Dritte

MIT Technology Review TR-35, Umar Saif

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:46:49 -0500

Today is a great day for Dritte. We're proud to announce that MIT Tech Review has selected Umar Saif as one of the top innovators under the age of 35 (informally referred to as the "TR-35 Award"). "The TR35 recognizes the world's top 35 young innovators that are radically transforming technology as we know it. Their work - spanning medicine, computing, communications, energy, electronics and nanotechnology - is changing our world", according to the Tech Review. This is the first time in the past decade that a Pakistani has been recognized by the Tech Review.

Umar has been cited for his works on BitMate and SMSall. Both technologies are aimed at providing better communication infrastructure for developing regions. SMSall is the "Twitter over SMS" that has been used to send nearly 4 billion texts to about 2.4 million users. BitMate, on the other hand, targets slow Internet connections in developing regions, and lets users pool their bandwidth together for faster downloads. BitMate has been downloaded more than 30,000 times by people in 173 countries.

The TechReview cites these two works probably because they were most recently in the news, but there are many other exciting projects that Umar is taking a lead on. He moved back to Pakistan, from MIT, with one goal in mind; use technology in innovative ways for improving the lives of people in developing regions. The MIT TR-35 selection will hopefully help in bringing more attention to this noble cause.

MIT GITA Award 2008

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:09:45 -0500

Umar Saif won the MIT Global Indus Technovator Award for his work on Dritte and commercializing some technology solutions for the developing-world. This award is for South Asians, under the age of 40, who have made outstanding technological or entrepreneurial contributions. More information here.

MIT TechReview Features DonateBandwidth

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:37:47 -0500

MIT TechReview has featured our work on improving Internet connectivity in the developing-world. This Project, dubbed DonateBandwidth, is a follow-up on our Poor Man's Broadband work. With DonateBandwidth, users in the developing-world can help each other by donating their unused bandwidth to those who need it. This project received funding from the US State Department/NAS and HEC and will be further developed in collaboration with UC Berkeley.

Read the TechReview article here.

Kenneth Keniston's Keynote

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:57:40 -0500

Kenneth Keniston is scheduled to give the keynote address at NSDR this year. The keynote will focus on key issues like lessons learnt from previous efforts e.g., in India, understanding the current ICT4D boom, and future directions for ICT professionals and researchers.

Kenneth Keniston is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Human Development at MIT and Director of the MIT India Program. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College. He received his D. Phil. from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He has taught at Harvard, Yale, and MIT. He is the author of nine books including IT Experience in India: Bridging the Digital Divide and The State, IT, and Development.

More information on the keynote here. More information on the NSDR 2008 program here.

New Scientist Features Poor Man's Broadband

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:29:33 -0500

This week's issue of New Scientist has published an article on our research on Poor Man's Broadband. This project has resulted in a modified version of a P2P system (BitTorrent) designed to bypass the "bottleneck of the Internet" in the developing-world. The system employs direct point-to-point POTS connections to exchange data at the maximum speed afforded by a modem. This project was funded by Microsoft Research's Digital Inclusion Grant.