Now here is a report on the use of low-end digital cameras (not very different from mid-range mobile phones) in constraining electoral fraud. They had used Randomized Trials.

A study just released by Michael Callen and James Long, a pair of ambitious doctoral students at the University of California-San Diego, exemplifies these efforts. The two researchers evaluated whether low-end digital cameras could be a cheap and easy technological fix for election fraud in Afghanistan’s 2010 parliamentary elections. Their results are promising. At polling stations where locally reported vote counts were digitally photographed, reports of electoral fraud were as much as 60 percent lower, and the vote counts of politically connected candidates—the ones most likely to have rigged elections—were reduced by about one-quarter.

Siddhartha Mukherjee is an author I greatly admire. I will read his book Emperor of all maladies when they extend the day to 26 hours. He has written a beautifully argued piece on mobiles and cancer in the last NYT magazine. Worth a read.

It is possible, of course, that even these sophisticated experiments will be unable to determine the risk. The lag time of cancer development with phone use may be 50 or 70 years — and cellphones have been around for only three decades or so. Yet even a slow-lagging cancer is unlikely to arise at a single point in time after exposure. Like most biological phenomena, cancer risk typically rides a statistical curve, with some patients developing cancer early, others peaking in the middle and yet others trailing off decades later. Thus far, no such statistical curve has been evident for brain cancer.

MICROSCOPES are invaluable tools to identify blood and other cells when screening for diseases like anemia, tuberculosis and malaria. But they are also bulky and expensive.

Now an engineer, using software that he developed and about $10 worth of off-the-shelf hardware, has adapted cellphones to substitute for microscopes.

“We convert cellphones into devices that diagnose diseases,” said Aydogan Ozcan, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and member of the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, who created the devices.

THE cellphone systems may be particularly helpful in screening for malaria, said Yvonne Bryson, a professor and chief of the pediatric infectious diseases division at the David Geffen School of Medicine at U.C.L.A. She has collaborated with Dr. Ozcan on several grants. “Right now you need a microscope, and you need trained people,” Dr. Bryson said. “But this device would allow you to work without either in a remote area.”

M. Fatih Yanik, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said, “This makes it possible for ordinary people to gather medical information in the field just by using a cellphone adapted with cheap parts.”

With the successful on going SIM Information System 668 campaign, official sources at PTA have revealed that the cellular phone companies have blocked 12.9 million SIMs in two weeks of launch, reported Daily News. Data of around 0.813 million subscribers has been rectified by the relevant mobile phone companies so far, they said while nearly 5 million subscribers have sought verification from the authority so far. PTA officials said that number of blocking of SIM could increase further as the millions of remaining customers will check their SIMs information against their Computerized National Identity Cards (CNIC).

With this it is speculated that the total subscriber base will fall along with reduction in individual operator’s subscribers.

This is not a problem limited to Pakistan. Sri Lanka, for example, has been cleaning up the registrations, but despite claims that it is an open society, the information is not coming out like in Pakistan. We wrote about the Pakistan overcount some time back too.

NEGOTIATING his way across a crowded concourse at a busy railway station, a traveller removes his phone from his pocket and, using its camera, photographs a bar code printed on a poster. He then looks at the phone to read details of the train timetable displayed there. In Japan, such conveniences are commonplace, and almost all handsets come with the bar code-reading software already loaded. In America and Europe, though, they are only just being introduced.

In 2003, researchers at a federal agency proposed a long-term study of 10,000 drivers to assess the safety risk posed by cellphone use behind the wheel.

They sought the study based on evidence that such multitasking was a serious and growing threat on America’s roadways.

But such an ambitious study never happened. And the researchers’ agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, decided not to make public hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers — in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress.

Phones are catching up with TVs, and the number of phones being used by ‘bottom of the pyramid’ households have already outpaced the number of radios and computers in South Asia, researchers have said.

