From Bollywood to BBC, Bubbly is a Voice in the Audio Blogging World data sheet 8140 Views
Bubble Motion, a provider of mobile messaging and social media applications, launched Bubbly this year in India, making strides in the mobile audio blogging world. Audio blogging is a form of blogging in which the medium is audio content. Bubbly works by call and record, and thus can be adapted in areas with high mobile penetration and low Internet access, such as India.
A Bubbly user calls the service and through an integrated voice response (IVR) menu can record a name and message, usually less than 30 seconds. When other users choose to follow a user’s posts (or “Bubbles”) they receive an SMS message every time new audio content is added. A video by Pi Social Media on YouTube demonstrates how to record and listen to a Bubble; this one about an office party meet-up.
MobileActive.org spoke with Bubbly and the BBC, a user of the service, to find out how it works.
South Africans use the word hectic to mean anything from cool, crazy, fun, to stressful. I mean hectic as the last sense of the word when I describe my efforts to accomplish a fairly simple goal in South Africa: set up a blog that I could update via SMS for a quick demo.
In the US
If I had tried to do this in the US, I would have had a myriad of possibilities, some good, and some bad. I will go through these possibilities to show the scope of what could be available in many countries, but isn't.
Here's an exciting project I've been working on recently (sorry about the PR speak, it's some copy I've been using in promotion!).
Glastonbury is a giant music festival, the biggest in the UK and probably in Europe, but it's located on a working dairy farm and we need to leave the farm the way the cows like it. So the only trace of this year's festival we want to leave behind are images, videos and text messages. So Greenpeace, Oxfam and WaterAid are collaborating with Moblog to capture the sights and sounds (but, thankfully, not the smells) on a mobile blogging website or moblog.
Brenda Zulu interviews Ndesanjo Macha, the Regional Editor for Sub Saharan Africa (Global voices) at Highway Africa.
He says: "Mobile technologies are cheaper, they do not require the infrastructure and investment other technologies need...Africa has the fastest growing number of subscribers....mobile phones are the key to producing content, sharing content, reading, looking at pictures and images, and even doing businesses."
He describes how mobile technology facilitates rural development and participation, linking rural farming communities with the global public sphere; mobile blogging; and mobile reporting.
Check out the blog at Web2fordev.net for other great content. Hat tip to Christian Kreutz!
Of the hundreds of mainstream-media news stories around the world on Wednesday August 8, 2007, about the pro-Tibet protest in China this week, the one copied below focused on the role of information and communication technologies in a compelling, vivid, and memorable way.
I hope that readers will know where this story could be taken and how it could be highlighted and used to maximum effect as an example of outstanding innovative use of free new-media tools to achieve social change -- feel free to do that, or let me know what should be done.
