One of the more interesting mobile apps that I saw at TED, a prestigious tech and design conference in California, projects information from the phone onto any surface -- augmenting information from the web with real life and physical spaces.
The prototype -- dubbed Sixth Sense -- showcased at TED includes a webcam and a battery-powered projector, a small mirror and an internet-enabled mobile phone. The device hangs around the wearer's neck and allows her to summon data and information from the Web on any surface.
Pattie Maes of the lab's Fluid Interfaces group said in her presentation that she and her students are seeking a "new digital "sixth sense" for humans. In the short clips below, Maes' student Pranav Mistry who developed the device, showcases the potential for social interaction and impact.
MIT is the first university to offer a graduate class exclusively focused on how mobile phones are used for social action. Call4Action!, the brand-new seminar, asks: How can mobile networked devices be used for social change, politics, and expression? From the course description:
Each week we will review existing tools for social change, cover techniques for mobile hacking, and piece together new experiments. International speakers ranging from Zimbabwean activists to telecommunication experts will discuss the problems with existing ICTs, and suggest parameters for new systems. We'll review protocols, systems, and packages like VOIP, GSM, SMS, and PBX to look at how they may be reused or reconfigured, and explore handset development and alternative communications systems. We will learn to set up, develop for, and hack with systems and open source packages like Symbian Series 60, Android, Openmoko, Django, Asterisk. Through hacking and technical exercises, we will demystify the field and build springboards for future work. By the end of the class, we hope to collaboratively create new repertoires for social change and technical activism.
While there have been few implementations of mobile technoogy so far in human rights work, recent innovations have the potential to be used to expose war crimes and other serious violations of human rights, and disseminate this information in real time throughout the world. Mobile phones, combined with GPS, cameras, video, audio, and SMS are transforming the way the world understands and responds to emerging crises. Handheld data collection devices, such as PDAs, provide researchers with new ways of documenting mass violence and attitudes toward peace, justice, and social reconstruction in conflict zones.
Data from Informa indicates that by 2010 half of the planet's population will have access to the Internet through a mobile device. Should you make your website mobile? We have heard recently from a number of organizations contemplating whether they should build a mobile site. Following is an overview of some points to consider and resources to draw on as you consider a mobile web presence.
A bit of background: There are now 4 billion mobiles phone subscribers around the world, according to the ITU, far outpacing Internet users worldwide. GSMA, the industry group for telecom companies, reports that more than 80% of the World population is currently covered by a GSM network.
This means that mobiles have become the most ubiquitous communication device in human history. It also means that a majority of the world's population will access the web via their mobile phones. And this means that organizations around the world need to think about what this means for their users, audience, and websites.
Our field has discovered that mobile phones are useful tools for collecting data in the field. As a result, there is an abundance of mobile data collection applications and projects.
Unlike bulk messaging and general information services that are targeting the general public as recipients of standardized messaging, mobile data collection applications are often used internally in an organization, customized to fit with existing organizational processes.
This may mean using services or applications that are not part of most people's day-to-day experience of mobile use. Add a liberal sprinkling of jargon (and the mobile world's plague of acronyms) and you have a recipe for much technical confusion.
The second in the MobileActive barcamp series, we'll explore mobile tech to advance social development and social change goals. Expect this to be highly participatory and interactive, and cover anything you wanted to know about using mobiles for social change. MobileTech for Social Change New York is open to anyone with passion and interest in the topic and since it's a barcamp, bring your ideas, innovations, products, tools, projects, and organizations!
And if you want to be an angel and sponsor the event, contact us at info at mobileactive dot org!
UPDATE: Henrietta Fore, the administrator of USAID, announced today the winner of the USAID Development 2.0 Innovation Challenge focused on mobile technology. MobileActive was a judge for the Challenge. The Challenge, a co-production between USAID's Development Commons and Netsquared, focused on mobiles in development. The winner of the $10,000 award is Child Malnutrition Surveillance and Famine Response.
There is a fascinating discussion about the fuure of mobile apps going on over at Change.org. Nathanial Whittemore started it all with a hopeful and visionary blog post on how mobiles will be changing the world. The discussion thread turned into a thoughtful discussion on mobile appplications and how this emerging eco-system of tools scales and interoperates to maximize resources.
Isaac Holeman, working on (and twittering about) MobilizeMRS, points out that "interoperability is a very important point..where it's not necessary for any one installation of anything to scale completely because data can move into or out of any system. Mobile health stuff is so new that interoperability of medical data has hardly been considered, to my knowledge. With MobilizeMRS, one of the primary reasons we want to interface with medical records systems is that a huge amount of work has already been done to promote medical record interoperability with standards such as HL7."
