Archive for the 'Technology' Category

Development and at a low cost?

charukesi September 30th, 2005

The developing world. And within that, rural. Children and education. And women. This is where all emerging technology seems to be headed. Politically correct noises? Or just plain marketing widsom? And is this here to last - and deliver the promise of accelerated development in these countries? Or a bubble waiting to burst?

Yahoo studying rural needs, says BusinessLine. Speaking to Business Line at his Bangalore office, Dr Prasad Ram, CTO, Yahoo! R&D India, said that `livelihood-based’ offerings for the rural market would roll out by mid-2006. Right.

And a very interesting Sub-$100 laptop design unveiled. Professor Negroponte came up with the idea for a cheap computer for all after visiting a Cambodian village. His non-profit One Laptop Per Child group plans to have up to 15 million machines in production within a year.. Such optimism is actually scary - Professor Negroponte predicts there could be 100 million to 150 million shipped every year by 2007. What I found interesting in this product idea is the thought that seems to have gone in with respect to the needs of the end users (in this case, children from the developing world) - with all the associated problems - for instance, the laptop is designed to be sturdy and will have a hand crank for charging it - which makes immense sense given the power situation in most places where this laptop is targetted. Virtually indestructible, says the report further.

Not to forget mobile phones. Mobile market shifts its focus - to surprise, surprise, the third world. It could see an increase in cheaper, data-based voice services and a rise in voice-based messaging services. The latter will be particularly popular in areas of low literacy, the report finds. However, with mobile phones, there are regulalr reports of good work happening across countries (textually is fantastic with recording these activities).

Read about village phones for farmers in Uganda and about the Bangladesh mobile help-line for women which has recently won the gender and ict awards. I had recently blogged about two similar internet-based initiatives in India, one, the NCW portal targetted at women and the other, the popular echoupal for farmers.

Update : Low-Cost PCs for the Enterprise linked by Rajesh Jain on Emergic discusses many such initiatives, including Negroponte’s sub $100 laptop.

Shopping and advertising on blogs

charukesi September 27th, 2005

Shoppers use blogs for bargains… says the BBC. Consumers are starting to use weblogs, or blogs, as guides to what they should and shouldn’t buy, finds a survey.

A survey (conducted by whom and for what purpose, this does not say) says that people trusted blogs since they were written by “real people” and based on actual experience. Real people… I wonder - think of all the “nice site. please visit my site” comments by the gambling and roulette “people” that blogs get everyday. I don’t know about shopping but for me, blogs are a credible source of information - I respect the opinions of bloggers I read regularly - and I believe there fewer personal and political agendas being played out in this space (I say fewer - fewer than on msm - but not none).

While on this, Flickr User Upset Over Yahoo Ads on Photo Pages (through Adrants). Tanais on flickr has a picture of a gorgeous puppy - and right next to it is an ad for ‘…puppies for sale - ready now’

puppy ad

Original here

I see Yahoo is making use of the pictures I upload. I do not like my pictures being used to advertise a specific breeder (they may be excellent they may be terrible — that’s not the point)… so I shall sit down and think about how best to AdBust this - says Tanais under the photograph of the offending ad(s).

Sure, the basic flickr account is free but does it automatically give yahoo (who owns flickr now) the right to advertise on all accounts? Freebies on the net too come for a price. I do not mind the google advertising on my blog - my funny notion about the fact that I have chosen to have the ads - but thinking about it, there is no control I have over the kind of ads that appear on my blog. My post against fairness creams for instance had ads for fairness products on my blog for the next few days - while the one on ‘veronika decides to die’ had ads around suicide prevention and counselling…

Notes on Web 2.0

charukesi September 26th, 2005

(More for my own reference and later reading…)

Eye-opener (for me) discussions across blogs on the value of web 2.0

Link throughbusiness week online.

From the corporate blogging blog - As we know, the thing about the Web 2.0 is that it is not one thing. It’s blogs, it’s technologies such as AJAX, it’s tagging, it’s remixes — it’s all that and more. All visualized in this map.

web 2.0

Original here - on Tim O’Reilly’s.

Technology scare at home

charukesi September 9th, 2005

This weird and scary thing happened last night. Around 11 p.m. my husband who was browsing on the net received an SMS saying - your data folders are visible on my computer - please protect your data. Captain Desai. Or some such thing. Initially dismissing it as spam, my husband messaged back saying who is this - it was a Bombay mobile number.

Captain Desai called back saying he could see a couple of our work folders on his computer. And he read out file names. And asked my husband, you work with ** don’t you?

A complete stranger. And he had access to our computer. And our mobile number.

After a long chat with him, this is what we found. My husband had shared on of his work folders between our desktop and his laptop last week when he was working from home - and we used our Sify connection to access the net from both.

And this had been shared across the Sify network. Essentially, anyone connecting to the net through Sify broadband could have seen the folders. (I am always ready to expect the worst from Sify, but this?)

Samaritan Desai was shutting off his computer when he saw the message - …will affect other users on this network. Concerned about these “other users” he had no clue existed, he looked and found our computer. And found a few old Orange bills stored there. And found our mobile number. And let us know.

