:: DEF : Newsletter October 2012 ::

Vol 1 Issue 10 | October 2012

Quest for Innovations in October

The Manthan Award South Asia & Asia Pacific 2012 (Registration Open)

The 9th edition of the Manthan Award is all set to be held on December 01, 2012 at India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi, India. The international conference, exhibition and award gala evening will mark the graceful presence of 75 finalists of ICT4D practitioners from South Asia and Asia Pacific who will share experience and showcase their innovative ICT and digital solutions and practices. The day long programme will mark inaugural Power Summit, key Parallel Plenaries, full day Digital Festival-cum-Exhibition and Award Gala evening to be graced by invited dignitaries from the government, industry and international agencies. Registration is open for delegates and participants at www.manthanaward.org. About 1000 people are expected to attend this full day unique digital extravaganza.

For partnership and sponsorship please contact - Ms. Anamika Garg @ anamika@defindia.net or call Digital Empowerment Foundation’s office on Telefax Nos: +91-11-26532786/87 & 46080646 Mob : +91 78 2721 8475.

eNGO Challenge Gathers Momentum, Grassroots NGOs Flock to Apply

After the Launch of First The eNGO Challenge, we got immense response from the grassroots organisation across the Country, and we extended the last date of filling Nomination under 5 broad categories of TheeNGO Challenge 2012. If you are associated or running any non profit initiatives, kindly apply for The eNGO Challenge 2012 Now!

Nasscom Foundation has partnered with The eNGO Challenge and all the network organisation is now applying for the challenge. The Last Date is 25th October, 2012. For More Details about The eNGO Challenge plz visit www.engochallenge.org

Recent Activities

The Manthan Award South Asia & Asia Pacific Grand Jury was held recently at New Delhi, India.

A total of 469 Nominations were received this year, 246 were filtered out in the internal & virtual jury, 223 went for main jury and a total of 75 Finalists were selected at the end of the two-day intensive process. The main event shall take place on Dec 1, 2012 at New Delhi, India.
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DEF Partners with Google's Women Entrepreneurs on the Web

Digital Empowerment Foundation announces the partnership with Google to create an enriching networking & learning platform for Women entrepreneurs in Manthan Award 2012 Ecosystem. We are inviting women entrepreneurs across the Globe to participate in the Workshop & EXPO by Google’s Women Entrepreneurs on web’ scheduled on 1st December at Manthan Award South Asia & Asia Pacific 2012.Manthan Award is a grand celebration to felicitate the best ICT practitioners among various countries. Along with the Award gala, entire day would have around 7 parallel interactive sessions on ICT different domains and 4 summits on Wireless, Minority Communities, eNGO, Digital Panchayat & m-governance.
Google will hold a workshop session on the same day exclusively for Women entrepreneurs and to train them for their better presence on the web. Do not miss the chance to meet inspiring women entrepreneurs at the session & be the one to showcase your initiatives & share the thoughts with others on the panel. Know more

Chairman's Column

Weavers' digital cluster: Chanderi shows the way
I often use the phrase “bottom of the pyramid” to refer to that part of the untapped markets of the world that has people living on less than $2 a day. And I have realized that in India, home to 345 million poor people, you cannot be a sustainable consumer unless you are a producer. I would like to discuss how information and access to information are the most important factors to overcome poverty, exploitation, corruption, economic deprivation and violation of rights. Although I have always believed in the power of information and access, I feel vindicated today through a research done by Institute of Rural Management-Anand and Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta titled From Market Separation to Market Development at Bottom of India’s Socio-Economic Pyramid: A Case Study on Digital Empowerment Foundation’s Chanderiyaan Project. Read more

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DEF Signed MoU with Intel to Follow the Fiber Program for Digital Literacy Mission

Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) has signed MoU with Intel to follow the Fibre & Digitally Literate One Adult programme for Digital Literacy Mission (DLM) project. Under the Fibre & Digitally Literate One Adult programme, DEF will take 1 panchayat in each of the three proposed blocks, including Arain block in Ajmer, Panisagar in North Tripuraand and Pravada in Visakhapatnam district. Know more

