Percussionists play candombe during parade Las Llamadas (The Callings). Picture taken by Flickr user ERBR and used under a Creative Commons license.

Carnival in Uruguay includes parades similar to those seen in Carnivals around the world, with queens, percussionists and colorful costumes taking over the streets, dancing to the beat of national rhythms. One of the most important events of the Uruguayan Carnival is the contest [es], where performers compete in their chosen category representing Uruguay’s distinctive musical and artistic richness: murga, negros y lubolos (playing candombe), parodistas [es], humoristas [es], and revista [es].

Carnival can be a melancholic and nostalgic time for Uruguayans living abroad, but thanks to the blog [es] and Twitter page [es] Todo el Carnaval, Uruguayans all over the world can download audio and videos of the day’s performances. Todo el Carnaval also provides Carnival music year round; its creator, Yuri, is backing up personal Carnival VHS videos and cassettes going back to the 1970s:

Todo el carnaval, es algo asi como un lugar donde decidi compartir todo el material audio visual que dispongo sobre carnaval. La idea original fue la de hacer un respaldo sobre este material y se convirtió en este blog, para compartirlo con todo el mundo.

Murga ensemble Los Curtidores de Hongos performing at 2009 carnival. Photo taken by Raúl Antoine, Flickr user rantoine2008, and used under a Creative Commons license.

Listening to the Carnival live is also an option. The popular site for Carnival information, Carnaval del Futuro [es], created a radio [es] which tunes listeners live into festivities, and promises 24 hours of streaming coverage.

Video by Eduardo Gamero:

Journalist and blogger Enrique Filguerias [es] explains that this radio will broadcast throughout the year:

Los carnavaleros estarán de fiesta con esta novedad, impulsada por Carnaval del Futuro: Disponer de una emisora a través de la cual poder difundir el Carnaval, en forma continuada y sin interrupciones, durante los doce meses del año […] De abril a diciembre, en la grilla se encontrarán con espacios dedicados a difundir el Carnaval del Interior, con la totalidad del Regional de San José y ya se están gestionando otros certámenes representativos.
También se apostará a una producción de programas originales que combinarán lo periodístico y lo musical, transmisiones de eventos en directo, grabaciones de los espectáculos que se ofrecen en las salas montevideanas y se contará con enviados especiales en las giras que se realicen.

Another online radio broadcasting live during the festivities is Radio Yorugua [es], from Los Yoruguas [es], a blog for and about Uruguayans living abroad. Los Yoruguas also offers a multimedia section dedicated to this year’s Carnival with information, videos, and pictures of the festivities.

El Pedregullo [es], also part of Carnaval del Futuro, calls itself “the online community of the Uruguayan Carnival.” This small online community acts like a social network where users can discuss events, post pictures and videos, and create groups:

El sitio está pensado para compartir todo lo referente a nuestro Carnaval. El Pedregullo, el lugar donde se cocina el Concurso. Ingresa y comparte tus fotos, videos, ideas.

Uruguayans can confidently say they have the longest carnival in the world; not only because of its forty days of official festivities, but because the internet and social media are spreading its influence during the remaining 325 days.

If Google were a state-owned company…

- Search requests would have to be submitted in written form, on a special application, on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 to 11 AM, at [the location where you're registered as a resident]. To do this, you'd have to stand in a line of 30 people.

- The written application would include the search request, as well as your date of birth, address at which you are registered, address of your actual place of residence, the number of children, your ID number, your passport data. With your request, you'd have to attach a color photo taken within the past three months (same type as the one on your travel passport). Three original copies of the written request would have to be submitted.

- The following documents would have to be additionally submitted along with your written request:

* a certificate confirming the absence of a criminal record;
* a certificate confirming the absence of debts for communal services [utilities], including a certificate confirming the absence of debts for heating since 2002;
* a certificate from a narcologist and a psychiatrist confirming competency;
* [military service certificate];
* a written consent note from parents […] and adult children, certifying that they are not opposed to your internet search request; if you have underage children, guardian board permission is needed;
* a decision from an expert commission of the Interior Affairs Ministry, certifying that your search would not lead to revealing state secrets (documents are accepted every third Saturday of every odd month from 4 to 4:30 PM);
* a decision of the regional department of the National Commission on the Issues of Morality, certifying that your search does not contain curses and pornography (documents are temporarily not accepted at the place of your registration, due to repairs);
* a certificate from the hospital confirming that you have had all the scheduled vaccinations and no harmful viruses would get into internet via your search;
* a certificate confirming the absence of other search requests that are currently being considered by [state company] “Googl'.”

