There’re roughly 3,000,000,000 phones on the planet which means there’re also 3,000,000,000 chargers. The average charger consumes 300mW on standby. You can do the math. The waste is tremendous. In addition, most mobile phones take only ~60 minutes to fully recharge these days. Yet most of us keep them plugged for hours… while resting at night.

Homegrown people planet profit – Raphael Grignani – Thoughts

A tonne of ore from a gold mine produces just 5 grams (0.18 ounce) of gold on average, whereas a tonne of discarded mobile phones can yield 150 grams (5.3 ounce) or more, according to a study by Yokohama Metal Co Ltd, another recycling firm. The same volume of discarded mobile phones also contains around 100 kg (220 lb) of copper and 3 kg (6.6 lb) of silver, among other metals.

Urban miners look for precious metals in cell phones – Yahoo! News

Pay attention to the sounds, other people going about their lives, cars and buses passing by, the architecture of buildings, the colours and shapes and symbols around you. Look out for patterns, coincidences, and most importantly, pay attention to the internal dialogue going on in your head: it’ll be trying to pick apart the problem at hand, and you can follow some basic retrospective techniques to work some of it out once you’re in that state of mind.

lixo.org :: Go for a walk

We sent this text message to our subscribers to seek their opinion: Kubatana! Government of national unity: Solution or sell out? What do you think? Reply with your thoughts via SMS or email info [at] kubatana [dot] org [dot] zw We’ve received a flood of replies, particularly via SMS, with voices against a government of national unity out numbering those in favour of it by about 10:1. Here are just a few of the comments we’ve received:

Kubatana.net speaks out from Zimbabwe » Blog Archive » GNU: Sell out or solution? Zimbabweans speak out

In 1992 when telecommunication engineers sent the first SMS in the UK, few would have predicted that less than twenty years later it would be used as both a mobilising and demobilising tool in Kenya during one of the most violent elections the region has seen for a while. Alice Munuya, KICTAnet , in her talk entitled ‘Civil Society Groups and National ICT Policies’ gave a fascinating insight into the use of SMS technology during late 2007/ early 2008 and how it could be manipulated for both violent and peaceful action.

ICT for Democracy > ICT for Democracy