Half of Africa's one billion population has a mobile phone – and not just for talking. The power of telephony is forging a new enterprise culture, from banking to agriculture to healthcare.

Mobile phones in Uganda's capital, Kampala: 10 million people across the country own a phone. Photograph: Yousef Eldin

Earlier this month, on a short bus ride through the centre of Kampala, I decided to carry out an informal survey. Passing through the Ugandan capital's colourful and chaotic streets, I would attempt to count the signs of the use of mobile phones in evidence around me. These included phone shops and kiosks, street-corner airtime vendors and giant billboard ads, as well as people actually using their mobile phones: a girl in school uniform writing a text message as she hurried along the street, a businessman calmly making a call from the back of a motorcycle taxi swerving through heavy rush-hour traffic. Not only were half of the passengers on my bus occupied with their handsets, our driver was too, thumbing at his keypad as he ferried us to our final destination. After five minutes, I lost count and retired with a sore neck. There was more evidence here than I could put a number on.

My survey underlined a simple fact: Africa has experienced an incredible boom in mobile phone use over the past decade. In 1998, there were fewer than four million mobiles on the continent. Today, there are more than 500 million. In Uganda alone, 10 million people, or about 30% of the population, own a mobile phone, and that number is growing rapidly every year. For Ugandans, these ubiquitous devices are more than just a handy way of communicating on the fly: they are a way of life.

It may seem unlikely, given its track record in technological development, but Africa is at the centre of a mobile revolution. In the west, we have been adapting mobile phones to be more like our computers: the smartphone could be described as a PC for your pocket. In Africa, where a billion people use only 4% of the world's electricity, many cannot afford to charge a computer, let alone buy one. This has led phone users and developers to be more resourceful, and African mobiles are being used to do things that the developed world is only now beginning to pick up on.

The most dramatic example of this is mobile banking. Four years ago, in neighbouring Kenya, the mobile network Safaricom introduced a service called M-Pesa which allows users to store money on their mobiles. If you want to pay a utilities bill or send money to a friend, you simply dispatch the amount by text and the recipient converts it into cash at their local M-Pesa office. It is cheap, easy to use and, for millions of Africans unable to access a bank account or afford the hefty charges of using one, nothing short of revolutionary.

Safaricom didn't invent mobile banking: it existed previously in countries such as Norway and Japan, but on a small scale and with nothing like the seismic effect it had in Kenya. The established banks weren't happy at first – they tried to shut down M-Pesa soon after it started – but now they are getting in on the game, and it is estimated that by 2015 global mobile transactions will exceed one trillion dollars. According to California-based mobile-banking innovator Carol Realini, executive chairman of Obopay: "Africa is the Silicon Valley of banking. The future of banking is being defined here… It's going to change the world."

The mobile banking phenomenon spread quickly to other countries in the developing world. Uganda's largest telecom company, MTN Uganda, created its own version, MobileMoney, in March 2009. Within a year, 600,000 Ugandans had signed up. Now, thanks to aggressive recruitment drives to win more subscribers – MTN agents trolling the streets for new customers are known as "foot soldiers" – the service has more than 1.6 million users.

MobileMoney outlets are everywhere in 2011: the distinctive canary-yellow buildings and kiosks that house them are dotted around not just Kampala but the greater part of the country. The MTN network reaches 85% of Uganda, and MobileMoney is available everywhere MTN has coverage. Many of the villages I travelled through, however minor or remote, had at least one tell-tale splash of yellow.

Mobile phones carry huge economic potential in undeveloped parts of Africa. A 2005 London Business School study found that for every additional 10 mobile phones per 100 people in a developing country, GDP rises by 0.5%. As well as enabling communication and the movement of money, mobile networks can also be used to spread vital information about farming and healthcare to isolated rural areas vulnerable to the effects of drought and disease.

Despite the proliferation of phones in Uganda, however, a digital divide persists. How can information be understood and properly implemented when more than a third of the country's adult population cannot read or write? And can complex and detailed information be managed by anything less than a smartphone, which is beyond the means of most Ugandans?

