Prabhas Pokharel contributed research and writing to this article.
We turn now from producing video on your mobile to audio to show you different ways that people are delivering content to mobile phones. Sending audio content can help you reach new and increasingly mobile audiences. It can also be a great way to reach semi- or illiterate populations or others for whom written content is not suitable.
There are many channels to deliver audio content to mobiles: calling listeners, providing numbers for them to call, having mobile web or app-accessible radio, or leveraging radios that are included in many mobiles. This post will focus primarily on projects and tools that use phone calls, or the "voice channel," to share content.
There are quite a few projects that disseminate audio content using the voice channel:
India: The Impact of Mobile Phones (ICRIER Report) data sheet 2394 Views
Author:
ICRIER
Publication Date:
Jan 2009
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
Research carried out by International Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). The ICRIER researchers looked at three segments of the population – the agriculture sector, the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector and urban slum dwellers. The research demonstrates that access to telecommunications is an important catalyst to realizing productivity and efficiency improvements and thereby making it possible for the benefits of economic growth. The research in this report on the uses and impacts of mobiles in agriculture show that improving productivity and rural incomes requires an array of enablers in the production cycle, which runs from planting to the final sale of produce; access to information is an important enabler.
The lack of adequate infrastructure is particularly acute in rural areas, home to 70% of India’s population and the 52% of the work force that is primarily engaged in agriculture and related activities. Agriculture in India accounts for 18% of national income, implying extremely low agricultural productivity. Until now, the focus of mobile operators’ attention has been on the more lucrative urban markets. The high cost of infrastructure rollout in less dense rural areas and affordability barriers for the rural population are likely reasons. But there are signs that this is changing. Infrastructure rollout in rural areas is now eligible for subsidy and all major providers have reported future plans for expansion in rural India.
Small farmers often struggle to access high-quality inputs such as advanced seed varieties, or services such as soil testing or credit, fertilizers, availability of loan options and efficient distribution networks and weather forecast. Therefore a very uneven access to information is seen currently. A national survey of farmers found that only 40% of farmer households accessed information about modern agricultural techniques and inputs while a lot of them still depend on other progressive farmers.
PoiMapper: Mobile Data Collection Through Points-of-Interest in Kenya data sheet 3495 Views
PoiMapper, a product from Pajat, is a mobile application for data collection, hosting, and sharing. It works on a feature phone with Java capability and allows a user to design a case-specific questionnaire to collect field data, including numbers, text, and photo images. Through this, it supports the collection of point-of-interest (POI) data -- hence the name, PoiMapper -- and is currently being tested in this capacity in Kenya in collaboration with Plan Kenya, Plan Finland, Helsinki University of Technology, and University of Nairobi. The pilot is ongoing and an evaluation is to be done a month from now.
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.
For citizen reporters, Fromdistance Mobile Citizen Reporter enables anyone with the application to send high-resolution images and videos from a mobile phone directly to a publisher or the web. This makes delivery quick and easy.
For publishers, Mobile Professional Reporter delivers content that is fit to the publisher's needs (video and images are automatically converted and resized) and the system is integrated with a publisher's existing content management system.
It also enables reporters and publishers to make themselves more accessible and better manage incoming content.
Fromdistance Mobile Journalism includes two tools: Mobile Citizen Reporter and Mobile Professional Reporter. For citizen reporters, Fromdistance Mobile Citizen Reporter enables anyone with the application to send high-resolution images and videos from a mobile phone directly to a publisher or to the web. Users may download the Mobile Citizen Reporter application for free.
For publishers, Mobile Professional Reporter delivers content that is fit to the publisher's needs (video and images are automatically converted and resized) and the system is integrated with a publisher's existing content management system. To become a publisher, a user must contact Fromdistance. Publishers can define their own terms of use for acquiring content (size and copyright, for instance). The service can work with large files.
For citizen reporters, Fromdistance Mobile Citizen Reporter enables quick and easy delivery in an all-in-one tool for citizen and independent journalists. Users may download the Mobile Citizen Reporter application for free. It supports all Nokia multimedia handsets and other Series 60 devices.
