Modern Science and Technology and the Challenges of Third World Countries

We live in a highly sophisticated world where everything is almost achievable. There would probably have been no changes between the world of today and that of three centuries ago if necessity and serendipitous discoveries had not driven men to achieve great things. Science and technology have had huge positive effects on every society. The world today has gone digital, even human thought. Our world has been reduced to a global village and is better for it.

The benefits of science and technology far outweigh every perceived shortcoming. Some of the biggest effects of technology are in the area of communication; through the internet and mobile phones. There is advancement of communication and expansions of economic commerce. Today we hear of information and communication technology (ICT). Any institution worth its name must have it in place to be really outstanding. Information technology has become boosted in today's generation; from the field of communication, business, education, and down to the entertainment industry. Through information technology, work performances are boosted with less effort and greater productivity by using various operations. Without computers or the internet, it will be difficult for people all over the world to get their questions answered. One may use the internet to locate a wealth of information with which to answer an essay question that may have been assigned at school, communicate with people, conduct transactions, access news, buy and advertise goods. The list is endless.

The advancement of Science and technology allow mass communication today so that we not only have the television, radio and newspaper, but even mobile phones which renders a multipurpose service; from long distance calls, listening to radio and music, playing games, taking pictures, recording voice and video, and browsing the internet. The benefits we obtain as a result of services from ICT have become widespread in our generation today. It improves the productive level of individuals and workers because People's knowledge of life beyond the area they lived in is now unlimited. This idea of mass communication also profoundly affects politics as leaders now have many ways they talk directly to the people. Apart from going on air to use radio or television, politicians resort to the social media for some of their political comments and campaign. Information about protests and revolutions are being circulated online, especially through social media. This has caused political upheavals and resulted in change of government in most countries today.

Furthermore, current global issues are much more accessible to the public. Communication has been brought also to the next level because one can find new ways to be able to communicate with loved ones at home.

Science and technology expand society's knowledge. Science helps humans gain increased understanding of how the world works, while technology helps scientists make these discoveries. Learning has maximized because of different media that are being developed which are all interactive and which bring learning experiences to the next level. Businesses have grown and expanded because of breakthroughs in advertising.

Modern technology has changed the way many companies produce their goods and handle their business. The idea and use of video and web conferencing, for instance, has helped companies remove geographical barriers and given them the opportunity to reach out to employees and clients through out the world. In today's economy, it has helped companies reduce the cost and inconveniences of travelling, allowing them to meet as often as they could like without having to worry about finding the budget to settle it. Modern technology helps companies reduce their carbon footprint and become green due to the fact that almost anything can be done from a computer.

There have been advances in medical care through the development of science and technology. Advances in medical technology have contributed immensely in extending the life span of people. People with disabilities or health problems are now more and more able to live closer to normal lives. This is because science contributes to developing medications to enhance health as well as technology such as mobile chairs and even electronics that monitor current body levels. Most devices used by the physically challenged people are customized and user friendly.

Science and technology increase road safety. Nowadays, law enforcement officers use Laser technology to detect when automobiles are exceeding speed limits. Technology has led to the development of modern machines such as cars and motorcycles which allow us to be mobile and travel freely and airplanes which travel at a supersonic speed.

Another machine, the air- conditioner, provides cool comfort, especially during hot weather. In offices where dress codes exist, people can afford to wear suits without being worried about the weather. It guarantees convenience even when the climate says otherwise.

Moreover, present day factories have modern facilities like machines and soft ware that facilitate production. These machines work with greater speed and perfection incomparable with human skills. These machines have enabled markets to have surplus products all over the world. For the soft ware, they make it possible for machines to be programmed, for production to be regulated, to monitor the progress being recorded and so on.

Modern technology indeed has been great. For third world countries, however, it has been challenging, especially the area of production. Only consuming and not been able to manufacture does not favour any country when it comes to balance of trade. The most sensitive parts of technology are the theoretical or conceptual parts and technical parts. These are the backbone of technological development anywhere in the world. Without the ideas, there will not be technology. Third world counties need to go back to the basics, that is, to the primitive. There must be meeting ground for tradition and modern technological invention. Third world countries engage in import substitution strategy where they import half finished goods and complete the tail end of the production process domestically. Third world countries started wrongly. They started with climbing the ladder from the top which is very wrong and difficult. They thought that being able to purchase and operate modern technological products qualifies for advancement in science and technological development. This makes third world countries to be a dependent system because working in the factories are routine work and this inevitably links to the issue of the idea of technology transfer. They should seek for technological transfer, but the problem is that no nation is ready to transfer her hard earned technological knowledge to any other nation for some certain reasons which drive nations into competition; world politics and economic prowess. That is the struggle to lead or dominate other nations technologically, economically and politically. Be the first to invent new gadgets and latest electronics including those used in modern warfare, use other nations as market for finished goods, and to have a strong voice and be able to influence other countries. They should consider embarking on technological espionage so as to acquire the rudiments for technological development if they must liberate themselves from the shackles of technological domination.

