An earthquake happened. Minor tsunamis occurred with no loss of life. The story was in the warnings and responses. My first (and obviously imperfect) reflections are in LBO. In the age of social media, people will learn of distant hazards independently of government.
Rarely do I do two posts off one story, but this story seems to deserve more than one. Venture capitalists are eager to get in on the mobile trend. According to the research firm CB Insights, mobile apps and companies attracted 10 percent of the total investment dollars from American venture capital firms in last year’s fourth quarter, and 12 percent of deals were mobile-related, up from 7 or 8 percent in previous quarters.
We’ve been thinking about mobile apps for over a year, thanks to infoDev whose Call for Proposals we bid on. But 1 billion? That still came as a surprise. Is it that the days of thinking about m apps as things that could be worked up in garages is over? Now, at a time when the mobile start-up Instagram can command $1 billion in a sale to Facebook, some start-ups are asking: Who needs the Web?
Interesting piece on value added services in Bangladesh in Daily Star: VAS helps operators go beyond typical voice services to earn more revenue. According to Grameenphone’s annual report, 6 percent of the company’s total revenue comes from the internet service. In Bangladesh, value-added services were basically introduced by the short message service (SMS). But nowadays, VAS has spread and people can even get emergency help from the telecom operators. One can talk to doctors for help or to agriculturalists for advice on farming.
How does one plan for 97 feet high tsunami? The scale of the possible tsunami trumps all previous notions of the risks facing the town. Deadly tsunamis have been rare here; the last few waves to reach Kuroshio, including one in 1946, did little damage. Town officials are not entirely blind to the risks of sitting on a shoreline facing one of the world’s most active seismic rupture zones. Two years ago, they built a tsunami tower for residents to flee to, but it is only about 40 feet above sea level.
Pakistan was early in trying to deal with this problem. And now the US is getting in on the act. Over the last year, roughly one out of three robberies nationwide have involved the theft of a cellphone, according to an F.C.C.
At the invitation of FAO, our CEO, Rohan Samarajiva, Research Manager, Nilusha Kapugama and I spent two days (April 3-4, 2012) in Bangkok participating in a regional FAO/ NECTEC workshop on the use of mobile technologies for food security, agriculture and rural development. The workshop brought together representatives from the agriculture ministries/ departments of 10 countries in Asia (Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam), FAO personnel as well as the private sector, including operators of Mobile Agricultural Information Services (MAIS). LIRNEasia research on the use of mobiles by the poor as well as in rural development set the stage for most of the sessions. Rohan, presented the latest findings from the Teleuse@BOP surveys; Nilusha presented some findings from the agricultural micro-enterprise survey (growers & non-growers); and I talked about the lessons and challenges of the current crop of MAIS in the region. The workshop interactions, especially the working group discussions facilitated by Rohan and myself, were eye-opening.
For the thousands of young people in emerging Asia wanting to break into the apps market, perhaps an opportunity? But the hundreds of thousands of apps that run on Apple and Android devices will not work on phones like the Lumia 900 that use Microsoft’s Windows Phone software. And many developers are reluctant to funnel time and money into an app for what is still a small and unproved market. So Microsoft has come up with incentives, like plying developers with free phones and the promise of prime spots in its app store and in Windows Phone advertising. It is even going so far as to finance the development of Windows Phone versions of well-known apps — something that app makers estimate would otherwise cost them anywhere from $60,000 to $600,000, depending on the complexity of the app.
First there was searching. Then there was ego surfing, where one spent time and energy looking to see how big a profile one had on the web. Of course, there was help, with Google alerts and such. Now, as we venture into big data (also known as business analytics), it is no surprise that the introspection angle is coming up. Here’s a nice little piece by Stephen Wolfram documenting what he’s done to analyze his personal big data of the past 23 years.
Several journalists attended the FAO workshop on mobiles and agriculture in Bangkok. The reports are coming in. The latest was Sri Lanka mobile phone use rising among poor: study. Others were Sri Lanka mobile phone ranking system coming for farmers and Sri Lanka rubber producer gains seen from traceability system
The most successful programs clearly define their objectives and broadly communicate their existence to civil society. THE EXAMPLE OF SRI LANKA To illustrate what such a program could look like, we look at Sri Lanka’s stated objectives, extracted directly from the Information and Communication Technology Plan for Sri Lanka 2011–2016 I thought I’d read the entire document, not just the long extract published in the report. Curiously, the reference (Ch 1.6; footnote 19) did not include a URL. Searched using Google.
The Network Readiness Index published by the World Economic Forum has always treated Sri Lanka and India well. They have quoted extensively from the Information and Communication Technology Plan for Sri Lanka 2011–2016 (which is, curiously, not available on the Ministry and ICTA websites). But more on that later. It appears that the methodology has been radically reworked in 2012, so much so that comparisons with previous rankings do not appear in the report. While Sri Lanka’s overall rank (71st) slips back to where it was in 2009-10 (72nd), its relative position among the South and South East Asian countries has improved considerably.
I have an unusual interest in Senegal. I’ve been there several times, but more than that, the former Foreign Minister and one of the unsuccessful Presidential candidates, Cheikh Tidiane Gadio is a good friend. So I follow the news more closely than usual. Here is a little piece from the Economist. The novelty is the use of a computer server outside the country.
It has been an intense and productive two days. There will be more than one set of reflections. This is the first, written from the airport on the way out of Bangkok. We have been worrying about the quality of information supplied to growers and other actors in the supply chains. What if the price information that is supplied is inaccurate, or worse, tampered with by those wishing to corner the market?
We don’t write much about entertainment uses of mobiles, but it appears the game is changing there too. From third screen to first screen . . . In a keynote talk Thursday at MediaPost’s Mobile Insider Summit, Bayle explained that instead of determining how to shoehorn its programming from traditional media to mobile platforms, the process is now reversed, with mobile becoming the starting point.
LIRNEasia‘s agricultural supply chain work from our current 2010-2012 research cycle was shared with the media at a dissemination event in Bangkok, Thailand. The event was intended to highlight some of the findings from the meta-study of ICT interventions in Thailand conducted for LIRNEasia by Deunden Nikomborirak. Presentations by the speakers are included below. Rohan Samarajiva, PhD., Chair & CEO, LIRNEasia Innovation for inclusive & efficient agricultural supply chains Nipon Poapongsakorn, PhD, President, Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) Supply Chain Management in Thailand Deunden Nikomborirak, PhD, TDRI Towards a Knowledge-based Economy: Case studies of the use of ICTs in enhancing agricultural value chains in Thailand Nilusha Kapugama, LIRNEasia Lessons from the supply chain studies in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka Sriganesh Lokanathan, LIRNEasia Overcoming the Smallholder Quality Penalty