US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner visits Eko

It was an eventful day for Eko. Timothy Geithner (wiki) today visited an Eko SBI CSP (Customer Service Point) and spent time there interacting with the customers, retailers and staff understanding how Eko is trying to change the way banking is done in India.

(Pic courtesy: Purva Gupta, Eko.)

Heres some coverage by Reuters, a string of images on WSJ, Economic Times, Yahoo News.

Also, do check out our facebook presence, and get updated with the latest at Eko.

How our brains are tuned to the pentatonic scale- Bobby McFerrin

I am no musician, but based on what I understand, a musical scale is an arrangement of a set of notes (pitches/ frequencies) within an octave (a mathematically repeatable range). Most of us have heard about the Heptatonic scale with seven pitches. It seems that the Pentatonic scale with five pitches is something that we are naturally attuned to (even a child inherently finds it easier to understand).

Most TED videos are really cool. They have added a section called the 'Best of the Web' and this one featuring Bobby McFerrin is simply amazing. Most of us know of Bobby McFerrin through his wonderful song 'Don't worry, be happy' (click on this wiki link to read more about this song's Indian connection) with a video featuring Robbin Williams, which won the Song of the Year Grammy in 1989. In the following video, he demonstrates how natural the pentatonic scale is to the human mind.

The following is the YouTube video:


Amazing.

Washing Machine Sans Power

Thanks to the bollywood movie 3 idiots, grassroots innovation in India has been brought to the limelight. The HoneyBee Network has been a pretty successful attempt at aggregating such innovations in India.

One such innovation was the pedal powered washing machine by Remya Jose (who's also a Keralite  :) ),




As anyone who has tried washing clothes on their own, without the machine, would acknowledge - it is a pain and a sheer waste of time and energy that could perhaps be put to better use. For many who have the time and do not mind a 'workout'- washing by hand still remains a lucrative option. However, gauging by the attempts made at simplifying this chore, I guess no one would mind a quick and cheap alternative.

I also chanced upon another product called 'cyclean' though it had nothing to do with India, I came across the link through Rahul Brown's blog post.

The latest design I have come across was through BoingBoing and has inspired this blog post by its simplicity (though I cannot vouch for its effectiveness). Its called Swirl. Forgiving their attempts at stereotyping the developing world through their website, I kinda like concept. Its a marriage between the well known and elegantly simple Q-Drum (a jerry can which can be rolled on the ground) and a washing machine drum. The following is the result:

It actually tries to make washing clothes fun!
So, whats your wash flavor- electric, pedaled, rolled or kicked about?

101st Post

Blogger says I've already made 100 posts. Here's a post which sounds like a tweet ;)

Microtelecom

Most of us would have heard of the term microfinance (oft misused for micro-credit). Here is an interesting company called VNL (Vihaan Networks Limited. 'Vihaan' apparently means new dawn) which promotes the concept of 'microtelecom' through its innovative, open-source, low-power, low-overhead, easily-installable, non-airconditioned, (even solar powered!) rural telecom infrastructure system called WorldGSM

I believe, along with its other counter-part - solar/ low-powered mobile handsets (powering the next billion cell-phones), this forms a really viable ecosystem.

The future of micro-finance itself depends on the way in which mobile telephony is (and will continue to be) able to permeate to everyone in the pyramid. We already know that the catchphrase 'roti, kapda aur makaan' ('food, clothing and shelter') has already been hacked in India as 'roti, kapda and mobile' ;). Already, call rates in India are the lowest in the world (1/2 paise, per second is the latest mobile ad-lingo). Such low-cost access to communication requires a new outlook and thus the jargon 'microtelecom' fits right in. Once microtelecom is in, can microfinance be far behind (Its actually doing pretty fine with even plain-old telephony :))?

Related:
Vihaan offers low cost network for rural areas
VNL Blog

Sense Substitution

Two interesting products from the field of neural interfaces.

Both of them leverage the fact that our sensory organs are just transducers which give inputs to a really flexible and remarkable signal processing system called the brain. This makes it possible to use one sensory organ to achieve a similar result to that of another. Sensory substitution.

In a very indirect way, sign-language or braille could be considered as external sense substitutions. But these two instances that I came across thanks to Engadget and Google, a few months ago, are much more direct. Interestingly, this article from HowStuffWorks seems to suggest that folks have been trying this since the 1900s!

