As the price of hardware continues to drop the financial barriers to health
information for all continue to fall. We are now able to package and ship
an offline version of Wikipedia in multiple languages for around 40 USD.
And we have sent out nearly 250 units in just over a year.
The question now is what are the remaining barriers to widespread
distribution and access? Is it a lack of awareness among those who need
this technology? Is it still too expensive? Are people looking for
different types of content? Or maybe different languages?
Peoples thoughts?
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
Greetings all,
One factor to be borne in mind is the "long tail" of the feature-phone.
This refers to the lingering presence in poorer populations of devices
which, while they may access certain internet services, do so via cellular
data, and are unable to connect to WiFi. I surmise that many potential
users of offline medical hotspots, in particular patients at remote
clinics, still have such phones.
But that's changing! The new generation of "smart feature phones" using KaiOS
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS>does have WiFi access, and has already
taken off in India. Where I am, South Africa, will see its first KaiOS
phone in the next few months. So let's hang in, and let's try to get
suitable apps developed for these devices.
Regards,
M.
On Monday, December 24, 2018, <offline-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
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> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2018 17:14:27 -0700
> From: James Heilman <jmh649(a)gmail.com>
> To: offline-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Offline-l] Internet-in-a-Box
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> CAF1en7V2SUNxyfGyK5yRPwEa-Lq+RRi6vg51KGzgMJe6BxMwOw(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> As the price of hardware continues to drop the financial barriers to health
> information for all continue to fall. We are now able to package and ship
> an offline version of Wikipedia in multiple languages for around 40 USD.
> And we have sent out nearly 250 units in just over a year.
>
> The question now is what are the remaining barriers to widespread
> distribution and access? Is it a lack of awareness among those who need
> this technology? Is it still too expensive? Are people looking for
> different types of content? Or maybe different languages?
>
> Peoples thoughts?
> --
> James Heilman
> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
>
I want to extract just bilingual dictionaries from Wiktionary. Are such
files already available? If not, does anyone recommend any method other
than downloading a dump, scanning all articles, and parsing the sections
between {{trans-top}} and {{trans-bottom}}? Thanks
I'm at UNICEF today/tomorrow w/ Chris Fabian to iterate on the dream of
offline knowledge-distribution. The addition of digital public goods +
knowledge into the procurement model for provisioning + ensuring access,
and involving NORAD for long-horizon plans, are nice developments.
Sharing FYI, suggestions welcome. Rabble - Paquete contact? Matt -
relevant to our chat Thursday.
Warmly, SJ
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Christopher Fabian <cfabian(a)unicef.org>
UNICEF Ventures, in collaboration with the Norwegian Agency for Development
and Cooperation (Norad), is hosting an unconference on *December 15 and 16,
2018* to kick-off the creation of a platform for Digital Public Goods. In
the late ‘90’s, UNICEF and other agencies worked to create an alliance for
vaccine procurement. This pooled financing mechanism became GAVI, a
multi-billion-dollar-a-year partnership that spans government, private
sector, and development and procures and delivers vaccines globally,
fairly, and at scale. *We want to do the same for information and
information products, for digital goods, for megabytes, and the content
that they can hold.*
The platform could enable governments/organisations in any country to
identify and deploy packages of digital goods (for example, Wikipedia,
MOSIP, U-Report, Project Connect, or the Global Digital Library). It will
be easy to add to / extend / and build on.
But – we don’t know how to build it. So, we want to work through issues,
problems, and opportunities we’ll face.
*More on Digital Public Goods… *
There is a now a global consensus that digital technologies have the
potential to create tremendous opportunities to accelerate sustainable
development. However, at the moment, there are deep inequalities in access
to technology and digital products, the lack of which further deepens
inequalities. A concerted effort to make technology and digital goods for
the public good easily discoverable, accessible, usable and customizable
will enable the attainment of the SDGs by 2030. The ‘*GAVI for Digital
Technologies*’ is the foundation of this effort. The proposed platform for
Digital Public Goods (DPG), will understand the demand for DPG, negotiate
favourable terms of access to DPG, and develop a financial mechanism to
ensure continuing access, especially by developing countries, to
much-needed information and other publicly useful digital goods. It will
help identify where the useful digital goods are, where there is a lack,
move kilobytes to the lacking areas, develop a financial mechanism to
create and buy useful kilobytes, and shape the digital industry to ensure
fairness and equality in the ecosystem.
*Think of it like “github for good” with physical distribution and a
better interface and some money behind it. This project is funded (jointly
by UNICEF Ventures+NORAD) for 6 months. *
--
Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266
Dear All,
I would like to inform you that I have asked for a rapid Grant and a
regular Grant, both related to promoting and distributing offline Wikipedia
(using the Kiwix program) in Senegal. One project will be bringing WikiMed
to health centers lacking internet access and the second project will be
bringing offline Wikipedia as well as other educational resources to
schools with very poor or no internet access.
Both of these projects include "training" sessions so that the future users
of offline Wikipedia will be able to benefit straight away from the huge
wealth of information contained in the encyclopedia which will henceforth
be at their disposal.
WikiMed project:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Rapid/GastelEtzwane/WikimedS…
Education project:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Offline_Wikipedia_in_Senegal…
Please have a look at these two proposals, and if you feel that they are
worth pursuing, please endorse the proposals. I welcome your comments and
remarks on the grant proposal pages.
Best regards
Gabriel Thullen
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chers Toutes et Tous,
Je tiens à vous informer que j'ai fait deux demandes de subvention (un
"Rapid Grant" et un "Grant"), toutes les deux liées à la promotion et la
distribution de Wikipédia offline (avec le programme Kiwix) au Sénégal. Le
premier projet va apporter WikiMed à des centres de santé qui n'ont pas
d'accès internet, et l'autre projet va apporter Wikipédia ainsi que
d'autres ressources pédagogiques à des écoles situées dans des zones sans
connexion internet.
Ces deux projets comportent aussi un volet "formation" pour que les
personnes concernées puissent tout de suite profiter au maximum de la
richesse de l’encyclopédie qui sera dorénavant à leur disposition.
Project WikiMed :
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Rapid/GastelEtzwane/WikimedS…
Project Education :
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Offline_Wikipedia_in_Senegal…
Je vous remercie de regarder ces demandes, et si vous les jugez
intéressantes de les soutenir. Vos commentaires et remarques sont les
bienvenus sur la page de demande de Grant, en français ou en anglais.
Avec mes salutations les meilleures
Gabriel Thullen