The Ushahidi Web site is collecting a variety of information and alerts of the situation in Haiti in realtime including messages of people looking for friends and loved ones as well as reports of locating missing persons and needs of supplies and resources in specific locations.
 

For those of you who will be in the Washington, D.C. area on January 13th, please see the event announcement below (click "read full story") regarding the African Diaspora Marketplace. The African Diaspora Marketplace is an innovative business plan competition focused on African entrepreneurship.  The event is free and open to the public.

A proposal for climate innovation centers recently were approved at the UN conference on global climate change in Copenhagen. Each of these climate innovation centers will focus on a particular key technology area and a produce that helps tackle climate change.

Ushahidi, one of the winners of USAID's 2008 Development 2.0 Challenge, was highlighted by the World Economic Forum as a "disruptive innovator" in information technology for not only developing groundbreaking products and services, but also redesigning business and society.

The ninth annual Tech Museum Awards, which celebrate social entrepreneurs and innovation, were held on November 19 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.  Fifteen "Tech Laureates" were selected from the fields of environment, equality, economic development, health, and education; five won cash prizes of $50,000.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) should be a tool for a development and not viewed as a pancea for all development challenges in emerging markets, panelists agreed at the Net Impact 2009 conference in Ithaca, New York.
 

Today Google announced that 17 of the World Bank's Development Indicators would now be available through their search engine.  Finding data such as the GDP of Indonesia is now just a simple keyword away.
 

The BSR Conference in San Francisco brought together some of the best innovators in social entreprenuership.  This video features a conversation about integrating sustainability into corporate innovation with Rosabeth Moss Kanter (Harvard Business School), John Kao (Kao & Company) and Hannah Jones (Nike).

On November 3, during her remarks at the Forum for the Future in Morocco, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the Civil Society 2.0 Initiative.