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Most mobile devices in Africa only have voice and SMS capabilities, and so we are focusing our technological efforts in that continent on SMS. Today, we are announcing Google SMS, a suite of mobile applications which will allow people to access information, via SMS, on a diverse number of topics including health and agriculture tips, news, local weather, sports, and more. The suite also includes Google Trader, a SMS-based "marketplace" application that helps buyers and sellers find each other. People can find, "sell" or "buy" any type of product or service, from used cars and mobile phones to crops, livestock and jobs. We are particularly excited about Google SMS Tips, an SMS-based query-and-answer service that enables a mobile phone user to have a web search-like experience. You enter a free form text query, and Google's algorithms restructure the query to identify keywords, search a database to identify relevant answers, and return the most relevant answer.

Google SMS is a suite of mobile applications that allows you to find information on topics as diverse as sexual & reproductive health, and agriculture to sports scores and weather. It also includes a new marketplace application, Google Trader, that will help buyers and sellers find each other; use it to buy and sell electronics, crops, tools, cars, properties, or anything else that you need or have. To start using Google SMS Search, simply text message your search query to one of the following short codes and we'll text message back your results:

Christine Peterson, VP of the Foresight Institute, coined the term "open source" in the late 1990s. She now proposes that this concept of peer-based collaboration and sharing can be applied to another emerging technology - sensors. See Also * h+ Magazine Current Issue * Search (and Destroy) Engines * Not So Quiet on the Cyber Front * Hacking The Economy "The intent of the project is to take advantage of advances in sensing to improve both security and the environment, while preserving - even strengthening - privacy, freedom, and civil liberties," says Peterson in a recent press release. h+ Magazine spoke with Ms. Peterson about this open-source style project, known as the Open Source Sensing initiative.

With news organizations beginning to create special positions to manage the use of social media tools, such as the recently appointed social editor at The New York Times, journalism schools are starting to recognize the need to integrate social media into their curricula. That doesn't mean having a class on Facebook (Facebook) or Twitter (Twitter), which many college students already know inside and out, but instead means that professors are delving into how these tools can be applied to enrich the craft of reporting and producing the news and ultimately telling the story in the best possible way.

What This Blog is About In one phrase: Building Engaging Learning Experiences through Instructional Design and E-Learning I'm an instructional designer developing online learning, so that's primarily what I write about. * Instructional Design: This is what I do all day, and I'm always trying to learn how to do it better. * Higher Ed: The courses I create are graduate courses, so I'm interested in higher education. * K-12 Education: The participants in those courses are mostly K-12 educators, so I'm interested in what's important to my audience too. * Corporate E-Learning: Even though I'm in education, I know I can learn a lot from corporate e-learning. Besides, I'm employed by a for-profit company. * Lifelong Learning: It didn't start out to be a goal for my blog, but I've discovered that these tools help my own lifelong learning. I write about my discoveries: what works, what doesn't, what I'm thinking. * Technology: I write about technology, especially as it overlaps with any of the above areas. * Bookmarks: The Daily Bookmarks Posts are resources I find interesting or useful. You can view and search the complete list of bookmarks on Diigo or del.icio.us. On my Post Series and Recurring Themes page, I've collected some popular topics. This includes my liveblogged posts from the TCC 2008 conference and my series on instructional design careers. The top posts in the sidebar to the right are another great place to start reading.

Certainly, there is a powerful new force developing here. Citizens who previously had little voice in public are using cheap Web tools to tell the world about the drama that has unfolded since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of Iran's presidential election. The government succeeded last week in exerting control over Internet use and text-messaging, but Twitter has proven nearly impossible to block. The most common search topic on Twitter for days has been "#iranelection" -- the "hashtag" for discussions about Iran -- and international media outlets are relying on information and images disseminated by ordinary citizens via Twitter feeds. Yet for all its promise, there are sharp limits on what Twitter and other Web tools such as Facebook and blogs can do for citizens in authoritarian societies. The 140 characters allowed in a tweet do not represent the end of politics as we know it -- and at times can even play into the hands of hard-line regimes. No amount of Twittering is going to force Iranian leaders to change course, as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader, made clear during Friday prayers with his stern rebuke of the protesters. In Iran, as elsewhere, true revolution can only happen offline.

Online Classes See a Surge in Interest During the Struggling Economy To Help Students Finance College Courses, eLearners.com Offers the Debt-Free College Guide, a Comprehensive Database With More Than 300 Financing Options

What This Blog is About In one phrase: Building Engaging Learning Experiences through Instructional Design and E-Learning I'm an instructional designer developing online learning, so that's primarily what I write about. * Instructional Design: This is what I do all day, and I'm always trying to learn how to do it better. * Higher Ed: The courses I create are graduate courses, so I'm interested in higher education. * K-12 Education: The participants in those courses are mostly K-12 educators, so I'm interested in what's important to my audience too. * Corporate E-Learning: Even though I'm in education, I know I can learn a lot from corporate e-learning. Besides, I'm employed by a for-profit company. * Lifelong Learning: It didn't start out to be a goal for my blog, but I've discovered that these tools help my own lifelong learning. I write about my discoveries: what works, what doesn't, what I'm thinking. * Technology: I write about technology, especially as it overlaps with any of the above areas. * Bookmarks: The Daily Bookmarks Posts are resources I find interesting or useful. You can view and search the complete list of bookmarks on Diigo or del.icio.us. On my Post Series and Recurring Themes page, I've collected some popular topics. This includes my liveblogged posts from the TCC 2008 conference and my series on instructional design careers. The top posts in the sidebar to the right are another great place to start reading.

A commentary by the Technology Enhanced Learning Phase for the University of London, London Knowledge Lab.