By JBC on 01 December 2008
LONDON, England – The other day we caught up with Ken Banks from kiwanja.net. On something of a high from the news of receiving a $400,000 grant from the Hewlett foundation, Ken gave us the lowdown on his plans for FrontlineSMS, the software designed to connect rural organisations with participants through SMS.
By JBC on 27 November 2008
BANGALORE, India – Building a social network so you could then create a job website on the back of it smacks of the tail wagging the dog. But this is exactly what the team behind Babajob.com and Babalife.com did. Realising that the way employers liked to hire people was through recommendation, they came up with a pretty innovative way to take what was essentially a real world social phenomenon and take it online.
By Mike on 20 November 2008
GLOBAL – Only last week I posed the big phone charger question, and it was great to see so many of you get involved in the debate and post a heap of interesting and extremely well considered points.
By James on 18 November 2008
GLOBAL – Yesterday’s piece on FrontlineSMS outlined how tricky it can be moving information around developing countries. But what about gathering and mapping reports using different technologies, such as mobile, email and the Internet? Ushahidi was created to do just that, acting as a platform for pulling together information from myriad sources across multiple channels, and then spitting it back out in a range of formats, including standard text (which can be added to and updated), geotagged and mapped data (highlighting hotspots) and even tracking events across a timeline. It’s genuinely interesting and evolutionary stuff, but its application is what’ll really make you sit up and think.
By James on 17 November 2008
GLOBAL – The lack of infrastructure in remote places can make what we in the developed world take for granted incredibly complex and in some areas almost impossible. Think about disseminating information to large groups of people. In the UK we might use a mailshot, or more likely, an email newsletter. In sub-Saharan Africa though, neither of those is an option. Which is why Ken Banks from kiwanja.net came up with a solution that focussed on the technology that was available locally, rather than that which we typically enjoy.
By the Team on 14 November 2008
GLOBAL – Over the next week or so, we’re going to profile a number of organisations and businesses who have a focus on helping the developing world. We’ve picked them simply because we think what they’re doing is interesting and their employment of the right technology to enable them to do what they do. So right now we’re kicking off with our first pick, Kiva.org. It’s stated mission – “to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty”.
By James on 13 October 2008
GLOBAL – Sometimes it takes someone else to notice something you do before you really take notice of it yourself. I like to think I’m well up on Nokia’s Corporate Social Responsibility strategy, particularly given that we write a fair amount about it here on Conversations.
But a piece today on Earth911.org brought home just how dramatic Nokia’s activities in that regard are.
By James on 19 September 2008
MALAYSIA – If all of the 3 billion people in the world who own a mobile phone, recycled just one used device, it would have the same effect as taking 4 million cars off the road.
That’s according to Nokia Malaysia’s Nellie Abdullah who’s Nokia’s local environmental coordinator. She was talking to ZDNet writer Lee Min Keong at the launch of a new recycling initiative being trilled out there, using Kiosks to collect the phones.
By Charlie on 22 August 2008
ESPOO, Finland – We are trusting people. But, in the immortal words of Ronald Reagan, “doveryai, no proveryai” [trust, but verify]. Therefore, organizations always seek to provide more transparency, either through helpful standardized labels, blatant Chinese notes, or stripping naked.
Huh?
By Mike on 08 August 2008
INTERNATIONAL – This week’s most exciting development has been the launch of we:offset, a smart eco-savvy mobile app that calculates your CO2 emissions when traveling, enabling you to offset them on the move.
Read on for the highlights…
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