Are you the sort of person who feels an instant sense of fatigue while reading the newspapers? Are you disturbed by the rising number of scams even as you read about them day after day? No, the number of scams haven’t gone up drastically. What’s happening, dear reader, is that you are getting faster and greater information flow. And promoting the “flow” are the multiple media platforms; so, from reading the news in print, you have access to the same news on the Net and also on television news channels.
Just how can media promote innovation in government sectors that demand immediate attention? This was a question raised at the session, ‘How media can promote design and governance Innovation’, part of Design!Public, a day-long conclave to study ways of promoting governance innovation.
For starters, the government needs to design and create websites in the digital media space that enables citizens to react and respond. Think about it. The often staid and rarely updated government websites can undergo a drastic change if only they are created as interactive platforms encouraging people to come aboard, interact directly and put forth their point of view. Design, after all, is not about structure alone. It’s about information.
Simply put, what we can start through media is digital activism. A case in point: Tata Tea’s Jaago Re campaign, an example of not just a commercially sustainable advertising campaign but also one with a public message to curb corruption. The brand was promoted through an interactive website even as the television commercials made us sit up and take note of the brand and what it did through innovation.
An example of technology “convergence” discussed at the session was an NGO in Maharashtra dealing with nutrition and education issues for the underprivileged. From creating dedicated telephone lines for “anganwadi” workers to emphasizing the NGO work through television programmes to even starting a dedicated website to allow a process of interaction, the NGO was doing its bit in not just promoting its work but also getting feedback for what it was doing..
Now If cybercafés brought to those who did not have home PCs the power of the Net, a new class of handphones, called "smart feature phones" are marrying low-end hardware and software in a way under which the cheaper feature phones - which do not allow third-party applications -can be enabled for selected features of the Net, such as news, content or applications such as social media sites Facebook and Twitter. And that is what is powering what I call the "Networking at the bottom of the pyramid" (This is also aided by SMS-based communities linked to the Web).
Facebook is making this happen through the integration of technology from Snaptu, a company it acquired. Media giant Yahoo is working with telecom service operators on the one hand and chip designers on the other, to make this work.
Yahoo plans to offer its services, such as its Yahoo Messenger, news, finance, weather, mail and Flickr embedded in MediaTek chips.
This is not really a browser interface that helps you take on the big big world of the Net, but what I call "Internet in a sachet" - to borrow an expression consumer goods companies used to proliferate the shampoo. "We are able to provide optimised Yahoo experience on very low-end devices," said Maheshwari. "It is going to give us reach."
The bottomline: we are heading for a future in which a Rs 1,000 handphone can access and interact with limited Internet features.
Last week, MediaTek announced an investment of $20 million in Spice Digital, a mobile value added service (VAS) company of the Modi group. MediaTek powers the chipsets for many feature phones in the market - companies like MicroMax, Lemon, Karbonn, Olive, Videocon, Intex etc.
By marrying content services with low-end handsets, design firms like MediaTek are doing to the Internet what microfinance is doing to banking
There is a lot to written on this.. and a gallons more to be shared..I would love reading your views - guruism@aol.in