So, Captain Desai, many thanks to you. If you ever read this…

And the more worrying aspect about security - or the lack of it that technology brings with it. I cannot describe the feeling of vulnerability which overtook us suddenly and forcefully last night.

My geek (and other :)) - blogger friends out there, I look forward to your thoughts on this one.

The Kalleda photoblog project

charukesi September 5th, 2005

Happy Monday Morning. Happy - to be back in Bombay, back home, and back at my blog (there, I said it) - and earlier than I had planned…

Also happy to have come across this remarkable initiative in flickr - The Kalleda Rural School Photoblog. This is the photoblog of the kids at Kalleda Rural School in Andhra Pradesh, India. The students take their own photographs documenting their lives and post them on their own flickr accounts. This account is a collection of some of their best photos.

Most of these photographs are simple and tell stories from the lives of these cildren - glimpses that would otherwise never be available to the outsider. I have written to the person behind this suggesting that specific themes could be introduced to the kids so 1. we the outsiders get a better idea of what certain notions - like say freedom or modernity or education mean to the kids there, and 2. the kids themselves think more deeply about them…

Photo-ethnography at its most basic and brilliant best… Please check it out. And if you are on flickr, do leave a few words of encouragement on the pics - the co-ordinator says, Photography is new to the kids, so please post comments and suggestions. Thanks!

This is the photograph that led me to this project first…

The budding photographer
(The original can be found here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/gdstone/26457702/)

I checked out the India Rural Development Fund which supports this school project and found out some more… This school started in 1996 currently has a strength of around 530 students, and 10 grades (Kindergarten through Grade 10). It offers high quality education to the children of Kalleda and surrounding villages. The first graduating class (2004) passed with distiction. Atleast 50% of the seats are reserved for girls, and admission to the school is based on a lottery system. Care is taken to ensure all communities are adequately represented based on the local demographics. The children have access to their own computer center and the internet.

Lottery system - does anyone know how this works?

Leapfrogging empowerment and development

charukesi August 16th, 2005

Indian Express has an Independence day special series - India explained, India empowered. The series was flagged off by an article by the President Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam. The focus of the President’s note is “Empowering Rural India”- and is titled - India Empowered to me is Knowledge taking roots in the village. Read the full piece here.

To the Prime Minister whose note followed the president, empowerment is Open democracy and open economy. Read it here.

And today’s piece by Mr. Somnath Chatterjee, Speaker, Lok Sabha who writes about Bringing into the mainstream all those kept out

Link through The Scientific Indian who says - If there’s one engine that’s today driving a changing India, it’s empowerment. Empowerment of the individual, the family, the neighbourhood, the community—and, hence, the nation.

The theme is India empowered to me is - to me, it is a fully functionally literate India.

And to you?

***
And Sri Lanka gets connected as villages get mobile technology. Phones begin ringing in Sri Lankan villages as new technology arrives, says this report on Smart Mobs. Not mobiles, nor standard landlines, but a clever combination of the two that is quickly making telephony accessible to all. - CDMA wireless technology which has made it posible in India for mobile phones to exceed landline connections in a span of just a few years.

Some 44.5 million Indians now use mobile handsets, compared with the 43.9 million existing landline users, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said in a statement. From this post on textually.

***

An then the debate about Ethiopia leaping into technology age.

10 % of Ethiopia’s GDP spent on broadband - Smart mobs

Ethiopia Leaps - WorldChanging

A thrust on computer technology and internet connectivity is always open to debate and criticism.The loudest rumbles come from those who believe that in a country where basic infrastructure - in the form of schools and healthcare and electricity - is not in place, spending on computers and internet seem misplaced - to the point of being insensitive to the “real needs” of the people. This is a challenge for those who believe in the power of leapfrogging technology.

As the WorldChanging article says - In essence, the Ministry of Capacity Building wants to make Ethiopia Africa’s first real Knowledge Economy. For a nation that has in recent decades suffered from overwhelming famine and civil war, this is an ambitious goal to say the least. If it fails, Ethiopia could become a symbol for the dangers of leapfrogging and the dangerous temptations of going too far, too fast. But if it succeeds — and the earliest signs are hopeful — Ethiopia could instead symbolize the pathway to success in 21st Century Africa.

This is also very relevant to India - when Dr. Kalam writes about knowledge taking roots in the village, I think about leapfrogging technology making a difference to the lives of impoverished and illiterate villagers. Bringing about a visible change for the better within a generation or two. Contributing to their development in some magical way that I have not fully understood yet.

But can social development really be leapfrogged? As usual, I have the questions here but I don’t know the answers…

Anthropology at Intel

charukesi August 9th, 2005

Product design is no longer about scientists sitting in their offices (mostly in the West) to develop products (for the entire world, including the inscrutable East - atleast where technology is concerned) and launching beta versions for testing and refining. Anthropological methods (tweaked to suit commercial needs) being increasingly used by large technology companies are taking design to the end user - observing their everyday interactions with the product and taking out insights that can be quite startling.

