Kanchoo is a support service for publishing mobile phone applications. Users provide the content and graphics and Kanchoo develops the application and provides a content management system. Once the application is active, the company can also assist with monetization and advertising services. Is is a Hong-Kong based company and Kanchoo means "publish" in Chinese.
Kanchoo works with media companies, businesses, and organizations to publish and distribute content to mobile platforms. The company asks users to submit specific graphics and content and then develops the application and provides a content management system for updates to the application. The service costs users US$88 to create the application and US$28/month to host it.
Tool Category:
App resides and runs on a mobile phone
Key Features :
Kanchoo makes it easy for users to create their own mobile phone applications. Users create an account and upload a small number of required items. Users can preview the application before Kanchoo submits it to the iTunes App Store for approval. Kanchoo also provides a content management system for the user. It is free to create an account and experiment with the service.
Mobile phone users want to display other maps instead of just Google maps on their devices. Mobile GMaps enables users to view Yahoo! Maps, Windows Live Local, Ask. com, Open Street Map, and other sources on Java J2ME-enabled mobile phones, PDAs, and other devices.
Mobile GMaps is a free application that displays maps from Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, Windows Live Local (MSN Virtual Earth), Ask.com, Open Street Map and other sources, but only on Java J2ME-enabled mobile phones, PDAs and other devices. MGMaps can connect to a GPS receiver over bluetooth or use internal GPS features on some phones in order to automatically display the map for your current position. You can pre-download maps and store them on your memory card in order to use them on the go without accessing the network.
Mobile GMaps is distributed under the Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivs Creative Commons license. You may download, use and distribute the application free of charge only for personal, non-commercial purposes.
Tool Category:
App resides and runs on a mobile phone
Key Features :
Mobile GMaps enables users of Java J2ME-based feature phones to view maps from a variety of sources. The creator is constantly improving this application and you can view past versions for download. There is also a G-Map Track BETA feature that allows you to view public Google maps and see a map of you and your friends. API for this application is coming soon.
Not listed, visit http://www.nokiausa.com/ or local Nokia site.
Problem or Need:
The Nokia S60 3rd edition video editor comes standard on Nokia N95 phones. The video editor is a simple video editing tool that allows a user to cut clips, add special effects, credits, and sound to video clips, and publish clips to a website, all through a mobile phone.
The Nokia S60 3rd edition video editor comes standard on Nokia N95 phones. It is part of the S60 Platform (formerly Series 60 User Interface) - a software platform for mobile phones that run on Symbian OS. The video editor is a simple video editing tool that allows a user to cut clips, add special effects, credits, and sound to video clips, and publish clips to a website, all through a mobile phone.
The Nokia S60 3rd edition video editor comes standard on Nokia N95 phones. It allows a user to cut clips, add sound, transitions, credits, and special effects such as slow motion or black and white. A user can create "micro-movies." The final version of the movie can be saved on the phone itself and sent via MMS, e-mail, or uploaded to a website.
Main Services:
Multi-Media Messaging (MMS) or other Multi-Media
Tool Maturity:
Currently deployed
Release Date:
2010-08
Platforms:
Symbian/3rd
Current Version:
1.3
Program/Code Language:
MESymbian
Reviews/Evaluations:
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/Editing_a_Video_Presentation_on_teh_N95.php
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/media/item/Videocast_11_Video_editing_on_the_Nokia_N95.p
hp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlhLb0MOn1s
Today's Mobile Minute brings you news about the continuous lack of Facebook privacy, the disagreement between IDC and Nokia on Nokia sales figures in India, a ranking of the top five free Android apps for journalists, a TNS study that found social media trumps e-mail as the most popular use for online mobile activity, and mapping indoor spaces with smartphone apps.
In New York City's East Village neighborhood last Friday, anyone with a mobile phone could have their words heard across Tompkins Square Park. An art exhibit called "Urban Speaker" allowed participants to call a mobile phone hooked up to an amplifier and loudspeaker, and the resulting messages were immediately broadcast.
Designed by artist Carlos J. Gomez de Llarena, Urban Speaker is a mix of technology and performance art – participants could either call the number printed on a sign, or use a QR code to get more information about the project. Anyone could call the number and had 60 seconds to speak into a voicemail service, and then the message was sent out over the loudspeaker. Watch Gomez de Llarena explain the project below:
Beyond the Demographic: How Sourcing Through Texting Connects Journalists and Citizens in Detroit data sheet 3202 Views
If a large truck illegally barrels through a neighborhood and no reporters are around to see it, does it make the story? It does if local residents with mobile phones can text truck sightings to a local public radio station. This is the premise behind a new pilot project called “Sourcing through Texting” from a team at The Takeaway radio program. Sourcing through Texting provides a way to connect citizens with journalists via mobile phones.
