The WNDW team has released its second edition of the book "Wireless Networking in the Developing World". The 425 page book includes lots of new material, including new chapters on solar power and economic planning, several new case studies.

The book is released for free under a Creative Commons license and is available in several languages (including Spanish, French, Italian, and soon Arabic and Portuguese). and it is free to download, print, update, or redistribute it.

The Wireless Networking in the Developing World book is just one part of the WNDW project. Community forums, training workshops, and additional material are also available on their website, http://wndw.net/.

via : Lunch over IP 

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Radar Networks, is releasing a free Web-based tool, called Twine, that it hopes will change the way people organize their information.

Twine website is a place where you can share any kind of information and knowledge such emails, bookmarks, documents, RSS feeds, contacts, photos, videos, product info, data records, and collaborate around common interests, activities and goals with friends, colleagues etc.

Once Twine has some information, it starts to analyze it and automatically sort it into categories that include the people involved, concepts discussed, and places, organizations, and companies.

Twine uses the Semantic Web, natural language processing, and machine learning to make your information and relationships smarter.

It still look unclear how Twine could make a real difference about organizing and sharing information but apparently a public beta version of the site may emerge soon.

Another question, Twine will be able to compete with what Techcrunch calls "the Google lethal social weapon", the project Maka-Maka.

Twine register form is available here.

More about Twine: Technology Review,  Read/Write web.

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It is impressive to see the quantity of bad news that reached Microsoft's headquarters this week.

Motivation may not be at its highest level in Redmond.

• Only 60 millions licenses (sic!) of Windows Vista have been sold. It is rather low considering that includes OEM and Corporate agreements (companies getting Vista licenses as part of their contract, but with no short-term plan to deploy it).

• Yahoo announced the acquisition of Zimbra, an open source server and client software for messaging and collaboration (email, group calendaring, contacts, and web document management and authoring).
• Google welcomed "Presentation", a new addition to the Google Docs & Spreadsheets family which has now all elements to compete with MS Office.
• IBM released the beta version of Symphony, a web-based open source office suite, based on the open document format (ODF).
• International Standard Organization (ISO) rejected Microsoft Office 2007 file format, called Office Open XML (OOXML), to be recognized as an ISO standard. Critics said the format was flawed and laden with MS-specific features.
• SCO group, a Microsoft ally to seize parts of the Linux market, took step of filing for Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

Last but not least

Microsoft lost its appeal before the European Court of First Instance regarding 2004 European Commission act that found MS abusing of its near-monopoly position. Final  Microsoft's bill in fines (689 millon USD) and penalties could reach about 2.8 billions USD.

Don't worry Bill, on Monday starts another week!  

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