Today's Mobile Minute brings you an interview with Indrani Medhi on her work with text-free interface technology, an SMS case study from Toronto's The Globe and Mail, a look at race and digital technology, Nokia's falling profits, and which mobile domains are most popular.
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The Mobile Minute is here to bring you the day's mobile-for-development new. Today's Minute covers disaster assistance applications on smartphones, a BBC guide to using pocket-sized video cameras for reporting, the UN ICT Hub's first Briefing Report on ICT4D in the Asia-Pacific region, the development of two new systems that allow mobile phones to work in areas with no reception, an intriguing idea for an iPhone app to combat homelessness, and an event on mobile payments in the Tech@State series in Washington DC.
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Today's Mobile Minute brings you news about the relationship between consumers and telecoms in Sierra Leone, potential problems with mobile phones for transparency in elections, law enforcement officials pulling evidence from iPhones, how international roaming charges were dropped in East Africa, and why geotagging photos may not be in your best interest.
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Today's Mobile Minute covers the mobile gender gap, mobiles in the classroom that allow deaf children to learn alongside hearing children, a study about mobile over-sharing, mobile credits on cell phones during disasters, post-Haiti disaster management with ICTs, and a 90-second interview with Patricia Mechael about mobile health.
- According to a Webroot Study of 1,645 social network users, 55% of people polled said "they worry over loss of privacy incurred from using geolocation data" on mobile phones."
[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.]
Image courtesy Flickr user QiFei
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The Mobile Minute, our new daily feature, is here to keep you up-to-date on mobile-related news.
[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.]
Image courtesy Flickr user QiFei
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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.]
Image courtesy Flickr user QiFei
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We have a new feature! We want to keep you updated with fresh content all the time - in addition to our-indepth content. So - it’s time for the Mobile Minute, your daily guide to the latest mobile news and information. Today's post covers Google's App Inventor, SMS farming alerts, using a phone for eye exams, why your nonprofit needs a smartphone, and reaching another milestone: 5 billion worldwide mobile subscriptions.
• “Google Demos Codeless Android Development Tool for Students.” Google’s new “App Inventor” tool (still in Beta) lets users create Android apps through a simple drag-and-drop system – no knowledge of code required.
• “Philippines Farmers to Get Rice-Growing Advice Via Text Message.” International Rice Research has developed an SMS program that will text rice farmers information about crops. Farmers fill out information about their crops over their mobiles, and receive back information about timing, fertilizer, and growing amounts. (via Textually.org)
• “Eye Exams Using a Mobile Phone.” MIT researchers developed an eye exam that runs on mobile phones. The article quotes the MIT News, describing the tool as, “In its simplest form, the test can be carried out using a small, plastic device clipped onto the front of a cell phone's screen. The patient looks into a small lens, and presses the phone's arrow keys until sets of parallel green and red lines just overlap. This is repeated eight times, with the lines at different angles, for each eye.”
• “Five Reasons Why Nonprofit Communicators Need Smartphones.” This article looks at the five key ways mobiles (and specifically, smartphones) are a necessary tool for nonprofit communicators.
• “Over 5 Billion Mobile Phone Connections Worldwide.” This BBC article looks at the rapid growth and high penetration rates of worldwide mobile phone subscriptions, examining the mobile boom in India and China, multiple mobile phone ownership, and what those numbers might mean. The article is based on information from Wireless Intelligence, the database for the GSMA. As of this mobile minute, the exact number of subscriptions is at 5,019,477,554.
[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.]
Image courtesy Flickr user QiFei
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[Updated with images] In Grahamstown, South Africa, getting and sharing news is a mobile experience. Grocott’s Mail, a local paper, incorporates mobile phones into many aspects of its news service – from disseminating headlines via SMS, to encouraging readers to text in their opinions, to a Knight Challenge-winning citizen journalist training program.
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This month, many of the events are more corporate, with a focus on informational conferences for larger organizations. But, as always, we keep you up to date with what's happening in the mobile world! If you have an event that you'd like to share, leave a message in the comments or send us an email at info at mobileactive dot org
MobileActive.org's July Events:
8 July, New York City, USA: Tech Salon, Participatory Mobile Sensing: MobileActive.org is hosting a tech salon focused on using phones for urban sensing. Join us for a fun, laid-back event that brings together practitioners, developers, and other curious people to learn how mobiles are used to gather and share information about the world around us. Register here.
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Back in January, we covered two organizations that use mobiles for raising awareness of immigration issues. At the Mobilize Your Cause Bootcamp, held June 2 in New York City, Nicola Wells and Rachel LaBruyere gave a presentation about how Reform Immigration FOR America and the Fair Immigration Reform Movement coalition built a sizable and effective SMS campaign. Watch a video of their presentation below to see an example of how to pull off a successful, large-scale mobile campaign.
In part one of the videos, Wells explains how the organization initially became interested in mobile campaigning and organizing, and describes the three goals they had for a mobile community and list:
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