In conclusion, it's not until third world countries begin to put embargo on the importation of certain electronics and mechanical goods that the necessity to be creative would replace the habit of consuming foreign products. Countries like Thailand, Burma, Brazil, and South Africa and so on, should be emulated. These countries experienced colonialism yet they did not allow it to overwhelm their creative prowess. Industry and determination saw them emerge as economic giants in the world today. Third world countries should emulate them by carrying out proper feasibility studies to ascertain which technology will suit their country; giving more financial boost to this area, training people to become experts; motivating and encouraging individuals who are naturally endowed and technologically inclined to display their bests of talents. These measures if strictly adhered to will go a long way to help the advancement of these countries in the area of science and technology. If these countries must achieve greatness before the next decade, they have to make conscious and unrelenting efforts. The time starts now! The more they delay, the more backward they become.

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Technology - The Key to Alleviate World Poverty

Modern age brought out solution to a lot of human problems. Science and technology have become part and parcel of everyday life. Technology is being used to help resolve the dangling and perplexed issues of the humanity. Modern invention and tools are being used to facilitate the life. Technological advancement has helped man eradicating poverty.

People were optimistic that technology would become the answer to all human tribulations, mainly those related with poverty. He was also hopeful that travel to space and the nuclear energy would resolve all the problems. Due to this false notion man wasted and over consumed the natural resources in the name of fast economic growth and social development. At once he has come to know that advancement in technology had deprived him of the clean water, fresh air and healthy atmosphere. Pollution led to global warming, food crises and poverty. Poverty has become a serious concern of the modern times.

In spite of the technical advancement, the developing as well as the advanced nation is wanting in commodities of life. The worst preys are the developing nations. The developing nations followed west blindly and spoiled their economies as well as atmosphere. This technology was hardly suitable to the circumstances of people in developing nations. Technology without necessary infrastructure and skills is nothing other than wastage of resources. It does not help to overcome poverty.

Technology is helpful only when it does not harm the local culture, society and skills. Such technology is called appropriate technology. Only this kind of technology is helpful in eradicating poverty. Only appropriate technology is the solution to the problem of poverty.

Circumstances specific technology

It took a lot of time to reach the conclusion that only appropriate technology is the suitable way to overcome the problems of daily life. Use of technology according to the local circumstances is a new phenomenon and is helping a lot in the war against poverty and food crises.

The acclimatization of technology is the only way to solve the manifold problems of the poor nations. Expertise intended to be appropriate to the requirements and means of a specific community is the only way to eradicate poverty. It utilizes native ability and means that are appropriate to the local circumstances. It does not damage the atmosphere and assists man to overcome the multitude of problems.

Appropriate technology is only way to resolve the present day issues related to poverty. Technology is related to all aspects of life. It has reached its zenith in advancement. This advancement can become helpful if we use the technical expertise according to our local circumstances. Small scale technical projects providing energy and power are the basis of the all programs related to poverty eradication.

People and states should take advantage of technical advancements mainly in sectors of energy, communications, and information technology to give power to the poor and gain fiscal development. Information and communication technologies are basic elements of the universal production, business, investment and capital flow. Incorporation of these technologies into poverty reduction programs is necessary.

Technology that supports Local growth, employment and local enterprise is in fact real technology.

It reinforces local economic progress and involvement of community in the development projects.Technology with its roots in customary skills and resources is the only way to get self-reliance and get rid of poverty.

