Nathan Eagle's Forum Nokia Blog

Great Articles in the Economist on Mobile Phones in the Developing World.

natecow — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 03:26:53 +0300

... complete with quotes from Nokia's own Jussi Impio!

The landscape oftelecoms

The rise of themobile

The mother ofinvention

Up, up andHuawei

New uses formobile phones

Internet for themasses

EPROM featured on the CBC

natecow — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:13:49 +0300

I was recently interviewed about my work in Africa for the CBC radio program Spark. Here is a link to the interview and a description of the show:

On this week's show, Nora chats with Nathan Eagle about designing mobile phone applications in Africa. Nathan is an MIT research scientist and postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute.

In October, Nathan plans to launch txteagle, a project that sends people small, simple tasks to do on their cell phones. Nathan observed that you can spend a lot of time waiting in Africa, and that people could put that time to better use by working on their mobile phones. What kind of work are we talking about? Nathan has posted some samples on the txteagle site.

He goes on to talk about some of the genius ideas for new mobile phones apps he's seeing in Africa and highlights one example where mobile phones are changing the way Rwandans pay for their electricity (9:05 in the audio below). He also gives his two cents on what the future holds for mobile tech.

EPROM: A Forum Nokia PRO Success Story

natecow — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:05:18 +0200

EPROM has recently been featured as a Forum Nokia PRO success story. Here is the article and also a link to the YouTube interview.

EPROM Mobile web Courses expand in Kenya

natecow — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 05:54:44 +0200

The University of Nairobi put their new application development laboratory to good use this August. Daniel Nyoka Mainye, a 2nd year computer science student and accomplished mobile phone programmer, led a group of his peers through the Nokia-driven short course Mobile Internet Services. Topics he emphasized included W3C guidelines, the ready.mobi developer tools, as well as his own experiences developing the University of Nairobi’s mobile-friendly website.

Mobile Phone Programming Courses begin in Ghana

natecow — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 05:48:38 +0200

Prof. Nathan Amanquah, Chair of the Computer Science Department at Ashesi University, ran his first EPROM mobile phone programming course as a for-credit elective this summer, with 12 hours of lecture each week for 6 weeks - equivalent to the number of hours in a regular semester course. All 12 topics of Nokia’s new Mobile Web Development material were covered, some in more depth. Students submitted weekly homework assignments and presented their individual projects at the end of August. This course received significant press coverage - both in the print media and several radio stations across the country.

HIV/AIDS Educational program piloted in Eastern Kenya

natecow — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 05:39:07 +0200

Dr. Eduard Sanders has been developing educational programs about HIV/AIDS for sex workers in Kenya for over a decade. In our pilot study, participants in his program will be given EPROM N70 handsets with University of Helsinki's ContextPhone software to augment the existing sex worker diary program. The phones will also be used to provide targeted educational messages about risk behaviors and information about free services at local health clinics.

Mobile World Celebrates Four Billion Connections!

natecow — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:39:50 +0200

This is a big day for mobile phones everywhere: The GSMA today announced that the mobile world has celebrated its four billionth connection, according to Wireless Intelligence, the GSMA’s market intelligence unit. This milestone underscores the continued strong growth of the mobile industry and puts the global market on the path to reach a staggering six billion connections by 2013 (the global population is projected to be 7 billion in 2013)!

Much of this growth is credited to emerging markets... Greetings from Nairobi!

“Mobile Computing & Communications” Launches at Makerere University in Uganda

natecow — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 05:31:26 +0200

Prof. Fisseha Mekuria is incorporating the EPROM curriculum into a new master’s degree program at Uganda's largest university. The objective of the new program is to carry out relevant research in the areas of mobile computing, communications technology, services, and associated enabling policy and regulatory frameworks. The research is structured to promote the sustainable diffusion of wireless communication technology in collaboration with regional public and private industry and organizations. Prof. Mekuria hopes to promote novel usage of mobile phone services as a vehicle for economic development in Uganda and the eastern Africa region.

The objective of the new program is to produce graduates with the necessary skills in wireless communications technology, services, and content development. The subjects within the new degree program will include:

Mobile & Wireless Communications Technology & Services

QoS & Mobile Multimedia Networking

Mobile Ad Hoc, Sensor & Mesh Networks

Wireless & Mobile Broadband Access Networks (IEEE802.1XX S)

Next Generation Networks and Developing Regions (NGN-DR)

Enabling Regulatory & Policy Issues for Next Generation Networks (RP-NGN)

Mobile Technology Usability, Content & Service Localization.

Mobile Web Content & Web Services

Mobile Application Software Development including M-Banking, M-health, M-Learning, M-Commerce, M-Gov

University of Nairobi mobile phone services for the visually impaired

natecow — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 05:24:23 +0200

The School of Computing and Informatics (SCI) at the University of Nairobi has recently started a collaboration with the Kenya Society for the Blind (KSB) in an effort to develop innovative mobile phone services for local visually impaired people (VIP). In this project, EPROM faculty members are attempting to empower VIPs through the development and deployment of mobile phone applications designed specifically for physically disadvantaged Kenyans. Functionality of these new applications include a text-to-speech tool that converts the text in a received SMS or printed text (captured from the phone’s camera) into an audio file which is played back to the VIP.

SMS Media “POWER CARD” - prepaid electricity Scratch-cards in Rwanda

natecow — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 05:10:35 +0200

After Jeff Gasana graduated from the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), he help form SMS Media Rwanda, EPROM’s latest industry partner. Some of Jeff’s most commercially successful SMS applications have been unique to the Rwandan market, ranging from auto insurance to local market price information to matchmaking. In 2007, Jeff developed an application that enabled graduate high school students to access their national exam results without having the travel to the capital, and 30,000 students now use the service annually.

In the beginning of 2008 SMS Media partnered with Electrogaz, the national electricity company, to sell prepaid electricity scratch-cards. Using the proven airtime scratch-card model, entrepreneurs purchase the prepaid electricity cards in bulk and then sell them throughout Rwanda. Not only has this created thousands of jobs, it saves Rwandans from having to travel into Kigali and wait in line to purchase electricity at the main Electrogaz office. While the system has only been operational since the beginning of 2008, already 30% of the country’s electricity consumers are now purchasing their electricity through their mobile phones using the SMS Media “Power Card”.

Beyond selling prepaid electricity, SMS Media is also partnering with KIST to enable EPROM students in Rwanda to deploy and sell their own SMS applications using existing short-codes with a 50/50 revenue-sharing agreement.