Archive for May 20th, 2008

No sooner had I returned from Berkman@10 than I learned of BlabNote, the purely vocal social network. Instead of interfacing through a web browser, like Facebook or MySpace, a user just calls BlabNote which recognizes the caller ID and allows them to do a number of typical operations: create groups, leave voice mails, conference call, etc. As TechCrunch puts it, BlabNote will have a long, uphill battle.

I’m interested in BlabNote for another reason though. As I chronicled in my recent post, mobile phones are incredibly pervasive in the world. Within 5 to 10 years more than 80% of people will own a cell phone and these will be increasingly powerful. This GapMinder animation shows the rapid adoption of mobile devices throughout the world.

Mobile communications right now are predominately vocal. Although advanced phones do include Internet browsing, the main form of communication is spoken. A major benefit to developing world users is that they need not worry about literacy. Where educational institutions are weak, vast swaths of the population can be illiterate or even if they can read and write in a local language, little online content is available outside of major languages like Mandarin or English. For example, take a look at the distribution of Wikipedia languages where English more than doubles the closest competitor.

These two trends make voice-only services a viable alternative in the developing world. The most obvious problem? The speech-recognition software which has improved dramatically for English is not available in Cheyenne or Zulu. If BlabNote could port the technology to other languages, they might have the possibility to provide a useful service to consumers and businesses in the third world who place great importance on mobile phones.

Today, to much fanfare and consternation, Google launched their medical web service. The site promises to safely and securely organize patient health information and share the information with medical providers to better offer care and awareness. Google has other competition in this developing area, including Microsoft’s HealthVault. Google is often the target of privacy questions due to their aggregation and organization of so much information, but Google Health probably represents the most important step in this regard.

Traditionally, medical information is protected by strict federal legislation called HIPAA. However, Google is not covered under HIPAA. As users of Google Health, one places trust in the user agreements, not a specific federal law. As is very clear, Silicon Valley moves much faster than Washington, D.C. Google has developed a chart comparing the two systems of protection.

Regardless of the specific provisions, and I’m sure there will be much important discussion about the privacy policies and implications of storing health records with a third party, it was inevitable that this would happen. The medical industry is woefully antiquated and moves glacially. Going to the doctor is a painful process even before the shots. Internet ingenuity and thinking will be essential to drive forward this industry and others. There is a reason Kleiner Perkins now focuses 1/3 of their investments in green start-ups and why Internet thinkers are increasingly focusing on more fundamental problems than college networking or viral videos.