Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 9, 2010

The titles had to be hunted out across the country by Bookshare volunteers from their libraries, through used book sites and in eBay auctions. It wasn't easy! None of the Dorothy Lyons books are in print. It took about a year to get them all, but we did it! Bookshare Volunteers are the best!

Volunteer 113

Volunteer Library Teen Law 113

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 16, 2008

Touring Pohnpei Because of the timing of the island hopper arriving on Saturday (next flight would arrive Tuesday), we had some free time on the weekend to see the sites of the island. The most famous site is the ruined stone city of Nan Madol.

Hawaii 100

Hawaii California National Site 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 30, 2007

The Braillebug web site is dedicated to promoting Braille to students who could benefit from learning Braille. I'm excited about our growing partnership with the American Foundation for the Blind, the leading foundation focused on blindness issues.

Student 100

Student Children Foundation Benefit 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Turns out, three students of the school were on the silver-medal winning blind soccer team (the Paralympic site described it as Football 5-a-Side ). We arrived in China just at the end of the Paralympics. So, paralympic athletes were a big deal. So, we were able to visit with them and congratulate them on their achievement.

China 100

China Music Student Celebrate 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 16, 2010

As conservationists progress through these steps, Miradi helps them define the scope of their project and design conceptual models and spatial maps of their sites. The program guides users through a series of step-by-step interview wizards, based on the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation.

Norway 133

Norway Conservancy Sweden Software 133

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 9, 2012

The recent upgrades in our Bookshare site and service such as the new audio formats, images, and image descriptions motivated several Members to share their thoughts, and we sought their permission to share those thoughts with you! I appreciate that so many of our Members take the time to write and thank our team.

Comment 124

Comment Audio Files Evaluation 124

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 3, 2006

This new site is the culmination of several months work from our staff and our web development partner, Mile7. It's our first complete overhaul of the site in more than four years, and we needed to reflect the maturity and breadth of Benetech's initiatives.

Articulate 100

Articulate Reflection Foundation Grant 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 5, 2007

We've just put Google Analytics on the site, and are playing with it. Miradi (the new name of what we used to call the e-Adaptive Management software) has been in beta test for a while and we've gotten great feedback from all over the world from environmental practitioners. So, feel free to visit and check it out.

Adwords 100

Adwords Conservancy Google Software 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

The site already works in a dozen languages and support for giving in more than twenty currencies. I know Terry because he was UBS’ point guy on philanthropy in Singapore and Asia before joining ammado. The challenge around something like this is critical mass, and the ammado team seems to be aiming very high in terms of execution.

Platform 100

Platform Singapore Asia Social 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 18, 2012

Maintain and develop our team's internal groupware websites: a MoinMoin wiki, a rietveld code review deployment, and several small custom sites built on Django. Maintain and develop our team's automated data processing and analysis infrastructure (POSIX-environment command line tools built on bash, make, python, and R).

Analysis 150

Analysis Statistics Chart Language 150

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 29, 2006

I was delighted to see the latest web site in Hong Kong about social enterprise, the Hong Kong Social Enterprise Resource Web. One of the most interesting things from a recent Gathering of the Social Enterprise Alliance was having an interview with a Hong Kong film crew that was doing a piece on social enterprise.

Social 100

Social Interview Web Site 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 23, 2007

The entire three and a half minute piece is up on the CBS News site: Bookshare Scans Books And Converts Them To Braille Or Audio For Immediate Access. The CBS team came to Palo Alto, as well as filming a Bookshare.org-using couple, Brian Miller and his wife Priscilla McKinley, in the Washington D.C. Thanks to our team and volunteers!

Tech 100

Tech Help Audio Washington 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 8, 2005

Susan Bazilli, an international human rights attorney, recently brought Martus to the attention of the women's rights community in Africa, through a posting to the Women's Information Technology Transfer site. Plus, we recently spotted this article on the Open Source Africa site.

Colombia 100

Colombia Nigeria Uganda Africa 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 27, 2008

The analysis of the placement of the Alanganallur site was reminiscent of what MacDonalds must go through when deciding to site one of their restaurants. Aravind doesn't like to borrow money, and start-up costs are either drawn from earnings or grants.

India 100

India Hype United States Europe 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 30, 2009

As evidenced from their comments on the site and a couple of blog posts they enjoyed the experience of “Getting to know the Neighbors” as much as we did. “On On Monday, Benetech Bookshare came to Mozilla and did a great brown bag info session about their program.

Volunteer 100

Volunteer Tutorial Open Source Info 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 14, 2007

Gustavo was the Site Manager for Bookshare.org, and was the foundation of our Bookshare.org team. I sent the following note to the Bookshare.org members and volunteers and received many, many emails expressing condolences and dismay.

Authoring 100

Authoring Foundation Team Accessibility 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 13, 2009

These sites should be working together using technology like RSS feeds. And All for Good does draw on feeds from other sites. Q: What's the difference between All for Good and other service websites like VolunteerMatch, Network for Good and Obama's Serve.gov? A: More will be revealed. We're all in this together in service.

Interview 100

Interview Afghanistan Iraq Government 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 13, 2007

It includes a feature to notify head quarters accounts when there are new field bulletins to retrieve (useful when projects are spread across a variety of field sites), and speed enhancements for accounts with large numbers of bulletins. We just released Martus 3.1 which focused on performance enhancements for our large users.

