Some of the farmers who lost their crops in the Horn of Africa drought this year may be able to afford farming next season, with the help of a ‘micro-insurance’ scheme. Kilimo Salama — Swahili for ‘safe farming’ — was launched last year, providing small-scale farmers in Kenya with crop insurance by combining mobile phone [...]
Google Plus is set to penetrate the Indian masses in a big way by allowing users access to their accounts via SMS. Since mobile phone penetration is huge in the country and smartphones are only just about catching up, this new facility is sure to win them a big following. In fact, it is sure [...]
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I was emotionally invested in a film that largely focuses on teenagers rapidly tapping keys on their phone. That speaks to the quality of “Thumbs,” a surprisingly entertaining documentary that follows a dozen or so competitors through a grueling national texting championship. The key [...]
What is less publicised is the continued importance of text messaging within this booming growth of non-voice traffic. The ITU recently illustrated this by claiming text messages sent by the 5.3 billion mobile users was generating $14,000 (around €9,700) per second for operators around the world, assuming an average of $0.07 per SMS. Also of [...]
When you go to a group of young girls in East London and say, do you want to program? They’ll probably run away,” Iris Lapinski joked. But last year, she proved herself wrong when 40 girls applied for 20 spots in one of Lapinski’s new courses on designing applications for mobile devices Read the entire [...]
Would you believe making calls is not the first or even second thing consumers choose to do when using their mobile devices? How about that it ranks near the bottom of the top five smart phone uses? Believe it or not, that’s exactly the case.. Get the entire survey details at www.pitchengine.com
Microfinance, the Nobel Prize-winning initiative to turn aspiring Third World entrepreneurs into self-sustaining CEOs, has long been the only game in town when it comes to offering developing world entrepreneurs a viable and sustainable form of funding. But other financial instruments may work just as well–if not better–at supplying small farmers around the world with [...]
Maryam’s husband was so outraged when he discovered the device she had smuggled into their Kabul home that he beat her with his fists and a whip. The contraband was a cell phone. “My husband’s family is very traditional,” says Maryam, a 24-year-old sheathed in a blue burqa who declines to give her last name. [...]
There were a million mobile phones in the communist-run country at the end of 2010, up from 621,000 in 2009 and 330,000 in 2008, when all Cubans were allowed to buy and use them for the first time, the National Statistics Office said in a report posted on its website (here). Cuba has a similar [...]
You might have a few dollars in your wallet, but chances are most of the money you spend is through your credit or debit card. The cashless system we’ve grown accustomed to across North America, offers consumers instant access to products and services – giving us the freedom to buy whatever we want whenever we [...]
