Let’s start.

Online Shopping

I know a few of you will say that Mauritius has a few online shopping sites now. For example, the multishop is considered Mauritian. But you have to agree, there are not so many Mauritian online shopping sites online yet, despite many shopping malls opening in the country.

Sadly, even the big names in shopping don’t have websites. For example, none of our well-known bookstores have websites where you can check their catalogue! Come’on people, it’s 2011. Even if you don’t have online-shopping facilities, an online catalogue is a must! But nope, not even that.

Don’t bother trying to buy furniture online. Clothes? Hardly any local sites. I’d even say, no local sites as far as I know. Electronics? Same. Most other things? Nope.

Why?!

I say, we don’t  have local online shopping for 3 reasons:

Firstly, buyers will not have a method for safely paying online while sellers are unable to accept electronic money. Remember, Paypal does not accept Mauritian account holders to receive money. I don’t think any of the other payment processors let Mauritians accept money too. Local banks could have done something about that by implementing our own, local payment processor. Some effort is being done, such as paying by mobile phone. But those are not applicable online yet. For now, there is no method to buy online, short of putting your credit card online directly – something few Mauritians want to do. The fear that “people will steal my credit card number if I put it on the Internet” is very much present.

Second reason: lack of customers. Maybe I’m wrong here, but I think not many people know how to shop online yet. At least in Mauritius, they don’t. Even if we had local shops selling stuff online, not many people would know how to buy. Granted, we can teach them easily but the distrust of online shopping will remain present for quite a long time. Considering the few customers wanting the convenience of online shopping, I doubt many stores will want to invest in creating shopping websites. Although, that does not explain why they don’t even have online catalogues.

For the third reason, you only have to look at our postal service. It’s not that fast, not that reliable and worst of all, does not make an effort to encourage people to use its services. It’s not completely at fault here: there is just not enough reason to use the postal service for shopping at the moment – there are so few online shopping sites anyway! Let’s hope that in the future, the postal service standard increases in the country, as the number of shopping sites increase.

Auction Site

I’m not saying we should have a local Ebay.co.mu or something, but we could at least have a functional auction site by now.

I remember we had a few, but as far as I know, they’re all dead. Due to lack of interest? Probably  not. Some even ran quite successful advertising campaigns, using bill-boards etc. But? They didn’t have the variety of products people were expecting.

Above all else, they were not very user-friendly. Most looked like pages filled with pictures and text, but not a simple, guided page on how to use the site to buy stuff.

We had a few but they all died I think. Due to lack of interest? Probably not. I’d say they went off quite well, but they didn’t

Why?!

They were not real auction sites anyway. There were merely catalogues where people posted what they had to sell and others searched through. To buy stuff, you’d have to contact the seller manually, arrange for payment and collection offline. Not very secure, huh? And, no warranties!

Secondly, Orange.mu’s Classifieds site is king in this domain. It’ll not be easy to dislodge it and take its place as “auction catalogue”. You’d have to come up with a really creative solution. We’ve not reached there yet.

Finally, no online payment facilities. Again!

A portal / Discussion Forum

Strangely enough, Mauritius does not even have an “official” discussion forum! I mean, a place where people just sign in to have a chat and discuss country issues. Don’t tell me Facebook has completely obliterated forums – it has not.

Facebook is good for keeping track of what friends are doing but it’s not that good for discussions with people you don’t know personally.

Most countries have specialized forums for discussing specialist topics – such as, lowyat.net for Malaysia’s Tech Community to discuss about technology and buy/sell/trade computer or electronic parts.

We did have a few forums, such as Nubaz. I was a member there for a long time but finally, the discussions died down as people got more interested in Facebook and spam-bots overran the site.

Why?!

Facebook mainly. It was much easier to use than a forum. You could have your own profile, stalk people’s pictures etc…, things which you cannot do when using a forum – most people use avatars and nicknames anyway. Posting on forums is relatively tedious and disorganized as compared to Facebook. Can Facebook pages replace a forum? Nope. Your discussions will get lost too quickly on the page walls. You’d also need one page per discussion topic.

I wish someone would spawn a Mauritian forum again, where we can discuss with fellow Mauritians about day-to-day topics, the news but also, buy and sell second-hand stuff. That at least would attenuate the need for an online auction site. One can run auctions quite easily using a forum.

I have one question: how come none of the private radios have forums? Are they THAT hard to moderate?!

Bus Route Planning

Update: Carrotmadman points me to this site: mauritius-buses.com. The site allows you to plan your journey by bus.

What I had in mind was a site, where you can set your current location on a map, and type in your destination, or again click on a map, and it’ll give you all possible bus routes to this destination, schedules, estimated travel times etc. But mauritius-buses certainly does the job. The presentation needs some work e.g. the map, and the prices need reviewing: “Total price: 19 / 9 / 10 MUR” from Port Louis (victoria) to Curepipe is only Rs. 19? But at least, that’s one more service we have. Thanks Carrotmadman.

