Check out eCharge2 Corporation at http://echarge2.com. It has so much potential in the future to becoming the standard method of online payments and encryption, and has already signed up many huge service corporations such as FedEx, American Express, and others.
It will still be several months before it is launched, but I for one, would love to see it take off!
Just for everyone's information, any Citibank customer that is a part of Citibank's Credit Monitoring Service will get 90 days for free for this little accident of thiers. Even though, this is small compensation for potentially getting your entire identity stolen, it is still worth about 30 bucks, so I for one welcome that. You can find more information or sign up for the Credit Monitoring Service at https://www.creditmonitoring.citi.com/index.asp.
I would guess that they will require you to have been a customer before this incident happened to get the 90 day credit. I think their incentive for this is so that users can check to see if anything is wrong with their credit, while in the same time, making their liability a bit less if this incident is ever taken to court.
Yes, most of the schools did have a Mac already there when we got there. Although the whole Daknet project is run off of PC Kiosks running Windows 2000 with Outlook Express to check their email.
Along with the practical applications of such a system, consider also the following benefits...
School children and teachers will be able to research educational web sites to further their education. Local farmers will be able to communicate with other villages and towns to sell their crops to interested buyers, and vice versa. Villagers that require assistance will be able to order groceries and supplies from other towns that could deliver the goods to the village. Sick people, through the help the village doctor, will be able to explain illnesses to qualified doctors elsewhere around the world for advice, and even attach a picture or movie file of the illness with the email. Teachers will be able to cooperate with other teachers and school boards to encourage children's education and attendance. Also, friends and family can keep in touch no matter how far the distance between them. The potential is endless, and the overall benefits of such a system is going to revolutionize these remote reaches forever.
Actaully, a fun fact... One of the villages that we hooked up was rich with gems. They literally were able to dig a hole and pull them right out of the ground!
One guy opened up a shop and cut and polished them. They are called Thai Diamonds and are a precious gem. But none of the villagers have money, and there are literally no roads that go to the village. So you see this dirt poor village with inhabitants with no money, and they are all wearing diamonds on them! It was so ironic!
So the guy was absolutely thrilled when I went in there and ended up buying a TEN CARAT diamond for 75 bucks!
Hmmmm... My collegue is already talking business with this guy to put his inventory on the net. Smart business there!;-)
You made a great description about how most of the urban life is in Cambodia, but do realize that where this project is set up is literally in the middle of the jungle where no cars can even get to!
No bars, no hotels, no nothing. We had to even travel by ox-cart to be able to get to some of the most remote villages!
These remote villagers don't use money really. They are still on the barter system.;-)
Along with the medical applications of such a system, consider also the following benefits...
School children and teachers will be able to research educational web sites to further their education. Local farmers will be able to communicate with other villages and towns to sell their crops to interested buyers, and vice versa. Villagers that require assistance will be able to order groceries and supplies from other towns that could deliver the goods to the village. Teachers will be able to cooperate with other teachers and school boards to encourage children's education and attendance. Also, friends and family can keep in touch no matter how far the distance between them. The potential is endless, and the overall benefits of such a system is going to revolutionize these remote reaches forever.
These benefits would not be able to be acheived by just expanding the road or mobile phone system. 95% of these people dont have a car or motorbike anyway... or even an ox to ride.:-)
FYI, the web site you mentioned is the company that installed the Daknet system in Cambodia. The founder of the company and site was one of the three of us that installed the system (and good friend and roommate).
Many more countries to come... keep your eyes open!:-)
The box, which we referred to as MAPs (Mobile Access Points) and FAPs (Fixed Access Points), were actually little kits that were made by a company called Sokres (sp?).
Each one of them (MAP and FAP) have a small 200Mhz processor inside it, and expansion slots for one Compact Flash and two PCMCIA cards.
We put the entire boot sector on the compact flash as well as the storage partition for the email files. Each box has a 256 MB card, but can be upgraded if needed (excepting the Root HUB which has a 512MB card).
