I suspect that just providing digital services to people dying of disease isn't much good, but I think there are some really nice technology projects operating

I suspect that just providing digital services to people dying of disease isn't much good, but I think there are some really nice technology projects operating at very cheap and small scales to do good. Two that spring to mind are kiva microloans (http://www.kiva.org http://www.kiva.org) and the 'Gravity Light' that replaces expensive and dangerous kerosene lamps with kinetic-energy powered LED lights (http://deciwatt.org/ http://deciwatt.org/) I suspect that these kinds of small projects, dealing with small amounts of cash, or lighting, or water purification, or similar, are the technology projects that might contribute really usefully and in very short timescales. Anyone else offer up some examples of cheap, near-term technology projects that HNers might want to get behind?