A global network of people using mobile technology for social impact.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you news on the state of the mobile web, California's plan to be the first state with a mass mobile alert system, Cisco's (rumored) move to buy Skype, a guide to installing PercentMobile on different platforms, and results from a study on the effects of SMS reminders for taking birth control pills.
One of the the key functions of mobile phones is their use in data collection. We have seen lots of online discussion here at MobileActive.org and elsewhere on the subject.
Here, we feature a peer-reviewed journal article from our growing list of resources on mobile data collection. In this 2009 paper, Ping et al. evaluated the effectiveness of PDA-based questionnaire verses a paper-based method for public health surveillance in Fiji.
After a slow August, September is bursting with events. Mark your calendars, there's something for everyone this month! And, as always - if you know of other events of note for this community, please add them in the comments!
23 September, Women and Mobile Tech Salon (New York, NY, USA) MobileActive is hosting a tech salon this month to discuss mobile tech and the particular needs of women to improve their lives, health, and economic status.
We will have short talks by women leaders in the mobile tech-for-social-change field. Register here!
The Mobile Minute is back with the latest mobile news. What's happening today? FrontlineSMS now supports MMS via email and offers scheduling features, an infographic breaks down the overlap between social networks and mobile phones, non-profits are ramping up their use of mobile giving campaigns, and Google introduces a new computer-to-phone voice service.
The Mobile Minute is here to bring you news about YouTube's new mobile site, 4G wireless networks in Russia, mobile phone ownership growth in North Korea, apps and the future of news journalism, and the New York Times' look at the growth of the web.
Femi Soremekun, managing director of Nigeria-based Biofem Pharmaceuticals, is all too familiar with the fight against counterfeit drugs. In late 2008, a distributor notified him that he suspected that one of Biofem’s products, Glucophage, was being counterfeited. After checking batch and inventory numbers, Soremekun reassured him there was no evidence of such activity. It was only after more allegations surfaced that he sent a sample to French manufacturer Merck & Co. to be analyzed. Turns out the claims were correct. “I was very shocked,” Soremekun says. “[The counterfeiters] got into my market, counterfeited my product, and I wasn’t even aware of it. I was losing sales.”
It was around this time that Soremekun learned about Sproxil, a start-up company that is part of a consortium that includes Nigeria’s pharmaceutical industry association and the country’s regulating agency. The group explores technology-based strategies to tackle drug counterfeiting. On the sidelines of the consortium, Biofem and Sproxil discussed implementing a drug-certification process in order to restore Biofem customers’ confidence in Glucophage. Following a successful five-month trial in Nigeria involving about one million units of Biofem’s product, the company has seen sales pick up again. “We ended up being called the guinea pig,” Soremekun jokes.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on the Hearst magazine empire's new focus on mobile apps, what can go wrong on your mobile website and how to spot it, a camera phone-to-email project in India, checking African drugs with SMS, and a new speed texting record.
The Mobile Minute is here to keep you up-to-date on mobile and ICT news. Today's Mobile Minute covers National Public Radio's (NPR) metrics in America, why FM radio could be coming to your mobile handset, the decline of landline phones in the US, a program that delivers email over SMS in the Philippines, and why advertisers should use mobile marketing in developing countries.
We have two new case studies for you to check out.
Both studies are part of the Mobile Media Toolkit that will include many other case studies, how-to guides, resources, and tools on how use mobile phones for reporting, content delivery, and citizen participation, to be puplished later this month.
The first case study looks at how Freedom Fone was deployed at two farm radio stations in Africa. We look at what worked, what didn't, and how integrated voice technology can help enhance radio. You can even listen to an IVR jingle with the sound of local drums from the Morogoro region of Tanzania.
The second case study looks at Bubbly, an audio blogging platform that is making strides in India.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on the debate between native apps and web apps, an Android application that uses Spyware to mine GPS data, questions about how to define "mobile" devices, an infographic that details texting habits in the US and around the world, and a controversy over a mobile water-finding app for people crossing the Mexico/US border.
The Mobile Minute is back with a video explaining the M-PESA mobile money service, news about maternal health insurance via mobiles, an app that helps users determine if a hybrid or plug-in car will be useful to their lives, a report on why you might want to turn off the geo-tagging system on your mobile, and FailFaire in The New York Times.
