(2004-07-30) Gillmor Guardian Groove

Dan Gillmor on the Strong Angel project to test technologies for supporting humanitarian projects. Laptops were everywhere, of course, and most were running Groove Networks' powerful collaboration software, which lets people share information smoothly and securely. With Groove, people can work offline and then synchronize data when they connect, in a way that ultimately lets everyone on the network - without any centralized "server" computer - update to the latest information... A major goal of Strong Angel, which was funded largely by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, was improving people's ability to understand each other, namely through translation services. For example, U.S. forces and humanitarian workers in Iraq need to know what the Arab media are saying about the war, the American occupation and the continuing Western presence. And they need to know it quickly.