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Matter of Life & Tech

Tethr: Getting online in a crisis

About the author

Clark is the technology correspondent for The World, a BBC World Service and US public radio co-production. For the past seven years, he has also hosted The World's Technology Podcast, a weekly audio offering that spins the globe in search of the latest and greatest in technology stories. He tweets at @worldstechpod and can be found on Facebook.

It helps, of course, that the price and size of the connection hardware is coming down, and that it's easier and cheaper than ever to prototype something. Aaron Huslage says tethr is currently looking for around $750,000 in funding. He has also entered tethr in a competition called the Knight News Challenge, as a potential tool for journalists to collect information in the field, and file stories effectively.

Ultimately, Huslage says he can see many different uses for tethr. At a recent social business summit in Vienna, Huslage says people from a host of different backgrounds, from running yogurt factories, to managing Ugandan farms, to doing mobile banking, told him they could see uses for tethr. With all that demand, I ask, why isn't this product already in people's hands?

"It astounds me every day that no one else is doing this. Then again, it's taken us a year to get where we are. It's easy to conceive of things. The reality is much more complicated."

But he concludes: "I feel lucky to be able to work on this. It's potentially transformative, but it's also a heck of a lot of fun."

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