With the unfortunate events that are occurring presently in the Middle East I thought it would be a good time to bring to your attention a little project underway by my pal and fellow MobileActive Erik Sundelof (a fellows at Reuters Digital Vision Program at Stanford University, a program that aims to develop technology to advance humanitarian goals in underserved communities).

Erik thought it would be interesting to see what the people on the ground (on both sides) are seeing and be able to report back live as it happens. So Erik has set up a Typepad blog that both sides can post to via their cell phones. The system uses a positioning solution developed Erik while a fellow at Stanford. The positioning system allows an end user, amongst other things, to determine if the mobile content was really sent from near or on location. Erik also built an SMSBlog for MobileActive.org, the online community for mobile technology and social activism.

But all of this is really part of his larger "In The Field Online" project in which Erik imagines every cell phone as a citizen media outlet. The point is to allow people 'in the field' to report news stories (or any other types of content for that matter) to the web using just a cell phone, but is developed in such a way as to be extremely extensible. As such one can basically push any piece of information - text, audio, graphic, picture, video from any cell phone to the web. It is the natural extension to citizen journalism as it creates the vehicle for people without internet to be able to get their voices heard on the internet.

The idea just came naturally to him:

I started to think about what would be my first thought after a car bomb went off. Certainly not to run to an Internet cafe. That’s probably the last thing I would think about. But I might call my friends with my cell phone to tell them I’m all right. Then you have your phone out, so now the possibility is that you could also record that, shoot it and send it to Reuters, the BBC or wherever. That would be a great tool to really create a vehicle and channel for those people to get their frustration out, that would help the democracy part.

Recently Erik was interviewed by Mark Glaser at MediaShift PBS to talk about citizen media and the future of its implications on the media landscape. "I truly believe cell phones are the right way to go here." Erik tells me. "Combine this with the proper business model and you have a really powerful tool." Or as Erik himself put it in the interview:

"The key here is that the media organizations need to realize they are losing control. They can't really control [the news] now because people are posting this stuff to other blogs. I think it would be better to merge traditional reporting with citizen media rather than have a [totally] new media.

To take the best of the old fashioned news organizations and bring in the power of the bloggers, because you have so many people investigating. Mix them and you have an extremely good organization and you'll have content that's really important in finding out the truth."

So, in the spirit of the project, people in Israel or Lebanon can now post to the blog by simply sending an SMS to the number +1 650 455 2692 (yes it's a US number but this is an experiment more or less, Erik is working on getting a more local number). Pictures can be sent via MMS (as well as just posting) by sending an Email to mms@inthefieldonline.net. All messages for now must start with a "TP" and end with a "STOP." If you want to include a title in your message, text as follows: "TP" add a title here "BODY" yada yada "STOP." WIthin the next couple of days, Erik has told me that the capability to post videos to the blog will also be made available.

If you are not reporting on the crisis in the Middle East but want to try Erik's tool out anyways try this very simple showcase here - http://inthefieldonline.net/showcase. Step by step instructions are as follows:

0. Click on Right now or use the direct link: http://inthefieldonline.net/showcase/dynamic.php
1. Take a picture, audio and/or video clip.
2. Choose to send that via a Picture Message/Multimedia Message/MMS (or email if you would prefer that)
3. Send this message to show@inthefieldonline.net (of course short-codes are supported.)
4. Just watch the computer screen and you will see the post pop up on its own.

The simplicity also exists for SMS:s and it has been tested in most continents.

At the moment, he's working on a cooler version of the service in the hopes of attracting Silicon Valley funding, or perhaps paying customers who run newspaper sites or other media outlets. So VC listen up. MOblogging could possibly be the next big thing. The blog Mobhappy has already made this easy for you to understand. His hope is to build an open source software platform with a programming code that can be improved and modified by anyone; to enable people to send in photos or video to central sites or to their blogs or websites of their choice. The simpler, the better.

If you are a volunteer nonprofit organization or political campaign you are probably very interested already.

The interview by the way is fantastic and has loads of information and answers to questions you might have about the technology.