You have to doff your cap to bill gates. I really respect him for trying to use his wealth to make the world a better place. Just take a look at the list of world’s wealthiest people and identify how many are giving back to society. There is warren buffett and not many others. Warren Buffett to me is almost like god on this earth. Can you imagine the world’s richest man giving away almost everything he made to someone else’s charity foundation so that together they can make a difference to the world? That is the most selfless act I have seen in my life. Someone who can do that must have no ego. It also says a lot about the friendship and trust between buffett and bill gates.
Now coming back to bill gates, he is definitely shooting for the stars. Bill and Melinda foundation is working on the world’s biggest problems such as treatments for diseases that cripple the world’s poorest countries.
Bill gates now wants to make banking easily accessible to the developing world using mobile phones. Mobile banking to me is not just about managing your money in the bank. It is an enabler to micro loans etc.
The GSMA, a worldwide consortium of mobile industries, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (owned by the guy who used to run Microsoft and his lady wife) have teamed up to found the the Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) initiative, allowing folks in developing countries to carry out mobile banking from their non-smartphones and keep and grow their money in a safe and affordable fashion.
The Foundation has donated $12.5 million to the endeavor and is currently working to “catalyze a new wave of mobile money innovation” and will support 20 projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The ultimate goal? Supply 20 million unbanked people with mobile financial services by 2012.
Not many people may know that Google is dabbling in movie making. Last year they announced a partnership with seth mcfarlane, creator of the popular TV show ‘family guy’, to produce a series of webisodes to be distributed exclusvely on the web by google.
Soon google could be an oscar winner. A google funded film is nominated for an academy award.
On Sunday, the Internet company will find out if a film that its philanthropic arm conceived of and bankrolled has won an Academy Award for best short documentary. The Final Inch, a 38-minute history about the battle to eradicate polio, was nominated for an Oscar back in November.
Rory Cellan-Jones asks an interesting question. Who in the mobile world is more of a game changer (at this point) - google or apple?
Two years ago all the talk at the Mobile World Congress was of the imminent arrival of the Apple iPhone, and how it was going to change the industry. One year ago, all the talk was of Google’s open-source Android operating system, and what a radical impact that might have. In each case, the big established players blew a collective raspberry at the thought that these upstarts would rock their world - so how much has changed?
There is no doubt in my mind that apple iphone is the bigger game changer (as a thought leader) as of now, though google android could change that in the future. As I mentioned earlier I see apple iphone doing to mobile platform what netscape brwoser did to internet. Isee android as firefox of the mobile platform.
As you know one of my biggest pet peeves is the lack of flash support on iphone and most other mobile phones. I want to enjoy my favorite flash web apps on my mobile. Currently it takes too much effort on the part of the content publishers to repurpose their video and other content for the mobile devices. Now there is some good news. Adobe is getting aggressive in pushing flash on to the mobile devices.
Is the web killing the DVD as the DVD killed the VCR? The DVD sales are continuing their decline according to news reports.
For years now, there’s been rumbling that the DVD market – the studios’ most reliable and robust cash cow – has been flattening, with Hollywood treating the news like a 4.1 level earthquake in Corona.
But in recent weeks, it’s become clear that this is no tremor — more like a 6.6 level seism running right down Hollywood Boulevard.
As home libraries have reached saturation levels and audiences have sought new forms of entertainment (as in, videogames and the Internet), consumer spending on home video entertainment has been on a downward spiral, dropping to $22.4 billion in 2008 from a peak of $24.9 in 2004, according to the Digital Entertainment Group.
The numbers for DVDs alone are even less comforting. After reaching a peak in 2006 with rentals and sales of $24.1 billion, they’ve declined to $21.6 billion in 2008.
Even new blockbuster releases are not making a ka-ching sound when they move to DVD.
And the introduction of high-definition DVDs is not proving to be the saving grace that studios had prayed for.
It is official. Microsoft has apple envy. It is clear that microsoft now sees the iphone platform as a major threat to its os dominance. It is feeling the heat from the netbooks on pcs, google on the web, and now iphone on the mobile front. When the going gets tough, they copy. So it is not surprising to see their announcement today that their new windows mobile 6.5 os offers a mobile application marketplace similar to the popular iphone appstore. I am happy to see the mobile platforms opening up more and more thanks to apple’s iphone. It is about time.
Remember Web TV, the company that tried to bring the web to the TV during the dot com times? Well, we are still waiting for its vision to come true. When will the TVs come internet enabled? NYT asks the same question.
You would be hard-pressed to find a screen today that does not have Internet access. It’s not just the PC and the phone — online content appears in elevators, in the back of taxis and at your airplane seat. Some companies have even tried (albeit unsuccessfully) to get the Internet displayed on a refrigerator door.
So how is it that the Internet has largely escaped the single biggest screen in most of our lives — the TV?