This was a sidebar to a story about a then new way for domestic and overseas migrants to send money home using mobile phones. Explains how Myanmar migrants prefer the traditional means, although many have since gone digital.
* Report on 5th Conference on Media Development
I served as the rapporteur at this annual conference in Yangon and wrote the attached report (as pdf). The subtitle is "Inclusive Independent Media in a New Democracy." The presentation of a study at this conference about gender equity in media gave me the idea for this story for Mizzima. The conference's chief sponsor is... Continue Reading →
* Burma’s Last Royals—Los Angeles Review of Books
Along with the stories of King Thibaw and Queen Supayalat, The King in Exile tells of the strange, twisted lives of their four daughters and seven grandchildren. As foreign visitors surge in, drawn by the idea of a new frontier, the book erodes the mythology, so pervasive in the region, of a happier, fairer era when white European men kept the grateful dumb natives gently in place.
* Omidyar grant jumpstarts for-profit accelerator in Myanmar—Digital News Asia
Besides Phandeeyar, the eBay founder's "philanthropic investment firm" has given grants to the Open Myanmar Initiative for election monitoring activities, Yangon Journalism Institute and Myitmaklia News Agency. It also supported a Global Witness report on labour conditions in Myanmar jade mines.
* Myanmar: 45 Million Mobile Phones and the $19 3G Smartphone—Forbes
More than half of those 27 million-plus smartphone owners in Myanmar are regular data users, who check into Facebook daily and the Viber messaging and VOIP app almost as frequently. How can so many people afford phones when the average wage is $3 a day?
Susan J Cunningham 