Owen abroad

Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Here is a  really nice animated talk by Dan Pink on what really motivates us.

For those who can’t play the video, he says that monetary incentives work for simple, straightforward tasks, but they don’t work at all well for tasks that require conceptual and creative thinking.  According to him, what motivates people is autonomy, mastery and purpose.

One conclusion I draw from this is that there are probably a lot more people than you might think who would be willing to spend a lot of time and effort helping to make the world a better place by reducing poverty, if we did a better job of enabling them to give their time and abilities.  According to Pink, what will motivate them is the challenge, the opportunity to develop mastery, and the knowledge that they are making a contribution to a purpose they believe in.  Those of us who work in development need to do some more thinking about how we can provide more platforms on which those contributions can be made, rather than just asking people to pay money in taxes or in donations.

In a more satirical vein, if you work in the aid business I think you’ll enjoy the “Hand Relief International” blog. Here’s the latest post, on innovation in development:

Speaking about thinking – I have been thinking about “innovation” a lot lately, as I noticed the word is all the rage these days. The challenge in our sector is how to “integrate innovation” in our language without changing much about the way things work.  … Passing innovation in a world dominated by career professionals with many years in the business and certain ways of doing things is a pretty tall order but then donor’s don’t really want to see much rocking of the boat happening either – that would force them to change their ways, which always makes them uncomfortable – they want to see the word used a lot, and they want to hear the occasional 300-words story about it, that can be put in a neat textbox in a report.

(Thanks to @AIDSPolicyProj for the link to the Dan Pink video)

This is the third post in a series providing non-technical advice about affordable and practical IT for people working in developing countries, especially where internet access is not great.   In the introductory post, I talked about the basic set-up – getting a computer and making sure it is secure and properly backed up, and getting basic office software and email.  In the second post I talked about easy ways to read blogs.

This third post looks at the software on your computer.  It does not deal with online services (such as Gmail or Dropbox) which I’ll cover next time.

Web browser

Many people use Internet Explorer because it is already set up on their computer.  But Google’s Chrome (free) is faster and more secure, and it just works.  I also have Firefox (free) installed, mainly because there are some plugins that I like and which are not yet available for Chrome; but for day-to-day use Firefox is getting too bloated and slow. (The beta version of Firefox 4 seems to be faster.)

Because I use a couple of different computers, I use Xmarks (free plugin for both Chrome and Firefox) to synchronise the web browsers across computers and across browsers. As well as synchronising bookmarks it synchronises passwords and it can even open the same tabs for you when you move from one computer to another.

Player for videos and music

I use VLC media player (free) because it seems to be able to play just about anything I throw at it.  Lots of people like MediaMonkey (free).

Communications:

Skype (free) is very useful for people who travel.  Skype-to-skype calls are free of charge; and you can use Skype to call people in other countries very cheaply (because your call goes over the internet to the destination country and only goes into the telephone network for the last part of the journey).  The latest version of Skype supports 5-way videoconferences; but that isn’t going to work if you are on a dial up connection.

However, for technical reasons that are too boring to explain, Skype can be a pain if you don’t have good bandwidth.  A good alternative is Google Talk (free) – but it does not do conference calls, and you cannot dial out to normal telephone numbers like you can with Skype.

I’ve also heard good things about Oovoo for multi-user videoconferencing.

Podcasts

I love having podcasts to listen to – I subscribe to podcasts ranging from film reviews to politics and technology.  Many mainstream radio servicies, especially the BBC and NPR, are making their programmes available and there are specialist programmes (such as my Development Drums podcast). Podcasts are a great way to keep in touch with what is happening back home: you can listen to them on long plane flights and car journeys, or in the gym.

Many people will already have iTunes (free) installed on their computer and this provides an easy way to download podcasts automatically. And if you have an iPod or an iPhone, you can set them to transfer the downloaded podcasts to your device automatically.  I don’t use iTunes for my podcasts, partly because I don’t like Apple’s attitude to controlling its users.

I use RSSRadio to manage my podcasts – it has really powerful controls (for example, you can decide which directory you want the podcasts to go into, and how many back-episodes you want it to keep).  I then use a utility called SyncBack (free) to keep my MP3 player up to date automatically.

