Future Of Health: Project Mwana Empowers Zambian Health Workers With Mobile Technology
PSFK speaks with Merrick Schaefer about new ways to help health care workers in remote areas.
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U.S. Lagging, Not Leading, Social Entrepreneurship
In 2009, William Kamkwamba, a teenager from Malawi, made the rounds on American talk shows and coauthored a best-selling book. The source of his notoriety? A homemade windmill that provided power and running water for his family. Kamkwamba built it from trash, using an old textbook as his only guide.
In the United States, the idea of deploying small-scale windmills had been abandoned as too expensive and horribly inefficient. In Malawi, a teenager had built one spending less money than the average American eighth-grader’s weekly allowance.
Kamkwamba’s story points to an unrecognized truth of social entrepreneurship and innovation. The United States isn’t a leader; it’s a laggard.
Consider some of the most important social innovations of the past 20 years. The modern microfinance industry was pioneered in Bangladesh and has spread to virtually every country in the world. The business model that allowed the near-universal penetration of cellular phones into poor communities was born in Bangladesh, as well.
Meanwhile, two innovative ways to use cell phones’ ubiquity in poor communities to change the world have emerged from Kenya: M-Pesa, a mobile-to-mobile money-transfer service, has become a model worldwide. And Ushahidi, a technology platform that ...
Evernote CEO Phil Libin’s 3 Steps to “Freemium” Success
The “freemium” business model really can work. Look no further than Evernote.
When Phil Libin set out to develop the Next Big App, he put forth one cardinal rule: “I didn’t want a clever business model.” Come again?
“Data analysis, referrals, advertising — it was all kind of sleazy,” says Evernote CEO Libin. “I wanted a clever product. I wanted that product to reach hundreds of millions of people. And I wanted 99% of them to be using it for free.”
The “freemium” model — giving away service to users and making money when some opt to pay for additional features — has become wildly popular among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, all banking on reaching the critical mass of a Facebook or Twitter (or being acquired). The competitive advantage is tantalizing. A product that’s largely free can’t be edged out by something cheaper. “But for most startups, freemium is a cop-out,” says Lincoln Murphy, managing director of Sixteen Ventures, a Dallas-based strategy consulting firm. Even if a company can eventually persuade users to shell out for something they’ve been getting for free, it’s extremely difficult to deliver freemium’s other requirements: a massive potential audience, next-to-nothing operating costs, a gotta-have-it value to ...
Location: How Check-Ins Speak Louder Than Words
For the June issue of Wired UK, John Battelle put together this database of online behaviors and what they communicate. Everything from a Google search to a Foursquare check-in says something about us.
Sites like Amazon and eBay capture a lot about what we buy, whereas Google and Bing queries signal want. Facebook and Myspace present personal and group identity while the status update deliberately communicates “what I’m doing” or “what’s happening.”
So what happens when the check-in is thrown into the mix? It adds to an action the context of physical location, or where. The power of place is enormous. We could simply say “I’m watching the game,” or we could include the name of a local bar or say, Yankee Stadium. These are two different places with two entirely different ways of experiencing the game. The receiver’s understanding of the message is enhanced. With developments like Twitter Places, it seems that we are able to communicate much more effectively while keeping friction at an all time low.
[via pasta&vinegar]
Ypulse Essentials: Marvel Creates TV Division, Cyberbullying In Schools, Truth @ Warped Tour
Chris Brown’s breakdown at the BET Awards (during his tribute to MJ has triggered a Twitter outcry and mini-media frenzy over the authenticity of his emotional outburst. Viewers, at least the ones commenting on MTV.com, were divided. Meanwhile Billboard has a recap of the night’s other highlights and big winners including Alicia Keys and Nicki Minaj) (Salon, day pass required) (New York Times, reg. required)
- Get ready for Marvel TV (A new television division created by Marvel Entertainment will bring characters and stories to the small screen.. and create at least one new potential portal for introducing less familiar faces to audiences) (Deadline)
- Fans move Mountain Dew (taking over the event-planning for a "grassroots" promotional tour as part of the year-long "DEWmocracy 2″ campaign. Plus more branded entertainment news from Schick: a new action sport web series “Clean Break” set to debut on Crackle) (MediaPost, reg. required) (Ad Age, reg. required)
-Cyberbullying in schools (New York Times, reg. required, on the difficult questions around the disciplinary role of schools in cases of cyberbullying. And over the Times’ Well blog, Dr. Elizabeth K. Englander answers ...
