Mobile banking POS terminal

Here's another one to watch for the mobile money ideas:

Square has developed a credit card reader for attaching to your iPhone, so you can accept payment via creditcard... an option for those random sales, off the normal phone line type grid....

Sharing a Cell phone

So here's another interesting potential.  It's a system to share a cell phone while keeping billing separate.  Think cloud - based telecom....

frog-design-movirtu-collaborate-on-shared-cell-phone-access-in-developing-countries

Unfinished thought

What if...

During the so called dark ages, shortly after the fall of the Roman Empire, Ireland was one place where monastaries were built. Ireland was on the very edge of the Empire, barely within reach and control of Rome, yet for a time it benefited from Romes influence. It was in these Irish monastaries where the writings from the height of roman empire were stored and preserved carefully.  The renaisance in "the west" owes much to those monks who carefully kept and maintained key information for many centuries that would later be rediscovered.

What if the civilization as we know it were to colapse, as some doomsday types might suggest, due to enviromnental change, war, or other disaster... Where would the monks of our day go to find refuge, on the edge of civilization, to keep important ideas that should be entrusted to future generations....  Where is the edge of our civilization? War torn, poor countries like Somalia, Afganistan.... We may owe more to these places in coming generations than we credit them for now....

Launch ideas on Sustainability

Here's another interesting article:


LAUNCH (warning, auto-play video) is an organization from the US, including NASA, the State Department and Nike, looking into ideas about sustaining life on the planet...

First area of concern: Water

Ideas:
semipermiable pipe to irrigate plants using salt water...
floating sensors for water quality and flow measurement, particularly during disasters
solar powered UV light and sand filters for purifying water in Rwanda...

other areas to be tackled in future: energy, food, air...

Open Source Washing machine

So, someone decided that it was important to look into how people in the developing world wash their clothes.  The idea being that some of us take for granted how those of us with access to such devices simply throw clothes in and they come out clean...  Now the questions becomes how to do this on a limited budget.   Not much work done here that i can see.  We'll see what develops here in a while.

http://www.oswash.org/

Jumo - Sharing skills, not just money

Here's an interesting one i just came across:

Facebook Co-Founder Chris Hughes Is Back in the Startup Business With Jumo.com

The idea is to link individuals who want to help with organizations that are already helping and need support.  We'll see how this develops, but it looks like some heavy hitters are involved in setting this up....

Open source, simple communications

Here's a couple of things i've found recently that may be useful in the developing world. A simple system for managing SMS messages to/from a central location is Frontline SMS. I haven't tried it, but if you want to use text messaging to reach people, then this just might be the tool.

Another recent article on kiwanja.net talked about a new interactive voice response system that will be released soon at freedomfone.org. This sounds like an open source version of the commercial answering system with voice menu prompts. It's billed as a tool for NGOs to use to share information between all the people that have cell phones but not internet access, or even literacy, in their own language. We'll see, but it looks very interesting... Maybe i can set up a digital voicemail/answering machine at home here that i can access via skype... I doubt the priority will ever get that high unless it's to test the software for some other purpose...