Other people recommend Juice (formerly iPodder) or MediaMonkey for downloading podcasts.  A new option which is growing in popularity is DoubleTwist – particularly valuable for people with Android phones.

Twitter

If you like Twitter, you’ll like Tweetdeck (free) which makes the flow of your twitter feed manageable.  I find this much easier than using the website.

Faster downloading & file sharing

In developing countries, downloading from the internet can be slow. It can also be irritating if the download breaks half way and you need to start again from the beginning. Free Download Manager (er, free) can help you with this.

Proxy service

Another way to overcome a slow internet connection is to use a proxy service such as OnSpeed. These typically charge a fee. You set up your computer so that you get your information via this service, which get the data on your behalf and compress it before sending it to your computer.

These services can also be useful for getting round blocks imposed by some countries on access to particular websites.

Utilities

For compressing and uncompressing files: 7-Zip (free)

For managing photos: Picasa (free)- this is both a website for storing photos, and photo management software you can install on your computer.

Privacy and cleaning computers (important to avoid identity theft): C-Cleaner (free)

Turn your computer into a wifi hotspot: Connectify (free, but Windows 7 only)

Next time, I’ll look at online services relevant to development workers.

… is here.  Simon’s stuff is always well worth reading – he has an enviable ability to synthesize ideas from across disciplines, and explain them with a coherent narrative.

Every time I add a new blog post, several hundred people now receive it automatically by email.  (If you would like email updates in future, just type your email address into the box at the top right of the page.  You can also remove yourself from the list at any time in exactly the same way.)

It isn’t surprising that people prefer to have blog posts come to them, rather than to have to make the effort to visit every blog they want to read.  This is especially true if you have low bandwidth or if internet access is expensive, as is often the case in developing countries. I guess that’s why some people like the email option.  But most blogs do not offer email subscriptions; and if you follow several blogs you might find it a bit of a pain to have your email clogged up with this stuff.

So you don’t to want to visit each blog individually, and you can’t or don’t want to get them all by email.   Not everyone knows that there are some good solutions to this problem, especially if they are not all that interested in technology. So here’s a quick guide to how to read blogs and other websites easily.

I read over 250 blogs regularly, because I find them informative, entertaining and interesting.  I get more diversity of opinion and ideas from those 250 blogs than from reading one or two newspapers; and often you get the chance to learn from real experts in their fields, without the casual mistakes, prejudices and dumbing down that you get when those views are intermediated by lazy journalists.

But I don’t want to visit 250 websites each morning. Nor do I want all that stuff arriving in my email each day.  I don’t want to read everything that they all write: I want to skip through the headlines, or a brief summary of each article, so that I can see which ones I want to read properly.

Fortunately there is a wonderful behind-the-scenes feature of almost every blog – and many other websites – called RSS.  I’ll spare you the technical details, but this stands for “Real Simple Syndication” and it means that you can pull the contents of a blog or website to another place.  And that in turn means you can get all the blogs you want to read in one place.

The simplest and most widely-used solution is Google Reader.   This is a website which lets you read blogs, rather like Hotmail or GMail lets you read your mail. You tell Google Reader the addresses of all the blogs you want to read, and it pulls all the posts to one place.   It looks a bit like an email programme: you can easily see what’s new, and skip through the headings until you find something that looks interesting.  When a blog post is new and unread it shows up in bold.

As well as blogs, you can subscribe to the feeds of other websites, such as the BBC Africa News or DFID Press Releases.   You can even set up a Google Alert for a specialist subject – such as your own name! – and have that appear among your feeds.  You can have all your friends’ Facebook statuses in a feed.  This means that you can decide what you are interested in, all over the net, and bring it all together in one place.

You can put the blogs in folders – mine are grouped into “Africa”, “Development”, “Technology” and so on.  Some people put their “must read” feeds into one folder, which they look at each day,  and their occasional reading in another folder for when they want to do some browsing.

However, Google Reader is an online website, and that may not be ideal for you if your internet connection is slow, or if you are on a plane.  One solution to this is Google Gears, which is a way to access Google services like Google Mail and Google Reader if you are not online.  I have found Gears a bit unreliable in the past, so it is not my preferred solution.

There are many other ways to have your computer fetch the information from these feeds when you are online.  (These programmes are technically called aggregators or feed readers.) Some of them can be set to download the content to your computer so that you can read it later offline, like you can with your email.

