... There are currently over 17 million mobile phone subscribers and 15,000 Internet users in Afghanistan. By 2016, the ICT Sector Development Project, using the approved $50 million fund, plans to quadruple Internet users, lengthen the fiber optic network to connect most of Afghanistan’s provinces, increasing telephone penetration to 80 percent of the population. Kabul will even soon be launching its first telecommunication satellite and providing 3G Internet capabilities.

“Mobile phones have become the affordable luxury,” Khoja tells MediaGlobal.

This is in stark contrast to the Afghanistan of 2002, where 50 percent of landlines were located in Kabul causing less then 1 percent of Afghans to have access to telecommunication services. A phone could cost up to $500, a local call over $4 per minute, and an international phone call meant traveling 700 kilometers to a neighboring country.

Orange, which operates in 20 countries in Africa, with some 70 million subscribers, launched a technology known as unstructured supplementary service data (USSD), which requires low enough bandwidth to allow feature phones, even those without Internet service or data plans, to access a scaled-down, text version of Facebook.

The company said accessing Facebook via USSD does not require an application, and its customers only need to type a specific code to start sessions, followed by PIN codes to access the service securely.

To date, more than 293,000 pregnant women and new mothers are receiving free, personalized text messages with information on their pregnancy or their infant’s health. The service is adding new subscribers at a rate of between 500 to 600 a day, marketing manager Emilia Guasconi said.

While anyone can sign up for the messages, Guasconi said that texts are an especially effective way to reach low-income groups.

The Syrian government has ordered blocks on text messages when they contain politically sensitive terms such as “revolution” or “demonstration,” according to two people familiar with the filtering systems. A unit of the Syrian intelligence apparatus, known as “Branch 225,” often issues the instructions on which messages to block, they say.

Syriatel Mobile Telecom SA, the country’s largest mobile- phone operator, conducts the blocking with equipment from Cellusys Ltd., a privately-held company based in Dublin, according to one of the people, who is familiar with the filtering.

... John Aalbers, chief executive of Volubill, said the problem with data throttling is that it has a connotation of punishment. People surpass a certain data level, and then they’re slowed down. That’s why it typically provokes incensed reactions from customers.

In its annual Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast, Cisco looked at the state of worldwide mobile networks to reach some interesting conclusions.

Cisco said mobile data traffic more than doubled last year, increasing 133 percent. It said traffic will grow similarly in 2012, climbing 110 percent, and it will have increased 18-fold by 2016.

By that year, over half of mobile traffic will come from Asia Pacific and Western Europe, with the biggest gains coming from the Middle East and Africa, where traffic will have increased 36 times over, Cisco said.

And the research isn't just talking about annoying social behavior like texting while on a date, or talking on the phone in a movie theater.

The researchers found that after their subjects spent some time using their cell phones, they were less likely to volunteer for community service than those in the control groups who had not used their phones. Cell phone users were also less determined to solve word problems even though they knew that their answers would lead to a monetary donation to charity.

... The study also distinguished its subjects from users of other social media -- Facebook users -- in one of the tests. The authors found that participants felt more connected to others because of their cellphones than because of their Facebook accounts, suggesting that this difference in connectedness was the underlying driver of the observed phenomenon.

According to Reuters, the reaction on the Internet was swift and vitriolic.

First, there was a flurry of angry comments on Twitter - estimated at more than 30,000 in 24 hours. A Facebook page, "Saudi people want punishment for Hamza Kashgari," has quickly grown to more than 20,000 members.

...Kashgari has since apologized extensively for his tweets, and if he is repentant in court he could avoid the death penalty.

A Facebook page called Free Hamza Kashgari has popped up over the past week and now has 2,474 members. There is also an online petition demanding Kashgari's freedom.

The minister said the old system whereby government bought and distributed fertilisers was laden with corruption and inefficiency and also led to rent seeking and exploitation of farmers.

He said the new fertilisers voucher scheme was designed to get seeds and fertilisers to small holder farmers using their phones and biometrics to ensure authenticity.

Farmers will get subsidised fertilisers and seeds at the rate of 50 per cent of the cost of the seed and the cost of the fertilisers.

In a statement, Google stated that it "strongly discouraged" users from using Google Wallet on rooted devices.

It was also claimed that that prepaid credit in stolen handsets that had the screenlock switched off can be accessed simply by clearing the data and reinstalling the Google Wallet App.