A major annoyance to me. I never know which bus to take and where to find them in bus stations! I’d just ask friends if they know which bus to take then wander through bus stations trying to look for that bus, and if all else fail, ask around until I finally find it. So much for tourist-friendly!

Why can’t we have a simple journey planner in Mauritius? You enter your starting point and your destination and it gives you the potential bus routes you can take, the route numbers, where the buses are found at which bus stations and their schedules.

Why?!

Too many bus companies! How can one expect to have a site that regroups all those companies and plan their routes, give their fares, schedules etc…?

Turns out you can. Ever heard of crowd-sourcing?

You just need to have a website, maybe powered by Google Maps. Then leave it to regular travelers or even the companies themselves to add their details and maintain it. That should be easier than having one entity maintain the whole thing. If a company doesn’t want to maintain their routes, too bad. That’s lost money for them.

I can’t imagine why a service like that doesn’t exist when almost every year, computer science students at the University of Mauritius are given projects that often contain route-planning and geo-location. I’m pretty sure it’s the same for University of Technology students too.

Can’t one of the companies take one of these projects as a prototype, have it refined and implemented? Can’t UoM / UTM themselves run one of these projects on their infrastructure and maintain it? What’s the point of Universities if none of their research ever gets used?

You want even more features? How about the service letting you buy and print your ticket in advance? How about buying long-term tickets for e.g. a ticket which you can use for a whole week?

Oh I forget… payment facilities. AGAIN!

Movie Renting service

Piracy is high in Mauritius. Why? Because we don’t have good things to watch on TV, buying original media is ridiculously expensive (Rs. 2000 for a recent DVD, are you kidding me?) and you can’t rent legal media to watch / listen. Video on Demand, while available, is not great.

What I want is a Netflix-like service. I understand that our local Internet speeds may prevent streaming HD content without Orange complaining that everyone’s leeching off its bandwidth. And I can tell you, if we did have a streaming service, Orange will probably charge you additional just to watch stuff. You’d be a “heavy downloader” or whatnot and therefore, must pay more.

So what can we have? A site that allows you to rent movies / music online. You pay a monthly fee, just like you’d pay a monthly utility bill. You then access your account on their site and they post what you’ve chosen to you.

Think of it like an online video club. Instead of going there in person, you choose what you want in person and they post it to you. After that, you just post it back to them. Posting charges are paid by the company and included in your monthly bill.

Not a critical service, but it’d be interesting to have.

Why?!

Our postal service. First, it’s relatively slow. A letter takes around 3 days to come from Mahebourg to Port-Louis. Second, there’s a big risk of breakage. Third, it’s quite expensive to post small parcels, even locally. Fourth… it’s easier to just pirate the damn thing if you want it so much. But hey, I was trying to suggest a legal alternative here!

SME marketplace

Do we have a Business-to-Business marketplace for SMEs and handicrafts in Mauritius? Nope. What if I wanted to say, buy 1000 mini-dodos to give as gift? Where do I go to find that? I’d have to contact SMEDA probably, then get the address of a few artisans. Then contact each of them individually and see if they can match my order of 1000 dodos. Etc etc… Basically, a long process.

If they had an online B2B market place, I’d just browse through, find who makes dodos and what size of order they can take. The site would list their contact details, pictures of their products etc…

I’d like a site like Etsy or Alibaba but for Mauritius. I don’t think there is such a site yet. In what way would this help? Boost our SMEs and startups of course! If no one knows what they’re doing, how can they hope to secure clients? A site like this may even help them reach an international market, who knows.

You can even extend the site to make it into a business directory with an SME corner, so that the site is able to help Mauritian businesses in general. For example, if I ask you to find me all the resellers of Logitech in Mauritus, how would you go about it? Open the Yellow Pages directory and go through the “Computer” sections? How about all the website hosting providers in Mauritius that can offer unmetered bandwidth and hosting space? Good luck searching!

Why?!

Lack of will. I can’t imagine any other reason such a site doesn’t exist. There is simply no will to invest effort in implementing such a service.

Local knowledge / Search service

Ever tried Orange.mu’s site? It is supposed to search the Mauritian webspace. Do try it and you’ll notice that it never returns anything Mauritian.

We need a local knowledge site, sort of like a Wiki for Mauritius or something similar. Say I want to find a mechanic in Quatre Bornes. Where do I search for that? Google? You won’t get meaningful results. There are no good places to search for local info about Mauritius.

