Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Experiences with kiosks in India, and MSSRF

This is an interesting (and detailed) overview of the kiosk situation in India. The key learning here is that unless kiosks provide services demanded by villagers, they are doomed to fail. A non-trivial observation is that the kiosk operator, once trained, has every incentive to move to a city! How should that be addressed? In the KioskNet solution, our approach is to use untrained kiosk operators, who run the kiosk as a side business. Perhaps that will do the trick.

posted by S. Keshav @ Tuesday, October 23, 2007 0 comments  

Thursday, October 18, 2007

India eNews - Rural India logs on to find a match!

India eNews - Rural India logs on to find a match!

Another (traditional) use for kiosks. I didn't anticipate this, but in retrospect, this seems like the 'killer app'.

posted by S. Keshav @ Thursday, October 18, 2007 0 comments  

Monday, October 15, 2007

Unplanned Obsolescence - Muhammad Yunus - Nobel Peace Prize - Bangladesh

Unplanned Obsolescence - Muhammad Yunus - Nobel Peace Prize - Bangladesh

An insightful look into how cellphones have made Grameen Phone obsolete. The last paragraph, however, is interesting - kiosks may be the way to go for rural entrepreneurs who want to compete with cell phones. I don't quite understand all the implications, but this gives me some hope for KioskNet!

posted by S. Keshav @ Monday, October 15, 2007 0 comments  

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Windbelt - Third World Power - Wind Generator - Video - Breakthrough Awards - Popular Mechanics

Windbelt - Third World Power - Wind Generator - Video - Breakthrough Awards - Popular Mechanics

This is a really cool way to make micro-windpower reality! The idea is to use wind-generated flutter of a tape under tension to generate electricity. I assume that the tensioning has to be adjusted relative to wind velocity. Yet, I was impressed with how simple, yet how efficient the solution is.

posted by S. Keshav @ Saturday, October 13, 2007 0 comments  

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Free of State » Blog Archive » ALTERNATIVE TO NUCLEAR

Free of State » Blog Archive » ALTERNATIVE TO NUCLEAR

An interesting, if passionate, advocacy of small-scale, highly distributed, energy production. This is complementary to our efforts in rural internet access.

posted by S. Keshav @ Thursday, October 04, 2007 0 comments