For publishers, Mobile Professional Reporter delivers content that is fit to the publisher's needs and the system is integrated with an existing content management system, making content delivery standardized and efficient. To become a publisher, a user must contact Fromdistance. Publishers can define their own terms of use for acquiring content. The service can work with large files.
Main Services:
Stand-alone Application
Tool Maturity:
Currently deployed
Platforms:
Other
Program/Code Language:
Other
Organizations Using the Tool:
The Fromdistance website says that "many leading media companies and publishers" have chosen the Mobile Professional Reporter tool, but it does not provide a list of company names. A datasheet also includes screenshots of use cases.
The usage of mobile phones is abundant in our daily lives in various aspects from making phone calls or sending text messages to checking e-mails or news updates to planning our activities or managing our budget. This project aims at making use of this wide spread usage of mobiles to help in the data collection process. It designs and develops a web based system called “MobiCollect” that is used for creating forms or questionnaires to be later accessed by the data collectors using their mobile phone web browser in order fill in the form with the appropriate data.
Once the system design and implementation is completed it will be tested and evaluated to ensure the satisfaction of at least the minimum requirements of the proposed system.
The Mobile Minute, our new feature, is here to keep you up-to-date on mobile-related news. Today's stories are about the number of Google searches made on mobile phones, an updated version of the PDA survey kit, the relationship between ICTs and accountable governments, and an octopus-themed mobile app.
"Mobile Accounts for 10% of Google Searches, Says Analyst" This Read, Write, Web article looks at comScore search market data – and found that mobile phones are used to make more than 1 billion monthly Google searches in the U.S.
"WFP PDASurvey" The World Food Program released an updated version of its PDA-based data collection tool. The group says that the program "allows very large questionnaires to be built very rapidly and deployed onto many PDAs using flash memory cards."
"Full Circle: ANSA-Africa Newsletter" The latest ANSA-Africa Newsletter looks at government accountability and the role ICTs can play in giving citizens a means of expression. Other topics include local government social media and responsibility, ICTs in Kenya, and creating connections in Bangladesh. (via Accountability 2.0)
"Paul the Psychic Octopus Gets an App" If you find yourself without psychic guidance now that Paul the Octopus (who gained fame by correctly predicting all of Germany's World Cup matches, as well as the final) has retired, a new iPhone app called "Ask the Octopus Oracle" can fill the void.
[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog-posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.]
BabaJob: Bringing Jobs to People at the Bottom of the Pyramid data sheet 4575 Views
Finding a job is hard but in India, BabaJob is making the process a bit easier for job seekers at the bottom of the pyramid.
Started in Bangalore in March of 2007, BabaJob is a matching resource for blue-collar workers looking for jobs. Sean Blagsvedt, co-founder of BabaJob, explains that the inspiration came from Anirudh Krishna’s research paper “Escaping Poverty and Becoming Poor: Who Gains, Who Loses, and Why?” Blagsvedt learned that most people moved out of poverty through job diversification. However, he noticed that most job-finding resources in India were designed for people seeking white collar jobs. Blue-collar workers and those at the bottom of the economic pyramid had to rely on word of mouth or luck in order to find the jobs that could help them move out of poverty. He decided to create a resource that would allow workers in India to find jobs in their fields and born was Babajob.
Finding data on media consumption can be difficult, but the real trouble comes in interpreting it – what does it mean if people in one country get most of their news from radio, while in another from television? How are mobile phones changing the media and communications landscape? How can this data be used to help keep the greatest number of people informed? And why does this information matter?
AudienceScapes, a project of InterMedia, tracks media and ICT consumption in developing countries around the world. Currently the site has detailed information about Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Columbia, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Peru. The site is a useful resource for detailed breakdowns on how different communities are using and consuming media.
It's been a pleasure and a joy to work with all of you this year! It's been a great year in this growing field of innovators, technologists, and social change-ists, and we are happy and proud to be part of it. Thank you!