If you have Outlook 2007, then you have a feed reader right in front of you.  You can tell Outlook which RSS feeds you want to read and they will appear in a separate folder underneath your Inbox.  To use this, you can go to the Tools menu, choose Account settings, then RSS feeds.  Paste in the address from the blog or website you want to subscribe to.  (Use Ctrl+V to paste into the box).  Apparently you can also add feeds to Outlook automatically from Internet Explorer.

I prefer not to use Outlook for reading blogs, however.  I use FeedDemon instead, which is a free download. This is very easy to use, and it has the neat feature that it synchronises with Google Reader. So if I add a new subscription to Google Reader, it is automatically added to FeedDemon.  If I have read something in FeedDemon, it is marked as read in Google Reader.

There are other feed readers, such as SharpReader.  (I use FeedDemon because of its synchronisation with Google Reader.)

If your office does not let you install new software, you may be stuck with Outlook (if you have Outlook 2007) or an online service like Google Reader.

Which blogs should you be reading?  If you are in to development you may be interested in my list of the best development blogs – look at the suggestions in the comments, which include some important omissions from my original post.  There is a longer list of what I am reading down the right hand side of my blog page.

How do you get started? Adding subscriptions manually is a bit of a bore at first.  Fortunately there is a way to share subscription lists.  To get you started, here are twenty two key development-related blogs in the form of an OPML file.  Right click the link and download this file to your computer, and save it to your desktop. Then in Google Reader or Feed Demon you can import this  file and it will automatically add these blogs to your subscriptions. (You can always unsubscribe if you don’t like them or if you find this too much).  I can’t see a way to import an OPML file into Outlook, unfortunately. ** UPDATE: See the comments for how do to this in Outlook. **

The key point of all this is that there is a way to subscribe to blogs and websites, so that all the information you are interested in comes to you in one place, whether from blogs, newspapers, website, facebook or even search.  This makes it really easy for you to see what is happening all over the world as you drink your morning coffee.

And if all that sounds terribly complicated, don’t forget you can get this blog by email by putting your address into the box on the top right of the page – or, if you must, send me an email and I’ll add you manually.

Happy reading …

Most of the people who read this blog are interested in development rather than computers. Many of you live in developing countries, where the internet can be slow and expensive, and computer support can be difficult. So I thought it might be useful to give you some non-technical suggestions for how to manage if you live somewhere where the computer facilities are rather basic.

In this first post in a series, I’ll look at the basic set up.

Read the rest of this entry »

Terrific post by Giulio Quaggiotto at the World Bank PSD blog on the trend towards more publication of data, rather than or as well as information and analysis (and as well as spin).  The key point is that organisations (such as government donors and international institutions) should focus on getting the data out there, rather than trying to intermediate it for their users.  Giulio says:

If resources are limited, focus your efforts on making your data open rather than in producing generic “lessons learned” documents (or other knowledge management products) that have little contextual value for practitioners on the ground. In a world where SMS makes it possible to connect with affected communities even in rural areas, those products will sound increasingly hollow.

In our work on aid transparency, we’ve heard a lot of staff of aid agencies insist that aid agencies have to package the data, otherwise it will be no use to anyone.  The charitable interpretation is that they want to make sure that information is useful; less positively, this impulse may come from the desire to avoid difficult questions that may arise from the raw data.

There is an excellent slide show by Chris Taggart at countculture on this latter point: the risk that open data will lead to the exposure of problems and to difficult questions being asked.

I do not have a problem with public authorities using data to present information and analysis that they think is useful and which will help build their reputation.  But they should publish the raw, underlying data as well.  Any services which they provide to information consumers – such as websites – should use the same data, and the same public access interface, as is available to everyone else.  So if someone else wants to set up a different website, telling the story in a different way or mixing it up with data from another source, they can do so.  There is no reason why the authorities should have privileged access to the data: it should be a common, universally accessible layer on which anyone can build their service or tell their story.

