Author: Serkadis

Haiti’s earthquake devastated not only lives, but whatever emergency services the barely functioning government had to offer. However, in less than seven days, a makeshift version of 911 sprung to life.

It’s a striking story of how a few tech-savvy social entrepreneurs, receptive ears in the U.S. government and hundreds of Haitian Creole-speaking strangers crowdsourced from around the world were able to help people on the ground get food or medical attention.

Hours after the earthquake struck Port au Prince, 23-year-old Josh Nesbit (pictured right), who heads a non-profit delivering health care in Sub-Saharan Africa through mobile phones, thought that an SMS gateway would be critical in Haiti.

He sent a tweet out asking for help. A Cameroonian managing a startup incubator in Africa, Jean Francis Ahanda, responded mentioning that a contact, Jean-Marc Castera, was headed to the command center of the Caribbean’s largest wireless carrier Digicel that day.

Within three days, they had co-opted a shortcode, 4636, that had been used for weather information in Haiti. They rushed to get several other partners like Ushahidi, which provides an open-source platform for tracking crisis communications, and Google on board. A non-profit that specializes in using technology for disaster relief, Instedd, built an emergency information system using the shortcode. On a very late Saturday night, a cobbled-together team of a half-dozen organizations or so launched ’4636′ as an emergency number.

They started publicizing it on the ground in Haiti through radio stations. Haitians could text the number with messages about injuries, people trapped under rubble or reports of missing people.

Some of them are desperate:

• “My name is J___ ____ my brother is working in Unicef and I live in C__ 11 A___ I have 2 people that is still alive under the building still ! Send Help!”

Two San Francisco-based startups, Crowdflower and Samasource, came on-board to help find volunteers to translate and categorize the messages. Both are in the “Mechanical Turk” space — they farm out simple, rote tasks that computing can’t solve to thousands of people at a time. (Crowdflower is a venture-backed startup while Samasource is a non-profit that gives this work to refugees and people in the poorest parts of the world, including Haiti.)

Crowdflower and Samasource asked for people around the world fluent in Haitian-Creole to translate and prioritize emergency texts coming out of Haiti. So far, a few hundred have signed up. (See the map below.) Nesbit admits the privacy situation isn’t perfect, but the project helps people in dire need.

Another contact, Katie Stanton, who was an early Google employee and is now the Director of Citizen Participation at the State Department, helped get emergency responders from the U.S. Coast Guard and Red Cross involved.

Now if a Haitian texts 4636, a stranger on the other side of the world will translate it and other volunteers (pictured right) will send it to the right responder whether it’s an urgent medical need or a general request for more food and water. Volume has risen to about 2,500 messages a day since the Jan. 16 launch and messages are translated and forwarded usually in between 2 and 10 minutes. They’ve filtered through more than 20,000 texts so far.

In some cases, it’s been life-saving. Earlier this week, a Haitian woman went into labor and started bleeding out. She texted 4636, calling for help. A translator and stranger pinpointed her location on a map, giving the U.S. Coast Guard her coordinates. They were able to reach her in time to help her deliver the baby.

The non-profits behind ‘4636′ are now trying to scale it up as the number of messages rises 10 percent a day. They’re also trying to make it more sustainable with larger pools of consistent volunteers.

“Honestly, this is rare to see groups like the State Department, Ushahidi and Instedd all working together,” Nesbit said. “I hope it doesn’t take another catastrophe to see this type of collaboration again. The bright spot in all of this is seeing the tech community take ownership.”

True, but the more intriguing part of the story may be that this all started with a simple tweet. In fact, Nesbit never set foot in Haiti.

(Top photo is from the United Nations Development Program’s Flickr stream)

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I told you about the Victorian government putting the squeeze on the Tote. Blasted fools! What a way to treat a good pub!

Anyhow, I’ve made myself a bit vocal about the local.

(You can hear one of my quieter tirades here)

Somebody has to stand up for the Tote!

It’s not just a place for young people, you know, and it’s not just about the music that’s been part of Melbourne for so long either.

It’s about high-handed bureaucrats sitting at their dinky little desks with pencils behind their dinky little ears searching for ways to wring out every last drop of blood from liquor licenses across the city.

Anyone would think the government was broke for crissake.

It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if a big club consortium from the nasty end of town rolled up to take over the license from the Tote. I wonder about our Premier too. Not that I’m inferring Brumby gets kickbacks from the King St Cosa Nostra, I merely make a slight insinuation, you must forgive my verbal wanderings. I’m getting on after all.