DEF Tura Centre launches Front Office Skill Development Programme

The Tura (Meghalaya) centre of Digital Empowerment Foundation, has launched the front office skill programme of undergrad and graduate youths towards employability. The course has been launched in association with IGNOU IVET Shillong. The course duration is 3 months with practical. A total of 23 youths have enrolled for the first batch. In fact, it is turning out that the Tura Internet & Service Center is turning out to be spearheading many news programs that DEF had never tried and demanded at its other several centers, for example, citizen journalism, e-school program and rural BPO program. To know more about whats the update with the center and also pictorially what has been happening, please click at http://tiscmeghalaya.in/

DEF Develops Android based Tablet Survey Tool for Nirmal Bharat WASH Yatra

Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) has developed Android based tablet survey tool for Nirmal Bharat Wash Yatra, a multi-channel, mega campaign that WSSCC has started with the support by WASH United, Quicksand, and other partners including DEF, Aragyam. The Android-based survey form app has been installed in 4 tablets provided by Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC). The same web-based form can be seen at http://www.inomy.com/nirmalyatra/. Recently, DEF also partnered with ZMQ Foundation who has spearheaded the initiative called Mobile for Development and has developed several citizen empowering Apps on mobile and has been instrumental in creating impact worldwide. Together with Mobile for Development of ZMQ Foundation, DEF has been working in developing several mobile application to help development at large. For developing Survey tool for WASH, DEF and M4D collaborated together.

DEF is Knowledge Partner for Pearson Teachers Award

The Pearson Teaching Awards for Teaching Excellence aims to recognize and celebrate teaching as the noblest profession in India by recognizing extraordinary teachers who are engaging their students in innovative and path-breaking ways to ignite their potential. As the Knowledge Partner, Digital Empowerment Foundation is managing the entire award process for eliciting nominations and conducting the Grand Jury to select the best teachers from millions of schools in India. Launch Date: 19th October 2012.

DEF & .ORG Launch eNGO Program in Kenya

The eNGO Programme is set to go Africa to empower African social groups with ICT & Web tools. The Launch is scheduled on 24th of October,2012 at Kisumu Country, Kenya with the local partner Brains & Vision Youth Group at Kisumu, headed by Mr. David. This will be the start of connecting grassroots organisations with ICT tools & give them virtual identity with creating a network of online organisation across Africa & with other countries like India. For more details, please visit www.pirengo.org.

Deen Dalit, World's 2nd only Hand Written Newspaper goes Digital, courtesy DEF

According to the Wired magazine, the only handwritten newspaper in the world is in India. The Musalman has been published daily since 1927, written in Urdu by calligraphers known as katibs. According to the Handwritten Newspapers Project (handwrittennews.com), the only entry from India is the The Musalman, as registered on 15 July 2011. But that is not true. There is another handwritten newspaper that’s not found much mention. Know more

3rd eNorth East Award Summit & 4th SIKITEX 2012 (Register Now!)

Invitation and registration is open for 3rd eNorth East Award Summit 2012 & 4th SIKITEX 2012. The two full days programme is being held on November 22-23 at Gangtok, Sikkim. The two days prestigious event is organised by Department of Information Technology (Govt. of Sikkim) & North East Development Foundation. The programmes consists of half day power panel summit, 8 parallel plenary, Award gala evening and 2 days SIKITEX exhibition. The programme is all set to have wholesome presence of Govt. of Sikkim and its departments, departments from other North East States, Central departments participation, industry presence, civil society and academic institutional presence and participation. Registration is open for participants, delegates, exhibitors For event participation you may log on to http://enortheast.in

EXPERT VIEWS

There are views of ICT & mobile domain experts who have written for the annual Manthan Award & mBillionth Award publications down the years. Here under we are publishing just two of the Experts' views (of Mouli Raman from OnMobile Global Ltd. & Milind Pathak from Comviva). More expert views will be published in the subsequent volumes of the monthly DEF’s newsletters. Happy reading. Feedback awaited.