Responding to this issue, on Friday evening, Google temporarily disabled provisioning of prepaid cards. The company said that it is looking for a permanent fix for this problem.

Mary Landesman, a senior security researcher at Cisco, says start-ups often do not build apps with security in mind. It seems the management philosophy of “ask for forgiveness, not permission” is becoming the “industry best practice.

.. The most sought-after bounty for state officials: dissidents’ address books, to figure out who they are in cahoots with, where they live and information about their family. In some cases, this information leads to roundups and arrests.

A person’s contacts are so sensitive that Alec Ross, a senior adviser on innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, said the State Department was supporting the development of an application that would act as a “panic button” on a smartphone, enabling people to erase all contacts with one click if they are arrested during a protest.

The proposal is part of a plan to extend Europe’s five-year-old limits on charges for voice, text and data roaming through 2022 and is likely go to a European Parliament vote by April. The current limits are set to expire in July.

... Plummeting digital storage costs will soon make it possible for authoritarian regimes to not only monitor known dissidents, but to also store the complete set of digital data associated with everyone within their borders. These enormous databases of captured information will create what amounts to a surveillance time machine, enabling state security services to retroactively eavesdrop on people in the months and years before they were designated as surveillance targets. This will fundamentally change the dynamics of dissent, insurgency and revolution.

The coming era of ubiquitous surveillance in authoritarian countries has important consequences for American foreign policy as well, impacting issues as diverse as human rights, trade, nuclear nonproliferation, export control, and intellectual property security.

Criminals as young as 13 years old have been spotted on bicycles and mopeds grabbing gadgets out of people's hands.

In one area of London, Islington, mobile snatching has increased by 400% in the past 12 months.

The equipment involves each cow wearing an intelligent collar that picks up on subtle movements with the same sensor used in Wii gaming and generates a continuous record of their activity patterns.

Results will then be sent back using a range of wireless technologies like 3G, with a full update accessible via a hub or even through a mobile phone. It is envisaged that farmers can set up alerts for their phone to receive a text when a cow is in distress, coming in to heat or entering labour.

The technology, called PocketTouch, was created by the Microsoft researchers Scott Saponas and Hrvoje Benko with Chris Harrison, a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The prototype uses sensors similar to those in most touch screens, and is mounted on the back of a smartphone case.

In a post on Nokia's "Conversations" blog, Ian Delaney lays out the company's public policy, which augments their supplier requirements.

Delaney boils the policy down to these four elements.

-- We prohibit human rights abuses associated with the extraction, transport or trade of minerals.

-- We also prohibit any direct or indirect support to non-state armed groups or security forces that illegally control or tax mine sites, transport routes, trade points, or any upstream actors in the supply chain.

-- We have no tolerance with regard to corruption, money-laundering and bribery.

-- We require the parties in our supply chain to agree to follow the same principles.

According to a study by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML), 92 percent of lawyers surveyed said smart phones are increasingly being used for evidence in divorce cases; 94 percent said they've seen an increase in the use of text messages specifically.

AML president Ken Altshuler said in a statement. "Text messages can be particularly powerful forms of evidence during a divorce case, because they are written records of someone’s thoughts, actions and intentions."

The new service via Iridium and Thuraya will allow people to share news and stay informed via Twitter even when they are in a war zone or an area affected by a natural disaster. It may also offer an alternative in countries such as China where governments block access to Twitter.

In the article titled “... FDA’s assault on mobile technologies, New regulations could be death blow to smartphone medical apps”, the writer makes many cogent observations including the real value that mobile medical technologies and applications could offer to improve access to care and reduce costs. In addition, the possibility of monitoring patients outside the clinic and offer real-time prompts could allow for behavior modification that encourage healthier choices, in a way that even the most earnest counseling by health care professionals cannot achieve.

However, the writer also mixes up many aspects of the evolution of mobile health technologies and its regulation to justify what seems to be an ideologically driven argument that regulation intrinsically inhibits innovation.

In reality, the FDA has issued a detailed draft guidance (July 2011) that lays down markers as to what they will and will not regulate in terms of mobile medical apps. Apps that are directed at consumers and which do not offer specific medical advice are clearly exempt as are informational apps for clinicians and apps which function as pass-through entities, providing feedback from sensors without interpretation.

What the FDA is very rightly concerned about are apps that interpret information and, with little oversight, drive clinical decision making.

