Jamaica
News - Real Estate - General
Source: Jamaica Gleaner, Ross Shiel, March 4, 2007
Web entrepreneurs slowly
taking Jamaica online
Years from now there might not be any advertising
on this page you are reading. More dramatically, there may not be a 'page'
at all, as content - editorial, advertising, information and media services -
migrate to cellular phones and the Internet, a process under way in other
markets.
That's if you believe attendees at 'Kingston
Beta', a networking event for Web and mobile professionals, held at the Jamaica
Pegasus hotel in New Kingston for the first time on Wednesday.
Technology
shift happening
They believe technological shift is already
happening in Jamaica.
"We have the beginnings of a 'Silicon
Caribbean!'" said event organiser Ingrid Riley, chief executive officer of
Dutchpot Interactive, a digital marketing solutions company.
With the passing of the e-Transactions Act,
increasing Internet access and Digicel preparing to package discounted laptops
with its WiMax service, due to launch mid-year, the business climate is now
fertile for like-minded entrepreneurs, contends Riley.
One of several young companies represented at the
event, Hondigo is a soon-to-launch 'intelligent advertising' service that sends
classified advertisements via SMS text messaging to cellular phones.
Fee-paying subscribers to Hondigo will be able
to specify exactly what they are looking to buy or advertise.
With almost every Jamaican owning a cellular
phone, mobile technology is now the most efficient way to deliver information to
consumers, maintains Hondigo CEO Wilbert Lyn Jr.
"It's got be mobile. It's the way for
information technology services to develop over here because people need to be
flexible and they already own a mobile. You only have to look at how mobile
television with Digicel has come here before it has with the Web," said
Lyn.
Bits & Bytes, like Lyn's company, was founded
last year with its CEO Damion Daley, a freelance software programmer for Cable
& Wireless Jamaica.
Both companies allow people to pay for their
services via telephone credit.
Daley is currently negotiating with the cellular
companies to provide a service that will allow customers to buy tickets using
their cellular phones, receive the ticket, also via SMS, and then be able to
forward the ticket to others - each ticket tracked by an individual code.
Patrons will then punch in their code on a
touch screen upon arriving at the event, ruling out the need to reach a ticket
outlet. Electronic systems that verify tickets are already being used locally at
events, such as Good Times held the previous weekend at the Chinese Benevolent
Society in St. Andrew, but these still require a physical ticket.
Joining line makes no sense
"Joining a line just doesn't make
sense," with the availability of his technology, believes Daley.
"I envisage a time," he said pointing
out the window at the Pegasus, "where the cellphone can be used to pay for
anything, like the car park down below where you can pay for your ticket before
arriving. The technology is already moving that way."
Sandor Panton established the website
directory Top5Jamaica.com in
1998, which last year attracted approximately 250,000 unique visitors each
month, with 70 per cent of its advertising revenue coming from North America.
A guest speaker at Kingston Beta, Panton was held
up by Riley as exemplifying the potential for online entrepreneurship in Jamaica
Employed in Canada to where he migrated in
2001, he was motivated to become self-employed back in Jamaica in 2005, after
attending an Internet conference in Orlando the year before where he met
freelance Internet professionals earning as much as US$100,000 per month.
"You don't need nuttin' more to motivate
you, trust me!"
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