NavigationUser login |
fgallez@mit.edu's blogPeru ApplicationSubmitted by fgallez@mit.edu on Fri, 02/20/2009 - 11:15.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/itw-pda-tt0211.html Anne Trafton, News Office For patients who have drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis, it's critical to monitor the disease as closely as possible. That means monthly testing throughout a two-year course of powerful antibiotics, with injections six days a week for the first six months. Keeping track of all those test results can be very time-consuming, especially in developing countries where health workers rely on paper copies. That's why graduate student Joaquin Blaya decided to try out a new tracking method: personal digital assistants. In a project launched in Lima, Peru, the researchers found that equipping health care workers with PDAs to record data dropped the average time for patients' test results to reach their doctors from 23 days to eight days. "You can monitor patients in a more timely way. It also prevents results from getting lost," says Blaya, a PhD student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST). Their work was reported in December in the online edition of the International Journal of Infectious Diseases. Blaya started the project after taking a year off during his graduate studies to return to Chile, where he was born. "I went back to Chile and realized … the key was to focus on the population I wanted to help," he says. "Instead of saying, 'I'm a mechanical engineer, what kind of device can I build,' I should be saying 'Who are the people working in the settings I want to work in?'" When Blaya returned to MIT, he took lecturer Amy Smith's D-Lab course and got connected with Partners in Health, a nonprofit whose mission is to promote health care in resource-poor areas. Working with faculty members from HST and the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Blaya launched the PDA project in Lima. He also worked closely with the Peruvian sister organization of Partners in Health, Socios en Salud. "The way to solve healthcare problems is by involving the community," he says. Under the old patient tracking system, a team of four healthcare workers would visit more than 100 health care centers and labs twice a week to record patient test results on paper sheets. A couple of times a week, they returned to their main office to transcribe those results onto two sets of forms per patient -- one for the doctors and one for the health care administrators. From start to finish, that process took an average of more than three weeks per patient. In some extreme cases, results were temporarily misplaced and could take up to three months to be recorded. There was also greater potential for error because information was copied by hand so many times. With the new system, health care workers enter all of the lab data into their handheld devices, using medical software designed for this purpose. When the workers return to their office, they sync up the PDAs with their computers. "The doctors get what they want, the administrators get what they want, and the team only has to enter the data once," says Blaya. The new system dramatically dropped the average time to record results to eight days, and eliminated the few cases where results went missing for several weeks or months. "You can really prevent patients from falling through the cracks," says Blaya. Getting timely and accurate lab results "is essential to determine if a patient is responding to treatment and, if not, to alert physicians to the possible need for medication changes," the researchers wrote. Peruvian health care workers enthusiastically embraced the program, which started in two of Lima's districts and has now been expanded to all five. In addition to saving time, the handheld devices are also more cost-effective than the paper-based system, the researchers reported recently in the International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. The current version of the tracking software, OpenMRS, can be found at http://openmrs.org/wiki/OpenMRS. Blaya used an earlier version of the software for his Peru study. Other authors of the International Journal of Infectious Diseases paper are Ted Cohen, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School; Pablo Rodriguez, engineer at Socios en Salud; Jihoon Kim, statistician at the Brigham and Women's Hospital; and Hamish Fraser, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. In The World is a series that explores how people from MIT are using technology -- from the appropriately simple to the cutting-edge -- to help meet the needs of local populations around the planet. If you know of a good example and would like the News Office to write about it, please e-mail dlc1@mit.edu. A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on February 11, 2009 (download PDF). World Economic Forum's mobile recommendations for 2009Submitted by fgallez@mit.edu on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 13:54.
