Being Unreasonable

I love this site, and would love to help take some of these ideas to reality.   

http://www.unreasonableinstitute.org/
The purpose of the institute is to act as an incubator of new ideas (and businesses) that could change the world for good.

The episode that got me here was #4 about Ben Lyon and FrontlineSMS:Credit.  His idea is to develop the software to link mobile phone money transfer and bank loan systems.

Props to Ken Banks for pointing this one out: (kiwanja.net)

http://www.kiwanja.net/blog/2010/07/celebrating-the-enabling-environment/

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

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...