Voting by mobile phone

An article titled "Estonia to vote by mobile phone in 2011" caught my attention. First off, I had never heard of a country called Estonia, and then I found out that it would be the first country to allow voting my mobile phone. Mobile phone voting would be allowed for the next parliamentary elections in 2011. Last year, they used internet voting, and they claim it was secure and there was no fraud. I am not currently aware of any other country who has done that.

For the mobile phone voting, voters would be required to obtain a free authorized chip for their phones, which would verify the voters identity. They say that system has already been tested and has been proven secure and reliable. I wonder what measures were taken for the internet voting they had previously done and which would be more secure?

From a little bit of research on Wikipedia, I found that Estonia has a population of 1.4 million which is about 1/200th the population of the United States. It is a very small country, which is probably why it is easier to implement these changes.

Recession proof

I was reading an article about the rise in sales of video game consoles especially the Wii, when sales of other items are dropping drastically. The Nintendo Wii got a rise in sales from last year and recorded their highest ever single month sales this November. Playstation and Xbox 360 also saw an increase in sales. I'm not a gamer, and I dont really know much about it. I am just curious as to how when people are loosing jobs, and teh economy is bad, a lot of people seem to find it necessary to purchase $300 gaming consoles, as well as the separate games they would also need to purchase.

Is gaming some sort of consolation gift people get for themselves, or is just a way for them to get their minds off all the problems in the world?

Border Security

I wasn't aware that border security at airports could search through your electronic information on your laptop or phone until I read an article today. Civil liberties groups are trying to impose restrictions on these searches as they claim it is a violation of privacy. I do agree, because there could be confidential information about business or patients as the case may be. I also have stuff on my laptop that is not meant for just anyone to see. Aparently, these devices can also be seized and held for an indefinite period, which is also very wrong, because a lot of people have their whole lives on their phone or on the laptop. I do agree that is important for national security because they have caught some terrorists and other criminals that way, but I still think they should respect other people's privacy. There is also some skeptisism that some of the border security saves that information and use them for private purposes. I think they should come up with a software that searches certain key words and can extract key information from pictures and videos. This software should then be run on the electronic devices. That is a better way and faster way to catch criminals while maintaining the privacy of law abiding citizens. Here is a link to the article:

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20081208/ap_on_hi_te/tec_laptop_searches

Microsoft roundtable

Microsoft roundtable is a new and advanced conferencing/collaborating device which enhances the engagement in a remote meeting. It is a 360-degree camera and software that is able to track the active speaker in the meeting in real time and allows them to exeperience the meeting like as if they were physically in the same room. According to what they have on the website, it is very easy to use, but I cant really guarantee that, because that is the same thing Windows vista claims. The software also offers the same features that google.docs offers in the sense that several people can collaborate on the same documents, but it also includes chatting, audio and visual communication.


http://www.microsoft.com/uc/products/roundtable.mspx

Entrepreneuship on TV

I usually watch this show called "Brothers and Sisters" that comes on every Sunday at 10pm on ABC. Recently, there was an interesting story line about these two 20-something guys who wanted to start a new business in California. They had hired as their CFO, a lady who was a former CEO of a thriving small business in town, to help them put together their business plan, so they could get funding. Their business was about making an online site where patrons can find local areas to purchase "green" things.

They did not get a lot of positive feedback except for one VC firm, who wanted to fire the guys (but leave them as co - founders), but they would keep the CFO. They turned down this offer, because they wanted to remain on board. I found this pretty interesting because this was the only firm who had contacted them, and they were being given a million dollars for the business, and they were barely surviving as it was. I guess, maybe the idea was a deep passion within them that they would rather starve than get a million dollars, even though they would not be carrying out their idea themselves.

Another interesting fact is that they portrayed the guys as a "Mark Zuckerberg" type or the google and youtube guys. These young scruffy guys, who seemed not to care about anything or even own a suit. I just thought that was an interesting fact, because it seems like that is becoming the stereotype of what young successful entrepreneurs are.

NFL offers live broadcast in 3-D

The NFL is offering a live 3-D broadcast of the Raiders/Chargers game today, and Fox Sports is doing that for the BCS national championship game coming up in January. Viewers would have to use a poloarized lense to view the game. Currently there is talk of making this available on TV. However, with everything being digital and the emergence on the virtual world, I think it would be cooler if everyone that watched these would have to buy these lenses or some sort of device that also gave them the stadium experience, so they would almost be at the football game virtually. Another thing would be to actually have maybe a theater experience, where people would actually have to buy tickets (for a cheaper price), and go to a theater to watch the live 3-D games, but they would also get the experience of being in the stadium. It could be like those 3-D movies that come out, where you feel like you are actually in the movie. Those are just some cool ideas/things that can be done with this that could really make them some money.

