By the end of this month (March 2010) Brazil is expected to announce what standard it is going to choose for terrestrial digital radio. Until recently all signs indicated that they were going to opt for Ibiquity’s HD Radio, the standard used in the United States, but it now appears that Digital Radio Mondiale, or DRM, is gaining favour. If Brazil chooses DRM it will be the first major country to do so in the region and the size of its market (population 190 million) will help convince manufacturers to design and building DRM receivers for the mass market.
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Marko Ala-Fossi of the University of Tampere in Finland sent me interesting link to an article about a project of some students in New Zealand using FM radio to beam lessons to the XO computers used by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. The article is from Peter Griffen’s blog. Griffen is a member of the selection committee for a “Microsoft Imagine Cup” which, in his words, “pits teams of university students against each other in a bid to find the top four most innovative and potentially world-changing projects”.
Continue reading ‘OLPC + FM radio = lessons beamed to computers’
In Podcasts: a community knowledge sharing tool, an article published on SciDevNet, Lawrence D. Gudza describes a pilot project in Zimbabwe that uses podcasts to get development information to the people of Zimbabwe’s rural district of Mbire, home to small agricultural communities without electricity, land line telephones or mobile phone infrastructure.
Carleton University’s (Ottawa, Canada) Centre for Media and Transitional Societies (CMTS) has launched a call for concept notes outlining proposed research examining the impact of convergence between traditional radio and new information and communications technologies (ICTs) in sub-Saharan Africa. Shortlisted concept notes will be invited to submit full applications for small seed grants of CAD$7,500 or larger grants of up to CAD$100,000. Concept notes and research can be in English or French. Details at http://www.cmts-cmst.org/ Deadline for concept notes: 8 January 2010.
Continue reading ‘Radio, Convergence and Development in Africa’
An article by María Teresa Aveggio & Teresia Mutuku explains how the Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) trained a group of migrants from the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand in radio production and broadcasting techniques. The trainees, a group of 20 migrant workers, most of them women, are now able to produce, broadcast and upload podcasts onto the APMM website thus reaching more migrants. The programmes are also recorded and distributed on CD.
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