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I did tech work and tech education in two developing countries so here is what think.

You should listen to some of the other posters and get your feet wet to see about volunteering in a disadvantage local community in any tech capacity. The developing world is gonna to be orders of magnitude worse than the first world ghetto in terms of resources and poorly executed or vaporware jobs done by predecessors. Also, most people up to the most high in a developing country are going view any type of computer professional as an expert in all IT skills so this local volunteering could help you learn to wear the hats. Check out http:idealist.org to get a local gig.

If you want to get a feel for what the computing environment is in a low resource country without reliable power or broadband, check out this white paper http://www.inveneo.org/2014/07.... The organization Inveneo does well-reputed work as a network and systems integration partner in third world countries. You can also look at the large organizations such as MSF, UN, Partners in Health, US-AID, CARE, VSO and try to apply to the IT area for a job or a volunteer. The paid jobs are going to weight past volunteer experience in a developing country pretty strongly.

But from you talked about, you are interested in the software side. Developing nations generally don't have good electrical power or networking so those type of professionals are more in need than software professionals. I think if you want to get job doing that a combination of any volunteer experience in a developing country, and a remote contribution to a major humanitarian open source project would be the way forward. Software projects to watch that receive attention in the global development scene are http://www.ushahidi.com/, Humanitarian Open Street Map Team, http://hot.openstreetmap.org/ and Open Medical Record System Open MRS. http://openmrs.org/

Inveneo certainly does involve local service providers in their work. In fact, that is what they are all about. I recommend that you have a look at their interesting business model.

P.S. Their "How to Deploy Long-Distance WiFi in Haiti" is a very informative read for the radio geeks among us.

P.P.S. I am a former Inveneo employee.

Inveneo certainly does involve local service providers in their work. In fact, that is what they are all about. I recommend that you have a look at their interesting business model.

P.S. Their "How to Deploy Long-Distance WiFi in Haiti" is a very informative read for the radio geeks among us.

P.P.S. I am a former Inveneo employee.

• Inveneo. They are helping setting up a terrestrial wireless network. Because that is one of the things they do. http://www.inveneo.org/?q=haiti-response
• ushahidi is setting up and managing their crisis-reporting application here http://haiti.ushahidi.com/ more of what they do is here: http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2010/01/15/haiti-update/
• The missing persons registry is here: http://www.haitianquake.com/ (google took that one over, it seems)
• There is a CrisisCamp for techies going on in DC today. They need GIS experts & programmers specifically. If you are in the area, here are the details: http://ow.ly/WQDD
• The university of heidelberg (yup, not a company) has put up a routing service based on Openstreetmap data: http://openls.geog.uni-heidelberg.de/osm-haiti/
• There is more on what the OSM community has done here: http://www.opengeodata.org/2010/01/14/haiti-openstreetmap-response/

In short, you don't even have to go to Haiti to be a helpful techie.

Inveneo.org is preparing to send a team, whose mission is to set up long-shot WiFi links, and put down solar-powered computer workstations as network nodes. That is all the information I have at the moment: visit their site at Inveneo.org. -jw

Inveneo.org takes donated thumb drives and sends them to students in Africa: http://www.inveneo.org/?q=Thumbdrive

"Thumb Drive Drive - Do you have old thumb drives (otherwise known as USB Memory Sticks) at your office or home that you don't use anymore? We're collecting these drives to share with the organizations we work with. They can be used in hundreds of useful ways by: * Teachers * Students * Relief Camp Workers Please keep sending them in to Inveneo here and we'll make sure they get out to people and organizations who can use them well: Inveneo 972 Mission Street 5th Floor San Francisco, CA 94103"

Not only a service to humanity, you could also have a lot of FUN volunteering for Inveneo. Their mission is to bring cool and useful IT technology to sub-Saharan Africa. Can you set up a multi-kilometer wifi link? Or work on a field hardened Linux distro that runs on 20W desktop machines? They tackle a spectrum of fascinating projects and regularly send team members to perform installations in rural African villages and meet with government ministers. Have a look at their website and get in touch with them! - Jim Wiggins

I don't know if I'll be running out to buy a cellphone with a projector in it to show of my family photos -- but I could see this being much more useful in developing countries where the cost and power consumption of LCD/CRT/OLED will be a significant factor for a long time to come. It looks perfect for something like the projects Inveneo is doing in Uganda with their bycicle powered thin client and phone service.

I'd be curious to know what the build of materials is for something like this.