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.
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.
We’ve been pushing for more-than-voice services over mobile. So why do we think voice is the game changer on the horizon? It’s a different kind of voice. One that allows commands to be given to ICT devices using voice. For the BOP, the evidence is crystal clear.
A roaming customer buys the service from his/her service provider, the one who controls the number. The service provider purchases roaming and billing services from a foreign operator in order to provide the service to the customer. Today, the most that a customer who wants to be reachable (who wants to receive calls while abroad) can do is register on networks of operators in foreign countries who offer lower prices to his/her provider. If there is a possibility of competition here, it’s a faint one. What the EU appears to be doing is to allow a customer to buy roaming services in the home country from a service provider other than the regular carrier.
US government gets behind big data. We agree, we’re getting into big data too. Difference is that in our countries there are not that many big data streams. Big data refers to the rising flood of digital data from many sources, including the Web, biological and industrial sensors, video, e-mail and social network communications. The emerging opportunity arises from combining these diverse data sources with improving computing tools to pinpoint profit-making opportunities, make scientific discoveries and predict crime waves, for example.
As a research organization we like data. We worry about the best indicators, for anything. For the longest time, per capita GDP has been the simplest, least-imperfect indicator of prosperity. It has many shortcomings, but the alternatives have more. The newest run at it zooms in on happiness.
The World Bank is a classic big bureaucracy. It’s rare for a single person to change the direction of this aircraft carrier (McNamara and Wolfensohn came close). Here’s the new front runner. Interesting choice by Obama: Born in Seoul, Korea in 1959, Jim Yong Kim moved with his family to the United States at the age of five and grew up in Muscatine, Iowa. His father, a dentist, also taught at the University of Iowa, where his mother received her Ph.
Yesterday, I gave a guest lecture at a Carleton University using the Rann Vijay Kumar video (constituting its official launch) and the attached slides. The focus was on agriculture. I was surprised the course was required. Guess this constitutes a significant achievement in terms of establishing ICT for development as a field of study.