Guatemala 100

Guatemala Burma Philippines Iraq 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 18, 2007

I think of it as being similar to the social networking sites (like FaceBook or LinkedIn) where people have more control on what information gets shared with whom. We've partnered with the folks from Papilia to provide user-customization of the information they receive from us.

Literacy 100

Literacy Voice Linkedin Structure 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 9, 2008

The principal of the school, proudly showed off plans to expand the campus over the next few years, with high quality architectural site drawings that would have looked perfectly in place in Chicago. The facilities are impressive, more or less brand new. Our team toured the school.

Los Angeles 100

Los Angeles China Jordan Classroom 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 4, 2007

According to the Bookshare.org Web site, a $25 initiation fee and a $50 annual subscription "gives patrons access to a library of more than 30,000 books and 150 newspapers. I found Bookshare's interesting history on its Web site's About Us section: "Benetech, a new kind of nonprofit enterprise, is sponsoring the Bookshare initiative.

Award 100

Award San Diego New York New York City 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 11, 2007

We just did a site upgrade on Bookshare.org : our third in as many months. Among the dozens of improvements in this update are two that I'm particularly jazzed about. The first is the initial international changes as we take Bookshare.org global. Users with disabilities outside the U.S.

San Jose 100

San Jose Virginia Copyright Global 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 10, 2005

Skoll also has it posted at their site: Skoll Foundation News , as Sandy Herz was the other main person quoted in the story. Here is the video and text from our CBS-Channel Five: Silicon Valley Ten Years After Netscape's IPO.

Washington 100

Washington Foundation Channel Local 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 22, 2008

Paddy Sullivan, part of our membership team, volunteered to demonstrate the new version of Don Johnston's Read:OutLoud software, which will be available once we launch the new site. Carrie Karnos gave the demonstration to Tracy and Margaret Romer (also from Department of Ed) of the ever-popular book mangler, I mean, book chopper.

Guatemala 100

Guatemala Demonstration United States Washington 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 27, 2005

My second day at the WEF, and I'm blogging on the WEF's site and writing my pieces for the BBC. Communications overload. Here's a link to my latest WEF blog, on the Social Investing session.

Site 100

Site Communication Social 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 17, 2008

I posted these on my Flickr site with creative commons licenses (of course)! I took tons of pictures at the conference and at the post-conference visit to the villages, ice-caves and mountains of the region around Linz: the Dachstein.

Austria 100

Austria Accessibility Conference Portugal 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 13, 2007

We were able to show the latest version of the Route 66 demonstration site, which is now fully functional for trial use. And of course, we have some major funders who support Benetech and provide us with risk capital that we can use to advance projects, such as Skoll and Omidyar. Johnny Falla and Ruth Norris of Skoll joined us at the event.

North Carolina 100

North Carolina Literacy Foundation Demonstration 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 20, 2011

In addition to identifying environmental threats and solutions, Elaina says Miradi helped her determine that people in the north end of Guam were more focused on dump sites than watershed issues.

Guam 124

Guam Conservancy Software Help 124

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

I’d like to thank our panelists and moderator, everyone who has participated at the event (on site or remotely by sending questions and comments), and our users, partners and supporters throughout the years who have made Martus possible.

Burma 168

Burma Analysis Guatemala Law 168

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 21, 2006

By placing Omid on the Internet, Roya and Ladan hope to reach Iranians in Iran and all over the world (as long as access to the site is not blocked in Iran) and encourage friends and relatives of victims of the Islamic Republic to contribute and make changes to it.

Iran 100

Iran Library Database Websites 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 23, 2004

On Monday morning, the 2004 National Book Award winners in fiction and nonfiction were made live on our Bookshare.org site, providing rapid access to these books to readers with disabilities. Bookshare.org News. Bookshare.org has the ability to move quickly!

Paraguay 100

Paraguay Detroit Ohio History 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 20, 2008

The picture from above shows its site: it's on the waterfront across the main harbor. We visited several schools, including detailed visits to two elementary schools and a high school. The first school was Sokehs Powe School, which is on Sokehs Island next to the incredible rock pinnacle I mentioned in an earlier blog.

Micronesia 100

Micronesia Classroom Language Student 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 20, 2010

I've included the post below, but comments are best done on the HuffPo site above. My latest post on HuffPo is now up: Going to Davos to Redesign the Planet , about my proposal to the WEF's Global Redesign Initiative. How would you try to change the world if you had the chance?

Proposal 100

Proposal Government University Switzerland 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 25, 2005

EQUITAS is under particular pressure just now because of its involvement in an excavation of remains on a ranch near San Onofre, a particularly sensitive site that may hold the remains of hundreds of disappeared people from the region, and has already yielded dozens of bodies.

Colombia 100

Colombia Technique Software Adopt 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 28, 2005

Since any user can contribute a scanned book to the site, it takes just one person to add a book to the collection. Gone is the de facto censorship that resulted from publishers of texts in alternative formats trying to cater to their largest demographic.

Bookmarking 100

Bookmarking Student Demographics Alternative 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 10, 2009

A recent example of this was web site accessibility. Change will happen when the organized blind sue Amazon or Amazon's partners, if they calculate that the cost of complying will be less than the cost of not complying.

Amazon 100

Amazon Accessibility eBook Problem 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 2, 2007

Route 66 Literacy Our newest project is Route 66 Literacy, and it includes a demonstration site that anyone can try out. And, the most committed and dynamic folks from that crowd may have the chance to serve on our board of directors. If you know someone like that, send her (or him) my way, too!

Literacy 100

Literacy San Jose Guatemala Bangladesh 100