There is a particular challenge in publishing foreign assistance: the consumers of information want information from many different donor agencies and international organisations.  In most cases, citizens in developing countries don’t want to know what a particular organisation is up to everywhere; they want to know what all organisations are up to in a particular place or on a particular topic.  So information intermediaries serving these users need some way to pull together data from many different sources, and turn it into a single stream of comparable, consistent and coherent data.  To a large extent information intermediaries could  do this automatically, if the organisations publish enough detail about their activities to enable the data to be compared; but to some extent it requires that data is deliberately classified and structured to enable this kind of mash up.   A good example is the ability to trace aid from one organisation to another: a lot of aid passes through many organisations before it arrives at its intended beneficiary, and even if every organisation is transparent about all its spending, there is no direct way to track the aid through this chain.  That would need an agreed way of tagging the data so that we can all see how money flows through the system.

So for me, the key messages are:

a. publish the raw data, either instead of or alongside the information and analysis (and sometimes spin)

b. to the extent necessary, agree a minimal set of standards for the way the data are structured and the detail it contains to enable users easily to mix and mash the data so that they can use it. The International Aid Transparency Initiative has the potential to do this.

c.  Aid agencies should not feel that they themselves have to meet the needs of information consumers; they should provide financial support to information intermediaries who will access this data, mix it with other data, and provide locally useful and relevant information which meet a wide range of needs.   The more the donors make detailed, raw data easily available in a consistent format, the less financial support they will need to provide to information intermediaries enable them to use it.

What are good ways to get feedback from the intended benefiaries of an aid programme? Can we use text messaging and other technologies to crowdsource monitoring?

VirtualEconomics is an unusual blog because it is maintained by someone in the front line of designing and delivering an substantial aid programme in one of the big bilateral donor agencies: Matt is the head of economics for the UK aid program in India.

Matt is interested in how to get feedback from the people who are the intended beneficiaries of aid:

New technologies for crowd-sourcing significantly bring down the transactions costs for collecting and ‘mashing’ data from many stakeholders. Examples include SMS-based systems (e.g. Ushahidi’s crisis reporting), smart-phone systems (e.g. Kenyan crop insurance) and web-based systems (e.g. eMoksha’s Fix Our City). What other examples are there?

So a question for us all to consider, how would you go about designing a simple platform for the Papua New Guinea public to provide reliable feedback on whether kids have received their textbooks? What’s the best solution?

As well as Ushahidi, another promising approach is Daraja in Tanzania which is going to use SMS messaging to provide feedback about which water points are working (full disclosure: I am on the board of Twaweza which is a partner of Daraja).

With changing technology and attitudes, we seem to be on the brink of a revolution in getting information from prospective benefiaries of aid.  Do you know of any existing, working programs like, or promising new approaches?

I’ve closed the comments here: if you have suggestions, please add them to Matt’s post.

Gapminder Desktop has been released and it is free.  Now you can do the same kind of graphs that Hans Rosling does in his amazing TED talks (see here and here).

I’ve been playing with it this morning and I find it captivating. Perhaps that just shows that I’m a data geek.

Gapminder on my PC

This is a great example of intermediaries (in this case, Google) creating applications that people can actually use, based on raw data published by government.  Governments and international institutions could never do something like this.  That is why they should focus on liberating the data, in a free, open, standardised way, so that more applications like this can be developed.

The World Bank is today launching a new website, data.worldbank.org, from which you can get a huge range of statistics and indicators about development.  In the past you had to pay to use World Development Indicators, or buy a CD-ROM.  From today you can  find, download, manipulate, use, and re-use the data compiled by the World Bank, without restrictions or payment.

Not only has the World Bank made this data available, it has created interfaces that enable programmers to access the data automatically (in technical language, they are providing an API).  That in turn means that individuals and organisations can create programmes, websites or visualizations that use the data and enable them to mash it up with other information.

This data does not yet included detailed World Bank project data.  But the World Bank is part of the International Aid Transparency Initiative, IATI, through which 18 donors are working together to put detailed aid data online.  When that is up and running, it will be possible to access aid data in the same way as the development information being put online by the World Bank today.

This is a huge step forward for open access to development data.  Well done the World Bank.

It would be invidious to recommend particular blogs, and what’s the point of having a blog if you can’t be invidious? So, if you only read a few development blogs, here is my list of who I think you should be reading. I expect I have embarrassed myself by leaving out somebody crucial – if so, please tell me in the comments and I’ll fix it.  I’ve also updated the blogroll on the right of the page.

