Great article in Jakarta Globe on how a new mobile startup Ruma is helping to increase income for thousands of poor women in Indonesia through business transactions they are performing on their mobile (cell) phones. Ruma is creating a supplemental income opportunity for agents in rural districts of Indonesia using the mobile phone that they… Continue reading Increasing BOP income through mobile phones
In a recent article titled, Power to the People, The Economist provided a helpful round-up of some of the latest energy innovations targeting the 1.5B people who have unreliable or intermittent access to electricity and other modern energy sources. I’ll use the short-hand term “energy outsiders” to refer to this group. Here are a few… Continue reading Micro-energy innovations
One Laptop per Child folks are continuing to push the envelope … a device made completely of plastic … and running Google’s Android OS = lots of apps! More details…
You don’t even need a data plan if you have one of the 50+ mobile operators listed below. It’s called 0.facebook.com. This could be a great new communications and collaboration tool for many of the world’s literate poor who increasingly have a mobile phone. Here’s an overview on Techcrunch.
Walt Ratterman died during the earthquake in Haiti. “He has personally brought light to thousands of people around the world.” Read about his work and see pictures
I met up recently with Whit Alexander, a co-founder of board game company Cranium which they sold last year to Hasbro. He has provided the seed funding for a new social business venture called Burro. Whit believes that there is a huge opportunity to develop quality branded products and a distribution channel optimized for the… Continue reading Rechargeable batteries as a social business
I just ordered two laptop computers … for a total of $399 plus $25 shipping. One gets shipped to me and one gets delivered to an impoverished child. NOTE: This is a special offer which started today and goes through Nov 26th only. So, if you’re interested in seeing (and supporting) what is an amazing… Continue reading One Laptop per Child offer
There is a very interesting experiment going on for the past few years in New Delhi, India called Hole in the Wall. Free-to-use [Windows-powered] computer kiosks with Internet connections are placed in and around a number of slums. The PC’s are designed to be industrial-strength with plexi-glass on the front and plastic covered keyboard and… Continue reading Leveraging Children’s Curiosity
The Economist published a report on how mobile phones are starting to become banking tools for the poor. In South Africa, 16 million people, over half of the adult population, have no bank account. Yet 30% of those people have mobile phones almost all of which are used on a pay-as-you-go basis. You might think… Continue reading Mobile bank accounts
Greg Wyler, buy cialis an American tech entrepreneur, is investing his own money in bringing Internet services as a business to Rwanda. His company, Terracom Communications is for the first time offering cellphone coverage, Internet access and television to unserved parts of the country. Terracom is hooking up schools to the Internet and opening Internet… Continue reading Wiring Rwanda
Defeat Poverty 