So, you heard about FailFaire (and maybe even read the New York Times article about it). You liked the idea of learning from failure in a not-so-earnest setting and want to have your very own FailFaire, or you think that your organization could benefit from an internal event. Here are some tips for rolling your own.
Caveat: We have now organized two FailFaires (first in NYC, next in DC) for our community of practitioners who work with ICTs and mobiles for international development because that community is our audience. And part of our mission here at MobileActive.org is to help reduce redundancies, build capacity and advance the field. We also happen to work in an area of the NGO sector where failure is not often discussed, least of all honestly.
But the FailFaire concept can work for any field or, maybe just as helpfully, within any organization. (Note, of course, that some of the suggestions listed below will differ for an internal event, rather than a public one like ours.)
The FailFaire name and logo are licensed under a liberal Creative Commons, so feel free to use them. You do not need our permission. For tweeting, blogging and posting event pictures, we have used the hashtag ‚#failfaire. If you are running an event branded as FailFaire, feel free to drop us a line (or leave a comment) to let us know how it went.
Here are some thoughts and tips on how we've approached FailFaires.
1. Start with a lot of personal, old-fashioned, direct outreach for both participants and presenters
Identify those in your network who are more agile, and less bureaucratic and less resistant to talk about and learn from failure. Have many conversations to introduce/warm them up to the this radical new idea long in advance - perhaps before you've even set a date. Explain the concept, the goals, and the format of the event. Gauge whether there are enough supporters who will a) participate, and especially b) present. This process is critical in order to get to #2: You need buy-in, advocates, people who are into it early on.
2. Have the right people in the room
You want people who are there to learn, not to be voyeuristic; there to be constructive, not to be snarky or malevolent. People who genuinely care about their work and want to do better. People who are ok with some irreverence and humor, because failure is hard to talk about without it. This type of event is great for building (or strengthening) community, so try to keep the audience targeted and relevant to your focus or topic. Promote the event among people you think will get the most out of it - those who value different ways of learning.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on how mobiles are helping farmers in India, jquery on mobile, a comparison of patterns between mobile and desktop Twitter usage, and a mobile-only magazine.
Today's Mobile Minute features links on fundraising with QR codes, a survey report on how audiences get information, a breakdown of how journalism is changing due to mobile phones, the announcement of a clearer definition of mobile broadband, an open-source, solar-powered mobile network, and five cross-platform mobile development tools.
Today's Mobile Minute covers the unfolding BBM security controversy, Ushahidi's new Crowdmap online platform, a roundup of mobile apps for the disabled, a break down of what mobile ownership numbers actually mean, and the take-away on mobile remittances from the Tech@State conference.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage about contactless mobile payments in the U.S., a report on trends in technology and health, research that covers how mobiles can help economic development in Africa and the challenges that are hindering that development, a data gathering platform from Nokia that is now open-source, and the announcement of the mHealth Summit's keynote speaker.
We've got news on Saudi Arabia's and the United Arab Emirates' moves to ban BlackBerry, the release of the TakingITMobile mobile youth activism survey, a review of livestreaming services for mobiles, USAID's mobile financial services risk matrix, and a report that reveals the niche uses for location-based mobile services.
Nokia Data Gathering, a Nokia-built software tool for mobile data collection, recently open-sourced its code. The software has two parts: a server-side tool that can be used to create forms and maintain a database, and a handset client for field workers to use for mobile, in-the-field data collection. Both pieces are licensed under the GPL version 2. The project site is available at Forum Nokia, and invites third-party patches.
As part of our “Mobile Research at Your Desk” series, this week we present a white paper written by Hernán Galperin in collaboration with the Diálogo Regional sobre la Sociedad de la Información (DIRSI) and International Development Research Centre (IDRC). He attempts to shed some light on the affordability of mobile phones between Latin American and Caribbean countries and compare tariffs with the rest of the world.
Recognizing that developing a single standardized metric for mobile affordability is a challenge, the author used a well-established OECD method - a basket of services - to estimate the cost of a set of mobile services specified for low-volume users.
The data exposes the reality of mobile affordability for the bottom of the pyramid.