Ypulse Youth Media Movers & Shakers
Today we bring you another installment of Youth Media Movers and Shakers. We’ve culled through industry publications looking for the recent executive placements we think you should know about. If you have executive news that you want us to highlight in our next “Movers and Shakers,” email me.
Inspire, USA Foundation has named Ypulse Media founder Anastasia Goodstein as Director of Digital Programs. She will oversee the development of the Reachout.com service including the rollout of new online, social media and mobile applications. She remains a valuable advisor to the Ypulse team and will continue to play a role in future Ypulse events. Meredith Sires will succeed her as Editor-In-Chief of Ypulse.com. More
An investor group led by ZelnickMedia is acquiring youth-focused entertainment company and ad network operator Alloy Inc. in a cash deal valued at $126.5 million… As part of the transaction, Geraldine Laybourne, the former Nickelodeon CEO and Oxygen Network founder, will serve as the chairman. Alloy’s co-founders, Matt Diamond and Jim Johnson, will continue to run the company as CEO and COO, respectively. The rest of the Alloy senior management team is expected to remain in place as well. Also joining the Board ...
Place, Space And The Mobile Interface
A report by Method on the current mobile landscape surmises some of the key shifts in how smartphone users relate to and use their phones – and some of the ensuing engagement opportunities for brands.
How Barcodes and Smartphones Will Rearchitect Information
For many years I’ve wanted to be able to link any physical object (e.g from the marketplace) to anything digital about that object (e.g. all the information in the marketspace). I call this linking of physical information to the digital information about it FindIt! search, and I think we are finally starting to get there. eBay just announced that it bought Redlaser, a company that allows anyone with the Redlaser application on his or her iPhone to scan a barcode. The program then shows you where you can get the product you scanned, how much it will cost, and even where you can get it for free. Scanbuy just announced a free barcode-scanning-software-development kit for Android developers.
We know from the principles of self-organizing systems that have been described in many places, including John Holland’s classic book Emergence, that a tagging architecture allows many new functions and capabilities to emerge. The fact that a page link is a standard tag allowed Google to analyze this standard tag with its page rank algorithm. Without the page-link tag, there would be no Google. Likewise, as Redlaser and Scanbuy both understand clearly, the barcode is an existing ...
the best digital in cannes
my choices:
golden grahams grant – social/site
yellow pages chocolate – social
stockholm pride how hetero – twitter
gatorade replay – entertainment
mentos beatbox – bannerburger king $1 – augmented reality
last call home – entertainment
bluedot gps chairs – integratedwalls smile activated vending machine – experiential
monopoly city streets – gaming
vw piano staircase – activationnike chalkbot – integrated
heineken football match integrated
met police choose your ending – social
northface conquer china – integrated
Tags: cannes digital giles rhys jones
Why We Check In: The Reasons People Use Location Based Social Networks
Services like Foursquare, Gowalla and others make it easy to post your physical location to the web – but what makes people want to do that at all?
Fifteen-month old Foursquare is adding 100,000 new users every week and Facebook has made it clear that location is a feature it is preparing to offer soon. What’s the motivation for users to register online where in the off-line world they are? We asked some users of these services and found that they had varied and interesting answers.
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Of course location services vary widely in nature. Nick Bicanic’s startup EchoEcho, for example, is a very discrete service for letting one friend know where you are at a time, emphasizing extreme ease of use. OK Magazine’s new celebrity stalking location app might represent the other end of the spectrum.
Most people who shared their experiences with us were using one of the big social location apps: Foursquare, Gowalla, Google Latitude or BrightKite. Real world businesses are starting to make interesting use of these services (here’s one list of twenty one different ...