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Brazil Using Smartphones For Planning the Future
shafiur writes "Brazil has bought 150,000 LG smartphones and has embarked on the world's first fully digital national census. Can they succeed when the US recently failed to go digital? The Brazilians say that the digital census has several advantages over paper and pen methods. They say that the data is more accurate since GPS data will pinpoint the exact location of a household. The GPS data is cross-referenced with satellite images to ensure that responses are correctly geo-tagged. The recently begun census will underpin future publicy-making decisions."
Also, it's a wonderful way for the government to show the poverty-stricken people (I realize that term doesn't apply to everyone) how "awesome" western culture is, and why they should start the "culturization" process we've been famed for in the past couple centuries!
Care to bet how long before Brazil has to start cleaning up their pollution clouds?
Hate to break this to you, but Brazil is "Western"
Obviously you've never been to South America. Brazil is a relatively wealthy country, but it's a country of Haves and Have Nots. Poverty in the US is nothing compared to poverty there.
If the US had waited a few years until GPS enabled phones were available they might have had more success. The contract to supply the devices was started way back in 2002. Maybe next time...