Tech@State: Mobile Money

On August 2, 2010, the State Department will host the second discussion in the Tech@State series at the George C. Marshall Center, at the U.S. Department of State, from 8:00am – 12:30pm EDT. Presenter Biographies»

Topics include:

• How do we scale the mobile frontier, leveraging technology and partnership for sustainable development and financial inclusion?
• What do case studies reveal about success and failure?
• What are the applications of mobile money and its implications for U.S. foreign policy?

Agenda

8:00 a.m.	Participants arrive 21st St. Entrance; light breakfast served
8:30 a.m.	Welcome by Maria Otero, Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs
8:40 a.m.	Scaling the Mobile Frontier: How do we leverage technology and partnerships for sustainable development and financial inclusion? Participants: Jan Chipchase, Director, Frog Design Carol Realini, CEO, Obopay
9:30 a.m.	Case Studies: Understanding Successes and Failures Moderator: Lois Quinn, U.S. Department of Treasury Participants: Monica Brand, Principal Director, Frontier Investments, ACCION International Shainoor Khoja, Roshan Afghanistan Kabir Kumar, CGAP Clients of Opportunity Bank, Colombia (via livestream)
10:30 a.m.	Break: Tech Alley
11:00 a.m.	Breakout Sessions: Applications of Mobile Money and Implications for U.S. foreign policy Moderator: Elana Berkowitz A. Remittances and Financial Inclusion: Bill Barhydt, m-Via B. Food Security: Menekse Gencer, mPay Connect C. Fostering Transparency and Security: Bart Stidham D. Scaling Microfinance: Ben Lyon, FrontlineSMS:Credit
12:00 p.m.	Summary of Breakout Discussions Moderators: Priya Jaisinghani Maura O’Neill, USAID Participants: Bill Barhydt Menekse Gencer Ben Lyon Bart Stidham
12:30 p.m.	Closing by Caroline Mauldin

How To Watch the Event Online

The live stream for this event is being hosted on Ustream.tv and will be at the following link:http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tech-state. This video stream will be open to the public, no password needed.  Chat/questions/comments and Twitter streams will be available. The Hashtag that will be tracked for questions is #TechAtState, so include it in questions you Tweet. You do not need a ustream account to view the video stream or post questions.

RSVP

To gain entry into the Harry S Truman Building, a member of the public should provide the following information by email to tech@state.gov not later than July 30, 2010: the individual's full name, date of birth, type of identification (valid driver’s license or passport) and its identification number, and whether there is a request for reasonable accommodation. 

This data is requested pursuant to Pub.L. 99-399 (Omnibus Diplomatic Security and Antiterrorism Act of 1986), as amended; Pub.L. 107-56 Stat.272, 10/26/2001 (USA PATRIOT Act); and Executive Order 13356. The purpose of the collection is to validate the identity of individuals who enter Department facilities. The data will be entered into the Visitor Access Control System (VACS-D) database. Please see the Privacy Impact Assessment for VACS-D at http://foia.state.gov for additional information.

In the RSVP email, please also indicate:

• Which two breakout sessions you would prefer to attend (rate your first choice and your second choice).
• If you have a technology you would like to show off in our Tech Alley, please indicate this in your reservation and we will follow up with you.

Enter through the 21st Street entrance. Please bring a valid U.S. government-issued ID.

-Presenter Biographies

It's the essential predicament of the Digital Age. Even on vacation.

It's tempting to blame our tools, the BlackBerrys and the iPhones that keep us so connected and busy. But the real problem isn't the technologies; it's us. We've convinced ourselves that the more connected we are, the better. We never give ourselves a break.

But we're human beings, not machines. To think clearly, work well and truly enjoy our lives, we need regular respites from our connected lives.

This is not a new challenge. For thousands of years, people have been inventing new communications devices that enrich people's lives while at the same time increasing the amount of information they have to navigate. The result has always been a combination of excitement and overload.

What Google is to the 21st century, the printing press was to the 16th. Shakespeare was so familiar with the overload problem, he gave us a tragic hero, Hamlet, who refers to his own head as a "distracted globe" cluttered with useless information.

Back in the 19th century, there were complaints about telegraph traffic pulling parents away from the family dinner table. Even snail mail was once addictive. Noticing how often his friends and neighbors checked their mail, Henry David Thoreau wrote: "As our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters proud of his extensive correspondence has not heard from himself this long while. "

Sound familiar?

Some want to run away from the latest gadgets. But if history teaches anything, it's that the techno-pessimists are generally wrong.