We utilized only one of the two PCMCIA slots with a 802.11b card which had an external antenna pigtail. The pigtail then connected to the WiFi antenna that was mounted outside the school.
Since the sokres boxes required very little power, they were a great option to use with the solar powered schools as well as off of the bateries of the motorbikes.
As I mentioned in my other post, I am one of the three people that installed this system in Cambodia in August so I know first hand who the benefactors are.
First off, the article is a bit misleading on this point. There really are no actual "benefactors" to this project, excepting perhaps First Mile Solutions, which developed the Daknet system.
The fundraiser for the project is a French man named Bernie. He individually found donors that would donate money to open up over 180 schools throughout the entire country of Cambodia. These donors got nothing in return except for the school named after them and good karma for such a deed.
In the budget for each of these schools came a small surplus that funded the installation of this project. Trust me when I say that everything over there is VERY cheap, and even the motorcycle drivers (we called them "motomen") work for very little, but are relatively some of the highest paid workers in the province.
I can assure you that none of these donors get any investment income in return. Bernie also does not get anything in return for his work. Even I went out there for a month and worked for basically peanuts. It was more for the experience than the money.
So, rest assured that there are no "alterior motives" to the benefactors in this case.;-)
Hey everyone,
A friend gave me this link so I thought I'd check it out and give my two cents.
I was one of the three people who worked locally on this project in Cambodia to install this system, which BTW is called the DAKNET system. (Dak means "post" in India).
Like I mentioned, there were three of us installing the network in the remote villages in the Ratanakiri province, close to Vietnam and Laos. I live in Boston and travelled there to install the system with one collegue whom also lives in Boston, and a third young man who lives in India. We are all in our late 20's and have relatively good computer experience, but I definitely can't boast given the present company.:->
It was an amazing experience and an even more amazing project in all. The possibilities of it are endless. I think that the New York Times article was the best so far that I have read about the project and prase the writer to actually bring the reader into the area and witness what the Daknet system can do.
Cambodia was only a pilot prototype of this system and there has been much interest in many other regions and countries that would like to implement the same type system. Keep an eye out, because this system is going to eventually bring the last mile into the online world... one village at a time.
Motor bikes were the chosen method of transport for that region, mainly because they were the only way to travel efficiently through the jungle roads (or more appropriately "lack of roads"). It is important to note that the mobile access points (or MAPs for short) can be mounted to any mobile vehicle, such as a car, bus, etc. Actually, the first implementation of this network was orginally designed to have the MAP run on a PocketPC which was lead on the back of a donkey! At that time, the system was appropriately named "DonkeyNet". I think the motorbike idea is a little bit more efficient.;-)
One thing that will always stand out in my mind is going to the different villages, almost all of which does not even have power, with loads of computer equipment to hook into solar panels. All this in a small village that has never even seen a picture of a computer before. There were a couple of villages that even a truck could not get to, so we had to physically take the computer equipment to them via ox-cart. Talk about irony! It looked absolutely silly bringing high tech wireless broadband equipment in a cart carried by oxen. Very amuzing though.
Actually, I'll post a picture if anyone is interested... Here's the link:
www.sashas-stuff.net/photos/ox-cart.jpg
Well anyway, the entire project took a little more than a month to physically install (not including development of course), and we covered 15 villages, a medicine clinic, and the governer's office before we were done.
It was an absolutely unforgettable experience and I was very honored to be able to take part in such an extraordinary project.
I'll check back from time to time in case anyone has any questions.;-)
Regards,
- Sasha W.
Slashdot Mirror
Check out eCharge2 Corporation at http://echarge2.com. It has so much potential in the future to becoming the standard method of online payments and encryption, and has already signed up many huge service corporations such as FedEx, American Express, and others.
It will still be several months before it is launched, but I for one, would love to see it take off!
