The 10 Best Digital Innovators Of The Year: 2009 Netexplorateur Awards

7. Netexplorateur: Sekai, Takahito Iguchi, Japan
Category: Management & Business

Sekai is being produced as an application for iPhones with built-in cameras and GPS systems. When you focus your camera on an object, Sekai will tag it with its geographical location and facts about it and its neighboring sites or shops. This information is, of course, picked up over the Internet, and is overlaid on the screen. Sekai, which is still in development, will also add self-tagging features that you can share with others, if desired.

8. Netexplorateur: ShopSavvvy, Alexander Muse, USA
Category: Management & Business

Already in use by The Big in Japan and just getting started in Europe, ShopSavvy is a consumer service for mobile phones that enables price comparisons after reading a bar code. So if you are in a store and scan a bar code with your phone, ShopSavvy will come back with prices of online stores for the same object, or it can give you the pricing of that object in stores nearby.

9. Netexplorateur: Ushahidi, Henry Addo, Kenya
Category: Information & Communication

A crisis response system that enables anyone with a cell phone to text a central data base that records and maps where the crises is taking place. "Ushahidi" is Swahili for "testimony," and indeed the platform enables anyone experiencing or witnessing injustices to report and record them. The open source platform is used for crisis response on a local, national, and international level, as anyone can gather the data via SMS, email, or online.

10. Netexplorateur: Wizzit, Brian Richardson,South Africa
Category: Environment & Sustainable Development

Reaching out to the "unbanked" population of rural South Africa, Wizzit is a simple banking system that enables those with little resources to save what they have, as well as purchase with their bank cards, with assurance and security had by people of more means. Training rural workers, called Wizz' kids, Wizzit provides jobs to poorer communities, and education about modern methods of doing business.

Sources: Nexplorateur.org and the websites linked above.