The first is called BrainPort (their corporate site talks about a more clinical use of their product).
Essentially, here vision is being substituted by taste!
Do watch the following video:


And heres the second one.
Check out this browser screenshot to know how I came across this ;-)

I think this (seeingwithsound) is a way cooler solution. The interface is much more natural and amenable to daily use. Well, here, vision is being substituted by stereo sound - almost sonar.

In case you want to try what this feels like, just download their free windows software winvoice, plug in your web cam and put on a stereo headset. Definitely has room for improvement, but I like the ease and simplicity it offers (they even have j2me, winmo and android mobile phone app versions!).

The best part - both of them are non-invasive, non-risky and do not cost a lot. I hope this helps a lot of people who really need it now. Certainly good news.

Eko rebranded

If you'd noticed, Eko has changed its colors and its logo over the past few days. Instead of orange, it now sports an earthy green and has a tail-piece (lets call it 'slash dash') added which makes it identify itself with the way most Indians sign off a cash amount while writing it on paper.

So adieu ol' logo

And a warm welcome to the new one

How do you find our new logo?

William Kamkwamba: Building a windmill

The following is the 2009 TED talk by William Kamkwamba who simply set up a windmill in his backyard. Inspired by two library books (more by the cover on one), from a really constrained background, with a scrapyard for raw materials and despite the local skepticism and superstition, William did what he set out to do.

His simple message - to never give up. Do also scroll down to view his 2007 TED appearance.



And heres his TED appearance in 2007:



TED is simply amazing!

I think it would be great to have a TED equivalent on prime time media in India instead of some of those really crappy shows and weepy soaps. Imagine how many little sparks this could ignite across a country like ours (and indeed in many other countries as well). This enthusiasm needs to be made infectious.

Patient Capital - Sunflowers in the desert

The poor need tools more than charity.
People providing these tools need more support and capital than mere aid.
And most importantly, the folks supporting these people need
a deep understanding of social capital and delayed monetization.
Jacqueline appropriately calls this - Patient Capital.

Another great TED Talk by Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO Acumen Fund:
(Courtesy: Guy Kawasaki)

Related: "Poor Aren't Lifeless Bricks"

Aggregation of Senses

I like Nostradamizing the future of telecommunications. So, if you're in the mood for some etherspeak; read on...

One major hypothesis I have is that user interfaces will be neural in nature.

Here's another one: Services in the future will be about aggregation of senses.

Just look around- Blogs are an aggregation of personal journals. Social Networking is about aggregation of weak-relationships. Advertisement is about aggregation of perceived demand. Cloud Computing aggregates processing power. Malls and Shopping Centers aggregate sales. Indices aggregate performance. Cities aggregate people. Banks aggregate liabilities and assets, Cosmopolitanism aggregates outlooks. The list is varied and colorful. (Btw, a list aggregates items ;))

I think we intuitively like to see things bundled together.

So, what does aggregation do?
It:
-Hides complexities
-Introduces redundancy
-Eliminates single points of failures
-Massively empowers
-Still maintains individual identity
-Assumes positive outcomes for decisions made on/by scale ('all' cannot be wrong)

Heres what I mean by aggregation of senses.
In the far future, thanks to neural inter-networks, decisions, opinions and actions could be based on collective sensory experiences.

• It will no longer matter if a friend is visually impaired, because vision would already have been aggregated, he could easily see through the eyes of his willing friends or even his cellphone camera. Maybe, even the cellphone would no longer need a camera!

• When you drive (your futurecar), if you've subscribed to drive aggregation on the road, you'll be able to easily speak on the cell phone while you drive at 300 mph, because when you do, the necessary inputs and processing for avoiding mishaps will come from various people in your proximity and even electronic sensors within the vehicle and on the road

• Virtual people will have 'real' implications. Virtual worlds will exist seamlessly with the real world.

By the time these things come to pass, the human brain would also have evolved sufficiently to handle such large volumes of data. Information density per person in 2009 is definitely magnitudes larger than what it was in 1909 and the only way it is heading is north, unless the human race decides one fine morning to completely shun technology.

This is the kind of stuff, that I think the Googles of the future will be busy provisioning, the people of the future subscribing to and the payment companies of the future banking on.

Snap, snap... back to reality.