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.
- Opera recently released its newest State of the Mobile Web report (covering July 2010). The report analyzes how people around the world are accessing the mobile web; for example, South Africa had the highest number of female mobile web users (43.5%) while India had the lowest (4.0%). Since July of 2009 the number of mobile web users has increased by 114.3%, and the highest concentration of under-18 mobile web users are in Vietnam and Ukraine.
- California will be the first state in America to have a government-run emergency mobile alert system when it launches a pilot program this fall. The commercial "Mobile Alert System" was announced last week, and will be piloted in San Diego county before rolling out to be state-wide.
- TechCruch reports that "Cisco has made an offer to acquire Skype before they complete their IPO process," although this news has yet to be confirmed.
- Mobile Analytics Simplified posted a run down on how to install PercentMobile (a mobile analytics service) on several popular platforms, including Python, Django, ASP.NET, Java, and node.js.
- A study published by Obstetrics and Gynecology found that daily SMS reminders had no effect on helping a sample group of women remember to take their birth control pills. The report states, "Daily text message reminders did not help the 82 women in the study become more adherent to their birth control pill regimen. Both the text-receiving participants and the control group missed about 5 pills per month."
[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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