July 2012

Imagine the web as a giant galaxy where the planets are sites clustered together by likeness, and what you might get is something like The Internet Map.

Representing over 350,000 websites from 196 countries and all domain zones at the end of 2011, the map displays over 2 million site links based on topical similarities. Each site is represented by a circle, with size depending on the amount of traffic, and the space between each is determined by frequency, or strength, of the link created when user's jump from one website to another. If you want to get into the fine details of how the map's layout is calculated, the group behind the project has provided a few very technical mathematical and engineering resources.

Craigslist makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year, but it has become stagnant. Today, it feels stuck in the 1990s, where links are electric blue and everything is underlined. As a result, the site is now crammed with listings and is extremely difficult to use. One might think Craigslist is as ready for disruption as sleepy newspaper classified ad sections once were. Why hasn’t a site this vulnerable been displaced? There may be part of the answer in this tale. Eric DeMenthon, a 27-year-old programmer, was one of the users overwhelmed by the site. In 2008 he was searching for an apartment on Craigslist and he couldn’t navigate the endless listings. So he quickly built an application that placed Craigslist apartment ads on an online map. After finding an apartment with the tool he had cobbled together, he realized the product had saved him so much time that he should make it available to others, also as a “public good.” He said, “I did the math and I figure if I save people three hours of their time on my site when they need to look for a new apartment, that’s over 350 years of time that I can save people each month.” Last week, Craigslist served DeMenthon with a lawsuit accusing his site, Padmapper, of infringing on copyright and trademark, and it threw in a long list of other piracy-related claims for good measure. But, according to DeMenthon, he isn’t stealing anything.

The 2012 race for the White House has been dominated by negative ads. With 99 days to go, the only question is how nasty it will become.

Both candidates have made no bones about the fact they’re going to attack one another, and each side already has been accused of making distorting statements and telling out-and-out lies. At the same time, President Obama and Mitt Romney have suggested there’s a limit to the mud they’ll throw. Yet in an election expected to come down to a handful of swing states, some think it will be harder and harder for the two sides to leave ammunition on the table as the race intensifies in the fall.

From remote farms to rural health centers, one thing is transforming how even the world's poorest people live: the mobile phone.

Cell phone use in the developing world has climbed to nearly 5 billion mobile subscriptions, and three-quarters of the world now has access to mobile networks. This technology is reshaping the way individuals and communities manage their finances, monitor weather, engage with government, and earn a living, according to the recent World Bank Maximizing Mobile report. “People are going from zero to 60. It is huge to go from no phone at all to a cellphone,” says Anne Nelson, international media development specialist and adjunct professor at Columbia University. “The rapid penetration of cellphones in developing countries is changing lives dramatically.” Mobile devices in regions like Africa are largely limited to voice and Short Message Service texting, but even the most basic mobile communications can increase school attendance, facilitate banking or cash transfers, create jobs, measure health indicators, accelerate disaster response, and fuel citizen engagement in governance and democracy.