Besides, all we really need is a new way of thinking about our devices, one that will bring our lives back into balance. We could start by taking this advice:

"Turn off your computer. You're actually going to have to turn off your phone and discover all that is human around us."

These are not the words of some Luddite malcontent trying to hold back progress. They were spoken by Eric Schmidt, the chairman and CEO of Google, in a commencement address he gave at the University of Pennsylvania last year.

On one level, it's surprising that the leader of the company that defines the Digital Age should be encouraging us to disconnect. But in another way, it's simple common sense. The point of technology is to free us from drudgery, to give us more time to enjoy the things that really matter, not less.

There's no better time to remind ourselves of this than summer, the season of respite.

As Schmidt suggests, it's not all that hard to do. The choice is yours: Disconnect regularly, even if it's just for an hour a day. Or keep feeding your screen habit until you can barely remember the meaning of the word "downtime."

Is there an app for sandcastles? I'm sure someone's working on one. Here's a better idea: Turn off the iPad, get down in the sand and start building.

William Powers is the author of "Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age."

Listen: or download | …also in Ogg

What are you doing with your spare cycles? You know, the bits of time you spend on the web when you’re not really being productive? Maybe you’re waiting for a file to download. Maybe you’re playing a game. Maybe you’re even filling out a form.

All of these little moments could in fact be put to good use.

In some cases, they are. And you might not even know it.

For instance, when you type out a Captcha — those little squiggly words on a web form you transcribe to prove you’re human — you are in fact transcribing a word from a scanned book. A word that is illegible to a computer’s eye. Here, you’re simultaneously proving you are a human being, not a robot, and also doing a good deed, helping to transcribe text.

You can thank today’s guest for that little innovation. Luis von Ahn — professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and expert in the field of human computation — explores the little innovations on the web that are harnessing the power of millions to change the world. Not always for the good.

Reference Section:
Luis von Ahn’s recent Berkman talk here ->
von Ahn’s homepage here ->
Jonathan Zittrain’s recent Minds for Sale talk here ->
More on the ReCaptcha Project here ->

CC/Public Domain Music from:
Learning Music Monthly
State Shirt – Computer
Neurowaxx – Carioca

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Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, with a Kindle. He says sales of the Kindle and ebooks have reached a 'tipping point'. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

It is an announcement that will provoke horror among those who can think of nothing better than spending an afternoon rummaging around a musty old bookshop. In what could be a watershed for the publishing industry, Amazon said sales of digital books have outstripped US sales of hardbacks on its website for the first time.

Amazon claims to have sold 143 digital books for its e-reader, the Kindle, for every 100 hardback books over the past three months. The pace of change is also accelerating. Amazon said that in the most recent four weeks, the rate reached 180 ebooks for every 100 hardbacks sold. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, said sales of the Kindle and ebooks had reached a "tipping point", with five authors including Steig Larsson, the writer of Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, and Stephenie Meyer, who penned the Twilight series, each selling more than 500,000 digital books. Earlier this month, Hachette said that James Patterson had sold 1.1m ebooks to date.

Neill Denny, editor-in-chief of the Bookseller, said the figures from Amazon were "eye-catching", but added a note of scepticism. He said that while ebooks had outnumbered hardbacks in volume, they were likely to be some distance behind in value. Some of the bestsellers listed on the Kindle top 10 list today were retailing for as little as $1.16 (75p). Free downloads of books no longer in copyright were excluded from the figures.

It does not appear that the growth of ebooks is damaging sales of physical books. According to the Association of American Publishers, hardback sales are still growing in the US, up 22% this year.

The association says that ebook sales in the US account for 6% of the consumer book market. One publisher in London said the US is "two or three years ahead of us. But there is no reason to suppose we won't see the same thing happening here."

Kate Pool, deputy general secretary of the Royal Society of Authors, said most authors would be "delighted" to sell large numbers of digital books. "If you speak to most authors, they couldn't bear to get rid of their old bookshelves, but if their readers want to read on an e-reader, then great. They are in it to earn a living after all."

The market is still relatively small in Britain. Digital sales were around £150m last year, says the Publishers' Association, over 80% in the academic-professional sector, with only £5m in consumer sales.

The Kindle has been available in the UK since October, although customers still need to visit the US site and get the device delivered from America.

The books catalogue is also available only through the American site and the titles priced in dollars. A spokesman said there are 390,000 titles available for UK readers to download. The company will not release figures on the number of Kindles sold. "We are nowhere near the same level as the US," Denny added. "I have never seen anyone using a Kindle in Britain. The iPad is more interesting."

