Cloud Phone

It costs 10 to 20 cents to activate. It basically lets groups of people share a single phone, while still maintaining individual phone numbers and private accounts. The "Cloud Phone" was presented by a company called Movirtu Limited earlier this month at the Pop! Tech conference in Maine, an event focused on new ideas in technology that benefit society at large.

There are over a billion people who use mobile phone services today but do not own a mobile phone handset. They borrow phones or they share a phone amongst family or they'll go to a street corner and buy a single phone call. The cloud phone allows people to have their own identity -- to log in and log out of other people's mobile phones, just like you or I would log in and log out of our e-mail account. By allowing them to log-in, they access a service -- which is called the cloud phone. After activating the user number, the call costs are the same as the existing tariffs on the prepaid network. Users can access their accounts from any phone. All they have to do is type in their special PIN code, and instantly make or receive calls under their own number.

So how is this different from maintaining a SIM card without a phone? First, the cheapest phone for SIM card would cost $20 to $25, and for someone who works for $1 a day that's six months savings. Second, it's not convenient to go through the trouble of taking the phone apart, replacing the SIM, turning it back on, etc. Third, it's very easy to loose a SIM card.

This amazing technology is already accessed today by thousands of people; however it's not as easy as was expected. Mobile operators are demanding profitable business models. 

For further reading please visit http://www.movirtu.com/.

Video: Nigel Waller - CEO : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pykQabzlbik

References:

1. Meet The 20-cent Cloud Phone
2. http://www.poptech.org/
3. http://www.switched.com

The Power of the Internet in China

Readers who can’t read Chinese—or even those who can but don’t spend time surfing the Chinese Internet—will be surprised by many research findings. Despite China’s authoritarian political system, censorship and surveillance, the Chinese Internet is a highly contentious place; debate is fierce and passionate. While political realities prevent the Internet from being a medium for open political organizing as it is in most democratic countries today, research shows how outraged citizens have used the Internet to expose and bring down corrupt officials. New organizations in particular have used the Internet to raise awareness for causes and expand membership.

Internet businesses have an incentive to promote controversies and debate—as well as creativity and lighthearted fun—as a way of gaining customers and traffic. Access to sites offering diverse political opinions remains highly restricted, even as Chinese intellectuals and activists regularly brave the constraints to post new statements. The government is also targeting what it calls unhealthy content on the Internet.

China's online population, already the world's largest, has expanded to 298 million (according to BBC News, January 2009). This marks a 41.9% increase on the previous year and is still growing fast, said the government-linked China Internet Network Information Centre to BBC News. The study also showed huge increases in the number of people in China accessing the internet through mobile phones. At the end of 2008, the number of net users in China, which has a population of 1.3 billion, was almost the same as the entire population of the United States. 

CHINA'S INTERNET USE (Jan 2009)

Total users: 298 million

Year-on-year increase: 41.9%

Mobile net users: 117.6 million

Internet penetration: 22.6%

References: 

1. Graphs: Internet May 2008, CNNIC July 2008

2. BBC News, Jan 2009

3. "The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online", by Guobin Yang. Columbia University Press, 2009.

10.10.10

Talking in class about security issues of IT systems, this week brought up an interesting discussion about the 10.10.10 virus. Reminded me a little of the "Bug 2000" we were all afraid of ten years ago. The date has set off alarm bells with some superstitious people on the internet who fear it could cause their computer's clocks to jam, or for a new virus to be let loose. A Facebook page has been set up with the title "Will my computer still work on 10/10/10 at 10.10am?", while other sites talk about the possibility of hackers unleashing viruses at that time.

Computer security firm Sophos has shot down rumors: "It's just the kind of scare that people love to murmur about, and share with their online friends, but I'm afraid it has no basis in fact," Sophos' Graham Cluley wrote in a blog post. "The reason why the 10th October has received attention is because of the cute quirk of the numbers reading 10/10/10," he said. "But even that's not a new idea. For instance, in the run-up to March 3 2003, I had to debunk rumors that the Internet would stop working at 03/03/03".

This date was a reason for a big fuss around the world and for many major creative events to take place– weddings, births… a few examples I found online: Brazil held a big festival in Belem, Australia made a mass picnic event (6000 people!!) on a bridge in Sydney, as part of the campaign for the 2022 World Cup Games, in Windsor, Canada was a big boat race event and many more.  

Reference: http://www.telegraph.co.uk

"Skype-Book"

Skype and Facebook, according to All Things Digital, will soon announce a partnership, integrating a number of functions between the two, giving the user the ability to call, video-chat or SMS Facebook friends from Skype. Although video chat features have been brought to us via numerous Facebook applications, they haven’t really been impressive to become the first choice for users.

The partnership between the two will give a big advantage to both companies, considering the fact that Skype is stronger in Europe while Facebook is stronger in North America. Adding together the users: 560 million registered in Skype and 500 million Facebook users (while some overlap), will surly offer growth opportunities for both sides, allowing access to new users. While Facebook connects between friends and Skype brings low-cost phone communication, this partnership seems almost obvious.

For some time now, Facebook was looking into mobile and video chat tools. As for Skype, the online-calling-space giant, it wants to be present where users are moving: Facebook. So, if both services are free, where's the revenue? "There is a lot of money in click-through ad revenue and in licensing," Laura DiDio, principal of ITIC, told the E-Commerce Times.

Both platforms are already successful. So what is the lure for a partnership? It is very likely that the real motivation behind this move is actually a third party: Google. "The common enemy between Facebook and Skype is Google. Given the threat of Google, and given Facebook's desire to move into mobile applications and phones in general, the partnership is logical" said DiDio.

References: All Things Digital , ecommercetimes.com