MobileActive.org

Two great blog-posts wrap up MobileActive08. Ismail Dhorat from ignite^2 gives an overview of one of the best sessions on ReadWriteWeb:

I found this presentation by Tino Kruetzer, a researcher at the University of Cape Town, extremely interesting. It was based on the interim results of a pilot study on mobile internet usage by low income youth in Cape Town. Some of the key findings were:

• Mobile internet usage was far higher then computer based internet usage, 83% had used internet on a mobile compared to 20% on a computer for the previous day.
• Close to 100% had used a mobile phone as often as yesterday, while the next highest item used was an (Ipod/Mp3 player) and computers were 3rd with under 10%.
• SMS messaging exceeds even voice calls, with 65% having sent at least one message on the previous day.
• Instant messaging is the most popular application with 47%.
• 56% of the youth surveyed used their mobile phones on the previous day to take a picture.
• Mxit was the most popular mobile instant messaging application.
• On average about 50% of their money was spent on mobile services, R30 (3-4 $) a week.
• Even though there are cheaper options for voice calls like community (public) phones, there is a social stigma attached to calling each other from public phones. They prefer using their mobiles even with higher prices.
• They do not think that using applications like IM or Facebook as being on the internet; when asked if they had used the internet, they say no even though they answer yes for having using IM.

Meanwhile, TMS Ruge notes on Project Diaspora's blog:

I dropped in on the Rapid Application Development (RAD) engine demo, Global Voices’ session on mobiles in citizen media, and a session on the evolution of the mobile web to name a few. Paul Cook provided some excellent notes from the Mobile Banking and Mobile Commerce while White African sat in on the launch of Open Mobile Consortium (a very big deal in this young marketplace).

Thanks to all who blogged, twittered, and flickred.  An aggregated list of some of the presentations shared is on Slideshare.

Extended aggregation of conference coverage by other media and attendees can also be found on the MobileActive08 blog.