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Ultra high resolution Gigapans, showing even facial expressions, taken during the late Egyptian demonstrations could be used to identify suspects in the killings of civilians. Article in Arabic provided with English translation by Google. Gigapan image: http://gigapan.org/gigapans/71965/

"Why is a universal translator so elusive? "

"Mobile is the next wave in technology. Cellphones text faster than email, spread video faster than cameras, and webcast in real time. They take assignments, document work, translate and podcast. Mobile interfaces with Web 2.0. Best of all: teachers and students carry them already! Learn what we can adapt to achieve educational goals."

"WE LIVE IN AN AGE of increasingly smart machines. In recent years, engineers have pushed into areas, from voice recognition to robotics to search engines, that once seemed to be the preserve of humans. But I.B.M. has a particular knack for pitting man against machine. In 1997, the company's supercomputer Deep Blue famously beat the grandmaster Garry Kasparov at chess, a feat that generated enormous publicity for I.B.M. It did not, however, produce a marketable product; the technical accomplishment - playing chess really well - didn't translate to real-world business problems and so produced little direct profit for I.B.M. In the mid '00s, the company's top executives were looking for another high-profile project that would provide a similar flood of global publicity. But this time, they wanted a "grand challenge" (as they call it internally), that would meet a real-world need. "

" a new paradigm in humanitarian work. The old paradigm was one-to-many: foreign journalists and aid workers jet in, report on a calamity and dispense aid with whatever data they have. The new paradigm is many-to-many-to-many: victims supply on-the-ground data; a self-organizing mob of global volunteers translates text messages and helps to orchestrate relief; journalists and aid workers use the data to target the response."

"India has 100,000 agricultural extension workers whose job is to translate research into useable information for the 60 percent of Indians who earn a livelihood from farming, many of whom cannot read and lack electricity." "Digital Green's approach is kind of the MOOC model turned upside down," "Looking ahead, Digital Green is planning to build a Khan Academy-like site for the videos, showing the step-by-step connections across their (now) 2,600 videos. It is planning a pilot with Vodaphone to use audio snippets to reinforce messages. If a farmer forgets something between viewings, he can receive robocalls, call in with questions, or listen to an audio version of a video."