Development blogs you should be reading

To make this pleasingly controversial, I’ve also put them roughly in order, from “must read” at the top to “probably should read”.  I’m not going in for that “in no particular order” fence-sitting stuff.

• Chris Blattman
• Duncan Green
• Bill Easterly (and colleagues)
• Aid Thoughts
• Karen Grepin
• Blood and Milk and everything else by Alana Shaikh
• Texas in Africa
• Global Dashboard
• Wronging Rights
• Tales from the Hood
• Transitionland
• White African
• Good Intentions Are Not Enough
• Hand Relief International (spoof)
• Wandering Thoughts
• Rethinking Development Economics
• Aid on the Edge of Chaos
• last and least, me: Owen Abroad

If you want an email whenever this blog is updated, please put your email address in the box top right.

Development organisations and think-tanks

Here are some blogs from development organisations and think tanks – some of them can err on the wrong side of the blog/flog boundary from time to time.  Again, best ones are first.

• Center for Global Development(disclosure: I work here)
• Shanta Devarajan at the World Bank
• Global Economic Governance group at Oxford
• Aidinfo (disclosure: I work here)
• Development Initiatives (disclosure: I work here)
• Publish What You Fund
• Danny Kaufmann at Brookings
• UK Department for International Development bloggers
• Ideas 4 development
• Overseas Development Institute (ODI) Blog

Development podcasts

Here are some development-related podcasts. (I’m about to start a new series of Development Drums, by the way).

• Development Drums (self publicity alert!)
• The Center for Global Development Prosperity Wonkcast
• Think Before You Give
• BBC Africa Today
• Peterson Perspectives
• PRI: Global Health and Development
• The World Bank Podcasts
• Philanthropy This Week
• PRI: The Changing World

Bubbling up: newer development blogs

Here are some more you might want check out – they are too new (to me, at least) or slightly off-topic to be included in my “must read” list, but they look promising:

• Access to Action
• Do No Harm – by folks at the London School of Economics
• Waylaid Dialectic
• Lindsay Morgan’s Despatches
• Wait  … What?

And of course there are more also-rans and off-topic blogs on the right of the screen.

On Twitter

If you are a Twitter user, you might be interested to add these to your list of people you follow:

• A list of Center for Global Development Fellows on Twitter
• Jim Cashel’s list of global development types on Twitter
• Mike Gechter’s list

Who are we missing?

I’m looking forward to being introduced to new blogs, and being reminded of blogs I’ve forgotten, in the comments.

Back in 2006, I blogged saying that I am in favour of better use of data by government, provided that there is a shift of control of personal data back to the individual. Here is what I said then:

A national identity register of unique personal identifiers could make a significant contribution to improving government services.  We could introduce such a register without allowing the establishment of a surveillance state. The following five conditions would help to protect our liberties:

• government data should be stored in decentralized databases, not in shared data warehouses;
• citizens should have access to all data held about them by government
• citizens should be able to see a log of all government access to their data
• an independent information security ombudsman should police the systems
• there should be no identity cards and no collection of biometric data

If all these protections were put in place, I would welcome a national identity register. If the Government will not implement any of them, I should like to know why not.

Roll on four years, and the Labour manifesto published yesterday says:

We will explore how to give citizens direct access to the data held on them by public agencies, so that people can use and control their own personal data in their interaction with service providers

The Conservative manifesto published today says:

Wherever possible, we believe that personal data should be controlled by individual citizens themselves.

Just sayin’, they should listen to us geeks and we wouldn’t have wasted the few years arguing about an identity card database.  (h/t mydex.org/blog)

While we are on the subject, Tom Watson seems really to understand the internet.  He says he wants to “stand on a platform that is avowedly supportive of the generation that seek to use the Internet to make the world a better place”, and he has drafted a digital manifesto for comments:

1. I will support and campaign for more transparency in the public and private sector.
2. I will oppose measures that unjustly deny people’s access to the Internet.
3. Whilst noting the acknowledged limitations, I believe people have the right to free speech on the Internet.
4. I will support all measures that allow people access to their personal data held by others. I further support restoration of control over how personal data is gathered, managed and shared to the individual.
5. I will use my role as an MP to support international free expression movements.
6. The Internet shall be built and operated openly and without discrimination.
7. I will support all measures to bring non-personal public data into the public domain.
8. I will support all proposals that lead to greater numbers joining the digital world and oppose measures that reduce it.
9. I believe that copyright and software patent laws should be reformed to reflect the needs of citizens in the Internet age.