Another example: You’re in the south and want to find a good restaurant to have lunch with some friends, especially Chinese food. How do you search for that? Would Google tell you that there’s a good restaurant, with good user reviews, found on the 2nd floor of some building that sells awesome noodles? Nah, I doubt it. You’d need local knowledge for that. Even better, searchable local knowledge. With pictures and user reviews if possible.

Here’s another example of where crowd-sourcing could help: just create the service and allow users to add their own local knowledge to it.

Why?!

No one wants to invest in such a service? I don’t really know why Orange.mu doesn’t offer this service. One could think local knowledge would be important, but I guess, not enough for Mauritius.

P.s. for fun: Orange.mu search just searches Google for you anyway! So much for local search! Is our local web space so meaningless?

So there you have it. My list of online services Mauritius ought to have but sadly, doesn’t. Can you think of other online services that would be good to have in Mauritius? Are there other reasons why we don’t already have these services? Is there one particular serivce you know of and want to recommend to others? Comment below!

This article comes from GeekScribes

Online Services Mauritius Does Not Have And Why

Merriam-webster says something about “the culture of computers”. It must be a joke: I hardly see any kind of “culture of computers” in Mauritius.

We are far, VERY FAR from deserving being called a cyber island yet. Why? Lots of reasons actually…

Stuck in Slow Lane, in 1st gear with a broken clutch

What’s the fastest Internet speed in Mauritius? I guess that’d be around 40Mbps that the Government has I think. For home users? That’d be around 4Mbps. That’s LAME! You don’t consider yourself cyber with speeds like that!

Cloud services? HD Streaming? Online desktop? E-working? What, you mad? None of this would work on low-megabit speeds like that. A service like Dropbox loses its attraction. Streaming? Forget it. Ask Carrotmadman about football streams! We can’t have our own BBC iPlayer because of the slowness.

The good thing is, Orange has been doubling the speed quite consistently over recent years. If this trend continues, we may get 8Mbps in what, 4 years or so? Too slow!

Another good news: Some ISP, Bharat Telecommunications Ltd, has applied for an ISP license to ICTA. Funny thing is, I can only find the license. I think I saw that in L’Express but I cannot find the original news again. They promised 10Mbps before 2012 ends or something like that. I’ll believe it when I see it.

For now, you’re stuck watching your lolcat videos on Youtube but with everything going in stop-motion. Very fun.

Education is either expensive or lacking

We have like, 5 Universities now, all of them offering a range of IT courses, most of them should just be called “Systems Engineering and Coding” instead of fancy names like “Bsc. Computer Applications”. It’s just that: we do tons of programming and very little of what remains.

Networking? Databases? Security? Mere modules in a Bsc. Show me one Bsc. course in Mauritius that focuses only on Game Development? Only on mobile technologies and development? Nah, we don’t have that kind of specialization.

We don’t need them. Or, to be more precise, our BPOs don’t need them. Maybe they’d need a few of those mobile tech guys, but Game Developers? Nope. BSc. in Security etc are not required because companies want their Sec people to have CCSPs and Microsoft Security Whatevers and Ethical Hacker something! They don’t care about your old-time BSc that still teaches how Ping of Death works. Nooo, they want you to be able to configure an IPS, not how to understand how it works!

Why’s that? Why aren’t non-programming Bsc or other university courses not in demand? We don’t have research. UoM calls itself a University but as far as I know, doesn’t do much research. Sure, we have people doing their PhDs and stuff, but most of the things they do are either just stuffed in a library somewhere, or cannot be put into practice in the country. That’s it for the demand, so there’s no supply as well.

On the other hand, there is immense demand for professional-level certificates like CCNA, CCNP, MCITP and whatever fancy acronyms you can think of. Those courses are really cool and do teach you quite a lot of practical stuff that Universities won’t teach you, or more precisely, cannot teach you because they don’t have the latest and shiny toys.

For those wanting professional certificates, they have to go to private training centres? What’s wrong? Those courses are ridiculously expensive! CCNA is a “mere” Rs. 30,000 at best. MCITP? Rs. 150,000 or so. And people DO shell out the cash to do those because it’s easy to get jobs when you got yourself a shiny new MCITP Virtualization certification (or not, employers are starting to see the tricks and do more hands-on interviews now).

Government, instead of trying to invent Cyber-names, should instead create a regulatory body for training centres. Like a Price Observatory for professional certificates. Also, we need loan schemes to be able to afford the high cost. This has to be sustainable: if you resort to this scheme, you need to get a letter from your employer to show that your newly-acquired skills would be useful to them and you will have to refund the cost of your training + interests over the next 2 years or something. There’s no point in 13-year old kids getting CCIEs when they won’t use it and just waste money. Unless you know, they’re genius 13-year-olds or something.

Where are the startups??

