Social media and web 2.0 have resulted in a flood of information and local brands have had no way to track or measure their presence. Brand managers are clueless and really really need help. I had in the past checked out an open source initiative…code name Tattler that offered an open source topic monitoring tool for today’s Web. What Tattler does is that it finds and aggregates content from the Web on the topics you want, using semantic Web technologies, it mines news, websites, blogs, multimedia sites, and other social media like Twitter, to find mentions of the issues most relevant to a journalist, researcher, advocate or communications professional. It rides of Drupal by the way:-) not too fond of it
Closer to home though, is the launch of a new platform from the team that brought Ushahidi to the world…sounds like copy for a trailer Swift River. Apart from the fact that the first app riding off Swift River – Sweeper App looks gorgeous, the platform addresses the need for an “easy” to set up and self managed platform, that sorts me out quite beautifully. I also like the fact that right off the gun, there is an obvious business model to it, though the pricing etc is yet to be put up. There’s no guessing what am going to deploy…!
From the horses mouth, SwiftRiver is a free and open source platform that helps people make sense of a lot of information in a short amount of time. The SwiftRiver platform was born out of the need to understand and act upon a wave of massive amounts of crisis data that tends to overwhelm in the first 24 hours of a disaster. Since then, there has been a great deal of interest in this tool for other industries, such as news rooms and brand monitoring groups. continue reading »
As telecommunications spread, the line between rich and poor countries gets further blurred. The Vice President of Multimedia & Systems Integration at Ericsson Sub-Saharan Africa, Sanjay Kaul, predicts that Africa will reach the same connectivity as the rest of the world by 2020. But to get there new business models must be in place.
This regulatory framework was developed to conform to international best practice and standards. It is also a product of vigorous engagement and consultations with stakeholders.
After identifying person to person payments (over the mobile phone infrastructure) as a practical strategy for financial inclusion of the un-banked, the Central Bank of Nigeria opted for the creation of an enabling regulatory environment as a policy path towards achieving availability, acceptance and usage of mobile payments services in Nigeria. The overriding vision is to achieve a nationally utilized and internationally recognized payments system.
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Silvian Wanjiku Gitau currently pursuing her phd at the University of Cape Town, South Africa was recently awarded the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship for her M-ganga app proposal. M-ganga is an app that records, catalogs and maps out traditional medicine and knowledge for both archival purposes and everyday use, combining traditional healing, community health workers and doctors to provide health-care. It will leverage on sms and web, with web giving a sort of unified dashboard. I agree with Shikoh that the the doctor-to-patient ratio in many African countries are unbelievably high - ‘as high as 1:50 000′, compared traditional medicine, where there is at least one traditional healer in every village.
On M-ganga and her Phd she says -
Silvian Wanjiku Gitau - courtesy University of Cape Town
“This raises an opportunity for a more proactive means to provide healthcare through this traditional means, which can be optimised through technology.” Her proposed system includes a web-based application that will capture and disseminate traditional healing sessions through a cell phone. The system records the sessions in both audio and video, and stores them in an online database. It will also show where the medicinal plants are available, how they should be used, and whether they are endangered or not.
“My motivation is beyond a degree, and my biggest fulfillment is to see people’s lives change for the better. It will be pointless if my PhD in computer science is not relevant in addressing people’s real life problems.”
Good stuff I must say, plus the fact that she wants to get back home ASAP and explore the opportunities that have been opened up by mobile tech. Kudos Shiko! continue reading »
The recent mobile price wars have sparked a lively debate both on and offline with people aligning themselves along various schools of thought, trying to dissect the moves by the three underdogs – Zain, Orange and Yu. While most of the discussions are from a consumer perspective, where cheaper may be considered better, we need to look at the ecosystem that has become part of our daily lives more closely to appreciate the factors at play and perhaps project what the space will look like in another five years.
Orange today announced the lowest on net tariff of Ksh 2/- and slashed its off net tariff to Ksh 4/- for its GSM customers following the revision of interconnection rates by the Communications Commission of Kenya. The new tariff also comes with an additional benefit of free calls from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. for only Ksh 100 top up per month across all Orange networks such as Orange mobile, Orange wireless and Telkom Fixed (landline).
Effective today midnight, both Orange GSM post and pre- paid customers will enjoy a new call and SMS rates of Ksh 2.00 per minute for calls and Kshs 1 for SMS whereas calls to other networks will be charged at Ksh 4/- per minute and Ksh 2/- per SMS respectively. continue reading »
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