Tech Stream

Tech Stream 023

24 July 2009

Listen and download: MP3

Mobile money, Google vs Microsoft and gaming in the Wild West. Its a mixed bag in the Tech Stream this week. You can listen to the full program with the MP3 link above or read more after the jump…

Money transferred using mobile phones and text messages has the potential to boost economic activity in rural areas in the Pacific and to protect people’s savings from criminals. That is what delegates attending the Microfinance Pasifika Conference in Fiji were told by experts already implementing these systems. Jemima Garrett speaks with Jeremy Cleaver, Pacific Access to Finance specialist with the Asian Development Bank about the rollout of these schemes. A full transcript of this interview is on our Pacific Beat website.

We also meet Harold Dimple from mHITS, a mobile payment and transaction service operating in Australia who’ve also done some work in Papua New Guinea.  His system allows people to pay for for things by using SMS on their mobile phones.  And not just ringtones but things like coffee and takeaway food.  Harold and his company were also featured on The New Inventors on ABC TV.

Microsoft shares fell in the US today after the company reported a 29 percent drop in sales.  Bloomberg report that revenue in their Windows unit “fell for the third straight quarter to $3.11 billion”.   Despite the disappointment it’s worth noting that the company is still making a hefty profit, for now, and they remain the world’s largest maker of software.

Their Windows 7 operating system will be available to manufacturers soon and should be available to the public this year, with some suggesting an October 22 launch. And the upcoming Office 2010 software will also be available as a free internet suite called Office Web.  Few were surprised by this move, it seems an obvious attempt to claw back some ground from Google’s “Docs” and similar cloud services.  Google themselves announced an operating system for PCs called Chrome OS, which we spoke about a couple of weeks ago, and so now the speculation starts over a looming battle between Microsoft and Google.

Geraldine Doogue from Saturday Extra spoke with Mark Pesce from Future Street and Ray Valdes, an analyst from Gartner about this looming clash of the titans.  You can also read a full transcript for this interview on the Radio National website.

And finally we catch up with Bajo from Good Game on ABC TV, for his review of wild-west shooter Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood.