[Air-L] Question Box > CellPhone Reference / Extension Service For The Developing World

Tue Sep 29 13:10:26 PDT 2009

Colleagues/

With the ongoing reorganization / revamping /reconfiguration of state
extension services, I am interested in past / present  / planned mobile
extension/information services in the US.

I am also interested in mobile extension / information  services in
other regions of the world as well

BTW: I've done a preliminary search of Agricola / CAB Abstracts / Agris
on the topic(s) ... 

/ Gerry 

New York Times . September 28, 2009

Dialing for Answers Where Web Can't Reach / RON NIXON 

KAMPALA, Uganda - The caller was frustrated. A new pest was eating away
at his just-planted coffee crop, and he wanted to know what to do. Tyssa
Muhima jotted down notes as the caller spoke, and promised to call back
in 10 minutes with an answer.

Each day, Ms. Muhima and two other young women at this small call center
on the outskirts of Uganda's capital city answer about 40 such calls.
They are operators for Question Box, a free, nonprofit telephone hot
line that is meant to get information to people in remote areas who lack
access to computers. 

The premise behind Question Box is that many barriers keep most of the
developing world from taking advantage of the wealth of knowledge
available through Web search engines, said Rose Shuman, the service's
creator. That could be a drag on economic development.

[snip]

Instead of searching for information themselves, people in two rural
agricultural communities in Uganda can turn to 40 Question Box workers
who have cellphones.

The workers dial into the call center and ask questions on behalf of the
locals, or they put the call on speakerphone so the locals can ask for
themselves. The operators then look up the requested information in a
database and convey it to the workers, who pass it along to the
villagers. The workers are compensated with cellphone airtime. 

The service is a joint effort of Open Mind, a nonprofit group founded by
Ms. Shuman, and the Grameen Foundation, which is best known for
promoting small loans for the poor. It has received financial backing
from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

[snip]

Where rural villages were once cut off and isolated from urban centers,
cellphones now offer a lifeline, providing access to banking, news and
business opportunities. 

That is a big technological advance, but for most Africans, Internet
access is still too costly and slow. Question Box was conceived as a way
of overcoming both the expense and the scarcity of Internet connections.
Eventually, Question Box will allow farmers and others to use the hot
line with their own cellphones or through text messages.

In June, Google introduced a similar effort in Uganda, also involving
the Grameen Foundation, that allows people to find information on topics
like health and agriculture via text messaging. 

[snip]

In Uganda, though, that model proved unworkable because Internet
connections are so slow. So the operators at Question Box search a
locally stored database created by Appfrica Labs, a Ugandan company that
hosts the call center. The database contains answers to past questions
as well as a repository of documents, government statistics and research
papers.

"A lot of this information isn't even available on the Internet," said
Jon Gosier, chief technology officer of Question Box and founder of
Appfrica Labs. "The real value in this database is that it contains a
wealth of data that only pertains to the local areas."

Links To Full Story And Related NYTimes Magazine Article ["Can the
Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?"] Available At 

[ http://tinyurl.com/yd77x7t ]

!!! Thanks To Bernie Sloan For The HeadsUp !!!

EnJOY !

>> Follow Me  On Twitter >> http://twitter.com/GMcKBlogs  

/Gerry

Gerry McKiernan

Associate Professor

Science and Technology Librarian

Iowa State University Library

Ames IA 50011

gerrymck at iastate.edu     

There Are No Answers, Only Solutions / Olde Irish Saying

The Future Is Already Here, It's Just Not Evenly Distributed

Attributed To William Gibson, SciFi Author / Coined 'Cyberspace