MobileActive.org

Guest writer Babar Bhatti from State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan writes about SMS and mobile use for organizing in the recent turmoil in Pakistan:

MobileActives, start coding! We called for an "Android for Good" last week and here it is. Google and the Open Handset Alliance's open platform released its software developer kit (SDK) today and issues a mobile application challenge that includes a call for applications for humanitarian benefit and economic development. The challenge will issue a total of $10 million USD, initially in a first phase that will award $25,000 each to 50 applications received by March 3rd, 2008. The second part of the challenge, launched after the first handsets built on the Android platform become available in the second half of 2008, will then award ten $275,000 and ten $100,000 prizes for the most promising apps that warrant further development.

According to the FAQ, the Alliance is "looking to reward innovative, useful apps that make use of Android's capabilities to deliver a better mobile experience." These include applications in these areas:

Understanding a housing mortgage isn't easy, especially within today's so-called subprime mortgages filled with legalese, deceptive interest rates and dishonest brokers. Having English as a second language doesn't make it any easier. Jeremy Liu and Tad Hirsch, the developers of Speakeasy, are using mobile phones to help non-English speakers fight the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States with an Asian-language specific foreclosure prevention hotline. MobileActive interviewed Liu for more information on this still-developing project.

Liu and Hirsch have developed a hotline that will connect Asian-language speakers faced with foreclosure or subprime mortgages with information in their native languages. Liu said that although similar hotlines exist in Spanish, there is no language-specific hotline for Asian languages. This leads to an information gap for Asian homeowners with subprime mortgages, many of whom don't know where to turn for foreclosure prevention assistance.

Google announced today Android and of the Open Handset Alliance, throwing wide open the field of mobile applications for commercial and social and civic causes and potentially much cheaper handsets that are especially important in developing countries. We here at MobileActive.org think that this will spur developments for the social sector that are faster and cheaper -- an "Android for Good."

The Open Handset Alliance is a consortium of more than 30 tech and mobile companies and Android is its open platform. Google's support of the project and development of the new mobile app software stack that includes an operating system, moddleware and open applications development is significant and seen as a major competitor to other mobile platform providers such as Microsoft, RIM, and Symbian.