"Utility MVAS – transforming lives of masses" by Mouli Raman

Although India is poised for rapid economic growth, the country still falls behind in key development indicators such as basic health and education facilities. It is vital to put in place a favorable policy framework and infrastructure for these services to grow and reach all the corners of the country. India is poised for a new era of growth with its young and entrepreneurial workforce, international services sector, opportunities in nascent industries such as green manufacturing and a huge untapped consumer demand from its rural population.

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"Challenges of monetization" by Milind Pathak

In predominantly rural, low-income, price-sensitive markets, across industry verticals, successful services delivery models have essentially relied on scale to compensate for low margins per unit. The rural population constitutes the dominant demographic in developing markets in South Asia but largely inhabit the margins of the digital economy. In emerging markets, the phenomenal adoption of the mobile phone makes it an important channel to deliver crucial services to the digital underclass. Whilst basic network coverage of elementary services including voice and SMS is largely available and growing, to fully leverage the network’s value, service providers need to consider moving beyond basic communication functions and develop and drive adoption of services that enhance lifestyles and improve livelihoods of customers.

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Meet the technology Innovators

Chai with Lakshmi

Bangalore: Chat shows are meant to be breezy. Given the low attention spans in the Internet age, however, it is difficult to pull off the traditional chat show that runs anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. Hoping to capitalize on this, 31-year-old entrepreneur Lakshmi Rebecca started an online chat show called Chai with Lakshmi last year. The show—aimed at 25-to-45-year-old urban Indians—consists of so-called webisodes of 7-11 minutes where Rebecca interviews people in cities who she says are shaping the future of India. "We are a cross between a talk show and a documentary film, depending on the subject," Rebecca said.

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Platform aims to build communities around ideas

New Delhi: When different teams work in different locations, consolidating the work is always a challenge, especially when the teams are located in rural areas where Internet connectivity is a huge problem. The solution can be a so-called cloud-based project management platform called ScalableC developed by Software for Education, Entertainment and Training Activities (Seeta). It is an online platform to share ideas, develop project blueprints and design, and organize information and content through videos, audio, images and blogs for individuals, non-profit organizations and government agencies.

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A website that helps save your electricity bill

Mumbai: Abhishek Jain has come a long way since he left a high-profile job in Deloitte to help Indians save electricity at home. His online initiative, bijlibachao.com, not only helps analyse electricity bills but also calculates how a consumer can save money by choosing the right colour for a room and correctly placing appliances. "An electricity bill is a confusing entity. If the bill is Rs.2,000-3,000, let’s go pay it, but how it gets to Rs.2,000-3,000 no one knows, and one just goes and pays the bill. The whole idea is to help them understand why the amount has gone up and help reduce it," said 31-year-old Jain, an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology and founder of the website.

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News from Partners

A vision of the re-invention of innovation in telecoms, Internet, media and edutainment

Digitalization is rapidly taking on the world across a number of domains. We live in a new world that is re-inventing itself every day, and our industry landscape is changing with the entrance of new stakeholders and dominance changing hands across the value web. The mobile device itself has transformed from a mere communication device (the handset) to a lifestyle phenomenon with convergence (and also divergence to some extent) coming out of the box. In this extended paper presented to The Next Silicon Valley by mobile industry innovator and entrepreneur Anuraj Gambhir, we look at the changing landscape of the converging Read more

India's global innovation ranking

Gambhir says this is being led well in India – the home of Ayurveda, spirituality, yoga, meditation, Art of Living, naturopathy, aromatherapy and more. Lives could be transformed with a ‘spa’ in people’s hands that will greatly enrich their well-being. Wirelessly enabled sensors of various types will take on the form to create whole new products and experiences. In this case networked heart rate, pulse, glucometer, mind sensors will assist with measuring stress and other health variables so that we can proactively manage well-being. There is a potential to use camera phones (via optical detection) to check blood pressure and heart health (eg pulse, respiration, blood-oxygen levels) that has been proven by the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program. Read more