90% of University IT graduates join a BPO less than 6 months after completing their studies. That’s not an official fact, just my personal observation. Most of my IT-related friends are currently in BPOs. As far as I know, none of them started their own company. That is, none of them created a startup.

Worse is, a few of them are really good at what they do, and their undergrad dissertation, with a bit of polishing could be a viable commercial product. But no, they just join BPOs like herded sheep. I understand them: Rs. 23,000 for fresh graduate is a lot of money.

The downside is that without Startups, our local IT industry is stifled. We don’t have big name players here because they don’t have anything to invest in here: they just shift out their boring work and maintenance to be done here by undergrad grunts. Not fun, but at least it brings money.

That and a boatload of call-centres. I remember the beginnings of Ebene Cyber City… I used to call it Call Centre City. Because that’s what it was filled with. That and Government bodies.

In my opinion, call centres are not IT. Yes, they use IT. Yes, they employ IT people. No, they don’t contribute anything new to the IT sector in general. They are just services, some of them existing only to annoy people into buying crap.

I do wish there were more startups. The market in Mauritius is small but that doesn’t mean you can’t sell your services to international folks. There are a good number of success stories with local companies mainly working with foreign ones, so there is hope for startups, only if people are willing to take the risk. Yes, startups do fail. A lot of them do. A few of them turn into giants like Google.

The void called Online Services

Try buying a cinema ticket online. Or try ordering a few computer parts or electronics stuff to be delivered to your doorstep. Ok, forget buying. You got a call from some number on your mobile but don’t know who that is. You want to do a reverse phone lookup. Or, you want to do a normal phone lookup, why not?

Tried any of those? Of course not! Why? Because the services are NOT available! You can’t do anything online! No services, no checking up bus time-tables, no booking a taxi, barely any online shopping, nothing! Cyber-island? More like, mall-island! You’re supposed to do all your shopping in big-ass malls that sell expensive junk. Yes, funny.

Why don’t we have any of those anyway? No one’s investing in them, that’s why! Secondly, but more importantly, we don’t have a local payment systems. Banks are more interested in getting you to shift your money from under your mattress to their vaults, that’s it. They’re not interested in investing a ton of cash in creating a local payment system!

And they’re wrong. They’d have made a ton of cash in return. People would have signed up for paid services just to get access to this payment service. They’d pay for security. They’d pay for convenience. They’d pay for being lazy. I’d pay for being lazy!

Who wouldn’t want to book their Harry Potter ticket online instead of standing like a pole in a long queue at Star Cinemas? Or check at what time and where they can get a bus to Quatre Cocos or wherever? Those services would be popular. If only they existed.

Oh, and it’d also help with that “culture of computers” thing. When someone’s told that they can avoid standing for 2 hours in a queue by using this computer-thing-service, they’d want to learn how to do that. They’d want to learn what else they can do. They’d develop a culture of computers. We’d become a Cyber Island! Yay!

We also need a more developed web-space. For now, we only have lots of Mauritian blogs but if that were to change with say, Chapeau La Paille having their webpage, Rose-Hill transport having theirs (instead of a crappy old un-updated website), we’d be better off.

Missing the cool stuff

Finally, I come to the point that grieves me most. I can’t find the computer parts I want! I can’t find that shiny gadget I want. Or if I can, it’s just too expensive!

I should probably do a comparison between Mauritian and Malaysian prices when it comes to computer parts. Just for the lulz, although I know their market is much bigger than ours. It’d be fun, probably.

I mean, really, how many good computer shops are there in Mauritius? I can name like, 5.

The main problem is not that parts are missing, but that there is no competition, or not enough competition. And not enough market. And not enough culture of computers.

Monopolies. Ah, monopolies. Am looking at you, Orange. You too, 5 computer shops. You are seriously ruining the fun. Not much to say here. It’s just that we’re stuck with drooling over parts online, parts that we cannot find in Mauritius. Too bad.

Ok forget that. We also lack specialized services. The craze is for smartphones lately and those things EAT data. Try finding a big data package from one of our… two operators. None exists. Sure, you can get a 1GB a month for a huge price but there’s no all-rounder packages to be had. Like, I’d like 200 mins of calls, 100Mb of data and say, 300 SMS for around Rs. 300. Nope, can’t have. Market too small. Need. More. Profits! PROOOFITS!

I’ll just stop here. If you’ve read all text above, you’d now know why I think Mauritius is no cyber island yet. I also offered a few suggestions about what I think could improve the situation. There is hope! All is left in the hands of our leaders, companies and corporates to decide if we could really earn that title afterwards. The future is not bright, is it?

This article comes from GeekScribes

Mauritius is not a cyber island yet. Here’s why.

I felt my Day 1 at Orange Expo felt kinda rushed. There were things I missed, things I didn’t notice. So when the family wanted to go there today, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to go again. Turns out, I did discover a few new things.

