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.
- The United Arab Emirates announced it will ban BlackBerry Messenger starting October 11th, and Saudi Arabia issued a ban to start this August, though as of today RIM and the government of Saudi Arabia seems to have to come to an agreement to allow monitoring, reports Reuters. The countries' moves to block BlackBerry Messenger are due to the BBM's encrypted data and foreign servers, which makes messages sent over BBM more difficult to track. Read our piece on the controversy here. The Ecoomist also has a good piece digging a little deeper on RIM, BBs and government spying.
- TakingITMobile released a study on the habits of youths and mobiles that "examines how youth leaders across the globe use mobile communications to create social change within their local communities and internationally."
- Technically Journalism posted a review of two popular mobile live-streaming services, Ustream and Qik, and analyzes the situations in which each service is best used.
- In response to the growing use of mobile money payments, USAID created the Mobile Financial Services Risk Matrix, which looks at different types of mobile financial services and the risks involved.
- A Forrester Research report found that "only four percent of adult online consumers have used a location-based [mobile] service;" Poynter Online looks at how marketers and journalists should respond to these statistics.
[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.]
Image courtesy Flickr user QiFei
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