I generally assume that people who read blogs use an RSS reader, like Google Reader or FeedDemon (which is what I use), rather than hopping from one website to another in your web browser.  You can even use Outlook 2007 or 2010 to gather blog updates automatically.  But talking to friends and acquaintances leads me to suspect that not many people are using feed readers.

So in response to a few requests, I’ve added a “subscribe by email” box on the top right of the my blog. If you want an automatic email every time a new blog post appears here, please put your email address into the box and press the subscribe button. You’ll get an email asking you to click a link to confirm that you really do want to receive updates. Once you’ve pressed OK on that, you’ll get every new article by email.

Please let me know if you experience any problems making this work.

You can also follow me on twitter (@owenbarder).

(For the technically minded, I’m using the Subscribe2 WordPress plugin.)

Seventeen years ago this month, I set up the first British government website.  I was a young economist at the UK Treasury, and I thought the budget documents should be available online.  I proposed this to the Treasury Management Board, most of whom had no idea what I was talking about, but Terry Burns was into computers and to his credit he backed the idea.  I chose the domain name “hm-treasury.gov.uk”, a burden which they still bear today.

We got the text of the budget documents as ASCII files on 3.5″ disks from the typesetters, and I worked through the night, using a basic text editor to put the HTML codes into the files manually. I finished marking up the pages about an hour before the Budget Speech began; and we went live as the Chancellor of the Exchequer sat down at the end of his speech.

Not only was the Treasury the first UK government department to have a website, the UK was the first country anywhere in the world to put its budget documents online.  Today, of course, it is inconceivable that this information would not be available online. We could see then that the World Wide Web, invented three years earlier by Tim Berners-Lee, would change the way people access information, and we were proud to be part of that change.

In 2009, Tim Berners Lee (now Sir Tim) described in a TED talk his vision of a new internet, that will do for numbers what the web has done for words, pictures and video. He called for data to be unlocked. A year later, in a short 5 minute talk, he shows what can happen when the data are liberated.  It is well worth watching:

Once again I find myself persuaded by Tim Berners-Lee’s vision.  With an ace team at aidinfo,  we are working to see it applied to information about foreign aid.  We are working with donors to help them to work out the best way to put their aid data online in a common format (vision paper here – pdf) so that anyone with access to the internet can take that information from many donors, mix it together, and use it to help change their world.

If you want to hear more about why aid transparency is important, listen to this Center for Global Development “wonkcast” – a 20 minute interview with me.  And if you want to hear more about how citizens in East Africa are using information to increase “social accountability”, listen to the subsequent wonkcast with Rakesh Rajani.

<geek stuff>

Obviously I don’t use Internet Explorer because it is (a) not compliant with standards; (b) not safe; (c) Microsoft.  And I don’t use Safari because Steve Jobs is a control freak and I don’t wish to be locked up in his world.

So like most geeks I’ve been using Firefox, which is faster and safer than Internet Explorer and has great add-ons. But I’m finding Firefox is becoming a little sluggish as it gets more bloated, and perhaps it is becoming a little unstable. For the time being  I have now switched my default browser to Google Chrome, because it is quite a bit faster than Firefox. (I’m writing this in a Chrome, for example).  I’m keeping Firefox because I like some of the plugins (such as S3Fox and Scribefire) but I reckon I’ll only use it when I need one of those.

But, I hear you cry, what a pain switching between different browsers!  It means your bookmarks and logins are never in one place, and they are never there when you want them. Well that is where Xmarks comes in.  This nifty add-on which is available for Firefox and Chrome (and indeed IE and Safari, if you like that kind of thing) synchronises your bookmarks to a central server on the interwebby.  (Securely, we hope.) Once you have installed Xmarks in your various browsers you can forget about it.  Whenever you bookmark something in one browser, that bookmark will appear the same everywhere.  (Ditto stored passwords, if you want.) So whether I am using my home computer, my work laptop or my Linux server, and whether I am using Chrome or Firefox, my bookmarks and logins are all the same in every broswer without me having to copy them over.  Which is nice.  Even if you don’t use more than one browser, Xmarks is pretty handy if you use more than one computer.