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BerlinBundesjustizministerin Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger erwartet nach dem Urteil des Europäischen Gerichtshofs für Menschenrechte (EGMR) zur Meinungsfreiheit von Arbeitnehmern hierzulande eine starke Auseinandersetzung über die Veröffentlichung von Missständen. „Die EGMR-Entscheidung wird die Diskussion in Deutschland beleben, wie man mit Whistleblowing in allen Bereichen umgeht“, sagte Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger dem Handelsblatt.

„Wer Kenntnis von unethischen oder illegalen Zuständen hat und die Entscheidung trifft, solche Zustände öffentlich zu machen, bewegt sich in einem Spannungsfeld", betonte die Justizministerin. Auf der einen Seite gebe es zweifellos Missstände, die an die Öffentlichkeit gehörten, damit sie bekämpft würden - und die nur durch Whistleblowing bekannt werden könnten. „Auf der einen Seite muss sich jeder Arbeitgeber oder Behördenchef auf seine Mitarbeiter verlassen können“, sagte die FDP-Politikerin. Bei der Reform des Beschäftigtendatenschutzes habe sie sich dafür eingesetzt, dass sich Angestellte bei Datenschutzverstößen jederzeit an die Aufsichtsbehörden wenden könnten.

Der Europäische Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte hatte am Donnerstag entschieden, dass die fristlose Kündigung einer Arbeitnehmerin wegen der Veröffentlichung von Missständen bei ihrem Arbeitgeber gegen die Menschenrechtskonvention verstößt.

Targeted online advertising has left many people slightly creeped out by the many ways strangers collect their online data. But a new study suggests that strangers aren’t the only people who are likely to collect personal information without your notice.

The study, which surveyed more than 1,000 online individuals, found that the percentage of significant others, spouses and parents who admit to digital snooping is significant and — at least among romantic partners — on the rise. It was commissioned by consumer electronics search engine and review site Retrevo.

About 33% of respondents admitted to checking a significant other’s email or call history without their partner’s knowledge at least once. Married couples were even more likely to snoop, with 37% of married respondents admitting the same.

Parents, however, were the worst online snoopers. Thirty-nine percent of mothers and 36% of fathers said they had done some digital snooping (across the board, women were more likely to admit to snooping than men). The majority of parents, 59%, also said that tracking their children’s location with a cell phone service or other device wouldn’t be a problem.

“Consumers may have just as much to fear from people they know than big corporations,” reads the study’s conclusion.

Do these results surprise you? Do you think that there’s ever an excuse for online snooping? Is it right for parents to snoop on their children?

Seit dem heutigen Mittwoch haben aufmerksame Verbraucher eine neue Anlaufstelle für Beschwerden von irreführenden Lebensmittelkennzeichnungen: Die Verbraucherzentrale Hessen und die Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband haben die Webseite Lebensmittelklarheit.de gelauncht. Aufgrund des großen Andrangs von 20.000 Anfragen pro Sekunde brach das Portal kurz nach dem Start zusammen. Ute Bitter, Sprecherin der Verbraucherzentrale Hessen, sprach gegenüber dapd von einem "echten Überlastungsproblem".

 

Das Portal solle schnellstmöglich stabilisiert werden, so Bitter weiter.

Bundesverbraucherministerin Ilse Aigner und die Verbraucherzentralen hatten am Vormittag den Startschuss für die Webseite gegeben. Verbraucher werden darauf dazu aufgerufen, sogenannte "Mogelpackungen" zu melden. Eine Fachredaktion prüft dann die anonym gestellten Fragen zu Aufmachung und Kennzeichnung der Lebensmitteilung und leitet den Fall bei eindeutigen Rechtsverstößen an die Lebensmittelüberwachung weiter. Für den Start wurden rund 20 Produktbeispiele online gestellt. In regelmäßigen Abständen sollen Chats zu wechselnden Themen angeboten werden.

Begleitend zum Internetportal wird es zudem Marktuntersuchungen und Verbraucherbefragungen geben, um die Repräsentativität der im Internet gewonnenen Erkenntnisse zu überprüfen, kündigten die Initiatoren an.

Bereits zum Start wurde Kritik an dem Projekt laut. Industrie und FDP hatten die Webseite als "Internet-Pranger" bezeichnet. Aigner wies dies zurück. "Wir fördern den Dialog, das ist das Gegenteil von Pranger", wird die Bundesverbraucherministerin zitiert. Ihr Ministerium fördert das Portal mit 775.000 Euro im Zweitraum von zwei Jahren.

