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Goodbye, Blogger posted on November 15, 2009 - 1:45am

I made the switch today. Jackfruity is now at jackfruity.com.I'm off to a world of plugins and shiny, shiny dashboards....Love,JF

WordCamp NYC 2009 posted on November 14, 2009 - 11:00pm

I'm at WordCamp NYC today, hopping from session to session of a superbly colorful schedule. I signed up partly to hang out with Jer, who's presenting twice this afternoon, and partly to learn what WordPress can do for me and for the SIPA academic community.

the cost of climate change posted on October 25, 2009 - 4:01am

Economists estimate the impact of climate change at 5 to 20 percent of global GDP. Five percent. Doesn't sound too bad, right?

gays and gorillas posted on October 23, 2009 - 10:46pm

I finally got a chance to catch up on Google Reader today. Some things you should see:

  • Friend a GorillaFor one dollar a year, you can friend a gorilla through the Uganda Wildlife Authority."Anyone can be a friend of a gorilla or follow specific gorillas living the forest on Facebook or Twitter for a minimum donation of $1. You will get updates on your gorilla friend(s), including photos, videos, and GPS coordinates, all of which are gathered by actual trackers that visit the gorillas daily."
  • Ethiopia 2010: Here Comes Africa’s Festival of Electoral FraudAn overview of recent elections in Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe, looking forward to Ethiopia.

traitor. posted on October 17, 2009 - 6:10pm

I've been using Blogger for six years. It's seen me through angsty college musings, a public to-do list, the beginnings of a cooking blog, an ill-fated attempt at blogging in Russian, and an even iller-fated attempt at Rebekah auf Deutsch. Oh, and this here web log.When I started blogging, WordPress.com didn't exist, and everyone I knew who wasn't using Xanga (cringe) or LiveJournal (ditto) was on Blogger. But as I've continued, more and more of my friends have defected, falling head over heels for WP's plugins and beautiful themes and shiny dashboards and seamless post tagging (Blogger was sadly late to the post categorization party) and integrated commenting (remember the days of Haloscan?).To which my response has always been: bah humbug.

(Belated) Blog Action Day: Climate Change posted on October 16, 2009 - 5:41pm

My post for last year's Blog Action Day on poverty focused on my friend Halle's fair trade organization in Uganda, One Mango Tree.This year's topic is climate change, and I'm equally excited to talk about the work another of my friends is doing. For the last six weeks I've been working with Global Voices on a project with MS Action Aid Denmark called Global Change.

Australian radio show features citizen journalism in Uganda posted on September 24, 2009 - 3:50pm

After I published an article for the Committee to Protect Journalists on citizen journalism during the Kampala riots, Shevonne Hunt of Australian radio show The Fourth Estate contacted me to talk about the role Twitter and blogs played in the crisis.Solomon King (the force behind Ugandan blog aggregator Blogspirit and one of the most prolific tweeters during the riots) and I are featured in the show's most recent podcast. You can access it at The Fourth Estate (scroll down to the bottom, click "Show Episodes," and choose the episode from September 25).

The Internet vs. the printing press: am I wrong? posted on September 16, 2009 - 3:48am

Blogren, Berkterns and others, I need your advice.I'm taking a class on the social impact of mass media. Tonight we discussed the printing press, and how print lends — now less than before, but I think it still applies — a legitimacy to thought that ideas that haven't been committed to paper lack.Someone suggested that all new forms of media give increased levels of authority to the ideas they transmit — not just print, but radio and television as well.I argued that this rule doesn't hold for the Internet, and I was promptly shot down by a surprisingly large number of people in the class. Their points were:

  • The Internet isn't a grand democratic commons. It's highly elite.

Things seem to have settled down somewhat in Kampala, where riots on Thursday and Friday caused at least nine and possibly as many as 14 deaths.

Calestous Juma on how Seacom will change everything posted on September 13, 2009 - 2:50am

In addition to censorship in China and Twitter in Tehran, I spent a decent part of this summer writing about Internet infrastructure in Africa. The summer had plenty of stories: damage to the SAT-3 cable in western Africa caused major Internet blackouts in Nigeria, Niger, Togo and Benin, a situation that hopefully won't happen again now that Nigeria's new GLO-1 cable has arrived.