TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

Malaysian Sensation

Yesterday was some day. Our overnite bus down the east coast of Malaysia broke down at 5:00 AM, stranding us in the middle of nowhere. A ludicrously expensive taxi (by Malay standards: 100 ringgit = 33 USD = 2 hour cab ride) got us to the airport a comforting 10 hours early. Due to the grim nature of the town hosting the said airport, and the presence of great food and A/C at the airport, we considered this to be a good thing. A short flight to Borneo, and here we are in Kuching.

Were staying at Singgashana Lodge - a spot I’d recommend to anyone exploring in Borneo. Best part? Free Wifi. Until you’ve backpacked asia, you have no idea how much of a treat this is. I’ve taken today (Connie’s exploring the city) to catch up on some ideas - like a “feed quality” ranking system for TechWatching - a big relief as the human overhead of sorting the 50 or so new feeds that the system identifies every is too hard to keep on top of. Predictably there’s some hurdles, but I’m hoping automated sifting of feeds will improve the focus of the front page and the quality of articles therein.

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Verified by who??! A letter to VISA.

Dear Visa,

Over the last few days I’ve spent many frustrating hours trying to book an AirAsia ticket over an hsdpa connection from a sandy tropical island. Not fun. Once the lethargic AirAsia site actually allowed me to book a ticket, the payment process was interrupted by something called “Verified by Visa” - a mysterious page at “securesite.com” that demanded that I register for the service, re-entering all of my contact info, showing my credit card details, etc. I have a few problems with this:

1. The service died halfway through my “registration” leaving me at a blank screen with nowhere to go. No idea if the transaction went through and whether I had seats booked or not. I ended phoning from the mainland to find out.
2. SecureSite.com?? I don’t know securesite.com from a hole in the ground. From my standpoint, all I’ve done is given yet another third party site all of my credit card details. Oh - I should trust it because there are Visa jpgs all over the place? Perhaps not.
3. I can just imagine the dismal marketing meeting the resulted in the decision to use “securesite.com.”
4. There’s no way to opt out of securesite.com or the Verified by Visa program that I could see.

So, in a nutshell, Visa’s program to make me feel safe (a) killed my transaction, (b) did so in a way that required phone calls to fix, and (c) made me feel less secure by dumping all of my info to yet another site that I don’t trust. Dear Visa: Please shut down the program until its ready for public use.

security visa

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State of the Web: Bangladesh

I recently spent six weeks volunteering in the depths of rural Bangladesh. During that time, I lived in a town of 50,000 people (Rayenda) – of which about 30% had electricity (which went out for hours at a time, several times a day), few had running water, nobody had a landline, and the only car in the town was owned by a western NGO. I counted a total of 5 computers in the town, and not many more televisions or radios.

The only technological shining star in Bangladesh is the cellphone. While penetration is still relatively low, probably 15 – 20% of the people in rural Bangladesh had cellphones (a somewhat higher proportion in urban areas). Inexpensive Nokia phones are if not affordable, at least within reach for many of the poor via installment plans. Airtime and text messages are ridiculously cheap too: fractions of a cent. Its the archetypal leapfrog example: towns and people who’ve never had access to communications beyond word of mouth now have access to a cutting edge GSM cell network.

Shocking fact: cell coverage in Bangladesh is 100% - the laser-flat topography and ubiquitous towers mean that you can talk and text literally anywhere in the country, however ridiculously remote it may seem. Another interesting thing is that a cottage industry of charging stations has sprung up in villages with electricity or generators, allowing people from un-electrified areas to sit and enjoy tea or dinner while their phone is charged.

Through-out the country there is little knowledge of the web, and even less reason to acquire such knowledge. In rural areas, cellphones are the sum total of electronic interaction for the average person. Most people had not heard of the internet or email (or ATM’s, modern banking infrastructure, or any of the electronic services we take for granted), and the few who had had only sporadic and slow access. In urban areas awareness of the net/email/etc. was much higher, but access is limited. Because no Bangladeshi services (airlines, newspapers, banks, anything) have online components, there’s little reason to make the internet a part of day-to-day life either.

For as long as I can recall the western world has been maundering on about the mobile web and the shape it will take. While some countries (Korea, Japan) have started down the path of mobile payments and entertainment (dmb, etc.), I think that it is countries like Bangladesh who will truly point the way to the next generation of online, mobile targeted services. Consider:

1. There’s no legacy systems of sunk investment to slow the purchase or development and deployment of new systems.
2. There’s no interface expectations: well we who are used to the full internet find WAP browsers and clipped pages to be a frustrating exercise, its all net new and value added to the people of Bangladesh.
3. It makes financial sense for Bangla businesses to extend themselves via mobile and skip the bricks and mortar phase entirely (banks provide a good example here).
4. There’s plenty of resources (coders) available just over the border in India to bring services into existence.
5. The economics of micropayments for mobile services make sense in Bangladesh where (a) the population is large (150M) and concentrated in a geographically limited area that takes little infrastructure to service, and (b) the people are conceptually acquainted with micropayments from the tariffs that they encounter during their day-to-day lives.

Anyway – that’s it in a nutshell. There’s a new world of millions of web users coming that will have never known the “web” - no browsers, no email, no rss – just a 1 inch Nokia screen. Who’s positioned to profit from this surge? How can you or your business be a part of it?

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Bored? Text Me in Malaysia!

Hey hey hey - if you have nothing better to do, text me! My number: 017 226 8612

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HSDPA from Malaysia

Good connection speeds on 3G wireless here in Malaysia - posting this from a sandy dinner table at a restaurant on the beach in Pulau Kapas — good times!

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Blog Names - Argh

Dear Everybody - please title your blogs with something useful. Seriously - I’ve been digging through the feed prospects that TechWatching and WheelScore have turned up, and for most of them you can tell absolutely nothing from their titles. For example:

• “Steve-o’s Blog” - about what?
• “Just Another Blog” - I have no reason to follow this whatsoever.
• “0WS3e” - maybe this means something in l33t, but it sure is useless to everyone else.

To those who are guilty of similarly lously blog names, here are some suggested naming conventions:

• Steve-o’s Blog: Family Ramblings
• Just Another Blog about Microsoft Silverlight Development
• OWS3e - HAM Radio in the Internet Age

Yup - that’s it. Just add a three word description to your blog title - please!

If you’re using WordPress, click “Options” in the Admin panel, and under “General Options” weblog title is right there. Anyone that works directly with feeds will thank-you for taking a moment to d o so.

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Video of our stint in Bangladesh

From extraordinary photographer Jeff Johns in Los Angeles, who came out to Bangladesh for his two weeks of vacation to help out:

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Follow me through Asia on Twitter

I’m finding Twitter to be alarmingly useful for quick posts from the road or my phone, so you’ll see my Twitter volume increase, and (as you may have noticed!) my TechFold blog be updated intermittently (apologies).

Anyway, you can follow me on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/dreadsword
or read our travel blog: http://venturefar.wordpress.com
and follow our pics: http://flickr.com/photos/dreadsword

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Wheelscore: Automotive Meme Tracker is live

Wheelscore is a second deployment of the TechWatching algorithm, now live and alive at http://wheelscore.com. If you’re into cars, you’ll like it. Feedback appreciated!

As noted on Twitter, there’s three more memetrackers in the works for launches in the next few weeks as well - stay tuned!

Btw - I’m out of Bangladesh, currently in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia where wifi is plentiful!

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