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20081204/ap_on_sp_fo_ne/nfl3d

Solar Car completes first ever trip around the world

A teacher, with the help of Swiss Scientists, built a fully solar powered car, and spent the last 17 months driving trhough 38 countries around the world. It is a two seater car that travels up to 55mph and covers 185miles on a fully charged battery. It was the first time that a solar powered car travelled around the world without using a drop of gas.

He took this car to the most recent U.N climate conference and argued that emissions can be reduced 100% instead of the 10 to 20% reduction that was being discussed. This seems like a really interesting product because, unlike the electric cars, it doesnt have to be plugged in (and gain power provided by other means, such as coal or natural gas). It is completely renewable.

Although the maximum speed is pretty low, and it goes a small distance without charging, I think this would be a very useful thing to invest in, because it would be very useful in small towns like State college, where you are not traveling to fast for too long distances. It would also be very important in tropical countries especially in Africa where solar power would be more efficient. It would also be interesting to know how long it took to charge the car, and how that would change depending on where you live. Here is a link to the article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081204/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_poland_solar_car;_ylt=AkacspCQdTukLSzpPAFPsAJvaA8F

NebuAd Law suits

I read this article http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20081114/ap_on_hi_te/tec_web_tracking_lawsuit, which talks about a Silicon valley startup that us being sued over privacy issues. This company created a technology that allowed internet service providers to scan everything being done on the consumers internet connection. The company is being sued along with these internet service providers for $5million.

This is an interesting article, because these are the kind of things that start up companies need to think about before intorducing a product to the market.

World Financial Crisis

The whole economic crisis, is not only going on in the United States, but also in many other countries around the world. The problem in the US and in Europe is mainly the credit crisis, but this has also trickled into various Emerging markets and Developing economies, such as China and some African countries, who had a lot of their money coming in from demand of their various goods and services from the US and Europe. These developing markets have also been affected by foreign investors pulling out their investments in those markets after signifcant losses in the US. These investors are pulling out be as a result of fear of a world recession or to gain extra cash to shore up their losses in the US.

However, since this demand has decreased as a result of the decreased cash flow, these emerging markets now to look internally, to see where else they could make money. These emerging markets have not been hit as hard as the US and Europe, but they are still very much affected. It is just interesting to see the difference in strategy between the fully developed markets and the emerging markets. The fully developed ones are more interested in increasing cash flow while the emerging dont really have a credit problem, but are more interested in the diversification of their economies.

The following links shold provide some interesting info:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081012/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_europe_crisis_summit;_ylt=AiUFCsJr8jSzyPSAMhmhRJhv24cA
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081012/ap_on_bi_ge/as_china_economy;_ylt=AjlZtoeVMGym3qvx9X8x9GGyBhIF
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081012/wl_mideast_afp/stocksgulf;_ylt=AtmYGVRouc1YelgJeF7TlJwT5LIF
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081008/wl_africa_afp/financebankingnigeria_081008193901

Elephant's texting

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081011/ap_on_re_af/af_kenya_texting_elephants

This news link is the full story about the Kenyan Elephant texting. Here is a brief summary.
Elephants sometimes left their reserves and roamed into towns, sometimes destroying cropsduring the harvest. This took a huge toll on farmer's incomes and could wipe out six month's worth of income at a time. The elephants had also sometimes caused death or injusry to people in the towns.

So a SIM card was placed in the collar of the elephant. (Side note: If you have AT&T ot Tmobile, the SIM is the removable card that is usually placed below the battery, it is pretty much what determines your phone number, and what makes the phone able to call, text etc.) A virtual geofence was made using GPS (which was a replica of the conservatiory;s boundaries), and a text is sent from the SIM to the ranger in charge of the conservatory, when the elephant gets near the fence. The ranger is then able to steer the elephant back to its reserve.

This also helps save the elephants which is an endangered species, and are also liable to be attacked because of the harm they cause when they roam into the towns.

Business Risk

The last project "Crash and Burn" and the speaker at the PSNE meeting last Thursday, got me thinking about the smallest possible risk you could have in a real world setting.
The business venture I undertook had zero risk essentially. This was because, my goal was to get as many orders as possible before I actually paid for the product. In the course of getting these orders, I came across a customer who actually suggested that I buy more of the product and that he would buy the remainder that I couldnt sell at my Cost Price.