Amazon cut the price of its device in June in response to the launch of Apple's iPad, which many believe could provide a substantial threat to the Kindle's market. Waterstones has sold ebooks from its website for the Sony Reader since September 2008 and will sell its one-millionth title this year, a spokesman said.

Pool said she had yet to invest in an ebook reader. "I have played around with one, but I haven't read a full book on one. It is not that I am a Luddite, more of a scrooge, which I think is the same for many people. I am waiting for the price to come down, for the amount of content available to go up and I want to be sure I am not buying the wrong thing. I don't want to be left with a Betamax when everyone else is watching VHS."

all according to Amazon itself, of course... the catch is they are probably including "free" digital books in the total # of digital books sold. Personally I've downloaded a handful of free ones and have purchased 3 or 4 physical hardback books from Amazon in the past few months.

By: Lynne Marek July 06, 2010 Sign up for alerts on this company

(Crain's) — Tribune Co. is starting a new consulting business in its digital department, allowing the newspaper company to sell its social media and Internet advertising know-how to small and mid-sized businesses.

The new business, called 435 Digital Services, will be hiring a handful of people for the effort and will redeploy existing employees to the project to create a unit of about 10 workers, says Bill Adee, the newspaper’s digital department vice-president.

Tribune has placed ads seeking new hires and hopes to install them by the end of this month, Mr. Adee says. One ad calls for a “social media guru” looking to “show off your sales skills.”

Mr. Adee says 435 Digital is one of many ways the paper is trying to develop new revenue streams for Chicago-based parent, Tribune Co., as it seeks to bolster finances before exiting bankruptcy later this year. The name of the unit incorporates the company’s 435 N. Michigan Ave. address.

“We think creating a special group dedicated to that idea is worth trying,” Mr. Adee says.

Tribune, which also owns WGN-TV/Channel 9 and radio outlets as well as other newspaper and broadcast entities outside Chicago, filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2008 and is aiming to exit Chapter 11 proceedings in the third quarter this year. Tribune filed a reorganization plan in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, but the plan has yet to be approved by creditors and the judge overseeing the case.

435 Digital grew out of the paper’s Chicago Now blog network initiative. When Chicago Now began working with small and mid-sized businesses it found that many client-owners knew they needed social media advertising — such as a presence on Facebook — and understood the importance of search engine optimization to help maximize exposure on the Internet, but few knew how to execute on those needs, Mr. Adee says.

Initially, the group will survey companies to better understand their advertising needs. Some clients may advertise through the Chicago Tribune, but others may not, he says.

The Tribune unit may add more employees later, depending on the revenue it generates, Mr. Adee says.

The parent company’s ending cash balance, as reported each month to the bankruptcy court, has risen steadily in recent months. The company posted a $1.52-billion cash balance for the month ended May 23, up from $1.4 billion for the period ended Feb. 28.

This is smart, especially if they find good talent -- of which there is PLENTY in Chicago.

Don’t let yourself be immortalized by a beer pong Facebook profile photo.

A quirky, little startup that lets you prepare your social media presence for when you die is now out of beta testing and open to the public.

MyWebWill stores people’s passwords and wishes, so that their online identities can be shut down or handed over to friends and family when they pass away. It creates a central hub, where you can plan what will happen with your web presence across all social networks and games. You can bequeath World of Warcraft armor to a friend, prepare a final tweet or automatically send a very last, personal letter to all of your closest friends by e-mail. You can also decide what you want as your very last Facebook profile photo. (You can see our original story and video on the startup here.)

It may sound like a silly idea at first, but increasingly, more of our lives are documented online. Who knows how long the web will be around, and whether your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren or even some generation far beyond that will be able to search for your name and see all of its accompanying photos, writing and videos?

Since testing in Sweden, the company has dropped the annual fee to $9.95, although co-founder Lisa Granberg says the company will ultimately pursue a freemium model with different pricing tiers and a limited free version. When you sign up for MyWebWill, the company will store your passwords and remind you once a year to keep them updated.

The company can tell if a person has passed away with two methods. In places like Sweden and Germany, there is a national registry that keeps track of all people living in the country and MyWebWill will cross-check their database against the national ones weekly.

In countries like the U.S., they’ll need two people to act as verifiers. When you sign up, you’ll provide contact information for the verifiers and MyWebWill will contact them through e-mail explaining the service and their responsibilities. They’ll also e-mail them about once a year as a reminder to check if the person is still alive. Granberg and her co-founder have yet to look for funding for their site.

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