New disaster warning technology on anvil-India-The Times of India
AREA is expected to deliver the ‘disaster alert’ within seconds of its transmission from the authorised authority and also has the provision to get connected to a siren.Further, the device can be powered by small solar panels and the antennas are compact in size. In normal times, the system can be used for infotainment purposes.
“The receiver automatically turns on even when it is not in use at the time of the alert,” Rangarajan added.
In terms of cost, each system would be costing a few thousand rupees depending on AREA configuration — whether it is attached to a computer or a fixed location, with public address for the community, among others.
AREA is the result of a joint effort…
On the insignificance of Sri Lanka in the perception of the people who write for the New York Times OR in the preception of the readers of NYT, in the minds of the people who write for the NYT.
Universe - Laws of Nature - Physics - New York Times
Against all the odds, we can send e-mail to Sri Lanka, thread spacecraft through the rings of Saturn, take a pill to chase the inky tendrils of depression, bake a turkey or a soufflé and bury a jump shot from the corner.
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It was not long ago that Laloo Prasad Yadav Minister of Railways and former Bihar Chief Minister sarcastically asked what computers can do for his constituency, comprised mostly of agriculture communities. Had he been to Madurai with the CPRSouth participants on last Monday (Dec 17) perhaps he might have learnt.
This lady, with so many others, plays an integral role in ROPE (Rural Outsourced Production Enterprise) which sets up dedicated village-based contract production centers for its clients. Its mission is to integrate domestic and international markets with informal sectors of rural India and generate value for the skills and resources available in these sectors.
This lady and others like her, we were told, make INR 50 (USD 1.26) per day on this part time job of making banana…
LIRNEasia’s new book, ICT Infrastructure in Emerging Asia: Policy and Regulatory Roadblocks, was unveiled on the 16th of December at the IIT-Madras Campus. The first copies of the book were handed over to Chief Guests of the event, Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala and Professor William Melody.
Edited by Professor Rohan Samarajiva and Ayesha Zainudeen and co-published by Sage Publications and the IDRC, this well-structured volume brings together scholars, practitioners, former regulators and policy makers to address the problem of expanding ICT connectivity in emerging Asia. It centrally engages the widespread claim that technology by itself—independent of policy and regulatory reform—can improve access to ICTs. In doing so, it shows that complex workarounds are possible, but they are significantly less effective than the appropriate policy and regulatory reforms.
More…
A little known Irish company is attempting to breathe life back into the moribund concept of high altitude platform stations (HAPS) in the stratosphere to provide network connectivity to users. The latest wheeze is to provide service courtesy of some antiquated Russian-designed military aircraft.
Qucomhaps claims to have raised US$355 million to launch the service above Malaysia using aircraft that will circle the coverage area and provide wireless transmission to end users on behalf of service providers. It says it will trial the concept in Malaysia next March.
The company has made waves in the Malaysian media this week with claims that it will set up a national network offering data speeds of 512kbps. Qucomhaps says it will deploy aircraft “hovering or patrolling” at the stratospheric level…
Ms. Helani Galpaya presented “Taking e-Government to the Bottom of the Pyramid: dial-a-Gov?” co-authored by herself, Prof. Rohan Samarajiva and Ms. Shamistra Soysa at the 1st International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV 2007) held in Macao on the 10 - 13 December 2007.
This paper won the “Best Paper in the Practice” at this conference which was one of the three awards given out. The others were for best paper in theory and best paper in linking theory and practise. A pre publication version of the paper is available here
The second conference of CPRsouth2: ‘Empowering rural communities through ICT policy and research’, commenced on December 15, 2007 in Chennai, India. The three-day conference is being held in association with the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras’s (IIT-M) Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI).
The events also include pre- and post-conference tutorials on December 14 and 18, 2007 and the second meeting of the CPRsouth Board.
More Information
The LIRNEasia HazInfo team, Rohan Samarajiva, Nuwan Waidyanatha, Natasha Udu-gama, joined its partners from Sarvodaya, Dialog Telekom and WorldSpace Corporation (India) to present findings from the “Evaluating Last Mile Hazard Information Dissemination” (HazInfo) pilot project at the “Making Communities Disaster Resilient” on December 11, 2007 during the Third Global Knowledge Partnership (GK3) conference in Kuala Lumpur from 11-13 December.