</geek stuff />

When Google decided to set up a censored version of its search engine in China in 2006, I was among those who criticised the company for its decision (here and here).

As well thiking it was the wrong decision in principle, I worried that a company that says one thing (“Don’t Be Evil”) and does another will eventually suffer from the contradiction between their values and their actions.

So I applaud their announcement today that they are taking a new approach in China and their threat to pull out of the market.

(Ironically, Google’s own blog is censored here in Ethiopia. You cannot access blogspot blogs.)

Google is standing up to dictatorship and speaking out for free speech, and putting this ahead of their immediate commercial interests.

It is hard to imagine other companies standing up for their – and our – values in this way. (Can you imagine Microsoft withdrawing their Bing search engine instead of producing sanitized results?)

Bloggers are quick to criticise when companies do the wrong thing.  So let’s be equally unstinting in our praise when they do things right.

Good on yer, Google.

The 6" Kindle, with a Bishoftu lake in the background, January 2010

I’ve had a Kindle here in Ethiopia for a few weeks now, and I’m lovin’ it.

I bought the international edition, with a 6 inch display (the Kindle DX with the larger 9.7 inch display is expected to be available in an international edition some time in 2010).

Update (6th January): coincidentally, the international edition of the DX has just been announced, and it will be shipping from 19 January.

Because it is an international edition, it works wirelessly in the UK and many other countries, using the mobile phone network.  There is no additional charge for this.  It means, for example, that you can subscribe to the Financial Times or the New York Times, and the latest edition is automatically delivered to your Kindle each day.  You can also browse for books and periodicals on your Kindle, and there is limited web browsing.

In Ethiopia the wireless does not work (presumably Amazon does not have an agreement with the Ethiopian mobile phone company, ETC).  So periodicals do not arrive automatically, and you cannot browse for new books on the Kindle itself.  But it is very easy and quick to download the latest edition of a newspaper or to get a new book from Amazon on a computer connected to the internet (it takes about 30 seconds to download today’s edition of the FT) and then to transfer it via USB cable to the Kindle.

I was able to update my Kindle to the latest version of the software by downloading it to my computer and installing it over a USB cable.  That worked fine. (If it were in an area with wireless coverage, the software would update automatically.)  The new software allows the Kindle to display .PDF files natively (i.e. without converting them to Kindle format) and apparently improves the battery life when wireless is turned on (I’ve not tested this last point, because my wireless is turned off.)

The 6″ version is a very good size for carrying around, especially when on the road or for plane journeys. It can store a thousand books, so you can be sure you won’t run out of reading material.  The screen only uses power when the page changes (it doesn’t use power simply to display) so power consumption is low – a couple of weeks with the wireless turned off.

I find the screen easy to read, even for long periods. It works well in bright sunlight.  The font size is adjustable (which is apparently one reason for very high sales among older people, some of whom like being able to increase the size of the text).  The slight drawback is that there is not very much on a single page, so you have to change the page often (especially if you read quite quickly).  Some people have commented unfavourably on the screen flicker as the page changes; I don’t find it a problem.

When the Kindle DX has an international edition, I think I may buy that as well.  (I had a chance to look at the US version of the Kindle DX when Chris Blattman was visiting Addis Ababa but I failed to take a side-by-side photograph).   Why would I want both?  The larger screen looks good for reading PDFs of academic journal articles and especially for newspapers.  But the smaller format is very good for having your books with you in your shoulder bag and when travelling.   I gather you can put the same content on both machines provided they are both registered to the same account.

So I think the advantages of a Kindle for people who work internationally, even in places where the wireless doesn’t work, are:

• Being able to carry a good collection of reading material with you while travelling – so you can travel light and you still won’t run out of things to read when stuck in an airport or at the border on a bus
• Getting today’s newspaper (e.g. New York Times, FT, Economist) delivered electronically (via a PC)
• Being able to buy the latest books without having to rely on the post (especially useful if you are in a book club!)

I’ve not tried the Sony eReader, and of course Apple may yet produce a tablet that blows the Kindle out of the water.

Good news: the Center for Global Development has started a new podcast series, the Global Prosperity Wonkcast.

