In his first major speech since taking control of Yahoo last June, Mr. Yang announced the launch of a new upgraded mobile home page for cellphones, an updated version of its mobile portal Yahoo Go as well as new software tools to help outside developers design applications and widgets to work in conjunction with Yahoo’s mobile offerings. Yahoo also announced new partnerships with News Corp.’s MySpace, eBay Inc. and Viacom’s MTV network, which will see those companies use Yahoo’s development tools to create mobile applications users can access through Yahoo.
Google Phone – New York Times Mr. Rubin is one of the primary architects behind another product that also smacks of potential über-coolness — the Google Phone. As Google’s “director of mobile platforms,” Mr. Rubin oversees dozens of engineers who are developing the software at the company’s sprawling campus here. The software embodies the promise of extending Google’s reach at a time when cellphones allow consumers to increasingly untether themselves from their desktop computers, as well as the threat that greater digital mobility poses to Google’s domination of Internet search.
It is high time that Asian spectrum managers started thinking about more efficient use this valuable resource. In Search of Wireless Wiggle Room – New York Times Having missed the opportunity to include these provisions in the coming auction, the F.C.C. will have another chance this year to create cheaper wireless broadband services.
Miguel Helft October 11, 2007, New York Times For more than two years, a large group of engineers at Google have been working in secret on a mobile-phone project. As word of their efforts has trickled out, expectations in the tech world for what has been called the Google phone, or GPhone, have risen, the way they do for Apple loyalists before a speech by Steve Jobs. But the GPhone is not likely to be the second coming of the iPhone and Google’s goals are very different from Apple’s. Google wants to extend its dominance of online advertising to the mobile internet, a small market today but one that is expected to grow rapidly. It hopes to persuade wireless carriers and mobile-phone makers to offer phones based on its software, according to people briefed on the project.
Missed calling (also referred to as beeping, flashing and many other names) has been most talked about in Africa; Johnathan Donner has been talking and writing about it for some time now; his research provides interesting insights into what he calls the ‘rules’ of beeping. A recent Reuters article looks at the growing phenomenon in not only Africa but other regions too. LIRNEasia’s Teleuse@BOP survey findings also show that the phenomenon is considerably common among bottom of the pyramid (defined here as Socioeconomic Classification groups D & E) phone users in India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand. But what’s more interesting, is that the phenomenon was seen as being used more or less to the same extent in the ‘middle and top of the pyramid’ (defined in the study as Socioeconomic Classification groups A, B & C). This held true for phone owners in all five countries studied – Pakistan, India (with some of the lowest per minute call rates in the world), Sri Lanka, Philippines and even Thailand (the country with the highest per capita GDP among the set of countries studied).
It is unlikely that the thin-client vision can be realized in the developing world in the short term unless connectivity and power supplies get a lot better, fast. However, the basic concept may become operationalized through the mobile. For Networks, Thin Is In – New York Times A decade ago, the network computer — also called the thin-client computer — was promoted as a replacement for personal computers and desktop software. Thin clients have no hard drives to store desktop applications, like Microsoft’s Word or Excel, permanently. The leading supporters of the inexpensive, terminal-style machines were Microsoft’s archrivals at Oracle and Sun Microsystems.
Lanka Business Online “By this initiative, we hope to give last mile access to people living in remote parts of the island,” USAID Acting Mission Director for Sri Lanka, Richard Edwards told reporters. “The kiosk will be powered through broadband technology, giving people high speed internet access to expand their knowledge, their education, or to look up new markets or technologies to produce goods and services.” The project brings together Sri Lanka’s biggest mobile phone operator Dialog Telekom, equipment vendor Qualcomm, software giant Microsoft, the National Development Bank and Lanka Orix Leasing Company, who have each chipped in by way of cash or kind. Within the next two months, the project hopes to open Easy Seva centres in Anuradhapura, Dambulla, Habarana, Rikillagaskoda, Weeraketiya, Nuwara Eliya, Tissamaharama, Nawalapitiya, Kekirawa, Devinuwara, Mawanella, Mahiyanganaya, Kegalle and Balangoda. “The locations, are quite remote but we believe people living in these areas are willing to pay for services, though their earning capacity is considered the bottom end of the pyramid,” Dialog’s General Manager Sales and Marketing, Nushad Perera said.
A version of the increasingly popular Linux operating system Ubuntu will be developed for use on net-enabled phones and devices. The Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded project aims to create the open source platform for initial release in October 2007. The operating system will be developed by members of the Ubuntu community, along with staff from chip giant Intel. Its development was prompted by the growth of power hungry portable devices that place new demands on software. “It is clear that new types of device – small, handheld, graphical tablets which are Internet-enabled – are going to change the way we communicate and collaborate,” said Ubuntu CTO Matt Zimmerman.
Pasted below is a communication from Harsha Purasinghe of MicroImage that may be of interest to readers of this website. “We are pleased to inform you all that Dialog Telekom launched the Sinhala & Tamil Mobile Browser and their Content Portal “SINHALANTHAYA” during New Year week. The browser can be downloaded by visiting http://www.dialogwap.com using your mobile and going into Application Download Area.
Big Money in Little Screens – New York Times Searching the Web on a mobile phone has been a lot like getting online via dial-up modem circa 1995: slow, tedious and not terribly useful. Typing on tiny buttons, squinting at a list of links and clicking through to a page that won’t display properly is enough to test anyone’s patience. The head of Yahoo’s mobile strategy, Marco Boerries, standing, said overcoming difficult Web navigation would be a challenge. But that is beginning to change. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have all trained their sights on cellphones, which they see as the next great battleground in the Internet search wars.
In 2004, 4.1 percent of Sri Lankan households had computers. As the data comes in from our six-country study, we will post the numbers for those countries as well. Looks like this will change the nature of the debate. The report states that Intel and Microsoft are not happy with Negoponte’s baby.
CPRsouth Chair and LIRNEasia international advisory board member, Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala was on a blue-ribbon panel discussing ICTs and rural access last night on NDTV. CIOL : .NET & Windows : Make bandwidth available to all, says Kalam NDTV’s Prannoy Roy moderated a discussion in which Ballmer, N R Narayana Murthy, Ashok Jhunjhunwala and Manvinder Singh of Ranbaxy participated. He started off by asking Ballmer about the contrasting personalities of the top two at Microsoft: small, shy and geeky versus flambuoyant and six feet six. Opposites make for the best partnerships was the reply.
PLEASE CONTINUE DISCUSSION ON STANDARDIZING SINHALA FOR IT APPLICATIONS IN THIS THREAD. CREATING ICT MYTHS THREAD HAS BEEN ARCHIVED. EXCERPT FROM PREVIOUS DISCUSSION BELOW:
Microsoft Would Put Poor Online by Cellphone By JOHN MARKOFF Published: January 30, 2006 DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 29 — It sounds like a project that just about any technology-minded executive could get behind: distributing durable, cheap laptop computers in the developing world to help education. But in the year since Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory, unveiled his prototype for a $100 laptop, he has found himself wrestling with Microsoft and the politics of software. Mr. Negroponte has made significant progress, but he has also catalyzed the debate over the role of computing in poor nations — and ruffled a few feathers.