This go-green initiative is the first of its kind among Buddhist temples in China. It helps reduce the size of crowds during peak seasons and lowers the risk of stampedes and fires," said Han Xue, a lay Buddhist who works at Guiyuan Temple in Wuhan, which has hundreds of thousands of visitors during Spring Festival.

... The temple, in cooperation with the Hubei branch of China Mobile, a leading Chinese telecom operator, offers a service of blessings sent by text messaging.

A message with eight or fewer characters costs 3 yuan, and longer ones of up to 20 characters cost 10 yuan. Normally, text messages cost no more than 0.15 yuan.

The sender writes the text of the blessing and includes the cell phone number of the receiver. China Mobile forwards the blessing to the receiver.

From 8 am to 5 pm, the messages are shown on an LED board at the southwest corner of the temple. Monks later chant prayers for the senders and receivers.

More than 30,000 people have already tried the service - they have to be China Mobile subscribers with phone numbers in Hubei province.

Traditionally, remittances - payments from diaspora back to the home country - are often made via wire transfer, check cashing, or payday loan services, all of which incur additional fees for the sender. Boom enables people in the U.S. to send any increment of money via a mobile phone.

It lowers the cost of sending money between immigrants and their families, and it improves their safety by reducing the risks of handling cash. It also creates new commerce capabilities, as users can receive payment for signing up others for the service.

To use Boom in the U.S., you can purchase a membership kit at participating 7-Eleven stores or by calling Boom customer service. To activate your account, you load money at the same stores, and then call Boom with the load receipt, an ID, and the membership kit.

PanicGuard was developed by entrepreneur Mikkel Dissing. “Everyone has a right to feel safe on the streets and in their own homes, but sadly that is not always the case,” says Dissing. “Our goal is to empower our users to feel more confident, knowing that without doing anything more than shaking their phone, they can instantly alert friends and family who can call the police to come to their aid and they will have the evidence to help them catch the criminal.”

It is estimated that over 120,000 people a year are victims of stalking in the UK. The app is intended to help the police gather evidence, which is streamed to a secure server rather than being stored on the handset.

...For example, a drug manufacturer makes a mobile app to remind patients when to take their medications and as a monitoring device for blood glucose levels for diabetics. A pharmacy benefit manager makes a mobile app to remind patients of prescription refills. These apps are convenient and provide valuable services to patients who seek to better manage their health. Importantly, the apps are cheap or free for consumers, and cost little to develop and distribute. A win for everyone, right?

Not if the FDA gets involved. The average time to approve a medical device is about three years and can cost upward of $75 million. In the software market, that is a lifetime. Additionally, if mobile apps are regulated as medical devices, they will be subject to the health care reform law’s 2.3 percent medical-device tax, raising prices as taxes are passed on to consumers. Free apps may no longer be free.

Constraints on speed to market and increased regulatory costs combined with tax-driven price increases may cause developers to move on to other, less burdensome endeavors.

In the developing world, where landlines are especially scarce in rural areas, mobiles have been used for governance, banking, agriculture, education, health, commerce, reporting news, political participation, and reducing corruption.

But the ubiquity of the mobile phone - and its application to a diverse and growing set of development goals - doesn?t guarantee economic or social progress.

Are mobiles just another high-tech solution to what are essentially systemic and deeply rooted problems? Are mobile solutions for combating global poverty overhyped?

Yes, mobile solutions are overhyped. At the moment, there is tremendous excitement around using mobile phones to address illness, ignorance, oppression, and other socio-economic challenges of the developing world. Within a decade, though, I expect that we?ll look back and see mobile development just as we view 1960s attempts to tackle the same problems with television ? the technology has great potential, but overall it?s just an unproductive diversion.

Cheerleaders for mobile development point out that there are nearly six billion active mobile accounts in the world, and that mobile phones are increasingly used by the remotest rural villagers. It?s hard, indeed, to overhype the business success or the consumer appeal of mobile phones.

Market penetration, however, is not the same as meaningful impact.

Technology amplifies human intent and capacity, but technology by itself doesn?t fix challenges of intent or capacity. What?s overhyped is a belief that mobile-centric programs are a cost-effective means to combat disease, improve education, or alleviate poverty, as if mobile or not were the essential question. What?s overhyped is technological innovation as a primary solution to complex social problems, at the expense of tested-and-true interventions that nurture people and institutions.