Mobile Mobile is an interactive chandelier/mobile made from old mobile phones that plays Christmas jingles. It is built by James Théophane Jnr, an interactive designer. He notes that "to add a little xmas spice to the mix, you can go online and enjoy annoying the hell out of people" waiting around in the reception room where the mobile hangs, by playing the thing live from your web browser. Happy Holidays!
There are different scenarios where it is more desirable to have a method of communication that does not depend on cellular or Internet backbone infrastructure:
Sometimes that infrastructure is down - for example due to natural disaster, or man-made "shocks" to the system, from a terrorist attack to simply a massive gathering of people who want to communicate all at the same time, for example at a ball-game or in a conference hall.
Sometimes infrastructure is just not there - like in some developing countries or regions, or rural areas.
Sometimes, one is interested in circumventing censorship, in order to enable civic communications or in order to get news out of a country or conflict zone.
Sometimes one just wants to save money and other costs - why use an expensive infrastructure that was made to get information to the other side of the world, and pay a service tax to the operator, when communication is local by nature? For example for internal communication in a rural village, campus, or enterprise.
Aside from the cases where infrastructure-based communication is not the best way to go, close proximity device-to-device communications offer several added advantages of their own:
A broadcast can be targeted to a limited geographic area without the need to use heavy GIS servers and requiring all participating end points to report their absolute locations.
Opportunistic communications with previously unknown parties, where the co-location serves as a discovery and bootstrap mechanism, and knowing absolute "global" addressing (email address, phone number, etc.) is not required in advance.
Natural mobility patterns of people or vehicles carrying the mobile devices can be leveraged to physically rout information from place to place, or from source to destination. People and vehicles can become "data-mules", or a "sneaker-net". For example, a bus carrying wifi enabled device can act as a "data-mule" and collect information from schools or villages along its path, delivering it to the internet when it reaches a connected access point. People moving away from a natural disaster or a civic demonstration can carry with them pictures, messages, and news from the disconnected zone to the outside world.
The mobile device can act as a sensor in the physical world - depending on the type of short-range radio used, it can sense peers who are physically proximate with varying accuracy.
In some cases the close-proximity communication adds improved security and authenticity, since all parties must be within a certain physical range of one another.
For all of the above scenarios there is a set of common technical requirements and features. The idea behind Comm.unity is to unite them into one core framework that allows development of applications for all of these cases. Different scenarios would call for more specific adaptations (for example added security for some of the scenarios), so Comm.unity is designed to be very modular, and allow developers to use just what they need for the applications that they build on top of it. It is also designed to be extensible by the developer community, so new features and modules could be added. This system is not meant to replace infrastructure, but rather augment it.
Comm.unity is a software framework in development, which is intended to allow developers and researchers to easily create applications that are proximity aware and socially aware, and can run on a large set of existing consumer devices. It implements a wireless, device-to-device information system that bypasses the need for any centralized servers, coordination, or administration. It is designed to span an extensible set of radio interfaces (WiFi, Bluetooth, IR, etc.).
Comm.unity is targeted for field deployment as well as for supporting advanced mobile-phone-based research. The feature-set for field deployment consists of a basic set of functionalities that are simple and explicitly defined. The research aspects include additional features that are more experimental, or support collection of research data - for example modules for performing logging a user's behavior and other sensor data, performing data-mining, machine learning and other types of on-device learning of a user's context and social activity.
Tool Category:
App resides and runs on a mobile phone
Key Features :
Communications unity: The current state of the close proximity networking space is very fragmented - Many different standards and technologies, and even devices with similar radios (e.g. Bluetooth or wi-fi) are not always able to communicate directly to each other due to limitations imposed by vendor, service provider, or simply lack of appropriate software. Comm.unity aims to resolve that by creating software and protocols that could run on a large set of different mobile and stationary devices, and allow them to directly talk to one another as long as they have similar physical radio interfaces. This means, for example, that iPhones would be able to discover and communicate with Nokia Symbian phones or Android phones via Bluetooth, no matter what mobile operator they belong to, and a WinMobile phone could connect to any Windows, Mac, or Linux computer via wi-fi without any special issues.
