Blog

Post-election violence has exploded in Kenya in the wake of the December 27 presidential elections. Ethnic killings -- which today's New York Times suggests may have been carefully planned -- have increased, and estimates of the death toll range from 650 to over 1000. In the midst of this, people both in and outside the country are using mobile phones in innovative ways to communicate political knowledge and circumvent the media blackout.

Read More >>

Political ringtones, wallpapers, and SMS election updates are part and parcel of election campaigns in countries around the world -- from Spain to Kenya to the Phillipines, from Argentina to the Ukraine. It is has taken until this year's presidential election, however, for political contenders the United States to catch up.

Read More >>

Voting, suggests Joel Marsden, shouldn't be a process that is confined just within national boundaries. "Could every man and woman on the planet have an equal voice and be part a global participatory process?" he asks. Joel believes that mobile phones could be an essential part of a global democracy.

Read More >>

In a series of posts about Twitter for organizations, guest blogger Nate Ritter gives an overview of the benefits and pitfalls using Twitter. And because he is a geek, he's got an aggregator at the ready... (Modified and posted with permission from Nate's blog.)

My experiences in the San Diego fires in Southern California in late 2007 gave me an interesting outlook on how Twitter, as a tool, could be applied in different circumstances. For those of you not in the know: Twitter is a "free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific" according to the Wikipedia. Just a few months after (and some even during) the 2007 firestorm some organizations are scratching the surface of what’s possible with this service.

Twitter is a tool. It’s a good one in some cases and and for some organizations, and useless for others. Don’t make Twitter the hammer and start looking at everything like a nail. Twitter does some things very well, but it doesn’t fit every organization’s goals. Here are some considerations that will help determine if Twitter could be useful for your organization. If one of these criteria benefits your community without too many hurdles for adoption, then Twitter might be the right tool for you.

Read More >>

The Direct Marketing Association's Nonprofit Federation, the trade association of nonprofit marketers in the United States, is rolling out a text messaging pilot program with discounted rates with Mobile Cause, a vendor focused on nonprofits. 

Read More >>

Medialab-Prado issues a call to participate in the Second Inclusiva-net Meeting: Digital Networks and Physical Space, directed by Juan Martín Prada, that will take place in Madrid from 3 to 14 March 2008.

The purpose of this open participation meeting is to explore the relationship between digital networks and physical space: how new locative media are changing the way citizens perceive the physical and geographic space (from cellphones, Google Earth and GPS to geobrowsers or the Local Web 2.0) and how these media are reorganizing civic communcation and interaction.

Read More >>

The submission form for the first Android Developer Challenge is now available. As you recall, Android is the new Google mobile platform. The developer challenge will provide $10 million in total in awards -- no strings attached -- for great mobile apps built on the Android platform.

Read More >>

We are very pleased to announce the first set of translations of MobileActive's Strategy Guides into Arabic. Thank you to the National Democratic Institute for its pro-bono support for the translation.

Mobile phones have become a powerful emerging tool for participation in civil society. The MobileActive series of Strategy Guides, now in Arabic, examines the effectiveness of civil society organizations using mobile phones to build their constituent lists, influence political causes, and raise money. In the Guides we aggregate strategies, case studies, and lessons learned to encourage the adoption of mobile phones by nonprofits.

This series of Strategy Guides is designed to equip organizations around the world with the know-how to deploy effective mobile campaigns for a variety of types of activism and advocacy.

Read More >>

Happy New Year, MobileActives!

To ring in the New Year, MobileActive is conducting, with the UN Foundation and the Vodafone Group Foundation, a global survey of more than 25,000 civil society groups about how these organisations are using mobile phones in their work.

Read More >>

When most mainstream media report on Kenya's upcoming elections, they focus on the perspectives of people in cities or urban areas. However, since this October citizen journalists using cell phones have reported on news and political perspectives from rural Kenyan communities. A new collaboration between Media Focus on Africa and the Arid Lands Information Network (ALIN) gives mobile phones to "Community Information Volunteers" to use as a reporting tool.

Read More >>