Marketing in Laos and Ethnographical Smart Phone Applications

Been a while since I last posted as I decided that I was in need of a holiday and so ran to the nearest country that I thought would lack internet resources and was not under a military regime. Laos seemed like a good choice, as well as allowing me to undertake some excellent adventure motorbiking.
I took my iPhone for music, but soon discovered that there was a lot of Wi Fi available and mobile reception almost everywhere despite the fact that this is one of the poorest countries in the world. Ain't Skype a wonderful thing when overseas? I am sure that Telstra are not too happy about my lack of roaming...
From a markets angle, Laos is either a dream or nightmare market. Government controls a lot of the companies who operate there. If you work for Beer Laos it is fantastic - 99% of all beer sales are just one version of about two or three beers that they make. No one else gets a look in. Telco has a bit more competition in the cities, but everywhere else there is just the state run version of Telstra.
Apple has created a demand for high tech products there too. OK, correction, for high tech looking products - at the markets in Vientiane there must have been between 20-30 different iPhone replicas (which of course had none of the functionality of the real thing). A fascinating country from any perspective that is worth visiting as it tries to catch up with the rest of the developed world.
But back on to iPhones, there has been a lot of discussion as to where marketing and research is heading in 2010. Last year there was a big shift in how people marketed products and the research world started to catch onto the idea of using 2.0 applications and online social media for faster, cheaper, more insightful research. Some made a relatively successful leap, others struggled to let go of the traditional way of thinking. But looking forward as we seem to be coming out of the financial crisis, we have resigned to the fact that things will not be the same and how we communicate and listen to people will continue to evolve. Ethnographic research will likely take a larger role in our lives as will social media monitoring and listening.
As the iPhone and now Android are increasing the share of smart phones in the mobile market, it seems that the time for mobile ethnographic tools is coming to us. I have not see a lot of tools out there and would love to hear what people have seen or used, but below is a tool that I downloaded to my iPhone.

It is an interesting first foray into this market, called EverydayLives and says that it "Turns your iPhone into a sophisticated tool designed by ethnographic researchers for ethnographic researchers, field anthropologists, agency planners, marketers and research respondents."
I have not given it a huge test run and initial thoughts are that it could be good for planners, but for researchers who want respondents to use it, it is a bit on the clunky side in terms of entering information and would be better if the project information could be entered at the researcher end so the user only had to enter what they were doing and any additional media.
The costing structure is also not conducive for respondents to take it up, but these are all minor technical things that I am sure could be altered in the future, after all this is only version 1.1!
I need to give it more of a test run, but if anyone else has tried it or used it in a real situation I would like to hear about your experience.