In the end we can say that use of internet to gain access to the development projects and keeping touch with the world markets is also an important technology to decrease poverty.It can coordinate all the efforts made in this connection and can help in achieving the success.

self obsevation

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Three Emerging Technologies that Will Change the World

I was speaking with a friend the other night about his great grandfather. His great grandfather was born in 1875. He lived until 1965. Can you imagine the technology that this man saw come online? Let me name a few: the typewriter, the electric dental drill, the telephone, the phonograph, the incandescent light bulb, the hearing aid, the electric fan, the dishwasher, the escalator, the airplane, the Model T automobile, the air conditioner, the defibrillator, the atomic bomb, the electric guitar, the nuclear submarine, nylon, the polio vaccine, and the laser. He died right when the first minicomputer was coming to fruition. All of that in the span of his lifetime. Which leads me to the topic of this article. Technology has completely changed the way we live. And technological advances have accelerated at unbelievable speeds. Technology is converging in ways no one could have foreseen. I want to highlight some of the most interesting technologies out there. These are technologies that will change the world, for good and bad.

Nano Technology

Probably the most interesting and frightening of the emerging technologies is nano technology. Nano technology is a cross disciplinary field that deals with building and synthesizing materials at scales of 100nm or less. Nano technology usually works in one of two ways. It either pulls smaller parts together to build or it breaks bigger parts down. The parts are then used to form smaller, new materials. But why is nano technology so important?

Nano technology is important because it will have massive effects across every area of life. As I write this, researchers are working on a nano particle to target cancer cells in lungs. In 2004, Rice University tested gold nano particle cancer treatment. In this treatment, these 150 nanometer gold particles were injected into the blood stream of cancerous mice. Gold particles at this size pass into tumors, but not healthy tissue. The researchers then passed infrared through the mice. The tumorous cells absorbed the infrared, heated up, and were destroyed. They are also working on quantum dots that allow doctors to easily identify multiple diseases quickly and accurately. But the uses don't stop there. Nanotechnology will drive down the scale of electronics. This will lead incredibly small devices. The applications are limitless. And you can bet that the military will be clamoring for nano technology. The military is looking to have numerous nanotechnologies online by the year 2015. Such advances include performance enhancing nanotechnology that aids bodily functions. These will include response times, oxygen use, and heightened senses. But nanotechnology can also be used for reconnaissance and combat. Nanobots could scout areas without being seen. They could also enter into enemies for espionage. They could kill targets from within the host's body. The possibilities are frightening.

Alternative Energy & Fuels

When gas prices skyrocketed this past year, many people suddenly took an interest in alternative energy and fuels. And because demand rose, companies suddenly found themselves forced to take interest. Most of the common arguments for alternative energy and fuels center around issues of pollution, cost, dependence, and jobs.

What most people don't realize is that alternative energy and fuels always have environmental effects. This can be in the form of heat generation, air pollutants, waste by-products, land usage, extraction, etc. Instead, we have to talk about pros and cons around each type of energy and fuel. There is no silver bullet. Costs, dependence, and jobs also vary depending on the energy type.

There are a host of alternative energies being tested. Wind powered energy plants are already in place in many parts of the world. Solar energy production has taken huge steps forward with the help of nano technology. One such company is Nanosolar. Nanosolar is producing solar cells that are 100 times thinner than conventional cells. Not only are the cells cheaper to produce, but they also convert the solar energy much more efficiently. Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) uses the temperature differences in the ocean layers to produce energy. And OTEC can utilize this colder water (36 degree F cooler) in other things like on shore agriculture and refrigeration. And the list goes on.

Massive interest was generated in alternative fuels this past year when gas prices hit record levels. New developments in battery technology could help. One such development is Millennium Cell's hydrogen battery technology. This technology differs greatly from traditional rechargeable batteries in that it's instantly rechargeable. It also has a much great efficiency for energy conversion, so it is much smaller and lighter. There is also greater reuse efficiency since you don't need to replace the entire battery. You only need to replace the energy module. Developments are continuing in biodiesel, electric, hydrogen, methanol, etc. I think there could be some serious future synergy between nano technology and alternative energy.

"Bionetics"

This is my name for the incorporation of technology into the body. The dermal display is a great indication of things to come. Though I have yet to find a working demo version of this concept, I have no doubt that it will become a reality. The display would be driven by millions of nanobots. These nanobots would display light when touched. This would print a display onto your hand, or wherever the nanobot display would be housed. And this is where it gets really interesting. The display nanobots would be connected to millions of other fixed and mobile nanobots throughout the patient's body. This would give instant readings on hundreds of vital statistics. Again, nanotechnology plays a strong role here.

