Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Internet is different when it is 2.5 inches wide

Microsoft Research India has released a fascinating article about the use of mobile internet by people who have never accessed the internet before. A team led by Microsoft’s Jonathan Donner (@jcdonner) taught eight women in South Africa how to access … Continue reading

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Failure to Innovate, Cont’d

Here’s a nice companion to our earlier post on innovation in the social sector: UK-based NESTA is attempting to measure innovation in public sector organizations. NESTA – Innovation in Public Sector Organizations You can read the report as a PDF … Continue reading

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Failure to Innovate

Over at the Harvard Business Review, Erica Williams has an essay exploring why innovation is so challenging for organizations in the social sector. Her theory: an aversion to failure. …failure is a critical part of innovation. In order to try … Continue reading

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10 Emerging Technologies

Technology Review has released its annual list of technologies most likely to change the world. Among the selections this year: solid-state batteries, cancer genomics, gestural interfaces and social indexing. Technology Review: 10 Emerging Technologies 2011

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Crowdsourcing Power Cuts in India

PowerCuts.in is attempting to track power cuts throughout India through social media. To report a power cut in your area, you can email them, fill out a form on their site, or tweet your location with the hashtag #powercutindia. Great idea. … Continue reading

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“Business Class” for Newspaper Websites

Via Andrew Sullivan, Oliver Reichenstein prototypes a model for an alternative form of “freemium” service for newspaper websites. Newspapers have been struggling to find an online business model that promotes stories to be read as widely as possible while still … Continue reading

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The Dangers of Personalized Search

In this pithy and insightful TED talk, Eli Pariser explains how Facebook, Google and many other web sites are trying to design personalized web experiences for users. But in doing so, he warns, they may be steering us towards an … Continue reading

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How Coke Succeeds in the Developing World

In this video, Melinda Gates (of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) talks about the strategies that Coca-Cola has employed to succeed in the developing world, even in very rural and hard-to-reach communities. The section on Coke’s marketing strategy is … Continue reading

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Mobile Banking and Design

Over on his blog, Olof Schybergson wonders about the future of mobile banking, and the design challenges it presents: Design is key, but if the design of current mobile banking applications is anything to go by, then banks still have … Continue reading

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Marketing to Rural India

The National, a paper based in the United Arab Emirates, has an interesting article from the end of March about marketing efforts in rural India. Increasingly, companies are viewing rural India as a tremendous potential market. But marketers are having … Continue reading

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