Mobile Technology: What's New?

Yes, you have a cell phone right now and a computer and you are starting to use them together. You have also connected your camera to your TV, your computer and your phone so while you are watching your favourite program, you will see on the screen who is calling you or e-mailing you or just wants to chat with you and who has posted on your wall on Facebook. It makes the old answering machine look like steam technology and converges all you communications into one site. This is just the beginning. Tsunami of new apps is building to integrate all your devices for a much improved communications experience especially in energy management and home management.

Profiling and targeting have now become so focused to your own locality that you can download coupons for your favourite stores trying to make you captives of what they nicely call permission marketing. Group On is in your face now! Still, we can't opt out of this world. My husband has registered his email in our local M&M store in Ontario and enjoys reading the weekly deals seated in his computer in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Says it gives him an idea of food price inflation and consumption trends. What can I say?

Many networks now promise seamless connection in dozens of countries. It always amazes me when books are downloaded to my Kindle in airports in Shanghai, Bangkok or Singapore. I can use Whispernet to get my e-mails and search the Net. I love skirting the massive hourly costs of hotels for Wi-Fi with the readers 3G. With roaming options now, it is cheaper for me to buy a phone in the United States or the Philippines and just sign in for roaming options. Or some phones now have 3 Sim cards so I can buy Sim cards in each of the countries I frequent and just pay local fees. My sister uses the roaming option so whichever country she happens to be I can easily call her on the same number. And it does not carry the expensive rates North American phones charge for international. You can also use Skype as we do and now with Skype apps on the smart phone, this gets even easier and more portable. I can remember $60 phone calls from Africa and Asia just a few years ago and now they can be free with VOIP.

It's coming! All you need to carry when you go out is your smart phone. Just wave it to pay your taxi, your lunch, your train or subway ticket, gas and other transactions. This area got so much interest at the recent World Mobile Congress in Barcelona that they had to split the session in two.

Here is the latest social media closely following Facebook. This is closer to home as well. You can interact with people in your neighborhood and you will find out what places they constantly visit, which restaurants they frequent and where they usually hang out. You can upload pictures of places you visit and they interact with you when they see these and get interested. What a mine of information for advertisers. Someone just put over 40 million in this app so if you're not in yet, check it out: COLOR.

But here is what I admire. These solutions are just not there to make money although there is nothing wrong with that because to make money, the applications are making life better for many people. Mobile Health and Mobile Agriculture and Mobile Banking are changing the possibilities for people. In Africa, where supply distribution of medicines can mean life and death for so many people, they have used mobiles to monitor the inventory and have saved lives in the process by ensuring supply of medicines . Farmers are now sharing resources through mobile and can get answers to questions that they are able to save their crops. Villagers who had to walk for a full day to do banking can now do it from home.

Farmers in Argentina just can't be left behind. Having enjoyed the good price for their products, the farmers are now participating in the newly launched, Sojabook, so named after soy. So now it is not surprising to see an Argentine farmer with his netbook on one side and his iphone on the other. Through the network, they can exchange tips and find out the best sources for their needs as well as prices for their produce.

So, the work for us is to see how we can tweak these developments to open new futures for millions of people who are now "connected"?