The bionics revolution is already underway. There have been four major cases of robotic limbs recently, the latest being a woman. The robotic limbs take advantage of the functional nerve endings in the limb stump. These nerve endings are used to actuate the robotic limb and to provide feedback to the brain. More money is being poured into robotic limbs every year.

"Functional bionetics" are implants that enhance our lives. And you may be surprised to know that people are actively doing this as I write. People are inserting tiny electronics in their bodies that will unlock their front doors and their cars. The same technology is being used to unlock computers. But it doesn't stop there. There is talk of implanting devices that will carry health information. You could be carted into a hospital totally unconscious and they would be able to access all of your past medical history. Most of this is done through RFID technology.

"Bionetic networks" will be networks of connected bionetic devices. This would allow people to share sensation, feelings, and communication. If this sounds completely fictional, I invite you to consider the work of Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, England. He has implanted an extra-sensory device that interfaces with one put in his wife. They were implanted in their arms. The first experiments are aimed at exchanging sensory inputs, like pain. The hope is to extend that to other, more complicated neurological processes like thoughts and emotion. Obviously, that would drastically change relationships and indeed the world. Forget about your teens text messaging, maybe they will be brain linking in the future. Now that's really scary!

What will we be able to say came online in our lifetimes? I'm sure we could already list a lot of important technologies. But keep your eyes out for these emerging technologies. They are set to change the rules of our world. These technologies will upset economies, change military tactics, empower people, and be used to control others. Keep an eye on them.

Paul McGillivary has been a technologist for 15 years. In that time, Paul has experienced thousands of technology problems, challenges, and products. He brings this experience to bear in the articles that he presents.

For more great emerging technology information, visit us at Emerging Technology [http://www.gopaultech.com/category/emerging-technology].

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Search as a Verb: a Digital Representation of the Physical World

A Copy, of a Copy, of a Copy

There are many approaches to online navigation & discovery. On the surface many of them look exceptionally different, but when you look a bit deeper many of them are playing the same game with the same game plan. The main differences are brand perception & marketing angle, but they all copy off of each other.

New Ideas, or The Same Ideas?

There is an illusion that social media is significantly different because messages from friends are mixed in with the other stuff. However, when you look at the aggregate trends, ultimately social media pushes the same stuff that the mainstream media pushes (which is the same stuff that post-Panda Google pushes).

Researchers at HP tracked Twitter:

Huberman and three fellow researchers demonstrate that "user activity and number of followers do not contribute strongly to trend creation and its propagation."

Instead, says Huberman, "we found that mainstream media play a role in most trending topics and actually act as feeders of these trends. Twitter users then seem to be acting more as filter and amplifier of traditional media in most cases."

Social signaling is powerful. It drives people to like things they otherwise wouldn't. And the tear down is far faster & far more brutal than the build up:

it's amazing how you can be the king at one point, quote unquote, and everyone loves you and the minute your time has passed and it's time for you to get torn down. When it's tear down time -- woah, it's harsh. There's no pity. They will hurt you however. Jabs, uppercut, hooks, and they want to see you on the floor knocked out. TKO. That's what they want. I saw it happen to some people, but when it happens to you, it's amazing how devastating it can be. When the negativity is directed at you, it hurts because you're there as an entertainer. You want to please your fans, have a good time and make them smile. You do the best you can on stage for them, and suddenly, you're nothing but a joke. - Fab Morvan, Milli Vanilli

Facebook is also aiming to highlight big media:

Facebook is developing features that will make the sharing of users’ favorite music, television shows and other media as much a part of its site as playing games or posting vacation photos.

Along with the official relationships (and game board tilting) that big media enjoy, larger merchants can also tilt the table by selling into a new category with a loss leader to buy marketshare. In some cases they can promote give aways that use social signals as a form of payment.

The largest companies enjoy an asymmetrical information advantage, which easily allows them to scale up and down the value chain to dominate their vertical. Amazon.com sold books, but after Kindle they now sell more ebooks than physical books, they promote new formats like Kindle singles, and they look to be pushing into publishing. That is great news for authors, but is certainly scary for some traditional publishing companies.

Most of the "social" signals will generally promote that which is already large, or (for smaller businesses) that which is weird, funny, exotic, extremely biased, comforting & (falsely) empowering, fluff, or brutally honest.

If you are small, race toward an edge & stick with it. Own an idea. ;)

Like vs +1

Facebook has their popular like button. Google owns like.com, which unlike other shopping-search businesses that Google has bought and folded in, remains an active site, in spite of the launch of Boutiques.com. Google unveiled the +1 button to compete with Facebook. Facebook's add as friend button now states "+1 Add as Friend."