The session, moderated by Prof. Rohan Samarajiva, presented findings and analysis within a 90-minute session divided into two mini-sessions on technology and community. Mr. Michael De Soyza of Dialog Telekom and Mrs. Mala Rao of WorldSpace Corporation (India) presented their respective technologies piloted in the project. In the second mini-session on community, Dr. Vinya Ariyaratne, Executive Director, Sarvodaya discussed the Sarvodaya approach to making communities disaster resilient. Natasha Udu-gama and Nuwan Waidyanatha presented…
Tags: Dialog Telekom, India, Kuala Lumpur, Mala Rao, Michael de Soyza, Mile Hazard, Natasha Udu-gama, Nuwan Waidyanatha, respective technologies, Rohan Samarajiva, Third Global Knowledge Partnership, Training and Community Organization, Vinya Ariyaratne, WorldSpace Corporation.
Calgary’s 22-year-old Piotr Staniaszek subscribed the Bell Mobility $10 unlimited mobile internet plan. But he was hammered with a whooping $85,000 bill in less than two months!
Because Mr. Staniaszek plugged his mobile phone with a PC and happily downloaded high-definition movies using the “unlimited” mobile internet plan. Bell says its “unlimited plan” is applicable for browsing internet from mobile device only – not using the gadget as a modem and browsing the net from PC. Therefore, it has decided to charge Mr. Staniaszek $85,000 for every bit of data he has downloaded.
Baffled Mr. Staniaszek has refused to pay and Bell Mobility has shrunk the mammoth bill to $3,243 as “goodwill”. Yet the angry customer is reluctant to pay the “reduced amount” and decided to fight instead.…
A major telecom event in one of the most exciting markets in the world, India, is underway in New Delhi, Dec 12-14, 2007.
LIRNEasia presented its teleuse@BPO research at the first session: rs_indiatelecom07_final.ppt/ The central message was that India had to take the road less traveled by, focusing on developing the mobile as an interface to the Internet and its communication, information retrieval, publishing, transacting, etc. functionalities, if it is not to leave behind the people at the Bottom of the Pyramid. A most fascinating presentation by Steve Rondel of Conversay showed that voice interface with the mobile was not as distant as some think it might be.
Contrary to the idea of developing the mobile as the next Internet device preferably using voice and other alternatives to data…
Among the five countries LIRNEasia has conducted its survey on teleuse at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP), which country do you think we found people who are least willing to share their mobile phone with a another?
(a) India
(b) Pakistan
(c) Philippines
(d) Sri Lanka
(e) Thailand
This was one of the interesting questions asked during the interactive quiz show at the LIRNEasia organized session at GK3, ‘Teleuse at the Bottom of the Pyramid’. The session addressed issues like the misconceptions about the teleuse (including Internet) at the BoP; exact nature of the demand at the BoP (in terms of using common facilities, getting connected, staying connected); strategic behaviours do users at the BoP engage in and policy and regulatory barriers stand in the way of the BoP being…
LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE - LBO
Although seen as India’s greatest challenger in terms of its potential scale, China fared poorly for language skills, Gartner said.
China, India and Singapore all had strong government support for the promotion of their country as an offshore services location.
The political and economic environment remains a concern for many companies when moving work to offshore locations and so Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam rated poorly, Gartner said.
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Buzzcity got the top award for mobile networking applications at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress held in November 2007. This blog describes how they are changing their charging structure, partially based on LIRNEasia research.
gammalife: BUILDING MOBILE COMMUNITIES
We organised a session of BuzzCity-NUS Digital Media Forum a few weeks ago with presentation by Dr. Rohan Samarajiva, who leads a regional ICT policy group called LIRNEasia. His group had a done a study across five Asian nations – India, Pakistan, The Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand – and asked people the main reason why they use a mobile phone.
The pace and style of life in The Philippines is vastly different from Sri Lanka; India and Thailand have little in common other than a taste for spicy foods.…
Tags: Asia Congress, cellular telephone, India, mobile networking, mobile networking applications, Pakistan, policy group, Rohan Samarajiva, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Philippines.
Perhaps this might make those who continuously complain about the broadband quality in South Asia happy. Sometimes things are not too different in relatively more advanced places. When tested, at 1200 midnight the wireless broadband connection provided by a star class hotel in KL recorded a download speed of 54.5 kbps and an upload speed of 144 kbps. These speeds are far below than what some of the South Asian operators offer.
When asked this was Intel’s response to the $ 100 (er…$ 176) laptop, pat came the reply: “Yeah, you could call that” It is meant for children, but classmate PC is not a toy. It is a tiny version of a fully pledged PC. (512 M memory 2 GB in a flash, though no hard drive) The screen size is smaller, but on the other hand it is not easy to break even if you dropped it from a height. (Yes, they demonstrated it!)
This was seen at the GK3 exhibition at Kuala Lumpur Conventional Centre where the so-called $100 green coloured OLPC laptop was a notable absentee. By the way Intel classmate costs $220, and will be available for the governments to buy in bulk
A…
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