http://www.weforum.org/en/events/GlobalAgenda/index.htm The WEF's report on the future of mobile technologies and communications starts on page 192. Sessions in the Annual Our next IAP CfA: in rural India?..Submitted by fgallez@mit.edu on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 01:29.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123413407376461353.html FEBRUARY 9, 2009, 11:27 P.M. ET By ERIC BELLMAN Even amid the global economic slowdown, one Indian industry continues to boom: selling cellphones to the rural poor. Economists have slashed Indian economic growth forecasts for this year and the stock market is in the doldrums. But cellphone companies are signing millions of new subscribers a month, making India the fastest growing mobile-phone market in the world. There is no sign of a slowdown yet: figures to be released later this month are expected to show that new subscriptions in January reached a record 11 million. The demand for cellphones is coming mainly from rural consumers, who typically earn less than $1,000 a year. These buyers haven't been affected by plunging stock and real-estate prices or tighter bank lending since they typically don't own land and don't borrow. A large majority of them don't have access to regular landline phone networks -- there are only about 40 million landline subscribers in India -- so once cellular coverage comes to their towns or villages they scramble to get their first phones. In the village of Karanehalli, a cluster of simple homes around an intersection of two dirt roads about 40 miles from India's high-tech capital of Bangalore, Farmer K.T. Srinivasa doesn't have a toilet for his home or a tractor for his field. But when a red and white cellular tower sprouted in his village, he splurged on a cellphone. While the way his family threshes rice -- crushing it with a massive stone roller -- hasn't changed for generations, his phone has changed the way he farms. He uses it to decide when to plant and harvest by calling other farmers, to get the best prices for his rice, coconuts and jasmine by calling wholesalers, and to save hours of time waiting on the road for deliveries and pickups that rarely come on time. "Life is much better with the cellphone," he said from his rice paddy in the shadow of the new tower. "I bring it with me to the fields and anyone can reach me here." Mr. Srinivasa, like close to half the 800 people in his village, uses Idea Cellular Ltd. as it was the first to bring them service. He paid the equivalent of about $60 for his Nokia phone, and spends about $6 each month for service. Like most rural users, Mr. Srinivasa uses his phone to make voice calls -- he doesn't know how to text message or to download emails. On average rural Indians use their phones around 8.5 hours a month, up 10% over the past year. The story is the same across rural India, home to more than 60% of India's population of 1.2 billion. China, Indonesia and Brazil also continue to show solid growth in cellphone sales. The continued expansion of the cellphone industry in India stands in sharp contrast to most other industries here. Textile and software exporters are struggling. India's brand new malls are sparsely populated and the sales of cars, trucks, tractors and motorcycles have declined in recent months. But the cellphone industry recorded more than 10 million new subscribers in December, up from eight million a year earlier. The industry's overall subscriber base grew 48% in 2008 to 347 million customers. Rural customers "have been hungry for mobile phones for a long time, so demand will remain unaffected," by the global jitters, said S.P. Shukla, chief executive officer of the mobile business at Reliance Communications India Ltd., India's second-largest cellular company by number of subscribers, after Bharti Airtel. Reliance launched a new $2 billion nationwide network in January that reaches more than 24,000 towns and 600,000 villages. International wireless giants are clamoring for a piece of the action. Last year, Vodafone Holdings PLC took over India's fourth-largest cellular company by number of subscribers. In December, Japan's NTT Docomo Inc. announced it will pay almost $3 billion for a 26% stake in Tata Teleservices Ltd. While the average amount subscribers spend has slipped as less-affluent consumers get connected, profit growth and margins have remained healthy thanks to economies of scale, according to investors and telecom executives. For example, Bharti Airtel saw its profit in the three months ended Dec. 31 climb to 22 billion rupees ($452 million), up 25% from a year earlier, as it drew in a record number of new subscribers. And with a national penetration rate of less than 30% as of December there is still a lot of untapped demand. In contrast, in the U.S. more than 80% of the people have mobile phones. In China the penetration rate is more than 40%. In Khairat, a village 45 miles outside Mumbai that is only accessible on foot or by motorcycle, buffalo farmer Mohan Zore makes around $80 a month but figured he still needed a phone once his village got coverage. He doesn't have to walk into the market to find out the price of buffalo milk, he now just dials friends at the market from his phone. And he can easily call his son from the fields when he is out grazing his herd. He used to spend 300 rupees and three hours on a bus to visit his daughter and grandchildren. Now he can catch up with them for one rupee a minute. "The phone saves me money," he says from his mud-walled home, which he shares with his 20 buffalo. Mr. Zore can afford a phone because Indian cellular services are among the least expensive in the world. Incoming calls are free and making a call usually costs less than 2 cents a minute. Most of the rural subscribers use prepaid cards for service rather than monthly plans, topping up as needed. The companies are pushing ahead with multibillion dollar build-out plans to expand their networks to smaller and smaller villages. "We are still experiencing strong growth in all areas," said Amit Ganani, chief executive officer for Tower Vision India Pvt. Ltd., a New Delhi based company that builds cellular towers and then rents them out to multiple service providers. It built the tower that brought cellular services to Karanehalli. It plans to raise the number of sites it has in India to about 5,000 by the end of the year from about 3,000 now. "If you go to the remote areas you don't have to be a genius to record huge growth," Mr. Ganani said. The villagers in Karanehalli say the cellular tower was one of their first opportunities to plug into what was happening in the rest of India, and the world. They can name America's new president -- "Obama!" a group of villagers shout when asked. They know that the global slowdown has hurt the price of coconuts as well as silk. They know that their relatives that work at the nearby Toyota Motor Corp. factory have lost their jobs recently. They also understand that their agriculture-based economy is not hurting as bad as that of their high-tech neighbors in Bangalore. "After the global crises," said Mr. Srinivasa, the farmer, "I think we are in better shape." Write to Eric Bellman at eric.bellman@wsj.com Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page B1 Testing the New KGBSubmitted by fgallez@mit.edu on Tue, 02/03/2009 - 14:00.