In a recent Youtube video, Matt Cutts highlighted that "Google will use +1 activity to influence its search results ... "It's definitely a signal we're paying a lot of attention to," Cutts said. "It has tons of potential. It looks very promising."

Google accidentally leaked on TV that they were going to bake +1 into Google Chrome.

Like vs Spy

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article about how some of the social media voting buttons track users, even if they do not log in to the social networks or click on the voting buttons. You can avoid using the official buttons & use third party buttons, but those companies do the same thing! You can say "enough is enough" and simply avoid all the social media nonsense, but unfortunately 25% of Google's bonuses this year are tied to social crap. If you ignore social & your competitors do not, then ultimately you lose.

As I wrote earlier, many of them are playing the same game with the same game plan.

Other Search Engines

Blekko's slashtag model is all about highlighting content from the most well known sources in a niche. When you think about some of the really awful misinformation shared in the SEO space it is clear that popularity & quality are not the same. But if you have brand, sound authoritative, and speak of innovative changes; those can easily mask any factual errors. ;)

Bing's Stefan Weitz was recently interviewed by Eric Enge. In the interview Stefan points out how he thinks Bing sees the web differently than Google, in that:

• they "look at the web as a digital representation of the physical world"
  
• search will move from a web of nouns to a web of verbs, helping you to complete tasks in a more integrated manner: "there are enough services opening up their protocols and their APIs, Bing can then broker out that request to a number of different services across the web and stitch that information back together to help me go from I want to do this to I have done it."
  
• "Humans have this primal behavior around the social experience where we almost always ask our friends and acquaintances for advice."
  

I highly recommend the interview as a must read to understand where search is headed. The speed of change in technology is increasing at a logarithmic progression & search is going to become much more of a complete end-to-end service.

The big takeaways for me from that read were that Bing will be doing hard brand pushes at some point (a digital representation of the physical world) & a lot more tight vertical integrations (a web of verbs). In summary, that means their game plan is just like Google's.

Partnering vs Owning

The only areas where they are significantly different currently is that Microsoft is trying to partner to build an ecosystem, whereas Google wants to own the ecosystem (see Freebase, Google's ITA integration, Google Places pages scrape-n-displace, BeatThatQuote / Google Advisor, illegal ebook scanning, Google's botched partnership with Paypal on mobile payments).

Hosting Youtube's 3 billion daily video views, Google now controls more display ads than Yahoo! does.

More Data = Better Relevancy

In search, more data is typically better than better algorithms. As more signals get mixed into the pool, the value of any individual signal decreases.

Google has tried a number of attempts to solicit end user feedback & collect user data: the Google toolbar, Knol, SearchWiki, SideWiki, Google Chrome, etc. The Google founders have desired an annotated version of web more than search:

Sidewiki feels like another swing at something Google seems to desperately desires — a community of experts offering high quality comments. Google says that’s something that its cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted more than a system for ranking web pages. They really wanted a system to annotate pages across the web.

Yelp has dominated the review space, but in Portland (a test market) Google has collected more local reviews than the rest of the big review sites have in the history of their existence - and it only took them a couple months to do it.

A lot of information is coming online, but it is hard to sort out the signal from the noise unless you have identity. Google now has that through Gmail, Google Checkout, Android & Google wallet.

Eric Schmidt suggested that smartphone contacts could be used to create a social graph. Those cell phones use local services to send your location. With Google Wallet they are willing to give you $10 just to try it, simply because they know they will make more than that back on improved ad targeting & getting a taste of local ad budgets via their offers. They even have stickers to put on phones without NFC to enable it.

Who are the real wine experts in Portland? Maybe the people who...

• actually live there (confirmed by the address associated with their credit cards, the IP address of their home computer & the location information Android phones share with Google)
  
• those who are consistently spending hundreds to thousands of Dollars a month buying wines (the more skin you have in the game the more weight Google can put on your feedback & reviews.)
  
• those who review wines (Google can offer perks & bonuses to get people over the hump, & then add social game dynamics like badges)
  
• those who review wines who have positive reviews from other wine drinkers (nothing like a little peer review to an academic mind)

What wine stores in Portland are the best? Probably the ones which the above wine reviewers shop at. Looking up driving directions can be seen as a relevancy signal.