 

The Internet of Things, when real world objects are connected to the Internet, is a trend that we've been actively tracking since early 2009. So far a lot of big technology infrastructure and solutions companies have gotten behind the trend, for the simple reason that they see a huge market opportunity. As more and more 'things' go on the Net, it creates more demand for network infrastructure like sensors and routers. Enter the likes of Cisco and Verizon Wireless. Likewise, more technology solutions will be developed to upload and manage data from real world objects. Enter the likes of IBM and HP.

Cisco has designed an infographic that offers a simple example of how Internet of Things will affect you in your everyday life. It also states that by 2020, there will be 50 billion 'things' connected to the Internet - everything from your body, car, alarm clock and even cows.

There has been some contention about the number of connected things and by when. Cisco's prediction of 50 billion devices by 2020 matches Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg's prediction earlier this year within a similar time period. However IBM recently put it at 1 trillion connected devices by 2015. Indeed in April 2010, Cisco's own CTO Padmasree Warrior said that by 2013 the number of devices connected to the Internet will reach 1 trillion. So even Cisco doesn't seem to have a consistent prediction.

Regardless, as the infographic below shows, the number of things connected to the Internet has already exceeded the number of people on earth. So this is a big trend - and big business for Cisco and other technology companies.

Infographic via All Things D

Roughly 40 law enforcement agencies around the country are using iPhones to identify people with a criminal record, WSJ reports.

The technology is developed by BI2 Technologies, out of Massachusetts.

By taking a photograph from a distance of five feet or less, cops will be able to check someone's face against a database of criminal photos. It can even scan someone's iris.

There are interesting legalities involved -- facial recognition is a hot button issue when it comes to privacy law, and only certain states are granting access to their photo database.

Either way, it's a cool reminder about how robust the iPhone platform is.

The widespread use of search engines and online databases has affected the way people remember information, researchers are reporting.

The scientists, led by  Betsy Sparrow, an assistant professor of psychology at Columbia, wondered whether  people were more likely to remember information that could be easily retrieved from a computer, just as students are more likely to recall facts they believe will be on a test.

Dr. Sparrow and her collaborators, Daniel M. Wegner of Harvard and Jenny Liu of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, staged four different memory experiments. In one, participants typed 40 bits of trivia — for example, “an ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain” — into a computer. Half of the subjects believed the information would be saved in the computer; the other half believed the items they typed would be erased.

The subjects were significantly more likely to remember information if they thought they would not be able to find it later. “Participants did not make the effort to remember when they thought they could later look up the trivia statement they had read,” the authors write.

A second experiment was aimed at determining whether computer accessibility affects precisely what we remember. “If asked the question whether there are any countries with only one color in their flag, for example,” the researchers wrote, “do we think about flags — or immediately think to go online to find out?”

In this case, participants were asked to remember both the trivia statement itself and which of five computer folders it was saved in. The researchers were surprised to find that people seemed better able to recall the folder.

“That kind of blew my mind,” Dr. Sparrow said in an interview.

The experiment explores an aspect of what is known as transactive memory — the notion that we rely on our family, friends and co-workers as well as reference material to store information for us.

“I love watching baseball,” Dr. Sparrow said. “But I know my husband knows baseball facts, so when I want to know something I ask him, and I don’t bother to remember it.”

The Internet’s effects on memory are still largely unexplored, Dr. Sparrow said, adding that her experiments had led her to conclude that the Internet has become our primary external storage system.

“Human memory,” she said, “is adapting to new communications technology.”

 

Asia-Pacific is economically diverse, but universally high mobile usage unites the region. Mobile users in Asia-Pacific are increasingly looking at their phones as a first screen, whether to download media, access the internet or communicate with peers—and marketers.

eMarketer estimates over 2.1 billion people in Asia-Pacific will use a mobile phone at least monthly this year, representing over half the population of the region. By the end of 2011, Asia-Pacific will account for 56% of all mobile users in the world. Growth will be steady, with penetration reaching 72.6% by 2015 for a mobile population of nearly 2.9 billion.