Sometimes when I add up his (alleged) directorships on overseas companies and bits and pieces of that nature, my dredging up of two and two adds to five. Or maybe it is four. You better ask the Premier yourself.

I think I’m wandering again. I set out today to tell you that the Tote has a big message on their wall for me

They’re such nice people, and so kind to an old lady.

Spare a shilling for a glass of sweet sherry

Details have finally emerged for Gearbox Software and 2K Games’ third DLC expansion to Borderlands. It shall be known from hereon out as The Secret Armory of General Knoxx.
 
 
 

Great news, guys! SCEA has officially confirmed that GTA IV: Episodes from Liberty City will soon be coming to the PlayStation 3! As in March 2010 soon.
 
 
 

Hyundai Motor Co. posted a record quarterly operating profit as its small vehicles seem to become more popular with recession-weary car shoppers and analysts are saying that the Korean automaker should keep its edge over rivals, especially with Toyota facing an image crisis with the numerous recalls.

Hyundai reported an October-December operating profit of 837.2 billion won ($728.4 million USD), up 44 percent from a year earlier. Fourth-quarter net profit nearly quadrupled to 945.5 billion won ($822.7 million USD), well above analysts’ forecasts.

Sales for Hyundai were up 9.3 percent to 9.65 trillion won ($8.40 billion USD).

Hyundai’s sister brand Kia is also expected to see a sales growth this year as the economy recovers.

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: Reuters

15th January 2010 (Mary McKercher)
22nd January 2010 (Richard Fazzini)

With some great photos

On Sunday, Abdel Aziz began looking for more of the mud brick found last week. He had no luck, as the northern part had been completely destroyed by the Roman pit and extensive animal burrow we found in 2008. In the pit, however, Abdel Aziz did turn up a large piece of what would once have been a very nice diorite statue; he was quite proud of his find.

Here it is a few days later, somewhat cleaned up. When complete, it depicted a kneeling man holding an offering bowl bigger than he was. The text around the bowl would have named him and included an offering formula to a god (or goddess). Unfortunately all we have left is the tail end of the inscription. Even though his face is gone, the high quality of the carving of the wig, kilt and hieroglyphs is evident.

The right side of the “bowl man”; on the right a cowrie shell (about 2 cm long) whose back has been carefully sawn off to make it lie flat. It immediately put me in mind of the symbolism in Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party. According to our inspector, Hassan, cowrie shells are still used by fortune-tellers who throw shells on the ground and read the future in the patterns they form.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Firefox: Mozilla’s out with the 1.0 of its Weave project, and it delivers on what it first promised—quiet, complete syncing of bookmarks, passwords, preferences, history, and even open tabs. It also heralds the coming of a really cool mobile experience.

If Weave synced your currently installed add-ons, you’d be up and running after a fresh Firefox installation in 2 minutes. As it is, Weave is still a very efficient and lightweight sync of your core Firefox experience, allowing you to maintain multiple Firefox installations across computers and operating systems. Xmarks does bookmark and password syncing too, and across other browsers, but Weave doesn’t offer site “discovery” services or other value-added stuff—just a way to automatically connect your Firefox browsers, and even browsing sessions.

That syncing of open tabs is where Firefox Mobile, just out in a third release candidate, will really shine. As Jay Sullivan told us, the idea is that the minute you step away from your desktop or laptop and wake your phone up, Firefox Mobile will pick up on the tabs you had open while you were sitting down.

Weave syncs through Mozilla’s servers. If you’d rather sync up your passwords and bookmarks to your own hardware or cloud space, Mozilla offers instructions on setting up your own server.

Weave 1.0 is a free download, works wherever Firefox 3.5 or higher (or Firefox Mobile) does.

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Ancient World Online

The Oriental Institute of The University of Chicago is a leader in open access publishing of scholarly work on the Ancient World. In 2009 they published some 114 titles online, many of which are long out of print, rare, and hard to find. These are listed below in the order in which they appeared online, earliest at the top. The Electronic Publications Initiative of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago outlines the forward thinking policies which guide this effort.

For an up to date list of all Oriental Institute publications available online see AWOL – The Ancient World Online – 2: The Oriental Institute Electronic Publications Initiative. All told, nearly two hundred fifty volumes are now accessible.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Here’s an awesome graphic from Harvard Business Review. Essentially it shows a pie chart for each major nation in the world, and then shows the size of their A) government bail outs and B) government stimulus programs relative to the size of their economy. It’s definitely an interesting read for many reasons, it really puts things into perspective.

