Transfer mobile apps using bluetooth/wi-fi

At our company, we try to make use of blue-tooth to transfer mobile learning products to students. Blue-tooth is technology that most mobile phones have and enables the sending of files from one phone to another at distances of up to 100 meters. My learnings has been follow.

Blue-tooth seems to have the following advantages
1. Secure: You need to establish a secure connection between phones with a password before interacting or interchanging information
2. Instantaneous: You can check with other person whether he has received the file
3. Flexible: you can reach multiple devices(phone/laptop/desktop) and can send a variety of files(assuming all have blue-tooth)
4. Free
5. No wire : there is no wire needed and is a universal technology across devices from different OEMs. There is also no big setup and you can do it yourself. it is FREE and does not need Internet or SMS.

The challenges to make use of Blue-tooth are

1. distance limitations: The two phones have to be in relatively close proximity, so the students/teacher would have to be in the same room. when there are a lot of students in class, one can multi-cast using blue-tooth, it does not travel to student farther and does not give a cool experience.
2. lack of technology adoption in devices:College students use it mainly to transfer entertainment media files and the technology adoption has been abruptly ended. We need to educate people that they can use this to transfer educational content too.( in same way I find people making use of voice recording capability of mobile are very few). People are not familiar of the usage.
3. Not good implementations: Blue-tooth looks like a great technology but it just doesn’t work at times. File transfer between PC and mobile phone often fails. One thing to keep in mind is blue-tooth does not like too many paired devices and possibly deleting existing pairings (unpair devices) might be the solution.
4. Security/Hacking: A lot of folks leave Blue-tooth on all the time, often because they don’t bother to learn how to turn it off. People are worried that others could hack their mobiles and keep blue-tooth switched off. There is also danger of mobiles getting filled with marketing messages. To handle this, handset manufacturers need to rewrite faulty implementations, and cell phone users will learn to be more careful.

Hence we find blue-tooth is a technology that can be used within the classroom and not to be used beyond close room. Will it become an alternative to 3G or SMS?

First Observation in Green Initiative in Corporate Governance

Some times back I have posted a blog “Green Initiative in Corporate Governance – I see a risk to investor interests”, my doubt has the first email coming from company XXX.
1. See the email below. Will the company publish these mistakes on a newspaper too?
2. I do not want companies to give my name and Folio No in demat account in the email.
Should they not encrypt and send the same?
3. At the same time, I wanted to mention that Tata motors send me a CD of the annual report.
I am sure this costs today less than printing a book and would prefer that instead of the email? Hence Should companies not ask for printed book, CD or by email?

XXXX Limited
Regd. Office: XXXXX

Name of the Shareholder:XXXXXXXXXX
Ref: Folio / DP Id & Client Id No:XXXXXXX, XXXXXXXX

Dear shareholder(s),
We have noticed a few printing errors in the Annual Report of the Company for the financial year 2010-11 despatched to you in the first week of August 2011.

These printing errors have now been corrected. Accordingly, we have attached

1. Relevant revised notes on page 70 and page 135 of the full version of the Annual Report (Annexure I);

2. Statement under section 212 (8) of the Companies Act, 1956 forming part of the abridged Annual Report on pages 53-54 and full Annual Report on pages 159-160 (Annexure II)

We request you to read these versions in lieu of the versions in the Annual Report received by you.

Corrected versions of the Annual Report is available on the Company’s website http://www.XXXX.in and can be viewed / downloaded by clicking the following link:

XXXX Limited Annual Report 2010-2011

We apologise for the inconvenience caused.
For XXXX Limited

XXXXXX
Dy. Company Secretary
Place: New Delhi
Date: XXX 19, 2011

How to get adoption of apps in rural India?

I wanted to take my applications to the larger india(beyond major cities). I went around and observed the following behaviors which are different from regular app store style and wanted to evaluate some possible solutions. Are these solutions feasible or not for business? But they seem to be the way to reach consumer with the mobile?

1. Though mobile penetration has reached Indians, both rural and otherwise, the concept of the mobile applications seems not to reach the Indian.

• Indians make use of java enable phones(which comes installed on Nokia, Ericsson and other brands) and lack an offical app store.
• There is a lot of china mobiles that do not support third party applications.More than 60% of mobiles in rural India seem to china mobiles. They do not support installing of java applications and even installed,they might not allow the app to run.
• A lot of the applications are mostly online and and a surprising amount of people who have mobiles don’t use GPRS

To solve a problem for the user with application, am I making him purchase a new mobile? Does the end user get sufficient ROI from my application to purchase a mobile? What do I perform to build his confidence?

2. There is limited availability of internet. If they are ready to access internet, they do not have good regular internet connection. Hence they find it a challenge to use search for apps on internet or not motivated to consume completely online apps. They also try internet cafes/browsing centers to connect, which mushroom closer to colleges and major bus stands. Will this be applications that are offline for most of the time(expect for transfer at specific times of day) might be the best applications for rural users to consume?

3. In terms of connection provider, BSNL seems to be in nook and corner and that works every where. BSNL seems to come with app store and currently there is no app store. Does it still make sense to publish in app store and expect app to become popular? I would not stop there for sure. Is there a way that we could advertise offline with BSNL along with BSNL bill send every month to customers?.I am not sure whether this can happen or how to make this happen.

4. when people in rural want to download songs, they see airtel super singer and download by sending SMS or they go to mobile shops or mobile repair center and get songs downloaded on the mobiles. But this is either one way transfer or privacy of content, which any business do not wants. being a startup,i have less money power to advertise my app on the TV. How can we advertise in addition to word of mouth?

5.Is there a way that we could build a business model around the internet cafes/browsing centers and channel the products through them? The internet cafes/browsing centers push products to the customers and get a revenue share. This can be thought like the STD booth entrepreneur revolution of 1990s. One observation is that all of them are registered with State police and there might be some way to reach the. For example, I see that there is Tamil Nadu Internet Center Owners Association which connects with all internet centers in Tamil Nadu. In the similar fashion,one can look at mobile chain stores that sell mobiles across India?

Tough problems to crack! Any suggestions and help is welcome and I would happy to collaborate work with others to break digital divide and get technology benefits to all people.