The World’s Smallest Mobile Clinic

By | November 22, 2011
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JP/J. Adiguna

I love this kind of stuff, and wish these kinds of initiatives got better support from government, NGOs and companies:

Harun checks the blood pressure and weight of a customer in a park in Menteng, Central Jakarta, on Wednesday. He has offered the mobile service for the past 10 years, charging Rp 5,000 (about 60 US cents) per checkup.

We found dozens of these kinds of businesses in a pretty small patch of south Jakarta, and there are probably hundreds more, from guys renting out their cellphones to doing tailored alterations to clothes. Cellphones have improved their business a lot, but imaginative use of technology could help them a lot more, I suspect. But most of these guys fly under the radar of those who might be able to offer support and help.

The Jakarta Post – The Journal of Indonesia Today

Lame PR Responses #34,223(b)

By | November 22, 2011
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When independent blogger Mary Jo Foley, who knows more about Microsoft than Microsoft does, interviewed the company’s new Corporate VP of its Searching and Advertising Group recently, she was told that Microsoft had recently launched an ad-funded version of Microsoft Works, the application suite you think will be a cheap alternative to Office but turns out not to be.

She couldn’t find it online anywhere so, she asked Microsoft PR. Which is always a mistake:

I’ve asked Microsoft for more information on the new ad-funded Works suite. No word back yet. Update: Even though Microsoft’s own vice president discussed the product, no one will talk. The official comment, via a Microsoft spokeswoman: “We’re always looking at innovative ways to provide the best productivity tools to our customers, but have nothing to announce at this time.”

Agh. These kinds of mealy-mouthed, knee-jerk-and-yet-probably-took-all-day-to-form, smug, self-promoting-and-yet-information-free responses drive me nuts. How many people had input on that particular phrase?  Thirty? How many emails had to exchange hands in the crafting? Forty? And how, exactly, does this help the journalist? Or, for that matter, the reader?

And don’t get me started on how a VP statement (“Microsoft Works has already been released as an ad-funded product”) is then throttled into submission as a slab of slippery PR perch, flailing on the floor of the meaningless drivel wet-market. How dysfunctional is that?

Poor Ms. Foley. Spare a thought for someone who has dedicated themselves to trying to make some sense of Redmond’s utterances. I only have to sit through the occasional PowerPoint barrage of buzzwords, cliches and tautologies spewing from the mouths of identikit Microsoft promoters wearing Joe 90 glasses. She has to do it on a regular basis.

» Microsoft Works to become a free, ad-funded product | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

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How To Report on the Road

By | November 22, 2011
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I’ve always been looking for the perfect way to report on the road — do you write shorthand notes, do you record it all and transcribe it later, do you use digital writing tools like Logitech’s io Pen? Or a combination? Each one I’ve done has fallen down, usually because I get bored transcribing or deciphering my notes. The result is a lot of stuff gets lost along the way.

At a recent conference I ran into a guy who seems to have the answer: Don Sambandaraksa, technology writer for The Bangkok Post, who manages to touch type so fast on a Think Outside Bluetooth keyboard that his fingers are a blur.

image For a big guy it’s impressive display (I’ve got some video I’ll try to upload at some point). He is able to ask questions and keep eye contact with the interviewee (admittedly, with a faraway gaze in his eyes, but that may well be his normal look) the whole time, and when I snuck a peek at what he was typing, it looked good. I tested him out afterwards, and it seems he can do it on most subjects, including obscure Javanese kings.

He then dumps it all in his computer and is able to file quickly back to head office. (He also takes photos and all sorts of stuff on the spot. He’s a citizen journalist in a whirlwind.)

I was sufficiently ashamed to try it out myself. I wish I’d brought a Nokia N800 with me, which would have worked better than the measly notes application on the N95. But I didn’t do too badly — though by no means as fast as The Don. I asked him whether it meant he couldn’t focus so much on what was being said, and ask the right questions, but he said no, he’d been typing since the age of 5 (!) so it was no biggie. And, if his questions were anything to go by, he’s probably right.

