A global network of people using mobile technology for social impact.
MobileActives in New York! If you read about the folks who organized the Zumbido project which connects people living with HIV/AIDS through an SMS network, come meet them this Friday, February 22 at 5 p.m. We'll meet at the Park Bar, located at 15 E. 15th Street. Click here for a map.
See you there!
Twitter might tell you what the friend of a friend ate for breakfast or when your cousin is doing his laundry. But, charges Nate Ritter, Twitter is way more than a social networking tool used to communicate the mundane details of everyday life. The mobile phone service has potential -- and in fact, has been used in the past -- for emergency communication and response.
Limbo, a mobile marketing company, provided three of the U.S. presidential candidates with free mobile advertising. The goal was to measure how voting intentions and perceptions change with SMS advertising.
The results were surprising, Limbo's Chief Marketing Officer Rob Lawson told MobileActive. SMS advertising changed the "voting intentions" of 28% of the people who received the messages and about 14% of recipients said they viewed the candidates more positively after the campaign. "I was surprised by the impact on voting intention," said Lawson. "I thought people would be comfortable receiving them, but I didn't think it would cause them to pay more attention to the candidates."
A single computer, hooked up to a modem in Bobby Soriano's house in the Philippines, receives a steady of stream of text messages begging for help. There have been messages from Philippine seamen, who, after being accused of the murder of a Korean captain, were forced to confess by Omani police. There was a Philippine domestic worker in Lebanon who was forced to flee to the mountains to escape Israeli bombings, and a message from twenty Philippine sailors who were evicted from their ship by police near Denmark. In each of these cases, a single SMS message with the keyword "SOS" was sent to a hotline in the Philippines, activating a network of nonprofits and government agencies to come to the workers' rescue.
Claire Joyce Tempongko, a Filipina immigrant, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in front of her two young children five years ago. Tempongko had repeatedly tried to get help from state services -- she had called the police before, and her ex-boyfriend had been in jail for domestic violence -- but she was murdered despite the involvement of various services.
Immigrants like Tempongko repeatedly face language and cultural barriers to getting help from domestic abuse. Tempongko's murder was one of the factors that eventually led to a new translation program which was recently implemented by the city of San Francisco in California in the western United States. The new program brings translation services to non-English speaking victims of domestic violence in over 170 languages, all via mobile phone.
Jill Tregor, a Senior Policy Analyst with the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women, sat down with MobileActive for an interview.
This Valentine's Day, forget the chocolate, roses, and poetry-filled greeting cards. Instead, consider surprising your love with ringtones of animal mating calls available for download to North Americans at eNature.com.
The site features 20 different ringtones with more to come in the future. Current animals include a lovelorn howler monkey, a horny tree frog, a lonely African lion, various birds, and many other species. The ringtones can be downloaded at no cost. And if you are curious and want to learn more, each mating ringtone page contains a description of the animal's mating habits and calls. We are sure you'll be able to delight your love there.
With mobile phones become ubiquitous in developing countries and emerging markets, phone manufacturers istening to the unique design needs of users there. Younghee Jung , an anthropologist working for Nokia, spoke about the design possibilities for improving phones for the developing world at the LIFT conference in Geneva, Switzerland that addresses the "challenges and opportunities of technology in society."
In a video presentation, Younghee speaks about the research that Nokia conducted in shantytowns in three cities: Mumbia, India, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Accra, Ghana. The team conducted ethnographic research, conducted street surveys, and sponsored an "open studio" contest in which they asked people to design their ideal mobile phone.
This February 5th isn't just any Tuesday in the United States. It's Super Tuesday, so named because 23 of the 50 states are holding presidential primaries, making it the contest that could potentially determine the all-important presidential Democratic and Republican nominees.
Television station MTV (Music Video Television) has an innovative new effort to get out the youth vote and merge citizen journalism with mainstream media. The effort, dubbed "Street Team '08," is made possible through mobile phones.
In the quintessential American past-time of football, Super Bowl Sunday, the finale of the season, takes on a special meaning. In the middle of the usual high-profile commercials that can cost $3 million for 30-seconds of air time, viewers will see a 10-second United Way television ad asking users to donate via SMS to a campaign fighting childhood obesity. The ad will premier during the Super Bowl game this Sunday, and will continue to run until the summer.
The ad features the voice of Tom Brady of one of the teams, the New England Patriots, and is a 10-second animated spot sponsored by the United Way. Tom Brady says,
You don't have to be an NFL player to help kids get fit in your community. Do your part, text FIT to "United" to give $5 to United Way's youth fitness. A little "U" goes a long way.
A community SMS news program -- Alô Cidadão! (Hello Citizen! -- brings information about jobs, educational and cultural events, and local news to low-income people in Belo Horizonte in southern Brazil. The messages have been overwhelmingly popular -- over 90% of subscribers forward the SMS to family or friends and rely on the text messages for daily information. Watch our video interview, taped at MobileActive07 in Sao Paulo Brazil. The video, shot on a Nokia N95 mobile phone, features Alô Cidadão! coordinator Daniel de Araújo and interpreter Mary Anne Matos.
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Ben Freda Consulting