Couldn't help posting:) http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1874375,00.html The KGB's agents are everywhere. They're with me when I go for a walk, they follow me home after work, and if I wake up in the middle of the night, they're just a phone call away. I'm talking about the Knowledge Generation Bureau, of course. The Knowledge Generation Bureau is a text message-based information service, that, for 50 cents a text, will answer any question you have as accurately as possible. The New York-based company has been a major player in the directory assistance market for years; whenever you dial 4-1-1, chances are good that KGB will answer. But people don't call for information anymore, says Bruce Stewart, KGB's CEO of mobile and digital. They text. "When you want to know something, you text your friend or someone who might know. We are looking to be that someone." After launching a successful texting service in the United Kingdom, KGB decided to bring it to the U.S.. The beta test launched last fall and already the company has thousands of "agents" ready to provide you with anything from movie times and train schedules to the type of pen Bob Dole holds in his hand. (Answer: sometimes it's felt-tip, sometimes ballpoint, and occasionally it's a pencil.) Agents work from home on their own schedules and make 10 cents a text (5 cents if they simply forward a computer-generated response, like driving directions or phone numbers). Applicants must pass a "Special Agents Challenge" that is a trivia game mixed with a standardized math test for middle schoolers. Since applicants can cheat by using the Internet, failing is a challenge. The KGB acronym isn't accidental. Knowledge Generation Bureau's television commercial — in which an older gentleman interrogates a young recruit about the capital of New Zealand and the song "Sugar Sugar" — never tells you what the company is selling, and it deliberately tries to associate the "KGB" initials with mystery and conspiracy. "We wanted to rebrand the KGB," says Stewart. "We're democratizing information, giving knowledge out to the broad public instead of taking it. Contrast that to the historical one, and people say, 'Oh, I get it.'" Despite Stewart's claim, The Global Knowledge Network is also taking plenty of knowledge for itself, since the more users text, the more KGB can discover about its customers. For now, there are now plans to sell the information to marketers, but, says Stewart, "We see what are people asking about. What movies are they asking to see, what restaurants are they interested in going to, what sports teams they like, what merchandise looking to buy — there is an interesting level of insight about what people are thinking." In the Internet age there are very few questions that can't be answered with a simple Google search. And with web-capable cell phones, there really isn't any need for KGB or the similar service ChaCha (which is free but more annoying because its messages are riddled with ads). So KGB has to distinguish itself by the accuracy and speed of its answers. To find out if the company's service is of any use, we put it to the test, sending different questions at different times throughout the day to 542542 (or "KGBKGB"). Below are the unedited texts, and KGB's responses. >> Read further -- Access Denied [accessible online]Submitted by fgallez@mit.edu on Wed, 01/28/2009 - 13:18.
For those of you experiencing IAP CFA withdrawal symptoms, the OpenNet Initiative's latest book Access Denied - The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering may help, especially Chapter 6 and its sections on global civic networks, independent media, and tools of communication and hacktivism. phone phreaks & music freaksSubmitted by fgallez@mit.edu on Thu, 01/22/2009 - 09:34.
"Oh great, now U think U're my soulmate Prince Lyrics Now I understand what's behind my favorite musician's favorite cereals - it's all about sound. E-prescribing thrivingSubmitted by fgallez@mit.edu on Thu, 01/22/2009 - 09:07.
