Tags & Folksonomies - What are they, and why should you care? | Threadwatch.org: "Tags, or folksonomies are actually a lot simpler than much of the acedemic debate surrounding them. Put simply, they are a user defined method for organizing data. Im going to try to explain what they are, why they are important to marketers and web devs and suggest some ways you might use them. Follow the title link above for the full post."

A VC: del.icio.us: "del.icio.us made tagging popular, but others have used it with incredible results. The most obvious example is Flickr. I believe that tags and RSS feeds of the tags has made Flickr vastly superior to other photo sharing sites. " Communal taxonomy (folksonomy) is quite an attractive idea, given the stress of deciding how to categorise things in a single hierarchy... Flickr made it make sense for me...

BBC NEWS | Africa | Obelisk arrives back in Ethiopia

New Yorker again dominates magazine awards: South Florida Sun-Sentinel: "The New Yorker won the public interest category for a series of three articles by Seymour Hersh on the now infamous Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq. It also won the reporting prize for an article by Samantha Power on Sudan; profile writing for an article by Ian Parker about a kidney donor; reviews and criticism for three reviews by Adam Gopnik; and it also won the overall excellence award for its circulation category."

Job: Head of Communication and Information Services (Nigeria): "The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), with headquarters in Ibadan, Nigeria, invites applications for the position of Head of Communication and Information Services.
IITA is non-profit organization with over 130 internationally recruited scientists. The Institute has programs in many countries of sub-Saharan Africa. IITA scientists from about 35 countries work in partnership with national agricultural agencies to increase food production in tropical Africa, and ultimately to raise the productivity and income of small-scale farmers in an ecologically sustainable way."

International Crisis Group (Crisis Group) - Conflict prevention and resolution: "International Crisis Group
Africa Program
The International Crisis Group (Crisis Group) is an independent, non-profit, multinational organisation, with over 100 staff members on five continents, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict.
Central Africa Project Director
Crisis Group is looking for a new director to head the Central Africa project who will be responsible for overseeing Crisis Group projects and leading research in the Great Lakes "

Winners and Finalists

Business for Africa - Riches at the Bottom of the Pyramid: "For years, large national and multinational companies have overlooked BOP markets because they fail to see how people making less than $2 per day can afford a $100 television, a $50 cellular phone, or even a $4 pack of cigarettes. Rather than viewing the $2-a-day threshold as a barrier, companies must find ways to innovate around it, and create the capacity for those earning so little to consume the firm?s products. Selling cell-phone minutes for as little as $0.03, or shampoo for $0.01 gets around the barrier. So too does selling cigarettes singly, an element of the informal economy across Africa."

IWMF Programs, IWMF Public Health Fellowship: "The IWMF Public Health Fellowship program offers women newspaper editors and radio producers who cover public health issues in eligible countries the opportunity to receive on-the-job training with top media companies in the United States. The fellowship also requires that a fellow conduct a public health journalism project in her home country.

Two fellows will be selected in 2005 for fellowships that begin in August 2005 and end in January 2006."

Development Gateway Award: "Washington, DC, November 23, 2004 -- The Development Gateway Foundation is seeking nominations for the second Development Gateway Award. The $100,000 award will recognize outstanding achievement in using information and communication technologies (ICT) to improve people's lives in developing countries. "

More on muguka: "A constituent of the miraa that is sometimes confused with miraa is mairungi, mairungi are a somewhat bitter leaves but not exactly miraa.
Chewed over a long period and consistently, mairungi have also the capacity to give you a feeling of 'drunkenness' and a 'high sensation.'
In the same class with mairungi is muguka. Muguka are generally miraa 'residue' leaves that act as a substitute for real miraa leaves.
Over the last couple of years, miraa chewers of less able means have resorted to muguka because it is a lot cheaper and, more or less gives you the same sensation. "

allAfrica.com: Botany: Muguka - stronger leaf than miraa: "'Manze hii something ni poa, yaani steam yake ni noma sana kushinda ya veve..steam yake inakutake world ingine - .(This thing is so cool, its maximum effect is more vicious than that of miraa (khat), it carries you to another world)."

International Center for Journalists: "The Scripps Howard Foundation Semester in Washington internship program brings three international students per year to Washington, D.C., to work at the Scripps Howard News Service for 10 to 14 weeks each. The internship is designed to give international students an opportunity to cover events in the U.S. capital, as well as to report and write feature stories for the Scripps Howard Foundation Wire. Stories written by Scripps Howard interns may be published in newspapers across the United States."

rss2javascript There can never be too many RSS to Javascript widgets, imho.

Revenue Watch: Oil Revenue monitoring: "Revenue Watch is pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of three books addressing the management of oil, gas, and mining revenues in natural resource-rich countries. Each publication and its shipping are free of charge. The books will be published at different times within the next year; tentative dates are indicated below."