MobileActive.org

How Girls Use Mobile Social Networks -- and Implicatins for M-Engagement: An Interview with Tanja Bosch

South Africa is a hotbed of mobile social innovation. From a depression-and-anxiety group  helping teens via SMS, to assisting with compliance for tuberculosis medication, and the 'cellphones for HIV'  programm we have described earlier, diverse health initiatives are findings ways of using mobile phones. 

Missed Calls, More than Smoke Signals of the 21st Century

Jonathan Donner has been studying mobile phone use in the developing countries for several years. We have written previously about his fascinating work on the phenomenon of missed-calls as a way of communicating.

Jonathan is a researcher in the Technology for Emerging Markets Group at Microsoft Research India in Bangalore and an astute social scientist. At MobileActive08, Donner will be speaking in a panel where participants will brainstorm innovations in social mobile marketing.

Deadline for DOHA 2009 ICTD Conference Coming Up

This conference might be of interest to the Mobile Active community!  September 22, 2008 is the last date for submission of papers for the 3rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD2009).

ICTD2009 will be be held in Doha, capital of the small, oil-rich country of Qatar along the Arabian Gulf. This conference is a focal point for new scholarship in the field of ICT and international development. Confirmed speakers include a keynote by Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft Corporation.

Conference Co-chair Richard Heeks notes: "As noted previously, we will particularly welcome papers about mobiles and development."

Instructions for submissions of paper are here.

Is Conflict Good for Mobile Investment? A New Study Argues It May Be.

A new study from the University of Manchester argues that conflict is benefitial to mobile infrastructure investments.  These investments have long thought to be dependent on 'pillars' like security and stability, finance and infrastructure, workers and labour markets, and the regulatory framework and tax. "Overarching all of these, the view is that good, stable governance forms the crucial basis for investment," write Agnieszka Konkel and Richard Heeks from the University of Manchester in the UK.

Mobiles Phones and Social and Economic Impact, Part 3: A New World Bank Report

Beauticians in Pakistan, sex-workers in Serbia, taxi drivers in Thailand. What do they have in common?  They're all being helped by mobile phones which make it cheaper to start up businesses, and reduce the cost of operating.  Besides sparking off "entrepreneurship," mobiles across the globe are giving a spurt to productivity, says a June 2008 World Bank report on The Role of Mobile Phones in Rural Poverty Reduction.

This report was missing from the citation of the GSMA Development Fund just produced, so we are reviewing it here.

News, via SMS, claimed to reach 60,000 subscribers in eastern India

A journlalist I know, Jatindra Dash from the eastern Indian state of Orissa, started this rather interesting SMS-based news-service in the Oriya language which is spoken by some 31 million people. Elsa Patnaik's article on TheHoot.org describes it thus: