Africa’s Gift to Silicon Valley: How to Track a Crisis

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/weekinreview/14giridharadas.html?sudsredirect=true

Ushahidi also represents a new frontier of innovation. Silicon Valley has been the reigning paradigm of innovation, with its universities, financiers, mentors, immigrants and robust patents. Ushahidi comes from another world, in which entrepreneurship is born of hardship and innovators focus on doing more with less, rather than on selling you new and improved stuff.

DIY Solar video kit

http://solarvideokit.wordpress.com/

W3C Workshop on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social and Economic Development

held in Maputo, Mozambique on 1-2 April 2009. This workshop was organized by the W3C Mobile Web for Social Development Interest Group, part of the EU FP7 project Digital World Forum. During the two day event, the 70+ participants held discussions regarding the potential of mobile technologies in the development sector. The key outcomes that are expanded in this document can be summarized here

Microfinancing with mobile phones in Nairobi

I just launched a project called Mobile Movement, a microfinancing website that connects young entrepreneurs in the slums of Nairobi with the rest of the world using mobile technology.

We just launched and would love to get loads of people to log on. The youth in Nairobi are standing by their phones, and answer any and all questions! We also have a Facebook application if anyone is interested.

Mobile Movement is a partnership with a UN agency (UN-HABITAT) and is a winner of the Digital Media and Learning Competition at the MacArthur Foundation.

Cheers,
Leba Haber (ITP)

A Msg of Hope to Farmers

NAIROBI, Apr 10 (IPS) - Mobile phones are being used to diagnose and treat crop diseases that cause massive losses to farmers, presenting an opportunity to increase yields as location-specific information about disease threats is made available. more

Datadyne EpiSurveyor

EpiSurveyor is a free, open source tool enabling anyone to very easily create a handheld data entry form, collect data on a mobile device, and then transfer the data back to a desktop or laptop for analysis -- without expensive consultants.

Mobiles give Africa's farmers the chance to set out their stall

The latest technology is enabling villagers to bypass middlemen and find out the prices their crops will command. more

Vodafone launches UK-Kenya money transfer service

Vodafone Group Plc, the world's largest mobile phone group by revenue, launched a mobile money transfer pilot scheme between Britain and Kenya, aiming to increase its role in the growing industry and potentially boost customer loyalty.

more

Photovoice event 4 Dec 08

Sale of PhotoVoice Photographs

London International Development Centre, 36 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD

Thursday 4 December 2008

5pm-with wine and nibbles
You are invited to attend a sale of photographs by UK NGO, PhotoVoice currently exhibited at LIDC. Representatives from PhotoVoice will explain more about how their award-winning international charity (www.photovoice.org) empowers some of the most disadvantaged groups in the world with photographic skills and equipment. Through establishing in-field photojournalism workshops, its projects enable those who are traditionally the subjects of photography to become its creator. Through photography these individuals find confidence in their voices and are enabled to speak out about their challenges, concerns, hopes and fears.

PhotoVoice projects span four continents, assisting refugees, street children, orphans, HIV/ AIDS sufferers and special needs groups. Internationally the organisation provides the platform for these photographers to exhibit and market their work . It also provides long-term support for individuals to pursue careers in their local photographic industries.

Raffle prize
A 12"x 16" print of your choice from one of the images online at http://picasaweb.google.com/projectsphotovoice/LIDCFinalEdit?authkey=PEvRtWMchSs# will be raffled off at the event (tickets £1 each).

Discounted photos
PhotoVoice will be selling heavily discounted copies of the pictures exhibited inside LIDC's building at 36 Gordon Square (pictures online at http://picasaweb.google.com/projectsphotovoice/LIDCFinalEdit?authkey=PEvRtWMchSs# ). A couple of the pictures are also attached.
8" x 10": £25
12" x 16": £50 (usual price £125)
Framed 12"x 16" (as per exhibition): £85

PhotoVoice have guaranteed delivery in time for Christmas so we hope that these pictures may make good Christmas presents!

I hope you are able to join us.

Best wishes
Abby

Mobile environmental monitoring

Goes both ways: In London you can receive air quality info by SMS. Or sensors embedded in mobiles can detect and send radiation or pollen levels. "Grassroots citizen science" work by Eric Paulos in Ghana attached sensors to taxi drivers' phones in Ghana to measure pollution levels. Details here.

See also Urban sensing: Out of the woods: "Services such as Google Earth have driven to nearly zero the cost of this visualization measured in terms of dollars, time-to-deploy, and technical sophistication required." (See an example of the scientific use of Google Earth here.)

Stanford-Ericsson mobile learning collaboration

Stockholm (SE), July 2007 - Ericsson announced at the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit in Geneva (05-06 July) that it is collaborating with Stanford University to explore the innovative use of mobile technologies in distance eLearning. Ericsson will work with Stanford University's International Outreach Program to bring distance learning to countries in Africa.

The program offers students on different continents the opportunity to learn from researchers in environmental sciences from several countries and perspectives, as well as contribute to lively discourse and debate through Internet and mobile phone interaction.

Further details here.

Emerging journalism

Journalism training is booming in the developing world. David Okwemba of Kenya's The Nation newspaper also helps train journalists. For community-generated podcasts (esp. in Kambu for the radio station) we have envisioned community members conducting interviews and making stories.

Economist story here.

Open source mobile phone platform

Mobile phones, currently closed and self limited, will rival broadband computers. When based on Open standards, they will deliver ubiquitous computing and vanish.

Ubiquitous computing means more than computing wherever you wander: It means knowing the locale, weaving seamlessly into the local fabric, and vanishing.

OpenMoko is an open source, Linux-based mobile phone software platform. Read more here.

Workshop on Ubiquitous Sustainability: Technologies for Green Values

Workshop in Conjunction with the Ninth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp 2007)

Second Workshop on Speech in Mobile and Pervasive Environments

Matt Jones from VeSeL partner project StoryBank will be the invited speaker at this workshop in Singapore, September 9, 2007, part of ACM Mobile HCI 07.

Traditionally, voice-based applications have been accessed using unintelligent telephone devices through Voice Browsers that reside on the server. The proliferation of pervasive devices and the increase in their processing capabilities, client-side speech processing is emerging as a viable alternative. As in SiMPE 2006, we will further explore the various possibilities and issues that arise while enabling speech processing on resource-constrained, possibly mobile devices.

In particular, this year's theme will be SiMPE for developing regions.

Mobiles and Development

Report from recent UK workshop on this topic.

3G coming to Kenya

See this article for the latest on the telecom's plans for fibre optic lines and 3G connectivity.

sensors -> mobile phone

Mobile phone network looks like the best communication option for sending/receiving data in a remote location. This page describes interfacing a microcontroller with a Nokia phone. A challenge, however, would be keeping a battery charged via solar panel. Power requirements for the microcontroller/sensors will be low (~5V) and may be able to run off of the same panel used by the phone; microcontrollers can usually withstand up to 12VDC. Heat of course would be an issue...

Mobile AR in education

Details here about a US project involving augmented reality on handheld devices.

The VillagePDA

Perhaps interesting that this project appears to be dead....

"FIRST AFRICAN TRIAL OF VILLAGEPDA - FISHING FOR CHEAP RURAL CONNECTIVITY
The first sub-$25 PDA is about to be "road-tested" by the fishing community of Kenya’s Lake Victoria. A partnership between Environmental Liaison Centre International (ELCI) and the PDA’s creators, MediaSolv, the trial is seeking to address issues such as over-fishing in the lake. Vasee Nesiah of MediaSolv describes what they are setting out to achieve."

Full news item