“High-end is better than low-end” – I couldn’t agree with you more that it’s really about appropriate application. In my limited travels, I have seen wide variations in technology infrastructure and access. The trick is to figure out what will work best in context (technological, sociocultural, political, etc.).

“Centralised is better than distributed” – One key element of my approach to my work has always been sustainability. Devoloping local capacity & and an enabling environment are steps along the pathway to that. Localization & distribution equals empowerment & is more likely to lead to long-term viability.

“Collaborate or die” – A wise man (the Jhpiego COO, Joe Judd) once said, “collaboration & competition are not mutually exclusive.” There will always be opportunities to work together while still providing plenty of space for individual success. No one person or organization owns the Internet but plenty of money has been made off of it.

“Over-promotion is just hype” – Don’t forget about promoting failure, too. In fact, in some way, failure is more important to good design than success.

“Competition is healthy” – Your position is a bit idealistic, but i ultimately agree Of course, there is one side of me – the AI, neural networking, complex systems side – that sees immense potential for real innovation in a space that fosters healthy competition. The trick is to never lose sight of the ultimate goal: helping others.

As always, great post! Keep ‘em coming…

@Amelie – I’d be very interested in seeing what a look at environmental sustainability mobile applications would like like, if you’re interested in exploring further?

@Mark @Tracy – It’s crucial that we don’t get bogged down in scale. It may take more resources to cover the same population levels by replication alone, but that then ties in with the crucial issue of local ownership, and point #3

@Phillip – Have you seen Tactical Tech’s “Mobile Toolkit”? What you suggest can be quite tricky going by the very nature of mobile tools (some are mobile-based, some PC-based, some server-based, some operator-hosted, etc). They’ve been brave enough to try to put a kit together. See:

http://mobiles.tacticaltech.org

@George – I agree with everything you say. The whole scalability question feeds into many of the other Top Ten, of course, but locally ‘owned’ and run solutions are generally more successful at gaining the trust and local ownership so essential for a tool to work. Since I’m not an international NGO (thank goodness!) I’m able to avoid the very real issues that you raise. I just wish many more would think less of scale and more of the impact/replication potential