Ethopia again this year has experienced crippling droughts. Faced with the possibility of famine, UNICEF Ethiopia launched a massive food distribution program to supply the high-protein food Plumpy'nut to under-nourished children using mobile phones for monitoring and delivering supplies its more than 1,8000 feeding centers in the country.
To coordinate the distribution and maintain appropriate stocks, field monitors reported on supplies and number of children fed through an SMS reporting system using a UNICEF-built mobile data collection and monitoring software, RapidSMS. We have previously reviewed RapidSMS here, comparing it with a less scaleable lower-end tool, Frontline SMS.
We identify four common choices facing individual projects in mobiles for development: who are the intended users, how technically accessible the solution is, whether the project links to other platforms or content, and what the project requires from handset manufacturers and operators.
We think that these choices collectively mark aspects of the current landscape of M4D. We also think that these choices made at the project level may create different M4D landscapes with implications for the breadth and depth of the technology’s impact on development.
MobileActive.org welcomes on staff Patricia Mechael, an expert in mobiles for health, and mobiles for development. I am personally so pleased to work with Patty!
Here is a bit more: Dr. Patricia Mechael has been involved in the field of International Health for over 12 years with field experience in over 25 countries with a special focus on Africa. She holds a Masters in International Health from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Hygiene, and a PhD in Public Health and Policy from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where she examined the role of mobile phones in health in Egypt.
CGAP, one of the leading organizations conducting research and providing leadership in the mobile banking space in the developing world, is holding a live webcast today from 2-5 pm Eastern Time (-5 GMT). Here are the details:
Mobile Banking for Poor People: Pioneer Perspectives a CGAP roundtable and webinar
Dec. 11, 2008 | 2:00pm – 5:00pm World Bank Headquarters, Washington DC | online at http://technology.cgap.org
By the end of 2008, the UN says there will be four billion mobile phone connections globally. Millions of air-time resellers and retail agents in developing countries make it possible to distribute financial services at far lower cost than through traditional channels.
I just came from the Global Forum for Media Development an Athens, Greece, where there is a lot of interest in how to use mobiles in media and journalism trainings, and in supporting citizen media efforts. I presented briefly our most recent work, A Mobile Voice, that describes how mobiles are used in citizen media. The dicsussions were lively and there were lots of ideas to take this work further. Specifically needed are journalism trainings and better toolkits and how-to materials that detail what tools and approaches work where. Security was also of great concern, and participants were eager to learn more about mobile security for media and activists. Athens is, of course, also experiencing social turmoil right now, so I engaged in a bit of citizen journalism on Twitter on my own, interviewing police and demonstrators during the night.
The Extraordinaries, a new project by Mobile Voter (disclosure: I sit on the board of Mobile Voter) seeks to revolutionaize the way we volunteer. We wrote about its precursor before. Busy people in the West rarely volunteer for lack of time to go to an organization. Most volunteer opportunities require training, vetting, and time commitments. In fact 46% of non-volunteers in America, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, say they don't because they are too busy.
The Vodafone Americas Foundation has a new Wireless Innovation Challenge to promote innovation and increase implementation of advanced wireless related technology for a better world. The foundation is providing $600,000 in awards to support projects "of exceptional promise." The Challenge is open to projects from universities and nonprofit organizations based in the United States.
Projects must demonstrate a multi-disciplinary approach that uses innovation in wireless related technology to address a critical global issue in one or more of the following areas: access to communication, education, economic development, environment, or health. The technology should have the potential for replication and large scale impact. Teams should have a business plan or a basic framework for financial sustainability and rollout. Submissions deadline is February 2, 2009.
On day two of the MobileActive ’08 conference in Johannesburg, I attended a session entitled "In the Elevator With Operators: How to Pitch New Service Ideas to Mobile Companies” that focused on how to pitch mobile development projects that present both a social and a business opportunity. It was moderated by Jesse Moore of the GSMA Development Fund, and panelists were Pieter Verkade, the CMO of MTN South Africa, and Vuyani Jurana, executive director at Vodacom SA.
At some point, people with new mobile ideas in the development field need to get mobile operators involved so services can scale from small pilot projects to sustainable efforts that service many more people. As Moore said: “If you’re losing money, scale is your enemy. If you’re making money, scale is your friend.”
In our ongoing reviews of mobile tools focused on the NGO sector, here is our latest edition: A review of FrontlineSMS, the much-written-about desktop SMs bulk messaging tool. We take a look at some use cases, outline technical considerations in using Frontline, and describe the tests that we ran.
Firstly, and most importantly for many users, FrontlineSMS provides a simple way to send and receive SMS on a laptop or desktp, with contact management and grouping ability for bulk messaging. Provided installation comes off without a hitch and you are using a supported phone, this should allow new users to get started quickly, after which they can explore some of the more advanced functionality.
