Coredump

Sort of.

I’m posting from my ninth-floor room here at the Century Park Hotel. When I checked in earlier, I read the promo poster at reception that WiFi is available in the rooms for Php150 per hour. Man, that’s 50% more expensive than Airborne Access.

But, but, but… as I was messing around with my lappy, it detected three (!) unsecured APs. I tried one, and after a few tweaking with the IP settings, I was online.

Before I checked in, I was ready to use dialup instead. I even got to borrow a friend’s dialup access code to Infocom (free from 12 midnight to 8 am). Good thing I can ditch that now — city calls here are available for a “minimal” fee. The cheapskate in me just won’t subscribe to that.

Here’s an expansion of my previous post on the ICT caravan. Incidentally, I’ve blogged about it in our very aptly named “PFI Blog“. (Heh. We’ll think of a sexier name, promise.)

The Caravan, which will run from March to April, will feature the following:

• Cyber farm forum (multisite videoconferencing)
• Rice science and technology updates
• Agricultural videos
• Introduction to computers and the internet
• Pinoy Farmers’ Internet
• Enrolment in the Open Academy’s Virtual Classroom
• Text messaging for farming tips
• Experts online
• Rice Knowledge Bank
• Other important agricultural websites
• Online trading and real-time price watch of agricultural products
• Knowledge products for sale
• Maps and directories
• Last-mile connectivity solutions
• Open source software

More details in the website.

Very busy with the Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture. We are organizing an “ICT caravan”, a road tour of sorts that will span the archipelago (naks!), to spread ICT and IT-based agriculture knowledge to extension workers. This will happen in March.

The caravan will have five legs: Ilocos region, Southern Tagalog, Bicol region, Northern Mindanao, and Davao provinces. Five buses from the DOST SEI (their Mobile ICT classroom) will be equipped with internet connection — either through WeRoam or via WiFi in nearby internet cafes — and travel to different municipalities where one-day training on basic computer skills will be held.

We’re currently looking for sponsors — we’re eyeing local government agencies and telcos — to cover part of the costs. The Pinoy Farmers Internet will feature a day-to-day journal of the caravan. We will be assigning bloggers per team so they can post images and thoughts on the web. We will be teaching extension workers to blog, too, and how to use our wiki.

I’m thinking of using my stillborn Google Maps API-enabled AgriInfo map to set out the route and provide some interesting points as part of our coverage. Right now, I’m working on a decent XML generator to plug in the geodata with the resulting RSS feeds from the blog posts. I can then use the resulting XML to map out points (or routes) using the Google Maps API. (I know, I may be talking through my butt here — there might be a simpler way — but right now, I’m inclined to follow this approach. Either that or use a Drupal flexinode feed.)

I was in Davao del Sur last week for the launching of our project’s IT bus. My post is over at Pinoy Tech Blog. [via Pinoy Tech Blog]

To access rich content such as video and images on the internet through a broadband connection, extension workers and farmers need not look further than the kitchen.

In an effort to provide wider access to information for Filipino farmers and extension workers, information and communication technology (ICT) specialists from the University of Southern Mindanao (USM) and the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) have developed a “low-tech” solution to connect to the internet through Wi-Fi: using antennas made of pots and pans.

Read full article at the Pinoy Farmers’ Internet portal.