So this post will be less about the tech there, and more about the Expo itself, its organization, ideas and some suggestions to Orange, as I go through it.

For this post, I’ll not make the mistake of trying to compare the Orange Expo with the expos you have abroad. They cannot be compared. Instead, what we should be doing is comparing the Orange Expo 2011 with its peer: Infotech. On Day 1, I wanted to see iPad 2 and Xoom and all the new shiny toys out there. As a geek, I wanted to see them, play with them. But I realized that many people who visited the expo today didn’t even know what an iPad was! To them, it was something new and wonderful.

Free entrance for students and children

A friend of mine got in just by showing his University pass. I didn’t know the expo was free for students! Nice, Orange! Which leads me to:

The “Learn” concept

Today, this caught my eye: that Orange would put the Learn cube right in front of you when you enter the expo. They really wanted to emphasize how technology that Orange supplies will be making learning easier in the future.

Throughout the expo, there were people explaining things. At the Emerginov area, which I didn’t find interesting on Day 1, I found UoM and UTM students giving demonstrations of their projects:

Innovative projects

One really caught my eye: The MoLecture project. Those dudes did a cross-platform, virtual classroom. They were video-streaming from a laptop, directly to a browser and a Galaxy Tab. Multiple Galaxy tabs! It may not sound impressive like that, but if you consider just how many great things may be accomplished with that project, it’s stunning!

Imagine you waking up late, and missing your lecture. You could just take out your mobile, connect to the web-classroom and start following as if you were there, video and sound included. You can even see who’s in the class and interact with the lecturer. And all this in real-time! Very impressive indeed.

Another project was to pay bus fares with mobiles. Quite interesting too, and could possibly help with all the issues the Government is facing with free trips for students.

There idea of showing students’ projects during the expo is laudable too. At least some of them will get the public’s attention on their projects and possibly get sponsorships later.

I wish Orange would sponsor those projects. They could, like, offer to fund the most-voted-on Emerginov project and run it to completion, and then have the students market their product, all while having Orange’s brand on it. A great way to advertise the company, in my opinion.

The missing “Explain” corner

While I was there today, I often heard a simple line: “KieT sa?” or “what is this?”, most of the time asked by parents, while the kids got to answer. I had to do my fair share of teaching too…

What would have been interesting at this expo is an “Explain” section, or whatever Orange decides to call it. There, you’d find a set of large screens in a sort of mini-classroom. People who are not familiar with technology would be able to go there and watch self-repeating videos that will tell them more about the expo.

For example, the video might give them a tour, showing them the various products they will see, what they are and what they can do. It may explain a few terms like “Android”, “Tablet” etc… so that people at least have a brief idea of what they are looking at.

It doesn’t have to be a long video; a 5 mins video would be sufficient. After the video, just show a countdown with “Session restarting in: <countdown>”. A simple thing which would have really helped today.

It’s one thing to show people tablets and touchscreens, but it’s better if they know what they are holding.

Putting tech in people’s hands

As a technology-following person, maybe you didn’t find the expo satisfactory. You didn’t find some mobile or tablet or some other device you were looking for. Maybe you didn’t get to subscribe to 100Mbps Internet. But try to forget that there is anything beyond the expo. Forget what you know about tablets.

What if you went there, and for the first time ever, got to touch a computer so flat that it looks like a magazine in your hand. Imagine what you would feel. You, who don’t even have a computer at home, are now holding a cutting-edge device in your own hands!

Let’s forget the newer devices for a moment. Orange did something fantastic here. It allowed people to test devices. Ridiculously expensive devices. Everybody had opportunities to see an HTC phone, an iPad or a Galaxy Tab. That’s what I call putting technology in people’s hands.

People got a view of what Teleworking is, what a “video conference” is, how good voice can sound through “HD voice”. For geeks, these may be “already know”, but many of the people who visited the expo today haven’t read reviews on the iPad 2, or the HTC Mozart or some LED screen. They only went there, and were delighted to get to touch an iPad or to some, a “very thin computer”. That, is something important. Now, they have learnt what a tablet is and what it can do…

The HUGE number of staff

In the Day 1 post, I said I wished the Orange people would approach the public and explain what they were demonstrating. Maybe someone read my post, because today, I got served! Staff members! EVERYWHERE! The Orange-shirt wearing folks were literally, everywhere. They were demonstrating stuff and talking to the public.

Overall, I got a better understanding of the Business Area, and the various projects at the Emerginov area.

The lack of e-presence

I said this before: I wish Orange recorded the conferences and put them online for other people to see. Unfortunately we will most probably not find the conferences online.

Another thing that surprised me is that Orange didn’t make use of the Internet enough. Strange, when you realize Orange is an ISP!