Yet what struck out to us was the tiny, tiny use of bailouts and stimulus by France relative to every other major economy. Despite all the anti-socialist rhetoric from certain pundits and the notion that somehow nations like the U.S. and U.K. are free market bastions while France is some sort of government-infested economic monster, the reality is that France showed the most spending restraint of all nations during the financial meltdown. And it’s during crisis when our true philosophical colors shine… They may not talk the talk, but they showed the least manipulation of the economy.

See blow-ups of the graphic below, or see the full size one via The Big Picture here >

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See Also:

• A Nuclear Critic Draws a Lesson from France’s Success
• Sorry, Krugman, But I’d Rather Not Learn From Europe
• Haiti Has Become Ground Zero For Brazil To Flex Its Muscle Against The US

IOL (Alexander Dziadosz)

The remainder of the buried avenue will be uncovered in the next few years.

“In the area that we restored, we found many sphinxes,” Hawass said. “We’ll be excavating the rest of the road until it can go to Karnak, and this will take years.”

Home to many of Egypt’s most renowned antiquities, Luxor attracts thousands of sightseers to a country where tourism is a vital source of jobs and foreign currency.

In 2006 Egypt began a plan to demolish and relocate Gurna, a village near the Valley of the Kings, to access and preserve tombs buried beneath nearly 3 200 homes.

The government built the villagers new houses about 3km away, but many complained the new homes were too small for big families, and that people would lose their livelihoods in the tourist business.

“We are not moving anyone by force,” Hawass said of the Sphinx Avenue project.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Al Ahram Weekly (Jill Kamil)

David O’Connor’s Abydos: Egypt’s First Pharaohs and the Cult of Osiris. The American University in Cairo Press, Cairo (2009)

Abydos is situated on the western bank of the Nile about seven kilometres west of the town of Balyana in Middle Egypt. It made its debut on the stage of Egypt’s ancient history even before the dynastic period, and it retained its aura of sanctity longer than any other site in Egypt. It houses the tombs and mortuary cult enclosures of the rulers of the First Dynasty. It was the cult centre of Osiris, Egypt’s most beloved hero and the central figure of the country’s most popular myth. And it is an archaeological site that casts light on the origins of the Egyptian civilisation before the dynastic period, a subject on which scholars argue to this day.

It is a debate which reminds O’Connor, an internationally recognised Egyptologist with 40 years’ experience of excavation and research at Abydos, “of Pieter Bruegel’s wonderful etching depicting scrambling men gutting an enormous fish. It towers above them while, from the vast and gaping cut, a gigantic stream of smaller fish pours across the beach. Grand theories,” he goes on, “as impressive as Bruegel’s fish are proposed about early culture and kingship in Egypt, but are based on heterogeneous and random archaeological data, akin to Bruegel’s variegated little fish. So far, these data are an inadequate foundation for the complex speculations built upon them, for the evidence… has substantial ambiguities and gaps. Yet the challenge of tracing the origins of one of the world’s most brilliant civilisations continues to fascinate us, and Abydos is increasingly important to this endeavour.”

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Computer voice-to-text technology has come a long way, and every time it gets better, new applications open up. It is still not 100 percent accurate. Hell, it’s not even 90 percent accurate. But it is accurate enough for automated voicemail transcription services to become increasingly available and good enough not to have to listen through 15 voicemails to get the gist of what they are about.  Of course, voicemails are often translated incorrectly, sometimes to comic effect.

In a study comparing the accuracy of four different voice-to-text technologies (Google Voice, Preview in Microsoft Exchange, Ditech’s PhoneTag, and Yap) the one which came out on top was PhoneTag, which is now part of Ditech Networks. PhoneTag showed an 86 percent accuracy rate in translating 500 spoken messages into text. Google Voice was only able to achieve an 82 percent accuracy in its voice-to-text translations.  The study only evaluated purely automated voice-to-text systems.  Here’s how all four fared:

Automated Voice-to-Text Accuracy:

• PhoneTag: 86%
• Microsoft: 84%
• Google: 82%>
• Yap: 78%

The study was commissioned by Ditech and carried out by William Meisel of TMA Associates. You can read his methodology in the document embedded below. Of course, a study commissioned by Google might show Google Voice coming out on top  But what I find more interesting is that 86 percent accuracy is considered something to boast about.  Ditech’s Chief Strategy Officer, Jamie Siminoff (who founded the company behind PhoneTag, Simulscribe) points out that each percentage point gain in accuracy is a big deal and that his goal is to get to 90 percent accuracy.  To get beyond that, it si still necessary to use humans to clean up the automated translations.

