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Digital Planet: Free Basics Service Suspended in Egypt

Factual: Science & Nature

An Egyptian man hold up a sign praising the social network website Facebook, joins others in Cairo's Tahrir Square

12/01/2016 GMT

Free Basics Service Suspended in Egypt

BBC World Service - Digital Planet, Free Basics Service Suspended in Egypt

What is the fallout from Facebook Free Basics service suspension in Egypt?

Facebook Free Basics service fails in Egypt; Charging your phone via street furniture; MSF promotes causes through 360 degree videos; Video games musical excellence.

Facebook’s free internet service, Free Basics, has been suspended in Egypt. Click talks to Sahar Mohamed Khamis, professor of Communication at the University Maryland and an expert on Arab media, about what this tells us about the digital landscape in Egypt and what the fallout has been.

Strawberry Benches
London’s Canary Wharf recently set up a high profile competition initiative Cognicity Challenge and invited start-up companies around the world with cutting-edge technology solutions for cities. The winning projects are being embedded into the existing landscape but also in its future buildings. One of them is Serbia’s Strawberry Bench, the outdoors smart bench with solar panels that provide free battery charging for smart devices. Click’s Snežana Ćurčić reports. 

MSF Takes a Punt on 360 Degree Videos
360 degree films have been used by concerned individuals and relief organisations over the last year to demonstrate the difficulties for instance that people have faced in the aftermath of Ebola in Sierra Leone and also following the earthquake in Kathmandu. And now a team from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has recently conducted an experiment into the logistics and use of such films. They produced a short film focussing on one of their programs at Shamwana, in Katanga, Democratic Republic of Congo. Click hears more from MSF’s Olga Victorie.

Video Game Music: The Young People’s Soundtrack 
Click talks to the composer, Grant Kirkhope, one of the leading composers of music for video games, about how and why such music is often more sophisticated than the music produced for films scores for Hollywood blockbusters.

(Photo: An Egyptian man holding up a sign, joins others in Cairo's Tahrir Square © Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images)

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