Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

Although it's digitally available on the Kindle and other ebook platforms, these aren't accessible to our Bookshare members. The hottest book in publishing is already in Bookshare in high quality digital text. Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol launched yesterday to tremendous sales.

eBook 100

eBook Culture Digital Accessibility 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 27, 2014

Hosted on the Crowdrise platform, the Challenge launched today, October 27, and runs through December 5th. We are competing against other participating organizations—and racing against the clock—to raise funds and secure matching funding from the Skoll Foundation.

Challenge 144

Challenge eBook Social Ohio 144

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 4, 2009

Their website, freshBrain.org , provides a social networking based platform where teens can innovate, create and share using a variety of technologies. Skills around technology, creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration.

Utah 133

Utah Teen Skills Mobile 133

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

WIPO Headquarters The event this last week at WIPO in Geneva, Switzerland, was the ninth meeting of the Stakeholder’s Platform, which was set up about the time the original Treaty draft was introduced. The Stakeholders Platform and the TIGAR project were time-limited and needed to be replaced by a new structure.

Accessibility 247

Accessibility License Copyright Library 247

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 30, 2013

Next month, I will be heading to TOC a couple of days early in order to participate in a W3C Workshop on eBooks and the Open Web Platform, where I will be talking about Social DRM (Digital Rights Management). There is no better place to engage with colleagues about new technologies, changing business models, fresh ideas, and shared standards.

Accessibility 171

Accessibility eBook New York City Social 171

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 15, 2012

Leveraging the strong community of Bookshare volunteers, we are building a crowd-sourced platform for creating affordable, high-quality image descriptions and tactile graphics in accessible textbooks. We look forward to sharing in future blogs the success stories of this and other partnerships.

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Library Student eBook Accessibility 164

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 4, 2013

So we will go beyond the traditional providers and ensure that teachers, students, and other authors also have platforms that help them create materials that are instantly usable by everyone. You’ll hear about our work with publishers, distributors, and makers of content platforms to implement our born accessible strategy.

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Literacy Program United Arab Emirates Student 166

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 14, 2011

We’re also developing a new platform, Beneforge, to make it easier to engage with new and existing projects both inside and outside Benetech, applying technology to achieve positive social change. We hope that you’ll join this movement and realize the true dream of the technical person: to work on challenges that Matter!

Technology 150

Technology Change Social Literacy 150

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 24, 2010

This was first introduced (to my knowledge) in the Stakeholder's Platform discussions, which were the quickly ginned-up alternative option created in response to the original introduction at WIPO of the Treaty for the Visually Impaired ("TVI") by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay (and now co-sponsored by Mexico).

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Authoring Paraguay Law Copyright 150

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 16, 2014

Mifos can immediately deploy these new mobile features of its financial inclusion platform, which delivers world-class microcredit services that help open up new opportunities for the poor and their families. billion poor and unbanked.

Open Source 183

Open Source Africa Zimbabwe Malawi 183

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 27, 2013

Building a Strong Culture of Communications This summer, we rolled out the updated Benetech brand identity and a new narrative platform, which are featured on our redesigned website. It’s part of our larger effort to build a strong, organization-wide culture of communications.

India 142

India Literacy Global Accessibility 142

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 9, 2013

Aiming at the revenue potential of these growth markets, the main international players in the world of digital content distribution – such as Amazon, Apple and Google – are racing to enhance their platforms with non-English content. Spanish publishing is one of the hottest digital battlegrounds.

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Spain Language America Law 151

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 8, 2011

Route 66 Route 66, our online platform for teaching reading, has officially launched thanks to support from the Peery Foundation. We’re thrilled that students and other readers who have disabilities that keep them from reading standard print can now read the same books as their peers, using the same devices.

Guatemala 159

Guatemala Literacy Qatar Open Source 159

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 10, 2009

There's so much to talk about here with Amazon, so let me focus on just a few key points: The Closed Platform problem. The Closed Platform problem. Unfortunately, when they turn it off on the Kindle, they are turning it off for everybody including people with disabilities. The Textbook problem.