Cost of Mobile Services and the Affordability Gap in Latin America and the Caribbean - Research Ignite #2 from MobileActive.org on Vimeo.
Hernán Galperin offers a quantitative analysis using a sound approach to predict affordability of mobile tariffs. In the report, it is acknowledged that price of handsets or connection charges are not accounted for, and it is clarified that per-minute calculation can result in an over-estimation of cost.
In another report, Galperin and colleague Judith Mariscal share mobile opportunities informed by survey results of 7,000 individuals in low income households. Discussed there are perceptions of mobile service costs, and patterns of mobile usage, and both reasons for and barriers to mobile adoption. With colleague Roxana Barrantes, Galperin demonstrates the relationship between costs of mobile services and mobile penetration and discusses the savings incurred by low income users with micro-prepayment and per-second billing schemes.
All three papers can be accessed in our mDirectory for your reading.
MobileActive.org's content license is here. Please note that some materials in this slidecast may be separately copyrighted by the respective authors of the papers we presented. Images and materials are used here with the author's permission.
The Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency (Sida) recently published a report, The Innovative Use of Mobile Applications in East Africa, that provides an overview of the current state of mobile phone applications for social and economic developments in East Africa. The report seeks to answer “what hinders the take-off of m-applications for development in East Africa" and asks what role donors should play.
While mobile phones are the main channel for information in East Africa, with mobile penetration covering over 40% of the population, sustainable, scalable mobile services for social and economic development are limited. The report is supported by secondary data, statistics, and field work carried out in Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania, along with numerous interviews, meetings and discussions with key stakeholders in East Africa. Major trends in mobile usage, barriers for increased use of m-applications, as well as opportunities for scaling are discussed.
Barriers: High Cost of Ownership.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on why the the idea of a "cyber-utopia" is flawed, a demonstration of a hacked phone tower, a report on Alabama's increasingly mobile-based news consumption, licensing iPad and iPhone apps from the New York Times, and mBillionth's mobile awards.
[Update below] On the morning of July 29, Reporters Without Borders reported that several citizens of the United Arab Emirates has been arrested for allegedly using BlackBerry Messenger to coordinate a protest against the high price of gasoline. This news comes on the heels of several countries’ working to block or severely limit the use of BlackBerry Messenger in their respective countries. There have also been reports on RIM setting up a server in China under Chinese pressure, even though MobileActive.org could not directly verify these reports.
On July 25th, the United Arab Emirate’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority said that they believed BlackBerrys could be used in a way that compromised national security, in April of 2010 Bahrain issued a ban against using the chat feature to share local news, and now India has joined the ranks of countries requesting access to data and information sent over BBM.
Reporters Without Borders has been covering the controversy in the Middle East. Regarding the arrests in the U.A.E., the organization reports:
The authorities were able to trace the organizer, known as “Saud,” because he included his BlackBerry PIN in a BBM message he sent calling for the protest. They held Saud for a week and used his phone to trace those he had been messaging. Accused of inciting opposition to the government, he has lost his job. At least five other members of the group have reportedly been summoned by the police or are still being sought.
Today's Mobile Minute covers how mobiles are improving students' performance in a North Carolina school, personal data theft from a malicious Android app, a $100 million USAID grant for health services in Malawi, the effect of mobile applications on the East African economy, and the release of Opera's "State of the Mobile Web."
As a part of the Mobile Media Toolkit, we are producing how-to screencasts that show how to use various mobile tools that have to do with the production and dissemination of content and media.
I argued recently that content publishers should publish for the mobile web rather than build more apps. So it only felt appropriate to do a how-to screencast on how to actually produce content for the mobile web. One way is to use the polular and open source blogging software Wordpress as the back-end of the website, and optimize it so the front end is suitable for mobile viewing. We help viewers go through this process in a brief how-to screencast. See it below or click through to the How To article.
Mobile Media Toolkit Screencast: Mobile Optimize your Wordpress-based Website from MobileActive.org on Vimeo.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage about revenue from Brazil's mobile youth, a Pew report on mobile habits, the conclusion of NPR's look at race and the digital divide, a guide to building voice infrastructure in developing regions, and what m-banking services need to consider about non-literate consumers.
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