I'm a little more confused around the goal. It's designed to share eBooks in places that have no infrastructure, maybe not even a reliable electrical grid. Okay... but share with what? People in those parts of the world aren't running around with iPads.
No, they're running around with phones. Phones really have revolutionized the world, all the way down to that one remote village with one phone to share with everyone to let them call in to see what price their crops will bring or whether heading into town will get them all slaughtered. I doubt they have an iphone 6+, and they probably have a candybar nokia, but cheap androids are only getting cheaper and will be in more hands as they do, especially when you have whatever idealist kids going around handin
I don't have a smartphone. Are there places in the world where people pay for smartphones without any sort of data plan whatsoever?
Smartphones still can do a lot with just WiFi, and there are a lot of places with "free" wifi in generic metropolitan areas.
I know quite a few people with little-to-no data plan; i.e. many with no data-plan at all, and a significant number of people with very little (a few hundred MB)
Even the "small" data plans are used only for apps like Maps or Mass-Transit info (stuff that you may need while not near wifi); for all of their browsing and such while out of the house, they'll stop in at a Starbucks or som
I doubt they have an iphone 6+, and they probably have a candybar nokia, but cheap androids are only getting cheaper and will be in more hands as they do, especially when you have whatever idealist kids going around handing them out.
There's probably still a lot of the candybar phones still around, but it was the Huawei IDEOS 8150 that took on the laptop-killer role in sub Saharan Africa all the way back in 2011. They were a quiet revolution in that part of the world, with locally-developed apps for everything from agriculture to healthcare, from disaster response to business and more. This stand-alone WiFi library would be ideal for those areas.
Do we really need this? (Score:0)
Re:Do we really need this? (Score:2)
Do we really need yet another file server distro?
I'm a little more confused around the goal. It's designed to share eBooks in places that have no infrastructure, maybe not even a reliable electrical grid. Okay... but share with what? People in those parts of the world aren't running around with iPads.
Re: (Score:1)
No, they're running around with phones. Phones really have revolutionized the world, all the way down to that one remote village with one phone to share with everyone to let them call in to see what price their crops will bring or whether heading into town will get them all slaughtered. I doubt they have an iphone 6+, and they probably have a candybar nokia, but cheap androids are only getting cheaper and will be in more hands as they do, especially when you have whatever idealist kids going around handin
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I don't have a smartphone. Are there places in the world where people pay for smartphones without any sort of data plan whatsoever?
Smartphones still can do a lot with just WiFi, and there are a lot of places with "free" wifi in generic metropolitan areas.
I know quite a few people with little-to-no data plan; i.e. many with no data-plan at all, and a significant number of people with very little (a few hundred MB)
Even the "small" data plans are used only for apps like Maps or Mass-Transit info (stuff that you may need while not near wifi); for all of their browsing and such while out of the house, they'll stop in at a Starbucks or som
Re: (Score:3)
I doubt they have an iphone 6+, and they probably have a candybar nokia, but cheap androids are only getting cheaper and will be in more hands as they do, especially when you have whatever idealist kids going around handing them out.
There's probably still a lot of the candybar phones still around, but it was the Huawei IDEOS 8150 that took on the laptop-killer role in sub Saharan Africa all the way back in 2011. They were a quiet revolution in that part of the world, with locally-developed apps for everything from agriculture to healthcare, from disaster response to business and more. This stand-alone WiFi library would be ideal for those areas.
http://singularityhub.com/2011... [singularityhub.com]