The Takeaway is a radio program produced in New York City (a co-production of Public Radio International and public radio station WNYC in collaboration with the BBC World Service, The New York Times, and WGBH Boston) which can be heard live online or on the radio at about 60 stations in “Takeaway cities” across the U.S.
Planning and Implementing a Mobile Interactive Voice System data sheet 9964 Views
Author:
Melissa Loudon
Abstract:
In this article, we look at tools and systems for Interactive Voice Response (IVR). IVR allows callers to navigate an automated menu by pressing keys on their phone keypad, reaching either an extension ('press 1 for sales, press 2 for support'), a further menu, or audio content. Such content might be pre-recorded - for example, a weather report - or retrieved from a database and read out by an automated voice, which most mobile users will have encountered when calling in to request an airtime balance or bill amount. IVR systems can also be configured to allow people to record their own content.
Long neglected in favor of SMS, mobile apps and the mobile web, voice is enjoying a resurgence in mobile tech for social change projects. There are good reasons for this:
Voice is universally available on even the most basic handsets
Voice has much greater capacity for information exchange (although not for automated translation) than either SMS or USSD
Voice systems don’t require literacy
Voice is familiar, and often a trusted channel for communicating confidential information.
Voice systems can quite easily be developed in multiple languages, or in local languages not supported on all handsets.
In this article, we look at tools and systems for Interactive Voice Response (IVR). IVR allows callers to navigate an automated menu by pressing keys on their phone keypad, reaching either an extension ('press 1 for sales, press 2 for support'), a further menu, or audio content. Such content might be pre-recorded - for example, a weather report - or retrieved from a database and read out by an automated voice, which most mobile users will have encountered when calling in to request an airtime balance or bill amount. IVR systems can also be configured to allow people to record their own content.
We have been very keen on exposing the security issues related to mobile communications for activists in insecure environments. To that end we have, to date, produced a number of how-to guides that evaluate some of the tools available.
We will continue to pay close attention to this space as there are not enough tools and resources yet for activists and journalists to communicate securely via mobile. If you are aware of other projects or resources, please add a comment!
The Role of Digital Networked Technologies in the Ukrainian Orange Revolution data sheet 2276 Views
Author:
Joshua Goldstein
Publication Date:
Dec 2007
Publication Type:
Other
Abstract:
This working paper is part of a series examining how the Internet influences democracy. This report is a narrative case study that examines the role of the Internet and mobile phones during Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution. The first section describes the online citizen journalists who reported many stories left untouched by "self-censored" mainstream journalists. The second section investigates the use of digital networked technologies by pro-democracy organizers. This case study concludes with the statement that the Internet and mobile phones made a wide range of activities easier, however the Orange Revolution was largely made possible by savvy activists and journalists wililng to take risks to improve their country.
Digitally Networked Technology in Kenya's 2007-2008 Post-Election Crisis data sheet 2305 Views
Author:
Joshua Goldstein and Juliana Rotich
Publication Date:
Sep 2008
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
Written largely through the lens of rich nations, scholars have developed theories about how digital technology affects democracy. However, primarily due to a paucity of evidence, these theories have excluded the experience of Sub-Saharan Africa, where meaningful access to digital tools is only beginning to emerge, but where the struggles between failed state and functioning democracy are profound. Using the lens of the 2007–2008 Kenyan presidential election crisis, this case study illustrates how digitally networked technologies, specifically mobile phones and the Internet, were a catalyst to both predatory behavior such as ethnic-based mob violence and to civic behavior such as citizen journalism and human rights campaigns.
The paper concludes with the notion that while digital tools can help promote transparency and keep perpetrators from facing impunity, they can also increase the ease of promoting hate speech and ethnic divisions.
Want to use mobiles for data collection? Don't know where to start your research or where to read evaluations of existing and past mobile data collection efforts? You're in luck! We've produced the resource guide you've been waiting for.
Recently, MobileActive.org collaborated with UN Global Pulse to crowdsource an inventory of mobile data collection projects around the world. While this growing inventory shows there is enormous interest to leverage mobile technology for data collection, technical reports and evaluations of deployments and pilots are scattered.
So, we took the lead and compiled the existing literature (as best as we could) in an easy-to-use spreadsheet here.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on using SMS to access social networks in Nigeria, Organizing for America's new iPhone app that aids political canvassers, HTC's development of a dual GSM and CDMA phone, a pilot project that uses SMS to send information to pregnant women in Peru, and a Pew Research Center report on U.S. adults' mobile phone usage habits.
Today's Mobile Minute's coverage will feature release of the data-aggregating program SwiftRiver, feature phones' allure in developing countries, Nokia's entrance into the dual SIM card market, a new book that investigates how ICTs will have an effect on politics and culture in the Muslim world, and how RIM's response delayed India's proposed ban on BlackBerry services.