Amazon 100

Amazon Accessibility eBook Problem 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 3, 2008

She was lying on a platform in the family house, looked over by her mother, Menty, and great-grandmother, Dorothy. I was surprised to see a teenaged boy wearing an American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) soccer jersey: AYSO is the soccer league where I volunteer as a referee during the fall.

Children 109

Children Phone Green Local 109

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 10, 2006

moment when I first read some of Jonathan's essays years ago, and this book is a platform for expanding on these crucial topics. It often explains why certain initiatives failed and others succeeded. I had that kind of "aha!" The best example of these insights is the "Trusted Source Relationship" concept.

Technology 100

Technology Social Analytics Project 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 3, 2013

We are developing many of these free tools with publishers and content creators in mind and in consideration of the online platforms more and more people use to author and publish information.

Literacy 208

Literacy eBook Images Accessibility 208

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 27, 2013

With Bookshare, we knew that a web-based platform would enable us to get the product to scale and into the hands of hundreds of thousands of users today. Then, with Bookshare, our users decided (and still do) what books they want in the collection.

Develop 144

Develop Social Library eBook 144

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 12, 2006

The only open platform for sharing information came out of University Lahore where some students and professors put together a solution called "RisePak." Even today, communication in the zone is quite limited in terms of any open, shared channels. FYI, the cell phones in most of Kashmir worked even immediately after the quake.

Pakistan 100

Pakistan Disaster Wiki Google 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 17, 2012

We're pushing ahead, and we look forward to helping human rights groups keep their data safe in more ways and on more platforms. It stands up remarkably well, and we're proud of the code: since 1.0, there has not been even one security-related bug.

Public 150

Public Generation Problem Analysis 150

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 14, 2009

The publishing industry has put forward an alternative to the treaty called the Stakeholders Platform which is based on voluntary action, which the disability community feels is the status quo, which is not good enough. Nothing I heard from the Copyright Office made me think they were pro-Treaty.

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Copyright Proposal Audio eBook 104

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 11, 2013

Matching Techies With Social Causes SocialCoding4Good began with the idea of building a sort of Match.com for tech volunteerism — an algorithmic platform that would match individual software developers to nonprofit organizations that were building open source software for socially good causes.

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Open Source Lesson Tech Project 118

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 20, 2012

At scale, our platform will support an active network of education and volunteer opportunities for individual and corporate technologists of all levels, as well as a practical toolset for nonprofits and social enterprises building open source software solutions in service of social good.

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Los Angeles Mobile Impact Technology 205

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 28, 2012

My organization, Benetech, alone has products and services touching on all of these areas: • We write the leading software package used for managing conservation projects: Miradi, a standalone software program usable on PCs and Macs, and our Read2Go software is the leading Special Education Literacy software for the iOS platform (for iPhones and iPads) (..)

Social 196

Social Literacy Open Source Application 196

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 11, 2014

For more advanced app requirements, they would start with their application 90-95% done already on the platform. It will allow organizations to go online and design a mobile app that pulls together the information they need, all with customized branding.

Data 187

Data Impact Open Source Mobile 187

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 26, 2006

Later on, I had the chance to chat with Negroponte about getting a development unit to use to write software for this platform, and I was definitely encouraged. Rory is normally quite skeptical, but he was enthusiastic about the possibility that this would really make an impact.

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South Africa Nigeria Brazil India 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 30, 2011

It is not about the technology, it is not about platforms. "My colleagues and I at Benetech spend a lot of time working with people on the ground to figure out what's the strategic use of their information, and that is what the assessment needs to be about," said Ball. "It It's about what are you trying to accomplish.

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Conference Yemen Syria Skype 167

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 24, 2015

Kipp’s idea was that we could take this paper-based rape reporting system and build it on top of our Martus secure human rights software platform. In quick succession I met the medical director who oversees the doctors in the hospital, and then the hospital CEO, Dr. Sam Thenya.

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New York Boston Washington Africa 100