Where are the tweets regarding promotions? Tweets about live pictures from the expo? Live Facebook updates about curiosities? Or “If you are reading this, run towards Stand X and get 25% discount in the next 5 mins!”.

Alright, they DID tweet at the event. Check it out here. See the timestamps? I’d think that for such an expo, we’d be getting every-5-mins updates, but no, sorry. The picture above shows all the relevant tweets on the channel. Not many, huh?

Beyond the expo, Orange should try to reach out to its customers via the web. Like, offer special discounts online or promo codes etc. Get that Twitter channel more active, and also increase their social-network presence. It’s funny… how an ISP is not using the Internet to its full extent!

A family event

Friend of mine told me this. The expo today certainly looked like a family event, with kids roaming around, a large number of young people, accompanying their parents and explaining stuff along the way and people making good use of the seating arrangements conveniently put at various locations.

It’s great to see families and young people showing interest in technology, but the question remains: “should a technology expo be considered as a family event?” I’ll leave that for you to answer.

The simply bad

Did any one of you notice the laggy laptops at the Gaming Zone? A real pity, to see people trying to play on these things…

The ending

In the end, the Orange Expo 2011 was not a let-down. Certainly, the absence of the latest in technology was noticed. “An utter bore-fest for the geeks.”, as said by Carrotmadman6. But let’s be realistic: They did the best they could with what they have. They certainly introduced a few innovative concepts, and showed non-geeks what technology can do.

For geeks, maybe next time! I stand by my opinion: If you went to Expo 2011 for the latest, shiniest gadgets out there, you’ll be deceived. If iPad, Galaxy Tab and HTC are not familiar names to you, you must have enjoyed yourself.

Now, let’s hear your views, people!

This article comes from GeekScribes

Day 2: Orange Expo 2011 Revisited!

The Orange Expo 2011 is held this year from 8th April to 10th April at the Swami Vivekananda International Convention Center (SVICC). Anyway, if you’re reading this, you’ll only be having a day left to visit, and that’s 10th April, from 10h to 19h.

With that said, here’s my experience and thoughts on expo. Sorry for the blurry or low-light pics. My camera had big issues focusing on all the Orange there… I was kind of in-a-hurry too, so I may have missed a few things. If I did, please let me know via comments.

Alright so when you first enter the SIVCC, you’ll see lots of people crowded in the lobby trying to grab a few bags or whatnot. Good quality bags at that! Worth it! Even got a friend who went there just to grab one of those plastic bags… Hah!

So you make your way to the main hall, pass through a tunnel with video projections and end up seeing this:

This orange thing is called the Learn Cube. Inside, Orange wants to show us how classrooms of tomorrow will be. You can see for yourself how they will look like:

Do note the desks! The same ones we had in college! How nice! Wait, those will be vintage furniture in the Classroom of the Future, no?

The good things about this eClassroom that have been demonstrated are the eWhiteboard which allows the teacher to interact with its contents, modifying them on the fly. The Orange brochure says the students would get tablets, but I only saw laptops and few people having tablets. A classroom full of tablet-wielding students would certainly be an impressive sight.

I also got to see part of a lecture. Personally, I didn’t find it much different from the lectures done at UoM. So unless I was mistaken, it was a classroom with students equipped with laptops. I admit that I haven’t played with those laptops myself, so I don’t know if they have special software for interacting with the teachers and class. That would be an bonus.

Behind the eClassroom, there was a sort of conference room where people were giving mini-lectures or conferences if you want. The titles proposed on Orange’s site sound interesting.

Moving to the right, I got to see the 10 new channels that would be available on MyT soon. The channels themselves didn’t catch my attention, but the screens displaying them did. Those LED screens are really, really awesome. You’ll get to see one up-close by the end of this post.

If you continue on, you’ll get to Orange’s business area, where they are exposing the various aspects of business that Orange can help change. Here are those I found most interesting:

• The CSR stand: the person there explained that according to Orange’s CSR, they have developed a program to recycle batteries, especially mobile batteries. You only have to drop them to Orange, or at one of Winners’ outlets and they will handle the dispatch to France for recycling. That, I didn’t know.
• The Teleworking stand, which shows how you can work online. Mainly through web-apps, from what I saw on-screen.
• Remote surveillance through Internet

I have one complaint about those stands: I was walking around not really understanding what was happening. There was no guide or anything. All I could see were people sitting down at those desks and “working”. You had to approach them individually to know what’s happening…

A better idea would have been to include notes, like those you find at museums. So you just approach, read what the person is doing and move on, unless you got question. Another alternative would be video clips playing at each location, demonstrating what the person can do. Stuff like that would have been more interactive.