Unifying close-proximity technologies: There is a growing number of technologies that support close-proximity and device-to-device radio communications, wi-fi (802.11), Bluetooth, Zigbee, near-field technologies, wi-bree, or infrared technolgies, to name a few. If we abstract the common actions that applications using these technologies need to perform, we could define a common set of functionalities, for example: device discovery, sending a short message, or sending a file. With these and similar primitives, a programmer could write an application that can very easily be adapted to run on different network interface technologies.
Reusable codebase (sample modules: peer-to-peer networking, social awareness, logging, ...)
Extensible Architecture - Modular building blocks
Modular Runtime - Not all modules have to be loaded in runtime, this way strong devices could run high-processing load activities, while weaker mobile devices could run a minimal set of features.
In a classroom in Thies in Senegal, two teachers master an educational game on their mobile phones. Ten minutes later, their pre-school group is using the game to recognize number and count to 10. Noumounthi, Tamsir, Khady Coly and Mamadou, computer science students at the University of Thies, designed and developed the game following a recent Mobile Camp in Senegal. The exitement in the classroom helps the team of students understand the power of their new skills in mobile application programming, and what it means to be a mobile entrepreneur in Africa.
Mobile camps may be building the next generation of mobile programmers by helping to develop a new field of study in African higher education. Recent camps have produced tools for social development and provided educators with new skills.
KomKom is a mobile application that allows craft artisans selling traditional African craft to manage their sales and personal and professional expenses.
Mobile phones are prevalent, but have not been widely adapted for educational uses. Wannigame engages pupils in active and team learning in classrooms of more than 40 students in Senegal.
Wannigame is a mobile application that allows teachers to supervise the learning of numbers by children between the age of 3 to 6 in Senegal. With Wannigame, children learn how to recognize numbers and how to count.
Fluid Nexus is an application for mobile phones that is primarily designed to enable activists to send messages and data amongst themselves independent of a centralized cellular network. The idea is to provide a means of communication between people when the centralized network has been shut down, either by the government during a time of unrest, or by nature due to a massive disaster.
Fluid Nexus is an application for mobile phones that is primarily designed to enable activists to send messages and data amongst themselves independent of a centralized cellular network. The idea is to provide a means of communication between people when the centralized network has been shut down, either by the government during a time of unrest, or by nature due to a massive disaster. During such times the use of the centralized network for voice or SMS is not possible.
Yet, if we can use the fact that people still must move about the world, then we can use ideas from sneaker-nets to turn people into carriers of data. Given enough people, we can create fluid, temporary, ad-hoc networks that pass messages one person at a time, spreading out as a contagion and eventually reaching members of the group. This enables surreptitious communication via daily activity and relies on a fluid view of reality. Additionally, Fluid Nexus can be used as a hyperlocal message board, loosely attached to physical locations.
The World Wide Web enabled quick and easy information dissemination and brought about fundamental changes to various aspects of our lives. However, a very large number of people, mostly in developing regions, are still untouched by this revolution. Compared to PCs, the primary access mechanism to the WWW, mobile phones have made a phenomenal penetration into this population segment. Low cost of ownership, the simple user interface consisting of a small keyboard, limited menu and voice-based access contribute to the success of mobile phones with the less literate. However, apart from basic voice communication, these people are not being able to exploit the benefits of information and services available to WWW users. Spoken Web is designed to provide the benefits of IT to the underprivileged population in developing countries who are characterized by illiteracy and poverty.
Spoken Web is an entire platform that lets ordinary phone subscribers create and deploy their own applications and services over a simple phone call. It can be used to proliferate IT information and transactional services to masses on existing IT/Telecom infrastructure. It requires no additional cost of ownership to end users other than an ordinary phone.
