TECHNOLOGY
Filipino startup says
salt and water can bring light possible
Professor Aisa Mijeno and her
brother Raph have a dream for their 16 million Filipino fellowmen who live
without electricity.
In the Philippines, where a large
percentage of the rural poor do not have electrical access, the Mijeno siblings
have taken on the challenge to bring light to families using a very simple
concept that Professor Aisa thinks has long been taken for granted.
“The planet is three-fourth ocean
water,” the spritely, petite teacher muses, “What is the best way to solve
our energy shortage other than using the abundant natural resource that we
have? The science behind this has been existing for a hundred years; I’m not
really sure why people deviated from developing this principle.”
It sounds nothing short of
miraculous, if not even revolutionary: the Mijenos are going to make sublime
light from mere water and salt.
And then there was light Professor Aisa
is a part-time faculty member of the College of Engineering at De la Salle
University-Lipa, teaching technical subjects such as Embedded System, Data
Structures and Algorithm Analysis, and CCNA Exploration.
Before that, she also taught a
class on Environmental Engineering, with the course covering Sustainable
Energy.
Her technical background proved
useful when she visited a small tribe in Kalinga, a mountainous region north of
the country. There, she learned how people had to walk 12 hours to the
neighboring town 50 kilometers away, just so they can buy kerosene for their
lamps.
“That hit me in the heart, so I
started linking my past knowledge and experiences to come up with a sustainable
solution,” Professor Aisa shares.
This realization set her on the
path towards starting salt, which she and her brother proudly
brand as a social movement that aims to distribute
their sustainable, cost-effective, and ecologically-designed lamp
powered by tap water and table salt.
It wasn’t hard to believe that it
was her destiny all along. Her life of soul-searching seemed to
have been readying her for this epiphany: “After I graduated from college,
I had the chance to work for an industry for a couple of years. I resigned my
job and spent one whole year volunteering for various NGOs. I call that now, a year
of enlightenment — where I traveled across the Philippines and Southeast Asia,
and did work for free,” she reminisces. “I got to be part of Greenpeace
Philippines as a DDC (Direct Dialogue Campaigner) in the middle of that same
year.”
As campaigner, she received a
scanty PHP 4,000 a month, which eventually took a toll on her finances. With a
heavy heart, she resigned from her job.
Little did she know back then that
she would eventually have a groundbreaking idea which will get the attention of
business incubator IdeaSpace Foundation, and win for them a slot in
the organization’s recent tech startup competition, along with nine other companies?
The duo plan to adopt TOM’s
One for One model by ensuring that communities from depressed areas in the
country get a free lamp for every product purchased.
“Our first beneficiaries will be
the Hanunuo Mangyan tribe of Bulalacao, Oriental Mindoro that we were able to
visit last August,” Professor Aisa reveals. “Our main target communities are
those families that are living off the grid, not by choice but by
circumstances. The Philippines is an archipelago and the logistics of providing
energy to all of these islands are fairly limited. So we have to reach out to
these communities and help the government somehow,” she added.
Aside from this, they also plan to
expand beyond the Philippines, and impact other places that will benefit
from their innovation. “Lack of electricity access does not only exist
here,” she observes. “This problem also persists for 63 million
people in Indonesia, 26 million people in Myanmar, 10 million in Cambodia,
eight million in Thailand, two million in Vietnam, 2.2 million in
Laos, and 200,000 in Malaysia.”
When asked why people should
support their project, the Professor humbly answered: “What we do is a simple
way of helping, of trying to give back in the way we know how to. The places
that need this technology and the people that live in these places are amazing,
but sadly they are not being given enough attention. Hopefully, what we bring
to the table will get people with amazing ideas to follow suit.”
Freelancer.com believes in
passionate individuals making a difference in the world. That is why, together
with the Young Entrepreneurs Society of the Philippines (YES), it
has appointed SALt to represent the Philippines for the
Startup Nations Summit competition this November 24-25 in Seoul, Korea. Help
SALt win by voting for them by scanning the provided QR code. (Source: e27.co)
No need for law on anti-theft app,
say mobile phone makers
Installing a kill-switch on all
mobile phones is easier than believed, and with all the recent developments in
the market, congressional action may not be needed.
Many phone manufacturers have
developed kill-switches—all that’s left to do is make them available across all
cell phone models.
In the House of Representatives,
Ang Mata’y Alagaan party-list Rep. Lorna Velasco is seeking approval of a bill
requiring mobile service providers to install kill-switch software in all
cellular phones they provide to their subscribers.
“The enactment of this bill into
law will effectively weaken, if not eliminate completely, the black market in
stolen cell phones, which in turn will lead to a reduction in crimes related to
mobile phones,” Velasco said in her explanatory note to the bill.
But since 2013, Filipino smartphone
maker MyPhone has been installing a technology called Theft Apprehension and
Asset Recovery Application (Tara) “on some models of its products.”
MyPhone said it is aimed at helping
curb massive phone theft, which in 2012 numbered some 6,600 reported incidents
nationwide.
Tara is similar to Apple’s
kill-switch “Find My iPhone” in that it erases the contents of a stolen phone.
But unlike the Apple app, it does not give the owner an idea of where the phone
is.
Jun Lozada, who developed the
MyPhone app, had said in a previous interview with the Inquirer that while Tara
could not guarantee the stolen unit would be returned to its owner, it would at
least prevent the thieves from selling it.
Besides, the stolen phone, even
when turned off, would regularly set off an alarm and an automated voice would
let people nearby know it is not in the hands of its rightful owner.
While anti-theft apps made by
manufacturers like MyPhone and Apple are available, others have yet to follow
suit.
Software developers have said they
are already on it.
Google and Microsoft said they were
developing similar applications to be embedded in the mobile operating systems
they had developed.
Google, which developed Android,
said it had developed a kill-switch that zeroes in on malicious apps and
privacy violations only. The company said it had yet to transform it into a
full anti-theft app.
But Android users have only to
explore the Internet to find an anti-theft application.
One app touted to be a kill-switch
has been available on Google Play since 2012.
Called “Find My Phone,” the app was
developed by Glenn Beach, the same developer who came out with “Bake My Day,”
and is available for free download.
In June, Microsoft, which has been
struggling to keep its operating system on mobile devices amid the Android
explosion, said the kill-switch it has been developing could also be remotely
activated by the owner of a stolen device.
Microsoft did not elaborate but
hinted its kill-switch might be incorporated into an existing app designed to
help owners find their phones. (Source: besttopics.net)
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