Over 10,000 citizen reports relating to widespread flooding in Pakistan have been submitted across the spectrum of organizations using the SeenReport platform. The service allows anyone to create a profile and submit text, photos, and videos from a mobile phone for immediate publication on the Web.
The case study is part of the Mobile Media Toolkit that will include many other case studies, how-to guides, resources, and tools on how use mobile phones for reporting, content delivery, and citizen participation, to be puplished this Fall.
If You Build It, They Will Come: SeenReport and Mobile Citizen Journalism in Pakistan data sheet 4317 Views
The devastating floods in Pakistan have been covered by trained reporters and mainstream media outlets around the world. Citizens, often on the front lines of the flood, have also been contributing thousands of reports through mobile phones, in part enabled by the citizen journalism service SeenReport.
SeenReport (from “see ‘n report”) is a citizen journalism service through which users can submit photos, videos, and text accounts of news as it is happening via SMS, MMS, or e-mail. SeenReport won a 2010 mBillionth award, a first-ever contest which recognizes mobile content in South Asia. A YouTube video explains more about the service.
The SeenReport platform is designed to augment stories on online news sites. The platform has been purchased and customized by other media organizations in Pakistan, which helps to both promote citizen journalism in the country and to create a revenue stream for SeenReport.
The Mobile Minute is here to bring you news about YouTube's new mobile site, 4G wireless networks in Russia, mobile phone ownership growth in North Korea, apps and the future of news journalism, and the New York Times' look at the growth of the web.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on the Hearst magazine empire's new focus on mobile apps, what can go wrong on your mobile website and how to spot it, a camera phone-to-email project in India, checking African drugs with SMS, and a new speed texting record.
The Mobile Minute is here to keep you up-to-date on mobile and ICT news. Today's Mobile Minute covers National Public Radio's (NPR) metrics in America, why FM radio could be coming to your mobile handset, the decline of landline phones in the US, a program that delivers email over SMS in the Philippines, and why advertisers should use mobile marketing in developing countries.
We have two new case studies for you to check out.
Both studies are part of the Mobile Media Toolkit that will include many other case studies, how-to guides, resources, and tools on how use mobile phones for reporting, content delivery, and citizen participation, to be puplished later this month.
The first case study looks at how Freedom Fone was deployed at two farm radio stations in Africa. We look at what worked, what didn't, and how integrated voice technology can help enhance radio. You can even listen to an IVR jingle with the sound of local drums from the Morogoro region of Tanzania.
The second case study looks at Bubbly, an audio blogging platform that is making strides in India.
From Bollywood to BBC, Bubbly is a Voice in the Audio Blogging World data sheet 8209 Views
Bubble Motion, a provider of mobile messaging and social media applications, launched Bubbly this year in India, making strides in the mobile audio blogging world. Audio blogging is a form of blogging in which the medium is audio content. Bubbly works by call and record, and thus can be adapted in areas with high mobile penetration and low Internet access, such as India.
A Bubbly user calls the service and through an integrated voice response (IVR) menu can record a name and message, usually less than 30 seconds. When other users choose to follow a user’s posts (or “Bubbles”) they receive an SMS message every time new audio content is added. A video by Pi Social Media on YouTube demonstrates how to record and listen to a Bubble; this one about an office party meet-up.
MobileActive.org spoke with Bubbly and the BBC, a user of the service, to find out how it works.
A Comparative Study of Speech and Dialed Input Voice Interfaces in Rural India data sheet 1874 Views
Author:
Neil Patel, Sheetal Agarwal, Nitendra Rajput, Amit Nanavati, Paresh Dave, Tapan S. Parikh
Publication Date:
Apr 2009
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
In this paper we present a study comparing speech and dialed input voice user interfaces for farmers in Gujarat, India. We ran a controlled, between-subjects experiment with 45 participants. We found that the task completion rates were significantly higher with dialed input, particularly for subjects under age 30 and those with less than an eighth grade education. Additionally, participants using dialed input demonstrated a significantly greater performance improvement from the first to final task, and reported less difficulty providing input to the system.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on how mobiles are helping farmers in India, jquery on mobile, a comparison of patterns between mobile and desktop Twitter usage, and a mobile-only magazine.
Your Smartphone is Now a Mobile News Studio data sheet 2582 Views
Author:
Tiffany Campbell
Publication Date:
Jan 2010
Publication Type:
Other
Abstract:
Mobile phones have become a critical mobile news reporting tool. They can be a very effective way to produce content and transmit that content back to the studio very cheaply. The presentation presents real world examples of how mobile phones have been used in reporting contexts to great effect, tools that can help reporters do this reporting, and things to keep in mind (such as battery levels). The presentation also includes the author's recommendations for the best apps for mobile journalism.