In this first episode, host Lawrence Macdonald talks to Todd Moss about his new paper, Saving Ghana from Its Oil: The Case for Direct Cash Distribution.  Todd proposes ways for the citizens to have more oversight of Ghana’s oil revenue, and to contain oil-induced patronage, by distributing the benefits of oil directly to the citizens.

The podcast lasts about 20 minutes, and you cou listen directly on line or subscribe on iTunes.

As you would expect from CGD, this first episode sugests that the wonkcasts will be essential listening.  CGD has a knack of addressing important developing issues in interesting and innovative ways, and basing its ideas on thorough research and evidence.

And if CGD’s wonkcast doesn’t satisfy your entire appetite for podcasts on development, there is always Development Drums.

Chris Blattman has a thoughtful post about his decision to continue blogging.

He gives a bunch of reasons – to paraphrase, they are: (a) it is way to have influence; (b) it is probably a good career more; (c) it forces the author to think more carefully about the issues and to think about the big picture; (d) it acts as a an academic memory or diary; and (e) it subjects the author’s thinking and arguments to the wisdom of crowds.

These are all good reasons.

I started to blog because I wanted to stand up and be counted on the things I think are important.  Because I work at home on my own most of the time, blogging lets me get things off my chest without bothering my long-suffering partner about every issue.

I am very glad that Chris has decided to continue to blog.  I learn a lot from what he writes, and I can hear his voice in every post.

Ryan Briggs has a good round up of development-related podcasts

Fall classes have started again so my time on the DC metro has increased greatly. The commuting has meant that I’ve been blowing through podcasts at an alarming rate, and I’ve come across a few that are worth sharing. These links are to the webpages of the podcasts, but all of them can be found in iTunes as well.

Peter Mandelson has not thought this through:

First, taking something for nothing, without permission, and with no compensation for the person who created and owns it, is wrong. Simple as that.

With respect, it is not as simple as that.

The reason this looks plausible is the use of the word “taking”.   If I take something from you, that implies that I now have it and you no longer do.  If it was yours to start with, that would be unfair (or, in Mr Mandelson’s word, “wrong”).  But the challenge for making good policy about intellectual property is that the goods in question are non rival – meaning that one person’s consumption does not come at the expense of another person’s consumption of the same good.  If I make a copy of a song and listen to it on my MP3 player, that in no way reduces your ability to listen to it.   So I have not “taken” it from you.  We can both listen to it.  The marginal cost to society of my listening to the song is zero.

Mr Mandelson may have meant by “take” the idea that if I neglect to pay you for something, you lose out.  But this isn’t necessarily wrong.  As Chris Dillow points out, if I give a lift to a friend, I deprive a taxi company of revenue.  The taxi company might not be very happy about that. They might lobby the Business Minister over cocktails on a yacht, requesting that taxi companies be given a monopoly on giving rides in the area they serve.  (After all, they have spent a lot of money on cars and offices.)  The Business Minister should tell them to get stuffed.   There is no basic right to make money on your investments, and being deprived of potential revenue is not the same thing as a cost.

As I explained in more detail here, the economics of non-rival goods is quite different from the other kinds of goods.   Intellectual property rights are a social construct to create temporary monopolies which, unlike other forms of property, worsen rather than increase static allocative efficiency.  For non-rival goods, allocative efficiency requires that the price is zero, but dynamic efficiency may require some sort of remuneration for the creators of the products.  A society may choose to restrict access to a product as a way to create financial incentives for innovation. This may be worth doing if the welfare gains from the incentives to innovate exceed the welfare costs of reducing access to the products.  But that trade-off does not automatically and necessarily come down in favour of having intellectual property rights, nor is the creation of intellectual property rights the only or the necessarily the best way to create incentives to innovate.

This is not a wholesale argument against intellectual property rights.  But it is an argument against the daft claim that intellectual property rights are just the same as rights to rival goods such as physical property.   Property rights for rival goods increase, or at any rate do not diminish, allocative efficiency and hence welfare;  property rights for non-rival goods decrease allocative efficiency, and that is a welfare loss that has to be justified by a welfare gain elsewhere.

We do need to reward and incentivize innovation and creativity appropriately.  But I am struck by the lack of imagination and innovation in the current debate about how we do it.  Intellectual property rights are one approach, but they have important drawbacks.  We should not forget other possible approaches – such as prizes, buy-outs, or public funding – which might secure many of the same benefits without the costs.