LIRNEasia, a Sri Lanka-based Asia-Pacific information and communication technology (ICT) policy and regulation capacity-building organisation, said in India a hundred bottom of the pyramid (BOP) households now had 50 TVs, 38 phones, 28 radios and one computer.

Radio has been displaced from its No.2 position after television in India. In India, and also Pakistan and Bangladesh, at the bottom of the pyramid, the mobile is more prevalent than the radio.

Respective prevalence of TV, phone, radio and computer in South Asia and around is as follows: Bangladesh (52, 41, 13, 0); Pakistan (68, 39, 24, 3); India (50, 38, 28, 1); Sri Lanka (80, 64, 77, 4); the Philippines (63, 50, 52, 1); and Thailand (75, 70, 64, 12).

The new symbols, called GS1 DataBars, can store more data than traditional bar codes, promising new ways for stores to monitor inventory and for customers to save money.

One use of the symbols will be in sophisticated coupon offers that combine deals on multiple products, said Jackie Broberg, who leads coupon control management at General Mills in Minneapolis. A single coupon, for example, could offer discounts on three separate items like eggs, bacon and biscuits, all in one transaction.

Another use of the new symbols is already helping to streamline operations for a common speed bump in the checkout process: loose produce. During the past three years, for example, the Loblaw Companies, the big Canadian supermarket chain, has gradually switched to scannable, miniaturized DataBar labels pasted onto some fruits and vegetables. Instead of entering a 4- or 5-digit number to look up a price, cashiers scan the DataBars on the produce, said Eric Biddiscombe, senior director of planning in Cambridge, Ontario.

The full story.

The current issue of Nokia’s Expanding Horizons quarterly magazine highlights LIRNEasia’s Teleuse@BOP3 study findings from India, illustrating this point.

Mobiles are now the most common form of communication, pushing public phones into second place… The rapid evolution of the mobile into a multi-purpose communications and knowledge tool combined with its fast adoption by the BOP, means they and the majority of people in the developing world are likely to have their first Internet experience via a mobile.

Although use of “Mobile 2.0” services such as payments and  e-government services is low, these are the ‘doors’ through which people are likely to enter these services. Governments and industry in South Asia need to understand potential barriers to usage and to identify what will motivate use of ‘non-voice’ applications among the BOP.

Key results can be previewed here. The full article can be viewed here.

Scientists said Monday they had reached the halfway point in a project to set up buoys across the Indian Ocean, helping farmers predict the monsoon in some of the world’s poorest areas.
The buoys measure wind, rainfall, temperature and other figures around the Indian Ocean, which has lagged behind the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans in data collection.

The international project, which began in earnest in 2004, has moored 22 buoys so far, with plans to put down all 46 by 2012, said Michael McPhaden of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

McPhaden, who is based at the NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, said the data would provide a major boost to farmers who rely on monsoon rains.

“If you know it’s going to be a year of heavy rain or deficient rain, there are different seeds you can plant, different timings and types of fertilizer,” he told AFP. “There are all types of strategies you can implement.”

Full story.

But it still makes us wonder why the World Bank is funding rural payphones, when the evidence is abundant that cheap mobiles are what will connect poor people, not payphones?

Poor families in four of the poorer provinces of northern and northwestern Cambodia – Banteay Meanchey, Otdar Meanchey, Preah Vihear, and Pursat – will benefit from a US$2.6 million grant to increase access to telecommunications services signed by the World Bank, acting as administrator for the Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid (GPOBA), and the Royal Government of Cambodia.
Up to 52,000 poor households or 260,000 Cambodians are expected to benefit from the scheme, through improved telecommunications network coverage and the installation of public access points where people will be able to make and receive telephone calls on a regular and reliable basis.

Full news release.

Dr. Samarajiva looks at the impact of collecting Transaction Generated Information (TGI) on customer-business relationships, persuasively arguing that covert collection can lead to a spiral of mistrust. Once a consumer’s trust in a business is weakened sufficiently, the consumer will resist collection or tender misinformation, prompting businesses to take more aggressive steps to collect consumer information and fuel the cycle. Samarajiva offers Quebec’s UBI (Universal, Bidirectional, Interactivity) network as a workable counterexample. UBI’s policies, which vigorously protect consumer data, are set forth in the UBI Code of Conduct, a document that reflects Quebec’s own stringent protections for consumer information. Samarajiva argues that these protections should, with time and adherence by the participants, lead to a trustworthy (and trusted) online business system.