- The following payments would have to be made before you submit your search request:

* the cost of the search (450 hryvnias) [approx. $56];
* insurance payment (8.50 hryvnias) [approx. $1];
* obligatory voluntary contribution to the Googl' of the Future Fund (93.11 hryvnias [$11.63], PLEASE HAVE THE EXACT AMOUNT READY, WE DON'T HAVE CHANGE!);

- Search request would be accepted only after you sign an Additional Agreement, by which you ascertain that you will not use other internet search services for three years since the day you sign the agreement. The agreement is signed in the presence of a notary public (the notary public service fee is 150 hryvnias [$18.75]).

- You should come no earlier than in 20 work days to pick up your “Quotation from the Internet” (the official name of the search results), and you'll have to stand in yet another line for that. You'll receive the quotation in printed form (printed on a dot matrix printer). Due to the lack of state budget funding, graphics that show up in the results of the search will not be printed.

- If the results aren't there yet, you should wait 20 work days more, after which you have the right to repeat your search request.

- If you own a website and provide free access to information, then, according to the Law #666-66 from February 38, 2010, due to the need to have state regulation of the information politics on the web, and in order to unify search services and allow more convenient access to information on the web for Ukrainian citizens, you are obliged:

* to urgently pass all the information from your website to the state company “Ukrainian Googl'” on 3.5-inch floppy disks (only disks produced by the private company “Disketa-Googl'” are allowed, the price of a single item is 25 hryvnias [$3.10]);
* once you receive the confirmation, [you have] to delete all the information from your website within five days.

We've collected our findings on a Future of ICT for Development special coverage page.

So what's being said?

After several months of dedicated analysis and writing about how ICT for development is covered on the web, here are some thoughts about the online availability of information about ICT4D – from academic articles, to conversation, commentary, and citizen media reflections on what works, what’s difficult and what is worth sharing.

It has been six years since the IDRC and Harvard held their first groundbreaking forum on ICTs and poverty. Since then there have been a great many zeros and ones spilled about practice and scholarship of ICT4D online. Much of this takes the form of research papers, books, and presentations produced by scholars or practitioners affiliated with institutions and nonprofit organizations.

It is, however, relatively more difficult to find blogs and citizen media content from unaffiliated individuals, and from those who experience the benefits, and sometimes challenges of internet technologies in developing-world contexts. While there are scattered discussions and commentaries, sustained, community-driven dialogue is not easy to find. This is perhaps not surprising, given the often complex and technical nature of the field.

Phone charging station in Uganda, 2008, by Ken Banks - kiwanja.net

There has been tremendous improvements in internet access and  explosive growth of cell phones in developing world, as Matthew Smith outlines in his essay for IDRC/Harvard’s latest conference, Communication and Human Development: The Freedom Connection? in September 2009.

However, GV’s research (led by Aparna Ray and John Liebhardt) has found ambiguous evidence of online discussion of these themes that advances beyond well-worn anecdotes of fishermen with mobile phones. Those discussions surely exist, if not online; a look at the Manthan Awards in South Asia, for example, gives us a window into communities of practitioners in this field, and the focus of their work.

In general, we observed that there are several categories of people writing online about ICT4D:

1. People who both understand grassroots development needs and are proficient in ICT. A very small percentage of online writers fall in this category. These people have the skills to develop tools/ techniques, speak the language of ICT4D, and are able to get exposure for their projects.
2. Academics who are interested in the field. They are able to develop concepts in ICT4D, and mostly run small research projects to prove/ disprove their hypotheses, build concepts, and make predictions. There is a lot of energy here - perhaps why we saw so many research papers in our web searches. These people explore and predict trends, but are not often in contact with grassroots folks, and rarely implement projects.
3. Everyone else either comes from the ICT community, and open to designing tools for development/ social projects, or people working in the  development sector who need ICT solutions but have relatively low/ no knowledge of ICT. These two sets of people do not usually speak the same language.