Like Katrin Verclas said, health is big. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123249533946000191.html With a host of new incentives, doctors are finally beginning to scrap pen and paper in favor of electronic prescriptions. Medicare this month began paying doctors a bonus if they switch their patients over to e-prescribing. Some private health plans also have begun offering extra payments along with free equipment, such as digital handheld devices. And a coalition of technology companies is giving doctors free software to encourage them to ditch their paper prescription pads. As a result, the number of physicians prescribing medicines electronically has more than doubled in the past year to about 70,000, or about 12% of all office-based doctors. E-prescribing allows doctors to transmit prescriptions via a secure Internet network directly to pharmacies using an office or laptop computer or a digital handheld device. >> Read further -- wireless and state-registeredSubmitted by fgallez@mit.edu on Wed, 01/21/2009 - 10:25.
I don't mean to throw a bucket of cold water on our enthusiastic discussions of all things wifi of yesterday, but a quick look at how the technology fares in a country like Russia makes me sober up in seconds. With regards to what follows: the Federal Security Service is the successor of the KGB - same thing, just renamed. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080416-russian-government-enacts-... According to Fontanka.ru, a Russian news source, the government agency responsible for regulating mass media, communications, and cultural protection has stated that users will have to register every WiFi-enabled device with the government and receive special permission in order to use the hardware. The agency says that registration could take as long as ten days for standard devices like PDAs and laptops and that it intends to confiscate devices that are used without registration. Users who wish to operate a wireless access point or WiFi-enabled home router are expected to go through an even more onerous process that will involve submitting documentation and obtaining a license. In certain regions, like Moscow and St. Petersburg, users will also have to receive special approval from the Federal Security Service. The policy, which was explained to Fontanka.ru by the Russian agency's deputy director Vladimir Karpov, could reverse existing policies like a 2004 government panel decision to provide blanket permission for indoor wireless access point operation and a 2007 policy which allowed use of mobile WiFi devices without registration. According to The Other Russia, which provides an overview of the Fontanka.ru article in English as well as some additional details, the Russian government agency which is responsible for issuing the new policy was created when the Russian media and telecommunications regulatory bodies were merged last year. The policy would likely be impossible to enforce and some question whether the government agency even has the authority to enforce it. WiFi technology is a powerful enabler of mobile connectivity and technological innovation. If regulatory policies broadly erode the availability of connectivity, the results could be disastrous for Russia's tech-savvy population. The policy reflects an abysmal understanding of WiFi's pervasiveness and utility and seems like arbitrary bureaucratic decision with no inherent purpose. Perhaps in Russia, unregulated WiFi is one of those accoutrements of capitalist imperialism that must be opposed with vigorous shoe-banging and similarly vigorous legislative action. The Fontanka.ru article quotes an industry specialist who points out that the government agency behind the policy is run by a former metallurgic engineer who likely has no clue about many of the technical issues overseen by his organization. In this respect, Russia has much in common with the US, where lack of relevant experience often seems to be a prerequisite for public office, especially when it comes to regulating the series of tubes that make up the interwebs. http://www.theotherrussia.org/2008/04/15/russian-agency-demands-registra... Wireless internet in Russia is spreading at lightning speed, with nearly every new notebook computer, mobile telephone and PDA coming equipped with the necessary technology. Wi-Fi hotspots are popping up in major cities, and some 40 million Russians have regular internet access. Yet as Fontanka.ru online newspaper reports on April 14th, officials of Russia’s media and communications agency believe that every wireless user must obtain permission and register their Wi-Fi devices before they can go online. The agency, Rossvyazokhrankultura (short for the Russian Mass Media, Communications and Cultural Protection Service), believes that it can lawfully confiscate wireless devices from anyone violating this directive. Vladimir Karpov, the deputy director of the agency’s communications monitoring division, told the newspaper that wireless internet users must obtain permission to use the radio frequency involved in Wi-Fi transmitting, and must register any electronics that use Wi-Fi technology. Wifi hotspots, personal home networks, and even laptop computers, smart-phones and Wi-Fi enabled PDAs would be affected. Most countries currently allow free and open access to Wi-Fi networking, without any mandatory licenses or limits. Local authorities generally put limits on the maximum signal strength of the transmitters, thereby setting a maximum broadcast range. Loose agreement on spectrum licensing has allowed wireless technology to become one of the most standardized services in the