Tool Category:
App resides and runs on a server
Key Features :
Creation and deployment of voice apps
Reaching out to masses on existing infrastructure
Main Services:
Stand-alone Application
Tool Maturity:
Under development/pre-launch
Platforms:
All phones -- Voice
Current Version:
1
Program/Code Language:
Java
Number of Current End Users:
1,000-10,000
Number of current beneficiaries:
1,000-10,000
Languages supported:
multi-lingual
Handsets/devices supported:
All voice-capable phones.
Reviews/Evaluations:
Article in the Economic Times: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Food/IBMs-spoken-web-to-ramp-up-Amuls-milk-business/articleshow
Ubiquitous Information - Mobile Phones in the Classroom data sheet 3208 Views
Author:
Toni Twiss
Publication Date:
Jan 2009
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
A New Zealand Ministry of Education eFellowship report on the use of mobile phones in classrooms to foster information literacy skills.
The report considers the impact ‘anytime’ access to information via access to the mobile internet will have on teaching and learning in the future. It explores the potential applications for mobile phones in the classroom and the skills that students will need in order to cope with the mass of information on-demand that is available to them.
The research conducted for the purpose of this report involved a class set of 30 3G mobile phones being made available for a single unit of work by three different classes; a Year 12 Media Studies, Year 9 Social Studies and a general Year 8 class. Each unit of work ran for approximately 5-7 weeks. The teachers involved in the study were given support to learn how to use various functions of the mobile phones and to plan their unit of work.
The findings of this report indicate the following:
Applications and tools available for use via a mobile phone, including access to the world wide web, have a great deal of potential for use in schools.
Currently cost of data is the single biggest factor in limiting this use.
While as teachers we are constantly being told our students are ‘digital natives’, many of our students are not as au fait with technology as teachers are led to believe. Students are being labelled the ‘net-gen’ and teachers who have been told that they are ‘digital immigrants’ often do not see that the skills they believe their students to have are not always present. While students may seem very ‘tech savvy’ they still need to be taught the skills to deal with the world that their use of technology gives them access to, namely the world wide web and information overload.
Key factors identified by secondary school teachers as impacting their ability to teach information literacy included limited access to resources (particularly technologies for accessing the world wide web), access to professional development and the impact of timetabling leading to a highly segmented curriculum.
Mobile Phones in the Classroom - A Review of Literature data sheet 3046 Views
Author:
Toni Twiss
Publication Date:
Jul 2009
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
This paper set out to answer how schools and educators might consider using mobile phones to support effective teaching and learning opportunities by reviewing literature which explores both the negative and positive impacts of mobile phone use in the classroom.
The key findings point to a lack of informed decision making by schools on mobile phone policy. Findings suggest a wide variety of opportunities for enhancing classroom learning through the flexibility of time and place in which learning can occur and the ability to offer context based learning opportunities. The use of mobile phones have been found to be effective in building relationships particularly with more non-traditional or disengaged students. Negative aspects of mobile phone use by students include socially unacceptable behaviour, such as the serious nature of ‘txt-bullying’ as well as being a classroom distraction and having impacts on lowering literacy rates.
Mobile phone use in classrooms may still be largely the focus of research reports rather than mainstream adoption by schools yet if teachers are open-minded and begin to explore the technology that so many of their students are already bring in to the classroom there is huge potential for enabling a variety of effective learning strategies.
During disasters, there is a need for quick, effective communication between those in charge and the general public; early warning alerts can make the difference between life or death during emergencies.
DEWN uses widely available mobile communication technologies such as short messages (SMS) and cell broadcast (CB) to create a cost-effective and reliable mass alert system. The network connects mobile subscribers, police stations, religious/social community centers and the general public to a national emergency alert center.
Tool Category:
App resides and runs on a server
Key Features :
Application can be triggered by an SMS
Messages can be received by either a mobile phone or a special purpose wireless alerting device.
Avaaj Otalo ("voice-based community forum") is a system for farmers to access relevant and timely agricultural information over the phone. The system was designed in the summer of 2008 as a collaboration between IBM India Research Laboratory and Development Support Center (DSC), an NGO in Gujarat, India.
