Word: webbed
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...reading this in Africa, you're one of a few who can. With just 50 million Web users across the continent, as few as 5% of Africans access the Internet, a percentage far lower than in Asia, Europe or the Americas. In only a handful of African countries do more than 1% of the population use broadband services. (Among OECD countries, broadband penetration averages 18%.) And the services that exist don't come cheap. Broadband costs more in sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else in the world: consumers in the region spent an average of $366 each month for speedier...
...Efforts like these to connect Africa will do more than add friends on Facebook. Boosting connectivity should do the same to countries' social and economic health, stoking trade and granting citizens access to crucial online health, education and government services, economists say. Stymieing the Web's expansion in Africa until now: the fixed-line telephone networks used to transmit Internet services in much of the rest of the world are almost nonexistent across the continent. On average, there are only four lines for every 100 people - the lowest rate anywhere in the world. That has left much of Africa reliant...
...telecom firms aren't diverting money away from other areas no less hungry for investment. But, says Raul Zambrano, ICT adviser in the United Nations Development Program's Bureau for Development Policy, "it doesn't address the issue of development." Just as important as connecting poor people to the Web: giving them more rapid access to birth certificates and government health and education services. So while O3b's plan, for one, is "a great start," Zambrano says, "is this sort of investment going to help poor people get services? I think the answer...
...Rochester Institute of Technology, examines the gossip that buzzes through every community, explaining why people feel so compelled to devour and perpetuate rumors, and what effect that has on society at large. DiFonzo spoke with TIME's Jeremy Caplan about some of history's worst rumors, the peculiarities of Web gossip, why "no comment" is the wrong answer and why certain presidential candidates should be more aggressive about battling rumors about them...
...findings, published in late August on the Web site of the British journal Nature, have implications for finding a new treatment or cure for diabetes...