In our ongoing and ever-expanding series of how-to resources for NGOs and grassroots organizations using mobile technology in their work, we are releasing a new primer on "Mobile Surveillance." Our reviewer, Melissa Loudon, gives an overview of mobile surveillance risks and tips and tools on how to prevent surveillance for secure communications.
The goal of the meeting is to assess the landscape of tools, and begin to develop a technical roadmap.
The Open Mobile Consortium believes that it is critical to overcome frthe current agmentation in this field, and to align existing projects that are developing and implementing mobile tools. A longer-term vision is to work as an open source consortium, with funding for coordination and project management, as well as code integration, refactoring and producing documentation for training and support.
MobileActive.org will participate in tomorrow's portion of the event, and report back on key discussions.
I am thinking a lot about how nonprofits and NGOs can use mobile phones for fundraising (this being the holiday season and all) and have been collecting examples of campaigns that I like to extract some lessons and data on how it's working. Here are my picks of some that I have come across. I'll tell you what I like and why (and what's not so great here). Note that I have no data yet on how WELL they have worked but believe me, we are on it for a whiteb paper on the topic later in the season...So, here is November's pick!
How it works: Donors can text the word “TOT” to 864233 (UNICEF) to make a $5 donation via premium SMS that gets billed to the user's phone bill or prepaid card.
What's nice about this: This campaign uses the just-in-time feature of mobile perfectly and had great potential to be used during the Halloween season where kids walk around with little donation boxes when the go door to door -- kids collecting for kids. Most people at the door give a few coins as opposed to $5, so with the right promotion, this campaign could generate extra money in addition to the collection.
Kutoma Wakunumadid a great presentation at MobileActive08 on her research that investigates whether women are benefitting from mobile technology. In this interview, shot by ICT4D.at at MobileActive08 in Johannesburg this year, she discusses how women are using mobile tech, what some of the barriers are, and social implications of mobile communications for women. A blog post about the discussion we had at MobileActive08 about women and mobile phones is here.
Take a look also at the notes from a session on participatory design for mobile tech with and for women here and an earlier article we wrote about women and mobile technology -- Who Will Join This Standing Up.
Thank you again to all who came out for Mobile Tech for Social Change barcamp in San Francisco! We had a great day at Google.org which graciously hosted us. Two highlights for me: A live video conversation with Tim Berners Lee who talked about the need for making the mobile web accessible to all people around the world, and his new Web Foundation. (Some video from the conversation is here.) It was wonderful to see that Tim understands the importance of mobiles in the next generation of the 'web' when the majority of the world is already accessing the web throught their mobile screens.
The second thing that thrilled me was the enthusiasm, interest, and knowledge displayed at the barcamp where the 80 participants enthusiastically delved into key topics. We hadmore than 24 session, all user-generated, and many more conversations.
A few key themes that have been emerging again and again:
On day three of MobileActive ’08, I attended a session led by Pragnya Alekal of the XPrize Foundation. Pragnya is a water sanitation and energy engineer who has spent a lot of time in the field. She stressed that technology has its limitations – it’s not the whole solution. Her entire goal has been to make up for the fact that technology is important while encompassing other factors.
Alekal told us that XPrize’s goal is to revolutionize sectors – they have a commons-based philosophy. Pragnya was at MobileActive ‘08 to get ideas. How do you solve poverty? How do you get more people to think of solutions?
Alekal told us the history of XPrize, which started with a big dream and got scaled out. It was founded by Peter Diamandes – from the age of nine on, he wanted to go to space. He became a rocket scientist and got six degrees. He felt that the astronaut program was too restrictive. If you are non-American like he is, your chances of becoming an astronaut are low. The number of people who make it into space is very small.
On day two of MobileActive ’08, Benjamin Brandzel of Avaaz.org led a session on cross-border mobile engagement. Avaaz.org is an international network of activists who work through the Internet to directly influence policy issues such as global warming, poverty, peace, democracy, and human rights. They have made use of internet and email to reach out to people. There is still plenty of room to grow with that, but now a growing segment of the world’s population uses mobiles and not the Internet.
Avaaz.org wants to transfer its model of issue advocacy across global boundaries. Brandzel asked if it is possible to engage folks through mobiles simultaneously across many different nations. To do so, we must deal with political issues, legal issues, and technical issues –- for example, there is no global shortcode. There are also language issues. In Zulu, it’s hard to say “Call me” in 160 characters.
Brandzel said, “Trying to set up a shortcode across a number of African countries is a nightmare. It would be nice to get a platform to make it easier.”