world (Unlike, for instance, mobile telephones, which use different types of networks in different countries). Up until now, the technology has had tacit acceptance in Russia, with the government taking steps to legalize a slice of the radio band specifically for free Wi-Fi. In 2004, the State panel for Radio Frequencies gave indoor wireless networks open rights to a narrow band of spectrum. And in July 2007, the Government of Russia excluded mobile wireless devices from the list of electronics requiring registration. Yet Rossvyazokhrankultura seems to have its own opinion on the matter, and the question of jurisdiction may make the situation all the more confusing. The agency was formed from a 2007 merger of two distinct regulatory bodies (Rosokhrankultura, which oversaw media and Rossvyaznadvor, which oversaw telecommunications). It now appears interested in strictly licensing each and every wireless transmitter and device. According to Karpov’s statement, registering a PDA or telephone would take 10 days. Then, only the owner of the device would be licensed to use it. Registering a Wi-Fi hotspot, on the other hand, would be more difficult. Anyone wishing to set up as much as a personal home-network would need to file a complete set of documents, as well as technological certifications. Networks in Moscow or St. Petersburg would also need approval from the Federal Security Guard Service (FSO) and the Federal Security Service (FSB). An industry specialist, who wished to remain anonymous, was not surprised at the agency’s statement: “Similar conclusions speak to the complete professional deterioration of a unified regulatory agency. It is now engaged in all manner of fields – protecting cultural riches, registering mass-media outlets, control of legal compliance on personal data, monitoring communications, allocation of radio frequencies and so on. The organization is led by a metallurgic engineer by background. It is unlikely that he can simultaneously manage communications personnel, fine art experts, journalists and attorneys.” Wi-Fi technology (short for Wireless Fidelity), comes built-in in nearly every new laptop computer, PDA, and mobile telephone, and allows for the easy set up of a local internet network without the need to install a mass of cables. The access point, or hot-spot, can be set up anywhere, and every computer store sells special Wi-Fi transmitters called routers. The typical router has an indoor range of around 150 feet, but can reach up to 300 feet if located outdoors. Hotspots, both free and paid are located around the world, in places like hotels, airports, cafes, and parks. There is even an international organization called the Wi-Fi Alliance, which oversees the standard implementation of global wireless technology. UPDATE: After this issue flew around the Russian internet and much of the world, Fontanka.ru issued a follow-up to its original article (RUS). Rossvyazokhrankultura has now denied that wi-fi devices will need to be registered. Wi-fi providers (hot-spots) that charge for the service will need a license, but free networks under a certain range will be exempted. However, the registration agency did not answer many of the newspaper’s questions, and the editors believe that vagaries remain within the wi-fi regulations. Cell Phone FreelancingSubmitted by fgallez@mit.edu on Wed, 01/21/2009 - 09:55.
The Audubons and all those among us interested in mobile technology-enhanced global activism will be interested in this recent report from Technology Review on the extended capacities that can be applied to cell phones, namely facilitating access to casual jobs. http://www.technologyreview.com/business/21983/?a=f As smart as computers may seem, they can't match humans in certain tasks: describing the contents of an image, rating the quality of Web search results, or transcribing and translating text from another language, to name a few. Tapping into human expertise to tackle problems that computers struggle with is also a growing business: Google lets customers refine its search results, and Amazon uses a system called the Mechanical Turk to off-load all manner of simple tasks to humans around the world; people will work on these tasks, even for pennies. Now Nathan Eagle, a research fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, in New Mexico, is launching a project similar to Amazon's Mechanical Turk but that distributes tasks via cell phones. The goal of his project, called txteagle, is to leverage an underused work force in some of the poorest parts of the world. Eagle says that distributing questions to participants in such developing countries via text messages or audio clips could make certain tasks more economical, such as the translation of documents into other languages, or rating the local relevance of search results. It could also provide a welcome source of income for those involved. "We're trying to . . . tap into a group of people to complete these tasks who haven't been tapped before," says Eagle. "And we're using mobile phones, which have a high penetration rate. More people are mobile-phone subscribers in developing countries than in the developing world, so we can get a user base of billions of people." The Finnish cell-phone company Nokia is a partner in the project, and Eagle says that it provides a good example of a Western company that could benefit from txteagle workers. Eagle explains that Nokia is interested in "software localization," or translating its software for specific regions of a country. "In Kenya, there are over 60 unique, fundamentally different languages," he says. "You're lucky to get a phone