PhoneTag offers both fully-automated and human-assisted transcription.  One service which uses PhoneTag is Ribbit Mobile, which I’ve been using with the human-assisted transcription option turned on.  I also use Google Voice on another phone.  I’ve certainly noticed that the human-assisted transcriptions are incredibly accurate.  It can even make sense of my three-year-old son’s messages:

Hi, daddy. Hello. We’re calling you from the kitchen. We just made, what we had just made, a banana (??). Bye. Bye.’

I turned off the human-assisted option and tested some purely automated transcriptions today, so I could compare it more fairly to Google Voice.  Some messages were pretty much the same, for others the accuracy went way down, but I really couldn’t say that PhoneTag was noticeably better than Gogle Voice.  But I do notice the difference when I have the human-assisted option turned on. So while 86 percent accuracy might be something to crow about, adding human translators to the mix is still by far the best way to go.

Accuracy of Voicemail-To-text Services

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saraband.net

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Princeton University Press

Thanks to Chloe Foster for letting me know about the publication of this book.

The Last Pharaohs: Egypt Under the Ptolemies, 305-30 BC
J. G. Manning

The history of Ptolemaic Egypt has usually been doubly isolated–separated both from the history of other Hellenistic states and from the history of ancient Egypt. The Last Pharaohs, the first detailed history of Ptolemaic Egypt as a state, departs radically from previous studies by putting the Ptolemaic state firmly in the context of both Hellenistic and Egyptian history. More broadly still, J. G. Manning examines the Ptolemaic dynasty in the context of the study of authoritarian and premodern states, shifting the focus of study away from modern European nation-states and toward ancient Asian ones. By analyzing Ptolemaic reforms of Egyptian economic and legal structures, The Last Pharaohs gauges the impact of Ptolemaic rule on Egypt and the relationships that the Ptolemaic kings formed with Egyptian society. Manning argues that the Ptolemies sought to rule through–rather than over–Egyptian society. He tells how the Ptolemies, adopting a pharaonic model of governance, shaped Egyptian society and in turn were shaped by it. Neither fully Greek nor wholly Egyptian, the Ptolemaic state within its core Egyptian territory was a hybrid that departed from but did not break with Egyptian history. Integrating the latest research on archaeology, papyrology, theories of the state, and legal history, as well as Hellenistic and Egyptian history, The Last Pharaohs draws a dramatically new picture of Egypt’s last ancient state.

J. G. Manning is professor of classics and history at Yale University, and a senior research scholar at Yale Law School. He is the author of Land and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt and the coeditor of The Ancient Economy: Evidence and Models.

See the above page for the Table of Contents

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

We weren’t sure things could get any more interesting with Microsoft’s mobile rumor mill, but along comes Zune Boards with some tantalizing findings in the latest Zune software update. First up is the eEndpointFamily files, which lists all the compatible hardware — ZuneHD, for example. Also found, however, were entries for “PmxPure” and “PmxTurtle.” PMX, if you recall, seems to be a reference to Microsoft’s
Premium Mobile eXperiences group, the remnants of the Danger acquisition who have been whispered to be working on Project Pink. As for Pure and Turtle, let’s go back all the way to September 2009, when we first heard those names as the initial Pink duo — there were some supposed renders, too. If that’s not enough, two PMX table entries pointed to a snippet of text stating that “Studio members” can “View and manage pictures and videos taken with your phone at the Studio,” followed by a link that for now redirects to Zune.net. Could the mysterious Project Pink and the oft-rumored “Zune phone” be one in the same, with some “Studio” service for uploading media to the cloud? Is this all some red herring perpetuated by some amused Microsoft staffers? We don’t know, but it’s mean to tug at our heart strings like that, Microsoft, and worse that it makes Mobile World Congress even more painful to wait for. #tmdp

Zune software references rumored Project Pink devices, a video upload service? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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More performance. More customization. More MINI. Introducing the new and exclusive race-inspired MINI John Cooper Works Challenge Edition – bringing the MINI John Cooper Works even closer to the track.

In recognition of the pure pedigree that underpins MINI, the release of the MINI John Cooper Challenge Edition draws John Cooper Works even closer to the MINI CHALLENGE race car, both in its appearance and performance.

