MobileActive's Blog

We are very privileged to co-host MobileTech for Social Change, a barcamp on 4 November 2008 in San Franciso from 10 am - 2 pm.  We are especially pleased to co-organize the event with Dan Appelquist from Mobile2.0, Mobile Monday UK, and Vodacom. Registration is here!

Fresh back from MobileActive08, we'll explore mobile tech to advance social development and social change goals. Expect this to be highly participatory and interactive, and cover anything you wanted to know about using mobiles for social change. MobileTech for Social Change is open to anyone with passion and interest in the topic and since it's a barcamp, bring your ideas, innovations, products, tools, projects, and organizations!

And if you want to be an angel and sponsor the event, contact us at info at mobileactive dot org!  Registration again: Go here!

 

With the advent of ubiquitous mobile phones recording video, audio, and photos and easily connecting to a worldwide audience, everyone has the potential to become a citizen reporter on the spot, as news and events are happening.  Traditional news organizations (aka mainstream media) are struggling to keep up and find relevance among the new voices from around the world.  Al Jazeera, the Arab news company (and arguably not exactly mainstream media) has been testing mobile phones with its reporters and for its media coverage. Safdar Mustafa, head of Al Jazeera's mobile media unit, explains how in this coverage from MobileActive08.

More videos are on the MobileActive YouTube channel.

On the first day of MobileActive ’08 in Johannesburg, I attended "M-Banking and M-Payments for Social Impact", with Jonathan Donner, Tonny Omwansa, Jesse Moore, Brian Richardson, and Alex Comninos presenting to a packed room. The session gave an overview of m-banking (mobile banking) and m-payments (mobile payments), including specific mobile banking solutions such as M-PESA and Wizzit.

Brian Richardson, the CEO of Wizzit, began by stressing that mobile banking is becoming more and more common in African countries. In South Africa, more than 11 million people live with cash only. 600 million in Africa don’t have access to basic financial services because of affordability, accessibility, and availability. Without access to basic financial services, it’s hard to be an economic citizen.

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I have long been a great fan of Paul Notzold, the ingenious SMS graffiti artist and inventor of Txtual Healing.  He is embarking on a 10-night tour through key states in America, projecting interactive displays where bystanders can text in why they are voting for Obama.  Paul is famous for his interactive and whimsical SMS displays.

He describes how it works: "The simple explanation is that it’s a cellphone paired to a mac using proprietary software, custom scripting and graphics, and then the results are displayed through a projector connected to the computer. The whole system is mobile and with the right projector/beamer, quite bright."

The tour will lead him through so-called battleground states that are contested for the presidential vote:  Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.  If you are in any of the states, go visit with him and text in why you are voting for Obama!

Photo courtesy Paul Notzold, Textual Healing

This article, in a slightly revised version, was published by Orascom's TALK Magazine, Fall 2008.
 
There has been much talk of late about mobile financial services as a way to lift millions of people worldwide out of poverty. A recent article in The Guardian called mobile banking in developing countries “potentially revolutionary.” The advent of mobile financial services promises to bring many more poor people into an economic mainstream where safer and less costly financial services (such as person-to-person payments and remittances) are delivered over the cell phone. But is this promise anywhere near reality?
 
Transferring money via mobile phones can save days of travel for workers in cities who send money home to families in rural villages. Mobile payments are also often cheaper and more secure than relying on informal brokers or carrying cash personally, and they have the potential to change markets by making small business-to-business transactions immediate and more reliable.
 

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Three hundred and eighty people gathered from all over the world in Johannesburg last week to discuss how mobile phones might be used for social and political purposes in developing countries. The event crackled with the kind of energy that happens when people gather on a topic for the first time. Russell Southwood, a prominent researcher and analyst in South Africa,  looks at the issues raised by the event. Excerpts follow.

At the core of all this energy was a very simple notion. The technology device of choice for the majority of people in developing continents like Africa is the mobile phone. If you want to deliver messages to people or get them to respond then SMS or voice is an obvious route to go down.

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Two great blog-posts wrap up MobileActive08. Ismail Dhorat from ignite^2 gives an overview of one of the best sessions on ReadWriteWeb:

I found this presentation by Tino Kruetzer, a researcher at the University of Cape Town, extremely interesting. It was based on the interim results of a pilot study on mobile internet usage by low income youth in Cape Town. Some of the key findings were:

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What an amazing three days MobileActive08 it was!  We gathered an extraordinary group of people in one place who usually never get to see each other and the energy and work and collaboration that happened here in Johannesburg was truly amazing.  The session and ideas are too numerous to describe here (and not that I would know about all the crazy work that went on, anyway!) but here are a few observations about who was here!

Participants: Thanks to the fantastic team at Mobile Researcher, we conducted a number of surveys of the more than 370 attendees and here are a few data points:

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Here are some of the main actions people would like to take as a result of collaboration and learnings at MobileActive '08.

1. Mobile Bill of Rights

2. Open Source Consortium

3. Global Mapping Project for Global SMS Interoperability

4. Enhanced Mobile Project/Vendor/Tool Directory

5. Communicability Strategy Research Group

6. More sharing and collaboration on social mobile projects

7. Mobile web wiki

8. OpenContent - especially HIV content including content, terminology, translation.

9. Group formed to collect cross-country comparisons of interventions using mobile technology

10. Group for agriculture and mobile technology

 

Reposted from www.mobileactive08.org

According to Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential division, there are several barriers standing in the way of effectively reaching the large masses of underserved communities. Among these are infrastructural obstacles, localization issues, the need for personalized solutions, and the prohibitive cost of technology.

As a solution to these problems they are looking at ways of tapping into the most basic a ubiquitous form of technology on the continent: mobile phones. This would enable users of mobile phones to access services from Microsoft’s services in the ether to mobile phones through pcs. To this end, there has been a lot of research into bringing the Microsoft platform to basic mobile phones by providing the technology to do this as well as by partnering with service providers as well as governmental and non-governmental actors.

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