Just after the Business area, you will find the display windows for all kinds of mobiles. Androids, WP7, Nokia of all price ranges etc… There were a few relatively recent models to be found, such as the HTC Desire HD priced at Rs. 24,999 (if I remember correctly). Bad thing was this: those mobiles are just demonstration units! Couldn’t play with them!

That area was so crowded that I didn’t get to shoot good pics. The prices were wide-ranging, from Rs. 1500 or so all the way to Rs. 20,000 plus!

I’d have preferred they did like, a long table where every mobile gets its own slot. So you can like, queue up and test whatever you like. With their current method of putting everything in display windows, you can’t even approach those, and when you even do, you’ll only find the devices to be dummies. Sigh…

At the back of the SVICC, you’ll find the MBC stand, which was deserted when I got there. Interestingly, you’ll see a few non-Orange stands there. I saw Cash and Carry displaying their impressive number of laptops. I saw Goupille (I think) displaying Samsung product. There were also Macs displayed, as well as an HTC representatives. Not bad, I’ll say.

Around the Learn Cube, you’ll find various mini-stands. The most interesting one was, for me, the tablet demo stand. There, you’ll get to play with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 1 (the 7″ one), the iPad (first generation), and a new comer on the Mauritian market, the Viewsonic Viewpad tablet.

I got to play with the latter, and initial verdict was a good-enough tablet. It’s not a cheap device, priced at Rs. 20,000 or so. What I can tell you is that it runs Froyo, it’s fairly responsive to the touch, although nowhere near iPad-responsiveness. The display is great, and comparable to the Galaxy Tab’s display. There are many reviews of this device online, so if you’re interested, check this one for example. An interesting thing with this device: It can dual-boot Android and Windows 7. Sorry apparently, only the Viewpad 10 can dual-boot.

To end with tablets, let me say that the iPad’s retina display is simply magnificent. Just magnificent. Haven’t seen THAT image quality on any tablet till now. Maybe the iPad2, but I haven’t played with it, and Orange hasn’t brought one this time.

Continue around the Cube, you’ll eventually reach the gaming area. I got to see a few kids playing on a Microsoft Kinect there. Not an Orange product but they were keen to show what tech was capable of. Around that area, I expected to find the Emerginov area, which the Orange brochure described as “a hub for interaction between developers for various platforms, including Android.” I found nothing particularly interesting around there. Except many people sitting down and watching others move around.

Other people were working on their laptops. Basically, it was like the Business Area I said above, without the high tombstone-like things!

I ended my trip to the section called the Intelligent home. You had to wander deep inside to find interesting things. What caught my eye there was those eMeters for electricity. From what the guy was saying, they can monitor your electricity usage from a distance, eliminating the need for people to come to your home. You can also control your home electric grid from home.

That was Orange Expo for me… I hear many people say the expo was “extra seryer” or “very good” and I agree. It was. For people who’re not used to seeing news-feeds about the latest tech out there…

The Expected

I expected to see a couple of things, which unfortunately I didn’t:

• High Speed Internet

Seriously, I wanted to see that. I know it may not be feasible, but I’d have liked to test, say a 50Mbps connection at the expo. Like, get a taste of the speed or something!

• The latest tablets out there

I’d have liked to touch a Motorola Xoom. Or the iPad 2. Or the Galaxy Tab 10″. I wanted to see Android Gingerbread 3.0. None of those, sadly.

• The conferences!

Some conferences have very nice-sounding names and I’d have liked to attend a few. I so wish Orange would have recorded those and made them as videos available on their site. THAT would have been really innovative, a true demonstration of eLearning!

The Unexpected

BUT! I was pleasantly surprised too. There were a couple of things I saw that I didn’t expect:

• The prices…

I expected them to be… lower.

• The HD voice booths

I didn’t expect that there would be demonstration for high-quality voice. Ok, I saw on their brochure, but I didn’t thought it’d be like that. Well made.

• That weird device I saw

Dunno what it is. A friend tells me it’s a sort of toy helicopter that you can control via iPhone. Wished I could have seen it flying around.

• The competitors

Seeing HTC representatives, Macs etc… at Orange’s expo is a nice touch in my opinion. Any chance we’ll see Emtel there next year?

• The Kinect

I knew how Kinect worked. I tested one. The same floating-thing game where you have to use body-balance to steer. But I didn’t expect to find one at Orange’s expo.

• Huawei’s Tablet

Didn’t even know they made tablets! First impressions: The screen was not very responsive. Device is a bit slow. It runs Android 2.2.1. Here’s a review. Pictures follow:

• LED screens

The quality when seen up-close… just stunning! Big Buck Bunny looked awesome on that screen! Ok, maybe they ramped up the contrast, brightness and colors, but the result was still impressive.

• The big Droid

Good one!

