Thirsty Rock

Trouble is brewing within and around the microfinance industry. Some industry watchers have been particularly scathing of the impact (or lack thereof) of microfinance on alleviating poverty. For forty odd years microfinance was touted as the  vehicle for delivery of low cost capital to the poor leading and thereby creating opportunities for local enterprise. Today the microfinance industry is accused of not only delivering neat profits for some but of also gifting influential organisations such as the World Bank a formidable political tool. Microfinance is premised on the belief that providing the poor with access to affordable capital stimulates entrepreneurship, creates jobs and helps to drive poverty out of their communities. That is all very well as long as there is a market for the said entrepreneurial goods and services within the community. In other words, while microfinance may tackle the supply side there is scant empirical evidence that it simultaneously boost...

Any amateur dabbling in radio technology knows the high cost of hardware. Peripherals designed to work with software defined radios (SDR) can cost anywhere between $150 (Funcube) to $4,500 ( Matchstiq ). While the Funcube operates between 64 MHz and 1,700 MHz, the Matchstiq transceiver covers signals from 300 MHz to 3,800 MHZ with channel bandwidth up to 28 MHz. The two devices have established niche markets, not every radio hobbyist is willing or able to fork out the sums involved, less so newbies. Enter the Realtek   DVB-T  dongle. Antti Palosaari , a DVB kernel developer, discovered that the  RTL2832U chip found in Realtek DVB-T dongles can be reprogrammed to transfer raw radio signals (I/Q samples) to a host computer. This presents hobbyists with a low cost ($20) software defined radio which can be used to receive raw signals between 52 and 1700 MHz. An obvious digital signal processing candidate is FM radio. Unfortunately, because of the inordinately high ...

Last week Samsung was hit with a billion dollar fine for willfully lifting smartphone technology off arch rival Apple Inc . At the heart of the legal spat is a software technique that appears to make icons bounce at the edge of a phone and another that allows a user to 'pinch' and zoom in or out of a section on the phone screen. Apple's i-devices are powered by iOS , an operating system based on a system developed by the  Darwin Foundation . Android , an OS released by Google, drives Samsung smartphones. The ancestry of both operating systems can be traced back to open source software based on UNIX; FreeBSD in the case of iOS and Linux for Android. The software features in contention all rely on UNIX internals. No UNIX means no pinching and no bouncing. Both Apple and Samsung should be eternally grateful to the University of California at Berkeley for releasing patent-free BSD Unix into the wild.

Troubled by a distinct decline in the computer skills of A level students applying for a seat in the Computer Science department at Cambridge University, Eden Upton and colleagues set out to build a low cost, bare-bones computer in the hope of stimulating interest in programming. In January 2012 the Raspberry Pi will be on sale for as little at $20. Based on a 700 MHz ARM processor, this little Linux computer sports a USB port, 128 MB of RAM and HDMI interface. Targeted at teenagers the computer can play Blu-ray-quality videos and a host of other multimedia content. Only the imagination limits the possibilities gifted to programmers by the Raspberry. Developing countries should take advantage of the low cost of procurement and ownership. Rural internet cafes are financially feasible as most of the expensive components (e.g. workstations, routers, back-haul radios) can be replaced with the computing power of the Raspberry and other open source hardware devices such as software ...

In mid February 2011 the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) published a new standard for data transmission using electricity lines. This technology has potential to convert the electricity grid into one large high speed IP network. Networking products that fully comply with IEEE 1901 will deliver data rates in excess of 500 Mbps in LAN applications. In first-mile/last-mile applications, IEEE 1901-compliant devices will achieve ranges of up to 1,500 meters. The technology specified by IEEE 1901 uses sophisticated modulation techniques to transmit data over standard AC power lines of any voltage at transmission frequencies of less than 100 MHz. In the transportation sector, for example, the standard’s data rates and range make it possible to deliver A/V entertainment to the seats of airplanes, trains and other mass transit vehicles. Electric vehicles can download a new entertainment playlist to the A/V system while the car is charging overnight. In the home,...

There are zillions of theories out there as to what constitutes a mobile payment. IMHO the infographic below is the best attempt (so far) to tell it as it is. The most important mobile payment infographic. Ever. Compliments of MobilePaymentsToday.com

At the end of July 2011 MTN Mobile Money announced the launch of payD, an on-line payment service. Using encrypted channels, payD allows bank customers to effect electronic payments with PIN-protected cards. A rogue IMSI catcher , masquerading as a GSM base station, can entice mobile phones in the vicinity to camp to its stronger signal and exposing the phone to packet sniffing. Sensitive information could be harvested from the communication session. It is worth noting that plain old SMS messages are not encrypted.