The MINI John Cooper Works Challenge Edition is powered by the same powerplant as the MINI CHALLENGE race cars; delivering 155kW from a twin-scroll turbocharged 1.6-litre four-cylinder engine. Developing a maximum of 260 Nm of torque (280 Nm torque available during Overboost) the MINI John Cooper works propels from 0-100km/h in just 6.5 seconds.

Exclusive to the Australian market, the John Cooper Works Challenge Edition includes the following features over the already highly optioned MINI John Cooper Works model: John Cooper Works aerodynamics package consisting of front, rear and side aprons, John Cooper Works Carbon spoiler, John Cooper Works Aluminium cross brace, John Cooper Works Alcantara and Carbon steering wheel, John Cooper Works Carbon gearshift knob with Alcantara shroud, John Cooper Works Carbon handbrake lever with Alcantara surround and unique Challenge Edition badging.

The Challenge Edition is available with all new MINI John Cooper Works Hardtop, Clubman or Cabrio models. Representing over $7,000 worth of value, the Challenge Edition is available for a strictly limited time as a $2,500 option.A testament to the strength and success of the MINI Challenge race series, last year the sales of MINI John Cooper Works reach unprecedented heights, accounting for 26 percent of MINI Cooper S Hardtop sales and 10 per cent of the entire model range.

The 2010 MINI Challenge season kicks off in March with the categories debut at the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide.

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ANSAmed

The goal of the exhibition ‘Abu Simbel: the preserving of the Temples, man and technology’ is to tell the story of the several stages in the extraordinary salvaging of the Egyptian Abu Simbel Temples. More than 2000 men – architects, engineers and workers – succeeded in the operation thanks to their hard work, technology, skill and genius. The exhibition will be hosted by the Mawlawi Dervish monumental complex in Cairo, restored by Professor Giuseppe Fanfoni and his group of the Italian-Egyptian Centre for Restoration and Archeology, after the first exhibition at the headquarters of the Chamber of Commerce in Rome, in May 2009.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Soros lays out his latest views on currency and the economy from Davos.

On the dollar:

“There is no alternative to the dollar, the euro has its own problems. And of course for the sterling, the United Kingdom is in worse shape than the U.S..”

“The renminbi, which of course is undervalued, is not open for people to buy.”

“Thus there is a general aversion to currencies and a flight into real assets such as commodities.”

On China:

“You said that when you see bubbles, that makes you buy, does that mean you’re active in the Chinese market?”

“Well, I have been active in the Chinese market. Right now the Chinese market is overheating and they have to slow it down. It remains to be seen how successful they are.”

(Via Pragmatic Capitalist)

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See Also:

• Soros: ‘The Ultimate Asset Bubble Is Gold’
• Doug Kass: Here’s How To Trade Tonight’s State Of The Union
• Soros: Scott Brown Will Create A Double Dip Recession

For all the talk about Greece having to sort things out by itself, a European backstop looks assured.

Gray areas simply don’t exist in such matters. Even a backstop that isn’t utilized still supports the credit of a nation, or a financial institution as was seen with AIG and Citi in the U.S..

Thus either Europe would or would not ultimately support Greece in the event of financial disaster. It doesn’t really matter if they haven’t done it yet.

And it’s official, they would:

FT: According to high-level EU officials, Greece would in the last resort receive emergency support in an operation involving eurozone governments and the Commission but not the International Monetary Fund.

Eurozone countries and EU authorities are reluctant to spell out how they would assist Greece, for fear that it would relax pressure on Athens to attack its problems and unsettle rattled financial markets.

The immediate priority is for Athens to demonstrate that it is serious about cutting public expenditure, improving tax collection, publishing reliable financial statistics and tackling corruption, the officials said.

“Greece has to sort this out itself. That is the issue,” a French official said.

Mr Barroso said “the best way to help Greece is for Greece to respect its obligations under the stability and growth pact”, a reference to the EU’s fiscal rules.

His message was echoed by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s prime minister, who said: “The euro club is a strong club with strong ties and reciprocal support. Let no one be mistaken about that.”

Read more here >

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See Also:

• Greece Once Again Denies It Needs A Bailout Even As China Refuses To Buy Debt And CDS Prices Soar
• Papandreou: Greece Is Being Targeted By An Outside Force With A Secret Agenda
• No Wonder Greece Is Bankrupt: It’s So Corrupt That Nobody Pays Any Taxes