It's easy to criticise billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and his giant social media empire, but through a non-profit organisation, he's planning to bring internet access to everyone in the world, starting in Zambia.
While most of us spend our days hooked up to a WiFi connection, a LAN cable or on our 3G, it's worth remembering that not everyone has that luxury, and only one-third of the world's population can actually get internet access.
However, a much higher percentage of people are in range of a mobile network, and using that technology, Facebook-backed internet.org wants to make the world wide web affordable and accessible to as many of those folks as possible.
With that in mind, they have released the internet.org app in Zambia so that anyone that has a smartphone can get access to certain online services, without needing to have an expensive data plan. Speaking at the Mobile World Congress earlier this year about the project, he announced that there "is a set of basic services that we think should exist" for everyone, including weather reports, social media (Facebook, of course), Wikipedia, amongst a whole host of other things.
As the app spreads and is introduced into other countries around the world, they will tailor the services needed to each specific region, so in Zambia the focus is on health services, employment and the ability to search Google.
However, certain pages are restricted, and people will be told they need full access or a data plan to access them, so this is a first step rather than a final measure, but a great project nonetheless.
Via Wired