“There is a dramatic contrast between highly advanced mobile countries such as Japan and South Korea and huge developing nations like China and India,” said Noah Elkin, eMarketer principal analyst and author of the new report, “Asia-Pacific Mobile: Redefining the Digital Landscape.” “And within the emerging markets in particular, there is a second divide, where the majority of mobile users own simple prepaid phones and a small but growing number sport smartphones and advanced feature phones.”

Mobile phones in some developing markets may have limited capabilities, but that is not stopping consumers from using them in innovative and unexpected ways. Internet access rates are high despite the preponderance of feature phones, and SMS remains a vital tool for delivering everything from marketing messages to banking services.

eMarketer estimates just under 30% of Asia-Pacific mobile users, or 623.3 million, will log on to the web via mobile at least monthly in 2011. Mobile internet penetration is expected to rise to 42.1% of mobile users in the region by 2015. And for many of these users, mobile is the first screen for internet access.

As the mobile internet user population mushrooms, mobile advertising is forecast to see similarly meteoric growth. Combined mobile ad spending for the region’s three largest markets—Japan, China and India—will rise from $2.01 billion in 2011 to $3.94 billion in 2015.

“Mobile devices have grown ubiquitous across Asia-Pacific, and marketers have likewise become an omnipresent part of the landscape,” said Elkin. “With mobile as the first or only screen, users are well acquainted with and often more accepting of mobile advertising.”

More Americans own Smartphones than hold a bachelor’s degree or speak another language in their homes, according to a Pew Internet Project report released Monday.

In a telephone survey, 83% of respondents said that they owned a cellphone of some kind and 35% of the 2,277 U.S. adults questioned in English or Spanish said that they owned a smartphone.

Not surprisingly, wealthy, well-educated and young respondents all had high levels of smartphone ownership. African-Americans and Latinos in the survey were also more likely to own smartphones than whites. But just about everyone who owned a smartphone was likely to use that phone to access the Internet.

Nine in 10 smartphone owners (87%) used their phones as Internet portals — about 78% of them did so every day. Nearly a third of smartphone owners use their device as their primary Internet connection.

With so many people relying on their phones for both verbal and digital communication, it’s no wonder the word cloud the researchers compiled to show respondents’ feelings toward their cellphones includes words like “necessary,” “convenient” and even, perhaps somewhat disturbingly, “love.”

In die großen US-Medien hat es dieser Vorgang bisher nicht gebracht, dabei bietet er doch genügend Reizworte: Apple, Geheimdienste, gehackte E-Mailserver. Seit Monaten liegt das Material im Netz, aus dem man auf ein bemerkenswertes Zusammenspiel eines Apple-Mitarbeiters und einiger Angestellter von US-Rüstungsfirmen schließen kann. Geschrieben hat darüber bislang nur ein Gastblogger auf der Website des US-Magazins " Forbes", und einer im Online-Angebot des " Guardian" - das war's auch schon mit den Mainstream-Medien.

Die Geschichte: Im Juli vor einem Jahr stimmten ein Apple-Mitarbeiter und einige Angestellte von US-Rüstungsunternehmen per E-Mail einen interessanten Termin ab. Mitte Juli wollten sie über die "Infrastruktur und Strategie" des Projekts Coin sprechen - wenn man davon ausgeht, dass die E-Mails authentisch sind. Coin war allem Anschein nach der Name für das Projekt einer US-Regierungsorganisation zur Auslandsaufklärung. Das legen E-Mails nahe, die Hacker von den Servern des US-Sicherheitsdienstleisters HBGary Federal entwendet und veröffentlicht haben.

Zehntausend E-Mails sind inzwischen im Volltext online recherchierbar. Für den Datendiebstahl nennt sich die Anonymous-Gruppierung verantwortlich. Aus den Firmen-E-Mails geht hervor, dass zu den Kunden von HBGary Federal unter anderem das US-Heimatschutzministerium zählte. Die Manager der Firma waren zuvor beim Rüstungskonzern Northrop Grumman tätig, haben mit Vertretern mehrerer US-Nachrichtendienste gearbeitet. HBGary Federal hatte damals Anfragen von SPIEGEL ONLINE zu den veröffentlichten E-Mails nicht beantwortet.

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