African Media Lab

Tim Unwin is well-known in UK ICT circles so It was great to see him support the London Africa Gathering. He's clear about what's going right and wrong - and that collaboration between people of different backgrounds is the only way forward. I particularly like his last point about African governments.

Interview with Professor William Webb, Head of Research and Development at OFCOM, London. He gave an excellent opening presentation at Forum Oxford on April 23rd 2009 in which he examined future strategies in mobile. In fact the global credit crunch will mainly have an effect on future investment - and some of the existing 3G networks are proving to be fast enough for much of the content. Will operators spend vast amounts making their mobile networks that much faster? May be not. The discussion continues on forumoxford.com.

The Freeplay company grew out of the invention of the wind-up radio developed by Trevor Baylis. Nowadays the Freeplay company specialises in alternative energy sources, and is now owned by an Indian company. At MWC in Barcelona, I caught up on what's new. I see they now have an Internet radio (based on the Reciva technology).

David Rose teaches at the Media Laboratory located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He also heads a company called RXVitality.com which is looking at how technology can help improve our health. He's focused on a problem facing many people - we suffer from a chronic disease but we forget to take our medicine. This solution turns out to be a lot more sophisicated than a timer in the cap. Yet, they have managed to get the price down to something that's very affordable. Of course, as scientists, they're curious as to the social impact of such an idea.

He gave an inspiring talk at LIFT-09 this year in Geneva and during the coffee break I asked him to show what's he's developed and why. I think this has a wide application in developing countries too, especially as mobile phones are becoming so prelevant. Imagine getting extra credit on your mobile phone because you'd taken your medicine on time!

I was delighted to meet Rose Schuman, a young graduate of Brown University of Rhode Island, and now travelling the world from her base in California. You don't have to travel far in India or Africa to find places where Internet access is out of the question, especially in villages where mains electricity and ADSL are in short supply. Now there's a series of practical trials to try to change that.

Rose has called it the Question Box. In the Indian villages of Ethida and Poolpur, a few hours from New Delhi, they have installed a simple system for getting information online. Now this trial is to be adapted and expanded in Uganda.

Rose explains in this interview at SxSW how they have tackled the problem of access to relevant information. As community radio starts to become more widespread in India, I can see the radio station providing the portal in local languages, and broadcasting the answers to FAQ's over the radio.