Size matters

The FM band remains tightly in the control of the government and the revenue generating private sector, with applications for the common good either poorly served, or not at all.

Money doesn’t Grow on Trees

“One could make this argument [with TRAI]“, says my friend Dr Arun Mehta, “that the people who need it most are being denied mobile phone value added services.” We have been discussing, on the India-GII mail list, the enabling of money transfers through mobile devices.
But TRAI cannot act in this matter, unfortunately, and that’s [...]

Less Power, More Power

A Little Energy Goes a Long Way
Somehow the concepts of ‘less is more’ and ’small is beautiful’ do not ring out loud and clear in the community networking environment. Perhaps they are just too obvious: however, I suspect that for urban-focused networks, with their routers and access points dangling from eaves and out of windows, [...]

Email and Security

Reading over my shoulder?
People who do a lot of email (I don’t do a lot, not by corporate standards, but I’m not exactly an online recluse), are increasingly concerned by the lack of privacy in this area of communication.
Some of us are keen to see the modes of communication used on the Internet become commonplace [...]

Radio: broadcasting uber wires

India is such an interesting country, as far as the media is concerned (well, admittedly, for many more reasons, but they don’t really relate to this note). It simply explodes with publications, thousands of them in print, tens of television channels, hundreds of radio channels.Why then, is the situation so parlous as far as community [...]