Just for everyone's information, any Citibank customer that is a part of Citibank's Credit Monitoring Service will get 90 days for free for this little accident of thiers. Even though, this is small compensation for potentially getting your entire identity stolen, it is still worth about 30 bucks, so I for one welcome that. You can find more information or sign up for the Credit Monitoring Service at https://www.creditmonitoring.citi.com/index.asp.
I would guess that they will require you to have been a customer before this incident happened to get the 90 day credit. I think their incentive for this is so that users can check to see if anything is wrong with their credit, while in the same time, making their liability a bit less if this incident is ever taken to court.
I agree with this post.
I have had vonage for about 2 years now and have nothing but good experiences. Plus they have just lowered their prices.
The Rio Karma also plays FLAC format, which is becoming a lot more popular because of its lossless compression, yet small size.
Yes, most of the schools did have a Mac already there when we got there. Although the whole Daknet project is run off of PC Kiosks running Windows 2000 with Outlook Express to check their email.
Along with the practical applications of such a system, consider also the following benefits...
School children and teachers will be able to research educational web sites to further their education. Local farmers will be able to communicate with other villages and towns to sell their crops to interested buyers, and vice versa. Villagers that require assistance will be able to order groceries and supplies from other towns that could deliver the goods to the village. Sick people, through the help the village doctor, will be able to explain illnesses to qualified doctors elsewhere around the world for advice, and even attach a picture or movie file of the illness with the email. Teachers will be able to cooperate with other teachers and school boards to encourage children's education and attendance. Also, friends and family can keep in touch no matter how far the distance between them. The potential is endless, and the overall benefits of such a system is going to revolutionize these remote reaches forever.
The furthest village was about 70 km. That's about 40 ot so miles.
;-)
It took most of the day to reach via a road in a truck.
There is no way that a cable could get there, through the jungle. You would need repeaters everywhere anyway to boost the signal along the way.
This is definitely the most simple approach to a complex problem.
Actaully, a fun fact... One of the villages that we hooked up was rich with gems. They literally were able to dig a hole and pull them right out of the ground!
;-)
One guy opened up a shop and cut and polished them. They are called Thai Diamonds and are a precious gem. But none of the villagers have money, and there are literally no roads that go to the village. So you see this dirt poor village with inhabitants with no money, and they are all wearing diamonds on them!
It was so ironic!
So the guy was absolutely thrilled when I went in there and ended up buying a TEN CARAT diamond for 75 bucks!
Hmmmm... My collegue is already talking business with this guy to put his inventory on the net.
Smart business there!
You made a great description about how most of the urban life is in Cambodia, but do realize that where this project is set up is literally in the middle of the jungle where no cars can even get to!
;-)
No bars, no hotels, no nothing. We had to even travel by ox-cart to be able to get to some of the most remote villages!
These remote villagers don't use money really. They are still on the barter system.
Along with the medical applications of such a system, consider also the following benefits...
:-)
School children and teachers will be able to research educational web sites to further their education. Local farmers will be able to communicate with other villages and towns to sell their crops to interested buyers, and vice versa. Villagers that require assistance will be able to order groceries and supplies from other towns that could deliver the goods to the village. Teachers will be able to cooperate with other teachers and school boards to encourage children's education and attendance. Also, friends and family can keep in touch no matter how far the distance between them. The potential is endless, and the overall benefits of such a system is going to revolutionize these remote reaches forever.
These benefits would not be able to be acheived by just expanding the road or mobile phone system. 95% of these people dont have a car or motorbike anyway... or even an ox to ride.
FYI, the web site you mentioned is the company that installed the Daknet system in Cambodia. The founder of the company and site was one of the three of us that installed the system (and good friend and roommate).
:-)
Many more countries to come... keep your eyes open!
Your wish is answered... :-)
The box, which we referred to as MAPs (Mobile Access Points) and FAPs (Fixed Access Points), were actually little kits that were made by a company called Sokres (sp?).