It's OurTube: Religion-based censorship will only fuel hate speech

Islamabad, September 18, 2012: Following the release of an anti-Islam movie "Innocence of Muslims" on YouTube, the Islamic world has been ablaze with protesters making a range of demands, from the prohibition of the movie and all websites hosting it, to the murder of all those associated with its production. The Government of Pakistan has responded to the film by carelessly and hurriedly declaring a blanket ban on Youtube for reasons of protecting Muslim sentiments. Read more

News to know

The Internet is not what it used to be a mere decade ago. With 130 million broadband users in India, it clearly has arrived to higher goals — and obstacles — in its growth path.

The broader point that Gordon is trying to make is that today’s so-called "information revolution" looks rather puny and small, when you compare it to the game-changing technologies that were invented over the last few centuries.

Reliance Communications increased the base call price to 1.5 paisa a second from 1.2 paisa, the company said in a statement on Friday, citing rising costs and lower competition.

Over the past year, the government has been criticized over several Internet-related issues, all of them to do with censorship. It received flak recently for the way it sought to contain the spread of hate messages over the Internet that had led to communal violence and a panic exodus by people from the north-eastern states in some cities.

Most customers get little more than 50% of the capacity promised by their Wi-Fi routers, says Dr. Alex Hills, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University who built the first big Wi-Fi network.

Notice that Google has more power over this than either the Egyptian or the US government," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor, as saying.

A future plan is to give points to mothers when they take their children to health clinics which can be redeemed for medicines.He also aims to give out Lifestraws (portable water filters) to villagers if they watch videos installed on their smartphones about contamination of water, since most water supplies are polluted by the villagers.

As tempting it is to believe that the whole world is connected, the truth is very different, especially in developing countries such as India.

You can't stop the mighty deluge of e-mail. You can only hope to contain it. In that spirit, Google Chrome add-on Inbox Pause lets you add a big blue PAUSE button to your Gmail inbox.

For now, we hope you'll keep checking in for regular news and updates from restaurants, images from our culinary adventures, and lots of recommendations.We'd love to hear from you with tips or info about any great restaurants you'd like to see featured on tablewalla.

The purpose of the Persuasive Technology Lab is to create insight into how computing products–from websites to mobile phone software–can be designed to change people's beliefs and behaviors. Our major projects include technology for creating health habits, mobile persuasion, and the psychology of Facebook.

Quick video on Impact of Rural Broadband featuring Mr. Sam Pitroda:

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Filmbooth is a registered not-for-profit society which promotes short film making and the interests of short film makers. We are a platform where creativity and talent are encouraged. Over the years we have evolved into becoming a voice for several ideas - including socially responsible themes - through various campaigns and events.

ArrayShield's authentication system is a simple pattern-based recognition system that changes every time a person logs on to the system.

India fell three places to the 59th position in the World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index 2012-13. Switzerland topped the list of 144 countries, while the US, hit by debt problems at home, continued a four-year slide.

MGNREGA Sameeksha: An Anthology of Research Studies on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 2006–2012

Priced at Rs. 149, this new GPRS pack offers 2GB of 2G Data beyond which the Mobile Internet speed is controlled to 40 Kbps. Priced at Rs. 149, this new pack offers 2GB of 2G Data beyond which the internet speed is controlled to 40 Kbps. Airtel customers can continue to browse and download from the Internet thereafter as well for a period of 30 days without any incremental charges.

During the early years of mobile in Africa, the Short Messaging Service (SMS) was at the heart of the revolution. Today the next frontier for mobile use in Africa is the internet.

Digital Empowerment Foundation
House No. 44, 3rd Floor Kalu Sarai, (Near IIT Flyover) New Delhi – 110016
Tel: +91-11-26532786 / Fax: +91-11-26532787
info@defindia.net, www.defindia.net