Broadly speaking, many development experts seem hesitant to learn technical skills and languages. They may want a ICT solutions, but there are numerous obstacles to engagement, including expertise, time, resources, and organizational culture. Hence ICT experts sense that development practitioners are rarely clear about helpful solutions.

Likewise, ICT tool developers may not involve development communities in the need analysis/ development phase, producing many solutions that are top-down, and without user support.

Solutions and strategies:

ICT4D is a vibrant theme, but also quite complex, and with little awareness outside of specialist communities. Our first months of coverage have captured some of the best of existing citizen media writing. A next step would be to fill the gaps in coverage and language that we found. Some approaches:

Continued engagement: Much more can be written, with a focus on clarifying who the audiences are for content.

Popularizing complex ideas: much of the content of the GV posts is news for those who are not in the ICT space; for ICT experts, it has less to offer. How stories are reported is key. Strategies include:

• Conducting interviews with experts and practitioners to simplify language and concepts for target audiences.
• Finding a common language and platform for dialogue among people both in grassroots development and in ICT technology development.
• Including writers from different perspectives and parts of the world.
• Highlighting the work of interesting ICT projects.
• Focusing on user experience and feedback.

数据显示13%的受访者为女性，87%为男性。这与大多数人的预测基本吻合，中文Twitter圈子阳气过重，男性推友应该鼓励身边的女性朋友上Twitter，不然，按照这个比例，在Twitter上找到女朋友的几率不会很大。

数据显示大多数推友的年龄在21-29岁之间，这部分推友占了将近70%的比例。…在接受调查的推友里，年龄最小的是12岁，最大的为55岁。下面是年龄分布直方图，很明显地，推友的年龄呈正态分布…

持有或即将持有本科学历的占了中文Twitter用户的绝大部分，硕士学历的推友是Twitter中文圈的第二大群体，接下来是大专学历的推友。

同时我们也应该注意到，一群高中生正在向Web2.0拥抱。

若干年前，有着自由思想的大学生做了一件轰动的事。现在，掌权者怎么可能轻易让大学生上Twitter？

将近一半的受访推友来自北京、上海、广东三地，接下来分别是：浙江、江苏、福建。。。这6个地区的推友占了总数的67%。从地图上看，这6个地区都位于沿海地区，经济相对比较发达。

从数据里可以看到，学生推友占了将近30%，然后是“计算机软、硬件”行业15%、“互联网产品相关”12.5%。如果将后两者归类为IT行业，那学生和IT人士占了推友的50%以上，他们是Twitter的主力军。

As for the question on why they choose to take all the trouble for getting access to Twitter, here is a list of their answer:

1、了解真相，开拓视野
2、用微博客随时随地记录生活、分享生活
3、获取资讯，关注民主政治
4、因为饭否被关了
5、每周要给火星同事扫盲（误），把twitter作为各种八卦消息来源
6、开始是为了follow喜欢的球星，后来渐渐喜欢上twitter的一切！
7、觉得twitter的交流方式很有趣
8、在这里信息无审查，信息最原始的传递逻辑得以在twitter保留
9、打发时间
10、看腿叔（@kcome）
11、我从可能吧知道这个东西，我觉得作为一名党员应该尽可能的多了解世界。
12、在这儿我想说什么就说什么。而不用去考虑，这句话我该不该说，该怎么说。会不会说过了而触犯了什么“法律”。 这就是自由的味道，我喜欢这种味道。
13、在政治灌输很严重的军校，Twitter让我能保持独立的公民意识。
14、大学老师介绍
15、这里说谎的人少
16、工作需要
17、新闻系学生的必然选择
18、仅凭对新技术的热爱
19、最早是因为某暗恋的女生在上Twitter，所以我也…
20、为什么不上twitter？