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.

Wind Power Sails Ahead

…a wind-powered energy system that can tap at least 60 times as much energy as the United States Renewable Energy Laboratories states is available in a square meter of wind

Primative Communication

For quite a while, many years, I would say, I have assumed speech to be a pretty level playing field factor for HCI (vis-a-vis human computer interface design), and much of the work Arun and I have done, even the “name” we used to do this work (Radiophony), implied “speech” as a deliverable.
Two interesting snippets [...]

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 [...]

Missing the Woods for the Trees?

An interesting new study has kicked off in Belfast, Ireland, says this news item. Under the broad aegis of the Queen’s College project called SEMAINE, SAL, the Sensitive Artificial Listener, will be designed to sense the unspoken (ie non-verbal) signals that characterise what most humans use whilst communicating. I haven’t found out just what the [...]

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 [...]

Access 4 All

Do alternate [telecommunication] technologies exist in reality, and can they really provide meaningful leverage for development? Here’s a quick look at the choices for India.