Digital Deliverance

By | November 22, 2011
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Last Friday’s Asian WSJ, and the online edition (subscription only, I’m afraid), published a feature I’d been working on for a while: The digital divide. I focused on Newmont’s mine in Sumbawa, in eastern Indonesia, and the company’s limited success in introducing e-business to the locals:

Newmont’s supply-system project is typical of many around Asia — by the private sector, by governments, by grass-roots organizations and international agencies — that attempt to improve the lot of ordinary people by giving them access to technology. But some people are skeptical that top-down projects like this give the people what they really need. In particular, can the dreams of big organizations really match the needs of ordinary individuals, especially when, as is often the case, those individuals aren’t asked what it is that they actually want? The digital divide often reflects wider social issues, and bridging it may represent little more than applying a Band-Aid to a deep-rooted problem.

Of course, Newmont and the company that is responsible for the technical side of the project feel it is a success, which is why they pointed me to it. But it was clear from what I saw on the ground that it has a long way to go to achieving the goals I had been told it had already achieved. A great example of not believing a press release. You have to see it with your own eyes. But not everyone can afford the airfare. Luckily the Journal shelled out for me to go down there and see for myself.

The story took me in all sorts of different directions, though far too few to get a real picture of things. I was quizzing one guy and being somewhat skeptical, I suppose, of the claims made by what I’ve heard call “photo opportunity projects” — big money spent by companies on telecentres in the bush — usually a room with lots of new PCs, the air-conditioning to keep them cool, a big mast to carry a fast Internet connection to a village that doesn’t even have water or basic sanitation. The guy’s answer surprised me.

He said I was the first journalist to ask him more critical questions: “It’s interesting you called us,” he said. “In the past a lot of calls from reporters who are very excited about the technology and want to write about ‘technology saved the world’ type articles, you’re the first to come to us with [questions like] “Are these projects really working”?’

He went on:

In the past you saw a lot of hype about the potential for technology. It’s  a very seductive story – the idea that technology like the Internet can fundamentally change the lives of people who are bringing in a $1 a day. But that needs to be mediated with a certain amount of realism… There might be a sudden kind of backlash against these projects. Although I do think there’s lot of potential for technology, it just needs to be done in a very careful realistic way.

(He was speaking on the record but I’ve not done a detailed check on my notes so these words may not be a verbatim quote, so I won’t name him.)

He concluded that my questions were “an indication the worldwide community is becoming more mature about these kinds of projects.” I would be flattered to think so, but I’m not so sure. Most of these projects are in faraway places — even ones in Indonesia I wanted to check up on I couldn’t reach, either because of cost or time. When they’re opened, with great fanfare, journalists are flown in at great expense and everyone involved gets the press they want. But who goes back to check?

One conclusion I reached from doing the story is that not enough people write about what is a huge topic. Technology permeates our developed (and developed pockets of the developing) world lives in ways we rarely stop to count or critically evaluate. Another is that when we do cover it we journalists tend to assume it’s all good — as if any kind of new technology is better for everyone than no technology, and that the intentions, the motives, behind any such introduction are good.

Well, frankly, they’re not. In most cases the company or institution behind it has much less interest in the suitability of the project than their own internal goals — publicity, places to dump money that’s already been earmarked for corporate social responsibility, even just testing out technology in new environments. Rarely, if ever, are the local people consulted and their wishes really listened to and taken into account. Of course, knowing whether these projects are worthwhile in the long run would require independent folk — journalists, academics — visiting them and measuring their progress or lack of it against the original targets. But most of us can’t afford to do that, so we rely on the companies or institutions themselves to post updates.

It’s telling, to me, that most don’t. I found it very hard to get a sense, an honest appraisal, of what had happened to the projects I looked at. Which to me is evidence that a lot of these projects can’t be considered a success.

Digital Deliverance – WSJ.com