A good lesson for someone traveling the world in search of innovation is that you can also learn about it by staying in one place for a few days. This happened to me at the Netexplo Forum, held March 15-16 at UNESCO'S Paris headquarters.According to...
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Winch 5
All posts for March 2012
Markets, Diasporas, and Social Networks: Lebanon
By pharish
Despite their country's 110,000 square kilometers and 10 million inhabitants, Cubans used to joke 30 years ago that they had the largest country in the world: our population is in Miami, our army is in Angola, and our capital is in Moscow, they'd...
Read moreInnovation: The magic and the method
When Otavio Good sees the word "salida" in a Spanish-speaking country, he thinks of "salad" instead of "exit." To avoid the embarrassment that can result from mistakes like this, the Mountain View developer created WordLens, a smartphone app that...
Read moreIn Yogurtistan, a currency valuable online and off
Cemil Turun is, without a doubt, one of the most ambitious people I've ever interviewed. He wants to create a currency that works in both the online and offline worlds. Facing my obvious journalist's skepticism, he hurries to add that his company,...
Read moreOntornet against Lebanon's snail-paced internet
Internet connections in Beirut are so bad that people can only laugh … before protesting. About a year ago, one Lebanese wrote a an acerbic post in English saying, "Oh My God, Lebanon you're number one" on the global download-speed list … if...
Read moreA financier who tweets, follows Middle East innovation, but doesn't invest in IT.
100,000 followers and 27,000 tweets make Sultan Al-Qassemi (@sultanalqassemi) one of the most influential tweeters in the Arab world. A native of the Emirates, he enjoys a great freedom of expression and, more importantly, uses it in service of...
Read more"Accelerating" Innovation in Lebanon
I have no idea how many innovators there in Lebanon fiddling around in their mountain garages with dreams of dethroning Facebook, Google and Twitter. But I'm sure they can find all the resources they need in Beirut's startup accelerators.Since...
Read moreArchimedes' children and their wager
The first steps of my world tour of ICT and innovation helped me realize that geeks, entrepreneurs (social or not) and activists often gather in communal spaces, and that they have multiple things in common.The raison d'être for these...
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