Lorenz of antropologi points to this article on Intel’s eforts at user research.

In a bid to eventually sell more chips, Intel plans to announce Monday that it has set up four new offices around the world that are staffed with anthropologists and engineers to help design computers with features for emerging markets.

Traveling from dusty rural villages in India to busy Internet cafés in Brazil, these Intel employees will collect data from weather to the content needs of people in regions where computers are not yet popular.

This effort began with China where Intel sent ethnographers to study how people interact with technologies. And they have plans for India too - Intel is working on a project targeting farming communities in India, where heat and unreliable power supply present challenges for keeping and using a PC. The company expects to launch a PC for this market next year, said Mr. Agatstein.

Here is an interesting observation study on mobile phone usage : Mobile Phone Users: A Small-Scale Observational Study

HP calls this process contextual invention - here is the HP research conducted study by HP in partnership with IMRB and Human Factors International - Contextual Invention: A multi-disciplinary approach to develop business opportunities and design solutions. This approach can be seen as a development of Contextual Design in which social and cultural factors are considered in the deployment of an existing technology. We call this approach Contextual Invention because the aim of the social science research is to inspire and generate new technology inventions with high social and business value. After an initial phase of ethnographic fieldwork looking at media use in India, the project team worked up new business and design proposals in three high-value areas.

Tags on flickr

charukesi July 14th, 2005

I had written on info on the London bombings about how the blogging world had responded almost instantly to the bombs.

And now I see this message on the discussion forum of flickr - Please don’t tag bombing pictures with muslim, arab or islam - someone (who has had his photographs tagged muslim / islam) has raised this topic and it is wonderful to see positive responses on the forum -

For instance, I agree, we should not let people who have warped values make us into bigots or racist. Extremists want to separate the world and put religion against religion so they come off as “freedom” fighters.

I do not know a lot about Islam but I have muslim neighbors in my bldg and they too are angry at these evil people. If we start using tags such as Islam, arab or muslim then we should at the same time take everyone into consideration and use christian, catholic, american, protestant, jew. But this would defy what flickr is about since its about uniting people, not dividing - adrianadesigner

There are so many nuts out there and more nuts to incite these ones…

HW R U?

charukesi July 11th, 2005

My husband received this sms last evening from a client who has recently moved abroad - HI (NAME SPELT WRONG) HW R U?

Nice ‘thinking of you’ message - except

1. this was not written by a 13 year old, as you may have immediately thought (as I did - what with the all caps and the spelling and the awful HW R Us - but let me not get started on that one)

2. it was sent at 7.45 on a sunday evening.

My issue is with the latter.

What is it with people who assume that having a call phone automatically puts you in the market for unwanted communication at any time of the day - and night?

Another of my husband’s colleagues (ya, he does make friends with some strange people) called him last week at 11.30 in the night to discuss an issue that even he did not think was that important… (I know this because he cheerfully signed off when it was suggested to him that this discussion could happen at a more decent hour)…

I also know that people carelessly pass around my mobile number to anyone who cares to ask them - it does not occur to them to ask me or suggest that the third person asks me directly…

I understand that in India, concepts like privacy are not such a big deal - but it seems to me that with the cell phone, people have lost all perspective.

It is not ok to send me sms forwards (sometimes just as a way of ‘keeping in touch’). Or call at any odd hour because something has gone wrong at work - surely it can wait till the next morning…

How did people cope before the mobile phone became so popular? How did we live without this need to be communicado all the time?

And please, do not even suggest to me that if you want a mobile phone, then you must be prepared for this. NO. This argument has a very shiv senaesque logic about it - if you wear a mini skirt, then you must be prepared to be molested.

I have a mobile phone for my convenience. So that I can keep in touch with people I know - friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances to whom I have given the number - and they with me. Within reasonable boundaries of time and space…

And not so that Atal Bihari Vajpayee can call me and request me in his gruff voice to vote for the BJP this time… (ok, I am sure he did not personally dial the number, but what the heck)

Or for HW R U messages… I am fine, thank you. And you?

Yellowikis - business listings as wiki

charukesi June 24th, 2005

Can’t find that information on the small business you were looking for? Now there is yellowikis - business information in wiki format.
(Link through ResearchBuzz).

This is what their main page says - We want to be like Yellow Pages (http://www.yellowpages.com), Dun and Bradstreet (http://www.dnb.com/us/) and Hoovers (http://www.hoovers.com) all rolled into one - but open, free to both companies and users, global, multilingual and a lot more ecologically friendly.

ResearchBuzz quotes this from their about page: “Small companies - particularly those in developing countries don’t find it easy to set up their own web pages and get them ranked by Google and the other search engines. We hope that a simple entry in Yellowikis will help level the playing field.”

I think it is a wonderful idea… This is a boon for small businesses - a way to get noticed and connected at two levels - globally (for those ambitious service providers) and at a very micro level, within your city or local area - and for free… Check it out…

« Prev - Next »