Janala – a new window

Knowledge of english has become a key differentiator enabling one person to score over another – especially in developing economies. In Bangladesh all schooling and knowledge is imparted in Bangla only and very few people know english well.

Research showed that while mobiles have penetrated to the farthest hinterland in Bangladesh, that has not been the case with internet technologies. Hence BBC World Service Trust has leveraged the ubiquity of mobile phones to disseminate lessons to teach English. They have launched a program called Janala (which means window).

This program has been immensely successful and has about 300,000 people signed up for english lessons. They have been successful because -
a) All mobile operators in Bangladesh offer access to this service
b) All mobile operators offer this service at a steep discount

This program is an amazing idea. It is the coming together of some distinct elements that garuntee success – viz. quality content, universal availability all at an unbelievably low price.

My takeaway from this  – whenever I  design a service, I will strive to provide access from a mobile phone either as voice or through SMS and provide access to a significantly larger population. What do you think? Please share your feedback.

Low tech Engg – III – the $6 solution to reducing green house gas emissions

The Kyoto box just won a prize worth $75000 for the most innovative solution to reduce green house gas emissions.

It is a solar powered cooker that can cook rice, boil water and so on and it costs only $6 or less to make.

It uses 2 cardboard boxes – one inside the other. The insides of the inner box are painted black to absorb solar radiation better. The space between the two boxes is filled with shredded paper / saw dust or similar insulating agent.
The lapels (for lack of a better word) of the outer box are covered with silver foil and the inner box is covered with a transperant acrylic lid which keeps the insides warm and manages to raise the temperature within this cooking box to upto 80 deg.

Thank you Jon Bohmer for this innovative device that is affordable and hence more likely to replace firewood for cooking.

In truly Rehmanesque fashion – Jai Ho!

Low tech engg-II

The last time I wrote about engineering and how it was not about technology but solving problems.

I found this really cool device – thanks to BNET. It is a really cool, ultra-small (credit card size), foldable, tripod for your digital camera. Nopes you did not read it wrong – I said TRIPOD and it is pretty inexpensive at $8 and change (excluding shipping).

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you – the fozi tripod. This is truly low-tech but seriously innovative and waaay to coooool (I really should curb my enthusiasm and stick to english spelling).

Take a look at it and do leave comments.