Anyway, the subject that I left is coming back to me, now through the mobile door.

With the dominance of the cellphone, a new metaphor is emerging for how we organize, find and use information. New in one sense, that is. It is also as ancient as humanity itself. That metaphor is the map.

“The map underlies man’s ability to perceive,” said Richard Saul Wurman, a graphic designer who was a pioneer in the use of maps as a generalized way to search for information of all kinds before the emergence of the online world.

As this metaphor takes over, it will change the way we behave, the way we think and the way we find our way around new neighborhoods. As researchers and businesses learn how to use all the information about a user’s location that phones can provide, new privacy issues will emerge. You may use your phone to find friends and restaurants, but somebody else may be using your phone to find you and find out about you.

We have some data about trust and privacy in the Teleuse @ BOP 3 survey. We will keep revisiting this subject periodically.

]]> http://lirneasia.net/2009/02/mobiles-and-location-based-services-we-know-where-youve-been/feed/ 0 http://lirneasia.net/2008/12/talking-on-the-phone-while-driving-hands-free-or-not-said-to-be-dangerous/ http://lirneasia.net/2008/12/talking-on-the-phone-while-driving-hands-free-or-not-said-to-be-dangerous/#comments Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:01:25 +0000 Rohan Samarajiva http://lirneasia.net/?p=3322 Well, the research is coming in on the use of mobiles while driving and it ain’t looking good.   Hands-free does not make a difference it seems, it’s the seriousness of the conversation.

But does chatting to passengers have the same detrimental effect on driving? An earlier study found that it does not. That research, led by Frank Drews of the University of Utah, analysed the performance of young drivers using a vehicle simulator. Dr Drews found that when using a hands-free phone, a volunteer “drove” significantly worse than he did when just talking to someone playing the role of a passenger. Passengers, the researchers believed, might even help road safety by commenting on surrounding traffic.

The reported does not seem to have distinguished between idle chatter with people in the car and serious conversation.   But I could see notices going up warning people against serious conversations in person or on the phone, while in a car.

]]> http://lirneasia.net/2008/12/talking-on-the-phone-while-driving-hands-free-or-not-said-to-be-dangerous/feed/ 0 http://lirneasia.net/2008/12/use-of-mobiles-in-the-mumbai-attacks/ http://lirneasia.net/2008/12/use-of-mobiles-in-the-mumbai-attacks/#comments Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:14:04 +0000 Rohan Samarajiva http://lirneasia.net/?p=3024 It is always informative to engage in a retrospective assessment of the use of technology in a terrorist atrocity and see what we can do to make their activities more difficult (and prevent knee jerk reactions that only make the lives of law-abiding people more difficult). The first reports on the use of mobiles by suicide attackers of Mumbai are coming out:

Mr. Muzammil, who is the right-hand man to Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakvhi, the operational commander of the group, talked by satellite phone to the attackers from Pakistan when the gunmen were in the Taj and Oberoi hotels, the Western official said.

The attackers also used the cellphones of people they killed to call back to Mr. Muzammil somewhere in Pakistan, the official said.

One use is clear: they killed people; took their mobiles and called the mastermind of LeT back in Pakistan. Nothing we can do about this, realistically.

The other is not as clear. So Muzammil uses a satphone in Pakistan. How does he talk to the cannon fodder? Did they carry satphones? If yes, why did they have to use the mobiles of the people they killed (saving money is not an issue when you are on a suicide mission)? If the raiders did not have satphones, did Muzammil call them through the Taj exchange (I am basing this question on the report that some of these murderers booked a room at the Taj and stayed for several days)?

Can someone shed light on these questions please?

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