Blackberry has got your back in an emergency–or, at least, they’ve developed an app for that. READ MORE
Meet Garage48, a series of weekend workshops that aim to develop a start-up by the end of the events. Oh, yes, it was founded in Estonia and has spread to Africa and across Europe. READ MORE
Stroome is hoping to put an end to the lonely task of video editing by making it collaborative and social. The web-based video editing start-up lets friends and colleagues upload video clips then work together to create their visual works of art. READ MORE
The dog days of summer are almost down to their last woof. But we realize there are still a good many of you still trickling in from your final seasonal travels. For those of you who’ve been off the grid lately, this tech update is for you. Here’s what you missed last week: READ MORE
The Pentagon is on Facebook. Somehow, the headquarters of the American armed forces, where men and women in soft-soled shoes whisper down long corridors lined by unmarked doors, – or so one imagines – only has 3,090 “likes.” That number may go up as companies compete for $42 million in funding that the Pentagon has announced it will award to social media-types who can help the military figure out what the place of Twitter and Foursquare will be in modern warfare. READ MORE
The annual Amazon Web Services (AWS) Start-Up Challenge has returned for its fourth year, with a new twist. American start-ups will now compete with challengers from all across the world for the grand prize of $100,000 in cash and AWS credits. READ MORE
Our collective imagination of the European Middle Ages conjures an age of darkness, disease, war, feudalism and feuding. The true story is much more complicated. Indeed, the Medieval era was a necessary period of challenge and experimentation – a period in which political systems evolved and in which understanding of the natural world struggled move from mysticism to science. It was an era that, although challenging, prepared the Western World for Renaissance, Scientific Revolution, and Enlightenment. The world of social entrepreneurship is, in many ways, in its own Middle Ages. READ MORE
Sub-Saharan Africa is booming, writes TechCrunch’s Jon Evans, who has spent nearly a year traveling in the region. One factor, he says, is the revolution Africa is seeing in the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM), which, in some places, has taken communications “straight from talking talking drums to cell phones, leapfrogging land lines entirely.” READ MORE
Move over, journalists. Social media is taking over your realm of influence. The death of Osama Bin Laden and the outbreak of tweets, posts, and videos about the historic event provides the most recent example of how anyone with a smartphone can and does generate the news. READ MORE
The revolution will not be Googled? Wael Ghonim, the Google advertising executive who has been credited with helping to launch a revolution in Egypt, is taking a “long-term sabbatical” from the search giant to start a non-governmental organization (NGO). Wired’s Sam Gustin reports that Ghonim, named to Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in the world, tweeted the news this weekend. Ghonim says he will launch a tech-focused NGO “to help fight poverty and foster education.” A reluctant revolutionary who was kidnapped by pro-Mubarak security forces, Ghonim was initially criticized for receiving what some felt was more than his fair share of credit for sparking the movement. READ MORE
