MobileActive's Blog

As more than 300 mobile social innovators set out to Johannesburg to convene at MobileActive08, we wanted to let you know how you can follow the proceedings and participate remotely.  We will be blogging many of the amazing sessions here on this blog, on MobileActive08's blog; and you can follow and discuss proceedings through these channels:

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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. 

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There is yet another competition focused on mobile app development, this time sponsored by USAID and Netsquared. Starting on October 13, Development 2.0 will reward the innovative uses of mobile technologies for international development withup to $10,000 for the winner. While this is less than some of the other recent competitions, applicants can get advice and improve their ideas and clarify their project submissions during the entire application process on a project gallery.

A open voting process will determine the best projects, and then a jury of USAID senior staff will select the final winners. More info is here.

Other compeitions open right now:

Knight News Challenge -- $5 million awarded to digital media projects, including mobile citizen media projects;

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Brough Turner is a renowned telcom industry professional with a passion for mobile and a very smart guy.  We recently interviewed him about the mobile web for a paper on cell phones in citizen media.  What he said is useful for thinking about this in the context for social benefit, so we post it here for you, before the release of our report. We will also have a workshop on the role of the mobile web for social development at MobileActive08.  

You asked me to elaborate on today's mobile web and how it will change with the advent of 3G networks.  Here we go: Mobile phone networks provide the best telephony coverage in the world and, for more than a decade, mobile operators have had a "data" story.  Unfortunately, the data side of mobile telephony has been slow, expensive and limited in what it can access.

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How are social movements in the global South taking advantage of the ubiquity of mobile phones?  Melissa Loudon, a researcher now working at the University of Capetown, looked at how the South African Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is using mobiles in their work to advocate for a comprehensive HIV/AIDS policy in South Afric, and wrote this article based on her research.

Kevin Gillan, a researcher on the British anti-war movement, describes social movements as “definitionally collective and communicative”.  Co-ordination of protest action, mobilisation of financial resources and strategic interaction would be almost unthinkable without information and communication technologies (ICTs). Although the importance of mass media to social movements has long been recognised, new ICTs burst on the scene in 1999 when demonstrators in the 'Battle of Seattle' orchestrated unprecedented protest action using mobile phones, email and the Internet. Ever since, ICTs have been accepted as an integral part of mobilisation in the North.

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This article was written by Lisa Campbell of the Youth Action Network and is reprinted here with permission.  Lisa's research and articles are on her blog Mobile Revolutions.

Globally 1.5 billion people have access to televisions, and 1 billion to the Internet; yet overall the most actively used electronic gadget is the mobile phone, with over 3 billion users worldwide. Reaching the 4 billion mark before the end of 2008, that equals to approximately one cell phone for every two human beings. Under 30-years in existence, cell phones are one of the most rapid developing technology the world has ever known. According to Touré, Secretary General of the ITU, “The fact that 4 billion subscribers have been registered worldwide indicates that it is technically feasible to connect the world to the benefits of ICT and that it is a viable business opportunity.”  According to Touré, “Clearly, ICTs have the potential to act as catalysts to achieve the 2015 targets of the MDGs.”

Mobile phones are the first telecommunications technology to be more popular in developing nations, than their developed counterparts, far outnumbering internet coverage (Zuckerman 2007). More and more people are using their phones to access the internet instead of computers.  Soon there will be more cell phone users than literate people on the planet. This signifies a shift into a new age of digital literacy, where avatars, emoticons, pictures, sounds and videos often hold more power than names and numbers.

Economists around the world are hailing cell phones as the solution for ICT development and a ray of hope in bridging the digital divide.

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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.

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In our occasional mobile tool reviews, we are featuring this week two reviews of similar mobile applications that provide bulk messaging focused on NGO needs.  Today's review is of RapidSMS, an open source enterprise level bulk messaging application developed by UNICEF.  Later this week we'll be reviewing FrontlineSMS, the much-touted grassroots bulk messaging desktop application. 

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A new report published by U.S. trade group, 3G America's, notes that the use of SMS as an emergency alert service poses serious limitations.

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Mobile phones are providing organisations and advocates with new ways to reach their communities. Now the Gender Based Violence Prevention Network in collaboration with Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) will use text messaging to create awareness about violence against women in Africa.

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