Each one of them (MAP and FAP) have a small 200Mhz processor inside it, and expansion slots for one Compact Flash and two PCMCIA cards.
We put the entire boot sector on the compact flash as well as the storage partition for the email files. Each box has a 256 MB card, but can be upgraded if needed (excepting the Root HUB which has a 512MB card).
We utilized only one of the two PCMCIA slots with a 802.11b card which had an external antenna pigtail. The pigtail then connected to the WiFi antenna that was mounted outside the school.
Since the sokres boxes required very little power, they were a great option to use with the solar powered schools as well as off of the bateries of the motorbikes.
Hope that helped,
- Sasha W.
I can answer this one fully.
;-)
As I mentioned in my other post, I am one of the three people that installed this system in Cambodia in August so I know first hand who the benefactors are.
First off, the article is a bit misleading on this point. There really are no actual "benefactors" to this project, excepting perhaps First Mile Solutions, which developed the Daknet system.
The fundraiser for the project is a French man named Bernie. He individually found donors that would donate money to open up over 180 schools throughout the entire country of Cambodia. These donors got nothing in return except for the school named after them and good karma for such a deed.
In the budget for each of these schools came a small surplus that funded the installation of this project. Trust me when I say that everything over there is VERY cheap, and even the motorcycle drivers (we called them "motomen") work for very little, but are relatively some of the highest paid workers in the province.
I can assure you that none of these donors get any investment income in return. Bernie also does not get anything in return for his work. Even I went out there for a month and worked for basically peanuts. It was more for the experience than the money.
So, rest assured that there are no "alterior motives" to the benefactors in this case.
Hope that helped,
- Sasha W.
Hey everyone, A friend gave me this link so I thought I'd check it out and give my two cents. I was one of the three people who worked locally on this project in Cambodia to install this system, which BTW is called the DAKNET system. (Dak means "post" in India). Like I mentioned, there were three of us installing the network in the remote villages in the Ratanakiri province, close to Vietnam and Laos. I live in Boston and travelled there to install the system with one collegue whom also lives in Boston, and a third young man who lives in India. We are all in our late 20's and have relatively good computer experience, but I definitely can't boast given the present company. :->
It was an amazing experience and an even more amazing project in all. The possibilities of it are endless. I think that the New York Times article was the best so far that I have read about the project and prase the writer to actually bring the reader into the area and witness what the Daknet system can do.
Cambodia was only a pilot prototype of this system and there has been much interest in many other regions and countries that would like to implement the same type system. Keep an eye out, because this system is going to eventually bring the last mile into the online world... one village at a time.
Motor bikes were the chosen method of transport for that region, mainly because they were the only way to travel efficiently through the jungle roads (or more appropriately "lack of roads"). It is important to note that the mobile access points (or MAPs for short) can be mounted to any mobile vehicle, such as a car, bus, etc. Actually, the first implementation of this network was orginally designed to have the MAP run on a PocketPC which was lead on the back of a donkey! At that time, the system was appropriately named "DonkeyNet". I think the motorbike idea is a little bit more efficient. ;-)
One thing that will always stand out in my mind is going to the different villages, almost all of which does not even have power, with loads of computer equipment to hook into solar panels. All this in a small village that has never even seen a picture of a computer before. There were a couple of villages that even a truck could not get to, so we had to physically take the computer equipment to them via ox-cart. Talk about irony! It looked absolutely silly bringing high tech wireless broadband equipment in a cart carried by oxen. Very amuzing though.
Actually, I'll post a picture if anyone is interested... Here's the link:
www.sashas-stuff.net/photos/ox-cart.jpg
Well anyway, the entire project took a little more than a month to physically install (not including development of course), and we covered 15 villages, a medicine clinic, and the governer's office before we were done.
It was an absolutely unforgettable experience and I was very honored to be able to take part in such an extraordinary project.
I'll check back from time to time in case anyone has any questions. ;-)
Regards,
- Sasha W.