Facebook recently announced a test in Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Slovakia, Serbia, Guatemala, and Cambodia. If you work in marketing or communications, you know about the Facebook Newsfeed and it’s impact on organic reach. Some of your posts are seen by lots of people, and some of your posts aren’t. Facebook can’t exist without its users. So the Newsfeed algorithm tries to predict what each user wants to see in their Newsfeed. But no algorithm is perfect. MORE

This is based on a talk I gave in Sri Lanka last year at the University of Peradeniya, but with a heavier technology component given the engineering audience. Technology and Human Rights Talk. My talk this week at Stanford was videoed and placed on the EE380 class website. I covered our Human Rights program, including the Martus Project and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (which joined Benetech last year). MORE

Before and during her studies, she conducted field research for governmental and non-governmental organizations, as well as foundations, on maternal and child health in Sri Lanka, Ghana, Haiti, Somalia, Uganda, Kenya and India. MORE

We've also had major efforts in Burma, Sri Lanka and Guatemala, to name a few; efforts we expect to continue this year. As many folks know, I try to send out quarterly updates on what's new at Benetech. Well, I just got my first one out in 2008! Regular Beneblog readers will know most of this, but it's always handy to pull it together all in one place. MORE

I’m Thushan Ganegedara, a 3 rd year undergraduate from the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. Many thanks to Thushan Ganegedara for this guest post about his summer open source project. My interests are Mobile Development and Computational Intelligence. My first-ever experience with Google Summer of Code has been with Benetech. I have realized that Benetech is indeed “technology serving humanity.” MORE

You can read about some of the NGOs that have used Martus to back up their data in Guatemala, Sri Lanka, the Phillippines, and Colombia. Guest Beneblog by Vijaya Tripathi As a Program Associate for the Benetech Human Rights Program (HRP), I train and support human rights advocates who use Benetech’s free and open source Martus program to securely document human rights violations. MORE

Like Sri Lanka where pictures weren’t getting out. Tonight, I attended a live panel discussion on the question of whether Technology is Really Good for Human Rights, or not. Below are live notes – apologies for spelling and grammar – that follow the main points and audience q/a. Enjoy! MORE

I also lived in Sri Lanka right about the time that sex tourism became a big deal, and saw it firsthand. "I think a lot of people perhaps have gotten a one-sided understanding of this issue of trafficking. They see it as coercive prostitution, or just see prostitution as synonymous with trafficking, which is really not the case. MORE

Our staff are actively working in the region in Sri Lanka and East Timor, but on December 26th were not in harm's way. Our partner groups and friends in Sri Lanka have also fared well, to our relief. Benetech's Patrick Ball was on National Public Radio's Morning Edition show today in a piece entitled Uncertainty the Rule in Gauging Deaths from Tsunami. MORE