At that point, that was a great deal. I was pretty much increasing my profit and taking a lower risk (zero risk) at the same time. So now, I'm wondering if this is really possible in the real world. My guess is that it is not, but if anyone knows of how this is possible, I am ready to listen. I figure that the risk for different businesses would vary by the industry. A Medical device business probably would have a greater risk than, say a facebook type company. So my question really is, are there any measures that can be taken to reduce the financial risk involved in any business venture?

Brain Drain

As many of you know, I am from Nigeria. I was reading an article reecently about Nigeria, and the subject of "Brain Drain" was brought up. Brain Drain is simply a situation whereby the talented expertise in science, health and technology (and other areas) are leaving the country, and moving to Western countries where they have been offered better pay or better opportunities for their research etc. The main discussion was around doctors and researchers in health and science.

This phenomenon has been occuring in the country for over 20 years. In fact, more than half of doctors trained in Nigeria in the last 20 years practice outside the country, with over 21,000 of them in the US alone. This phenomenon has been blamed for a lot of the problems including deteriorating health care systems, problems in infrastructure etc. The case was made that after the country has trained the talent, they lose them to other countries.

There is still a lot of talented expertise left in the country, most of whom are not reaching their full potential. Many of them are making good livings and doing well for themselves, but the people who are needed to improve the society - the doctors, scientists and researchers. who actually want to make a difference, and come up with solutions are not able to do so, mostly because there is not really a system that further develops their talent.

There is no system or infrastrucutre that allows them to make good use of their talents and improve the societies that they live in. These doctors, scientists, technologists graduate form college and want to make a difference, maybe trying to provide solutions to various problems in the country, but they do not receive any funding from the government or from any sources in general. Even if they are paid, it is not at a competitive rate, so when a college in another country offers them an opportunity to do this, they take it.

So now, the question is what can be done? We have a country full of business men and women, engineers, scientists who are just working for some big company ( or themselves) to earn a living. But the people who could make the country a better place by developing solutions that the country needs are not given that opportunity, and are forced to leave the country. The big debate going on now is, how can that talent be retained. It is very easy to say, throw some money at it, but that really is not the solution, because it really goes back to asking where the money will come from. Most of these countries that can afford to swoop up this talent are huge developed countries like the UK and the US. These researchers develop solutions for them that made them even better.

A system needs to be developed for the country to provide resources to keep this talent. It will take many years, but we have to start small, maybe support just a few in the first year. It may lead to solutions that improve the country or even make a profit that can be reinvested and the cycle can continue.

This brian drain was the case with India years ago, and now India is becoming more developed and a lot of the talent is being retained now, so maybe we just need a huge boom in one sector of the economy to bring in a lot of money that can be invested in health and research.

Apply Online

I'm sure most of you have been to the career fairs. You wait in line for 20 minutes, talk to the recruiter for another 20, you are expecting to be asked to come for an interview only to hear "this sheet has our website address, please go on there and apply online." That is probably the worst part of the career fair. You leave the Bryce Jordan Center after 3 hours of hand shaking and sore feet, with stacks of paper that just have website addresses on them.

You could say that sometimes it's because they do not want to hire you, but I think some companies just do that all the time, because I do get calls from some of them after applying online. I really wonder why these companies would travel this far, just to hand out the flyers that say "apply online," when someone else would be making the decisions anyways. You probably have to apply online either way, if it is a big company. However, I prefer to have been offered an interview before I apply online, because I do not want to waste hours of my time filling out online applications with no results..or results that come in too late.

So from the past 3 years of going to the career fair, I think I have mastered the art of figuring out the ones who interview on campus and the ones who just say "apply online." I know the companies that I would not go to, and if you watch closely, you can usually tell that they are mostly handing out the "apply online" flyer. I could probably just find that information online, or from a friend who stopped by their booth. I have my list set and ready and I am prepared to not leave with sore feet. I hope more people join the "no more sore feet" campaign.

Google chrome

I was reading today about the release of the beta version of Google's new web browser called Google chrome. It is supposed to load faster, with more security than other browsers currently available. Google is probably one of the very interesting companies out there, I find it really interesting how they always expand into so many different things, all around the same base(the internet). From search engine to emails, google docs, google earth and so many more and usually have a better product than what is in the market...or just something really interesting like the case of google docs.

Now they have the Google Chrome. It is faster and more secure and is also open source, which means that it is available for developers to enhance. However, I think the most interesting feature is the privacy mode which allows users to make a window, whereby nothing on that window is logged to the computer. Apparently Internet explorer is also coming out with that, but I think Google Chrome will come out ahead because of the past successes of other Google applications and the fact that it is also open source.

Hopefully, there won't be any legal issues with the privacy mode, because that might lead to unsolved internet crimes - fraud, child pornography, to name a few.