What wine stores in Portland are less scrupulous? Those which are mostly given 5 star reviews by out-of-town (or, out-of-country) people who have never logged into Google from an IP address in the Portland area, never used an Android phone in the Portland area, and have never looked up driving directions around the Portland area.

Cell phones show human movement predictable 93% of the time.

More Holistic Marketing

At one point in time online was a new and (fairly) level playing field where one could win based on meritocracy. Increasingly though search is becoming "a digital representation of the physical world." To win online you will often be required to win offline.

With all the above data being included in Google's algorithms in the coming years (along with other brand signals) some people might decide that SEO is becoming too hard for the head keywords & that they are better off playing in the tail of search. But even that has 3 big problems:

• if you have too many low quality pages Google can torch the whole of your site for it (and at this point it has been close to 100 days since Panda, and virtually no recoveries have been reported)
  
• the eHow model will be reformulated at some point & added into some of the larger publishers that Google's algorithms boosted the rankings for, so if you are not one of those guys then they would still have a cost advantage over you through increased rankings & distribution (along with easier influence of social signals & such)
  
• Google is looking into renting ebooks & could eventually unveil an ad supported ebook model for endless editorially-reviewed longtail content (and since Google would host those ebooks they would be able to track more relevancy signals from them, just like they have with videos on Youtube).

Certain categories with significant guilt or shame (say genital wart removal, criminal defense lawyers, etc.) won't have much end user data shared publicly (or, at least, users won't intentionally share that data with Google - though they may do so accidentally). Many (most) categories will have a sea of data available. And in those categories, at some point jumping through technical loopholes will be so tiresome & expensive that it will be cheaper and easier to create the signals Google wants to see through brand, public relations, and consumer experience than it is to try to fake them.

As search is becoming "a digital representation of the physical world" some of the best SEO tips in the years to come will have nothing to do with sitting at a computer. In due time, in search, there will be no security through obscurity.

Indeed, the future is already here.

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In a world with cyber warfare rules …

What do fighter jets have in common with cyber attacks? During war, neither can be deliberately routed through another country if that nation has not given permission.

This is one of the new rules, similar to existing guidelines for nuclear bombs, missiles, and espionage, signed today by President Barack Obama. The executive orders outline cyber attack etiquette for military commanders. The United States is currently collaborating with other countries on the rules.

Word on the guidelines, which have not yet been released in their entirety (that will happen “soon,” whatever that means.), comes from the Associated Press. The AP spoke with “several” government officials on condition of anonymity, although they point out some of the rules have been made public by US officials in recent speeches.

Perhaps one of the most significant results of the rules is the acknowledgement that cyber attacks are the new bomb. A cyberattack can bring down an enemy’s electrical grid much like bombs have done in the past.

“You don’t have to bomb them anymore. That’s the new world,” said James Lewis, cyber security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in an interview with the Associated Press.

Other guidelines indicate that the US can defensively take down servers in other countries and has the “right to pursue attackers across national boundaries — even if those are virtual network lines,” explains the AP.

The Wall Street Journal broke the original story on the guidelines at the end of May 2011, following reports of cyber attacks on the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin.

[Photo credit: West Point Public Affairs via Flickr]

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One World One Charger

My dad recently lost the charger of his dual SIM Fly V 180 DS handset. Since the charger looked like a Micro-USB interface, I did a bit of research on the internet to check whether standard Micro-A, Micro-B, Micro-AB cables could be used as chargers.

Micro-USB is the standard for the Common Charger initiative. The new common charger should be hitting our shelves in the next few months of 2011.

Thanks to the EU Commission, all major mobile handset manufacturers (Apple, Huawei Technologies, LGE, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm, RIM, Samsung, SonyEricsson, Texas Instruments) have agreed to adopt a universal charger for data-enabled mobile phones.

A thread at Nokia Conversations discusses the advantages for all stakeholders.

• For Consumers, in addition to the obvious benefits, standardisation would mean the cost of a charger would go down and its household reuse would increase


• Handset makers would have the option to ship new handsets without chargers thereby bringing down the packaging, shipping and overall costs


• Charger-less boxes would mean smaller storage space requirements for the retailer


• Hotels and other public places can now provide them to guests in need


• Envinronment friendly

Now that the charger (micro-usb) and audio jack (3.5mm) are standardised, I wonder what would it take to have standardisation of batteries for mobile devices.

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