salt-mining village in western India,...
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Dumpster Diving in China
When I was a college student my roommates would occasionally bring home a dozen or more loaves of free bread, which they found while rummaging through the dumpster located behind the nearest Companion Bakery. Although they were just amateur dumpster divers, my roommates knew exactly where and...
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India’s Model T: Tata’s $2000 Car Out by 2008
Update: Lee Schipper, Director of Research for WRI’s Center for Sustainable Transport, comments below on the implications of a low-cost car for India.A mass-produced, affordable auto revolution is coming to India. Or, as BoingBoing suggests, ?make way for the hundred dollar laptop of...
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Kiva’s Secret Weapon: Lower Cost of Capital
The second?part of NextBillion?s interview with Kiva focuses two issues that drive the organization?s success: Kiva?s value proposition within the greater microfinance community and strong partnerships that connect Kiva to its entrepreneurs. As many of you have read, microfinance has a...
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