• A garden swing in middle of a technology expo…

Uhh…

Alright, with that, I’ll end this post. Verdict? Orange Expo 2011 is an improvement over Orange Expo 2010. I particularly liked the way they wanted to demonstrate how technology that Orange provides will be changing our lives. The eClassroom was a good idea. Lacking tablets, but still a good idea. The conferences are nice. Sadly, I’ll miss them and I hope Orange records them and puts them online.

The bad things? The lack of interaction. The confusion. I was walking around, trying to understand what was happening at the Businesss Area. Only the person at the CSR stand explained stuff. The rest were either sitting, or doing stuff. I’d have liked explanations at least. Next, the lack of real units for the mobiles. I’d have liked to play with a few phones, like those running WP7. Instead, I’d have to hunt for a real unit throughout the Expo. Didn’t find one, even then. I’d also like to see really cutting-edge devices like the Xoom and its peers. The devices this year were fairly recent, but not 2011-recent. They are great for the general public who may not be familiar with these devices, but tech people would be left wanting more.

Orange Expo 2011 is an improvement, but there is still lots of possible improvements possible. Hopefully we’ll see more in 2012.

Opinions? Comments? Jump to the Comments section below and feel free to voice them out!

P.s. Sorry, I sort of like, ripped the Expo logo to use as the leading image. Hope Orange doesn’t mind. If there are issues, lemme know and I’ll take it down.

This article comes from GeekScribes

Orange Expo 2011: The Review

Here’s a quick post about its features, and what I think about the device and the service. Here’s the full advert that also appeared in newspapers:

Is it me, or do the 1st 3 people have really long arms?

The specs for the modem are:

• The modem is pocket-sized so you get to share WIFI access on the go. Teams who need Internet on the go will benefit from this. It’s easy to deploy a small wireless network with Internet access with this device.
• The speed: You get up to 7.2 Mbps downloads and 5.7 Mbps upload. It’s good speed, but remember you’ll be using a wireless network. Speed may vary greatly according to various factors: regions, weather, etc…
• 2 Power modes: Via USB or via Battery. The battery mode is good for say, devices that don’t have a USB port to charge from. Range will be affected, with a theoretical maximum 0f approximately 100 metres with USB and 20 metres with battery.
• A “password protected” WIFI network, which Emtel says is secure, but I’d not bet on that for highly secure transactions.
• It includes a MicroSD slot supporting up to 32GB cards. Storing files on the card allows devices connected to the AP to access the files.
• You can configure the AP via a web browser, just like a regular home router.
• You can also use this device to send SMS from a connected computer if you wish.

That was about the device. Let’s see about the packages:

There are 2 packages and prices don’t include VAT:

1. Emtel Prepaid Web offers:
   • 500MB is Rs. 360
   • 1GB is Rs. 480.

   You have to use your quota in 30 days from the day you activate the package.

   The AP will cost Rs. 4999 VAT inc.

   Excess usage is priced at Rs. 0.003 / KB.

2. Emtel Postpaid Web offers:
   • 1GB is Rs. 399
   • 2GB is Rs. 749
   • 5GB is Rs. 1499
   • 10GB is Rs. 2499

Monthly tariffs are as follows:

Excess usage is priced at Rs. 0.0022 / KB.

The AP will cost Rs. 4499 VAT inc.

Considering the prices, the Emtel MIFI service is definitely not made for people wishing to download things on the go, unless you’re willing to pay for the higher-end packages of 5GB and 10GB. For example, an excess of 1GB will cost you almost Rs. 3000 for the prepaid package. Businesses will likely be able to afford the cost and even then, they may not need to pay for expensive packages if their officers will only be checking their mails or accessing company websites.

If only there usages were higher, like say, 50GB for a fair price of around Rs. 1500 / month, and the AP priced at Rs. 2000 or so (or leased for a monthly fee), the Emtel MIFI would have been a really serious rival for the MyT packages due to its faster speed and portability. Too bad it’s not like that.

Overall the Emtel MIFI product is good for people, mainly business-people and business-teams needing Internet access on the go to check mails, news and such. It is not a good substitute for a full-time home connection considering the low usage limit and high excess prices, unless your daily usage is very business-like: No Youtube, no music, no gaming, just browsing a few sites, emails etc..

There are a some security concerns for system administrators with respect to this service. They will need to be weary about users sneaking that device in their offices to access disallowed sites (Facebook?) and possibly allowing people from the Internet behind their firewalls. Oh the headache…

Finally, if you want a review of the Huawei E5 modem, check this site.

That’s it for this (short) post on the Emtel MIFI. What do you think of the product? Let’s hear it in the comments section.

This article comes from GeekScribes

Emtel releases MIFI: Share Internet Access On The Go