By dialing a phone number and navigating through simple audio prompts, farmers can record questions, review and respond to others, or access content published by agricultural experts and institutions. In addition to the Q&A forum, Avaaj Otalo includes an announcements board of headline-like snippets updated regularly by DSC staff, and a radio archive to listen to past episodes of DSC's popular weekly radio program.
Key Features :
IVR system for information access and sharing of experiences amongst small-scale farmers in rural India.
The Strategic use of mobile phone among poor people in some Latin American Countries data sheet 2557 Views
Author:
Gamboa, Luis Fernando
Publication Date:
May 2009
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
Mobile technology lets the users implement several strategies in order to minimize their spending. This paper documents the study of the determinants of the use of different strategies for a sample of users surveyed during May 2007 in developing countries as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. This survey is focused in low income people and includes about 5500 people. The methodology used includes two steps. First, the study of the determinants of use of each strategy by means of a probabilistic model. It was found that educative level and age are important determinants of the use of the alternatives. Second, the use of a Poisson regression model to capture the intensity of use of these set of strategies. The findings differ among countries.
You are invited to CrisisCamp Ignite Session at the World Bank!
CrisisCamp DC is part of a global movement who is bringing together volunteers, academia, non-profits, companies and government officials to share best practices and lessons learned to advocate for further use of technology and telecommunications to assist citizens and communities during crisis.
UPDATE: In an email conversation with Yaw, he pointed out a few additional noteworthy things about the Open Data Kit.
Here is how our client is different:
As researchers we want to push the boundaries of what organizations can do today to collect their rich data. We want users to own, visualize and share this data without the difficulties of setting up and maintaining servers. We want the tools to be easy to deploy, easy to use, open source and freely available. It is only now that technology (hardware, software and infrastructure) which matches our above ideals have become available.
ODK is more than open source, it is open standards, easy to work with and available today. We use xforms standard for input and output. Organizations can start with low end java phones and run Javarosa. When they are ready to collect data on a more powerful platform, they can move up to the ODK Collect on android phones and all their forms will still work. Results can be sent to any compatible xforms server (in fact, RapidsSMS support is coming soon).
For developers, the code base is easy to use. For example, if you wanted to add barcode reading or submission to Openmrs servers over wifi, it will take very few lines of code. We already have local African developers working on similar functionality.
We've piloted the application and are scaling rapidly. We started with twenty devices in Uganda which were used to collect over 1000 geotagged forms with images. Our upcoming deployment will be a couple of hundred devices collecting millions of forms.
ODK also has a ton of features and we adding more each day. Touchscreen UI with swipe navigation and progress bar, xforms compatible gps and photo support, question grouping, repeats and constraints, answer defaults and constraints, logic and branching in forms, and much more is coming. We put the roadmap at http://code.google.com/p/open-data-kit/wiki/RoadMap
We think we've pushed the state of data collection a bit forward. Certainly, ODK Collect is not for every organization who wants to do data collection, but for our partners who are using it now, it is providing a lot of value.
Open Data Kit (ODK) is a suite of tools aimed at resource-poor organizations to collect, transform and report their data. Developed by Yaw Anokwa and Carl Hartung from the University of Washington, ODK Collect enables mobile data collection on the Android platform. ODK is one of a growing number of mobile data caollection apps, many of which are reviewed here and here on MobileActive. This video gives an overview of the Open Data Kit. You can download the source code here.
NetSquared just announced the top ten projects in UCB Human Rights Center Mobile Challenge, as chosen by community vote. The challenge, which was open to any project using mobile technology to support human rights work, had over fifty entrants from a wide spectrum of human rights organisations, technical experts and issue-based groups. Three winners will be announced at the Soul of the New Machine conference in May.
MobileActive members are invited to participate in the upcoming virtual forum on Mobile Telephony in Rural Areas (e-agriculture) 20-30 April 2009. The dicussions will be in Spanish.
