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Vodafone Wireless Winners, UK DNA Database, Swine Flu Questions Answered, and Airplanes!

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this week’s Technology Podcast

OK, so it’s true that mobile telecom giant Vodafone knows a thing or two about making money. The company currently operates in more than 25 countries, and has more than 250 million customers. Many of these millions are in developing countries, where things like infectious diseases and sudden natural disasters take heavy tolls. Well, the Vodafone Americas Foundation, a non-profit arm of the company, is looking for ways to help, and that’s where we start this week’s Technology Podcast (WTP 242). Vodafone just ran what it calls the Wireless Innovation Project. One hundred applicants submitted ideas that harnessed new and existing wireless technologies in pursuit of social good. The idea was to show not only great use of technology, but also a clear sense of how these products could, and would, make it to market. The three winners were recently announced at the Global Philanthropy Forum in Washington, DC. I just happened to be there, and was lucky enough to get to sit down with the three winners. Two of the projects, including the CellScope you see at right, try to capitalize on a smartphone’s imaging abilities. The CellScope works by fitting a microscope lens onto a phone’s camera, so that a field worker trying to find out if someone has tuberculosis or malaria could get lab-quality imaging of blood while out in the field. The other imaging project, the CelloPhone, dispenses with the camera lens entirely. Samples are placed directly on the cameras imaging sensors, essentially creating a hologram of the cells that are imaged. What can a cell hologram tell you? Plenty, it turns out. The third project is all about ANTs (that’s “active networked tags”). Imagine if our buildings, our bridges, our roads, even our clothes were filled with small tags that could talk to each other (and rescue teams) in the event of an emergency. Powerful ideas. I don’t know if any of this tech will save the world, but these devices might make it a little more livable for whole lot of human beings. You can see some pictures and videos of the winners here.

Also in this week’s technology podcast, we take an in-depth look at Britain’s DNA database. It’s supposed to hold DNA samples of British criminals, but it turns out that many innocent people are also in there, and that has privacy advocates up in arms.

Thanks to everyone who sent in their swine flu questions. We’ve got a segment that hopefully will answer some of them. Listen in for the great discussion between risk expert Peter Sandman and health journalist and blogger Christine Gorman. Good stuff.

And we end with another competition. Airbus is looking for interesting, even outlandish, ways to save money. So it’s asked engineering teams to submit ideas. Our favorites among the finalists: the windowless cabin, and having groups of commercial planes fly in an inverted “V” formation…like migrating birds. Yowzah!