with a Swahili interface, but even that might be somebody's third language. Nokia would love to have phones for everyone's mother tongues, but it has no idea how to translate words like 'address book' into all of these languages." Another application is the transcription of audio recordings: a user would listen to a short clip, write it down by hand, and then copy it into an SMS reply. Eagle's studies have shown that this task can be completed in less than two minutes, and he believes that a proficient user could earn about $3 an hour doing the work, which would be 60 percent cheaper than today's transcription rates.As smart as computers may seem, they can't match humans in certain tasks: describing the contents of an image, rating the quality of Web search results, or transcribing and translating text from another language, to name a few. Tapping into human expertise to tackle problems that computers struggle with is also a growing business: Google lets customers refine its search results, and Amazon uses a system called the Mechanical Turk to off-load all manner of simple tasks to humans around the world; people will work on these tasks, even for pennies. Now Nathan Eagle, a research fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, in New Mexico, is launching a project similar to Amazon's Mechanical Turk but that distributes tasks via cell phones. The goal of his project, called txteagle, is to leverage an underused work force in some of the poorest parts of the world. Eagle says that distributing questions to participants in such developing countries via text messages or audio clips could make certain tasks more economical, such as the translation of documents into other languages, or rating the local relevance of search results. It could also provide a welcome source of income for those involved. "We're trying to . . . tap into a group of people to complete these tasks who haven't been tapped before," says Eagle. "And we're using mobile phones, which have a high penetration rate. More people are mobile-phone subscribers in developing countries than in the developing world, so we can get a user base of billions of people." The Finnish cell-phone company Nokia is a partner in the project, and Eagle says that it provides a good example of a Western company that could benefit from txteagle workers. Eagle explains that Nokia is interested in "software localization," or translating its software for specific regions of a country. "In Kenya, there are over 60 unique, fundamentally different languages," he says. "You're lucky to get a phone with a Swahili interface, but even that might be somebody's third language. Nokia would love to have phones for everyone's mother tongues, but it has no idea how to translate words like 'address book' into all of these languages." Another application is the transcription of audio recordings: a user would listen to a short clip, write it down by hand, and then copy it into an SMS reply. Eagle's studies have shown that this task can be completed in less than two minutes, and he believes that a proficient user could earn about $3 an hour doing the work, which would be 60 percent cheaper than today's transcription rates. Users would be paid either in credit to their mobile accounts or in cash, as facilitated by a service called mPesa, which allows people to send and receive currency via cell phones and use their phones to claim money at mPesa agents and post offices, says Eagle. One technical issue that he has considered is quality control. Eagle says that he and his colleagues are developing machine-learning algorithms that can determine the accuracy of different workers' responses. Essentially, identical tasks are off-loaded to a number of workers, and if a high percentage of those come back with a particular response, then it can be assumed to be the most accurate, within a certain level of statistical confidence. Also, if a person consistently responds correctly, then the system deems her more trustworthy, providing her with more tasks, and allowing her to make more money. But Eagle admits that there are still some kinks in the system that need to be ironed out, especially for the translation and transcription tasks, whose accuracy can be somewhat subjective. Txteagle will use a reputation system similar to one developed by a San Francisco startup called Dolores Labs that works with Amazon's Mechanical Turk. CEO Lukas Biewald says that such a system is a powerful tool for txteagle. "You don't have to make assumptions about who can do your work and who can't," he says. "It allows you to take much more risk with the people doing the job," without sacrificing overall accuracy. Sharon Chiarella, vice president of Amazon's Mechanical Turk project, says that bringing crowd sourcing to developing nations could be a good idea. "One of the things that's powerful about this space is the promise of leveraging a worldwide workforce," she says. But Chiarella adds that there will be some limitations. The most widely available cell phones, for instance, are generally only able to send and receive text and voice messages. This makes crowd sourcing more complex tasks, such as tagging images, impossible. "The cell-phone screen size somewhat limits the tasks that can be viable via the phone," she says. "But I think that as cell phones continue to evolve, some of those issues will go away." Eagle agrees but says that his goal is to start small and see if the model works well enough to expand. He hopes to receive grant money that will allow txteagle to roll out the service in Rwanda, Kenya, Bolivia, and the Dominican Republic within the next year. |