HTTP, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, is the data communication protocol you use when you broswe the web - as you probably know if you've noticed that website addresses usually begin with http://. HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP, which you might have seen being used for sensitive transactions like online banking and online shopping. When you are using the secure part of a site, the web address will begin with https://.
When using your mobile phone for sensitive communications, it is important to ensure that your online activities - whether researching or reading about an issue, sending an email, writing a blog post or uploading photos - are done over a secure connection. There are three elements of secure web browsing:
Generation Mobile: Online and Digital Media Usage on Mobile Phones Among Low-Income Urban Youth in South Africa data sheet 1443 Views
Author:
Kreutzer, Tino
Publication Date:
Feb 2009
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
For this study, 441 grade 11 students at nine schools in low-income areas in Cape Town, South Africa were surveyed about their use of mobile phones. These young South Africans have adopted a number of ways to use the Web and mobile Instant Messaging. They also commonly access, produce, and share digital media via their phones and the Internet.
Access to the Web has, until recently, only been available to the wealthiest fraction of South African society (less than 10% of the population), making this a highly significant development. Until now, little quantitative data has been available to describe exactly to what extent and how this cohort is beginning to access and use the Internet and digital media on mobile phones.
The students reported intensive use of mobile phones to access mobile Internet applications, at a far greater level than they report using desktop computers to access the Web. Mobile Internet is considerably more accessible to these students than computer-based Internet access, and they are choosing to use the Internet primarily for mobile instant messaging and other characteristic forms of mobile media use.
This suggests that these students encounter a distinct, mobile version of the Internet. Their experience of Internet access and digital media may consequently be quite different to that of their computer-using peers.
Mobile applications gets a lot of attention today. The market is growing every day. Cellular-News recently reported that this quarter’s worldwide smartphone sales increased 96% compared to a similar period last year, and that smartphones now account for nearly 20 percent of worldwide phone sales. Apps are admittedly a great way to reach out to new audiences.
But for non-profits, developing mobile apps can be a tricky undertaking. There’s a lot of hype around apps, and it’s hard to know how to approach the smartphone market. Planning for a mobile app that fits into a non-profit’s mobile communications strategy can make the difference between a great app and an app that doesn’t meet expectations. For non-profits wanting to develop apps, it’s important to make sure that they are meeting a real need – both for the organization and for users. Before launching an app, there are four questions non-profits should ask themselves:
In today's Mobile Minute: The UN released a report on mobile penetration around the world and how mobiles can be used to fight poverty, Business Insider charted U.S. texting habits by age group, an Islamist group in Somalia banned mobile money transfers, Zimbabwe's first mobile money program prepares to launch, and the research group Akamai released data on the growth of the mobile web around the world.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you news about the continuous lack of Facebook privacy, the disagreement between IDC and Nokia on Nokia sales figures in India, a ranking of the top five free Android apps for journalists, a TNS study that found social media trumps e-mail as the most popular use for online mobile activity, and mapping indoor spaces with smartphone apps.
Web based platform for collecting structured data using various mobile devices. Design surveys and share them through URLs with any mobile user. No installation required.
Tool Category:
Is a web-based application/web service
Key Features :
Unlimited forms, pages and fields
Upload custom Excel or CSV lists
Fully exportable results
No software installation required
Compatible with all recent mobile devices
Optimized mobile user interface
10 different input field types
Quick entry using barcode scanning
Main Services:
2D Barcodes
Voting, Data Collection, Surveys, and Polling
Display tool in profile:
Yes
Tool Maturity:
Currently deployed
Release Date:
2010-08
Platforms:
Android
Blackberry/RIM
Mac/Apple/iPhone
Windows Mobile
All phones/Mobile Browser
Current Version:
1
Program/Code Language:
Python
Number of Current End Users:
Under 100
Languages supported:
English, Slovenian
Handsets/devices supported:
* Windows Mobile 6.1 or later (Internet Explorer Mobile)
* Google Android 1.6 or later (built-in browser)
* Symbian^1 or later (Nokia)
* iOS 3.x or later (iPhone Safari)
* Opera Mobile 10 browser or later
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on Australia's record mobile web usage during the recent elections there, how telecom's price wars in Kenya have pushed down prices, why carriers may have raised the price of Google's Nexus One, a project Ugandan refugees using mobiles to find missing family, and competition for data-enabled handsets in Africa.
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.
Acquee.com is a SaaS offering of survey/form designer + mobile portal where data can be collected online. No software installation is required on the desktop or mobile side. It is a web based mobile data collection service designed for use with modern mobile devices.
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.
How to Mobile-Optimize a Wordpress Website data sheet 12185 Views
Author:
Prabhas Pokharel
Abstract:
Publishing for the mobile web is an important way to reach audiences on mobile phones. This screencast demonstrates an easy-to-use tool that can enable many content producers pubish for the mobile web. Wordpress.org has developed software which lets many around the world create websites fairly easily. This tool, the Wordpress Mobile Pack, makes it easy for those content producers to also publish on the mobile web.
In this short how-to video, we show how easy it is install the Wordpress Mobile Pack and generate a mobile version of websites, along with pointers to the more advanced features of the software.
Publishing for the mobile web is an important way to reach audiences on mobile phones. This screencast demonstrates an easy-to-use tool that can enable many content producers pubish for the mobile web. Wordpress.org has developed software which lets many around the world create websites fairly easily. This tool, the Wordpress Mobile Pack, makes it easy for those web publishers to now publish on the mobile web.
In this short how-to video, we show easy it is install the Wordpress Mobile Pack and generate a mobile version of websites, along with pointers to the more advanced features of the software.
There is a need for tools that let publishers create mobile-optimized websites that are also easy to edit and upload content to. In particular, tools that integrated with existing solutions (like Wordpress.org publishing software) to create mobile websites are needed.
This plug-in takes a Wordpress.org-based site, and mobile-optimizes it. The back-end remains the same as Wordpress.org and is therefore easy to edit and upload content to. The desktop version of the site remains the same as well. What the plug-in adds is the ability for mobile viewers to see a website that is easy to navigate on a mobile handset. Auto-detection of mobile phones, conversion of widgets, and many more features are included.
Tool Category:
App resides and runs on a server
Key Features :
Adds a mobile switcher so mobile viewers are redirected to a mobile-optimized theme.
Adds several mobile-optimized themes to the set of themes available on Wordpress.
For webkit-enabled devices, has an advanced theme that takes advantage of those features.
Provides a mobile admin panel so the blog can be administered using a mobile phone.
Mobile ad widgets that are easy to integrate with Admob and Google Ads.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you an interview with Indrani Medhi on her work with text-free interface technology, an SMS case study from Toronto's The Globe and Mail, a look at race and digital technology, Nokia's falling profits, and which mobile domains are most popular.
There are now over 5 billion mobile subscriptions around the world. Smartphone ownership is steadily growing, both in the United States and abroad. Smartphone ownership is projected to be above 50% of all mobile phones in the United States by next year. This has many NGOs and other content and media prodicers wondering about how best to produce content for mobile phones (high-end devices, in particular). SMS and voice-based applications have their use cases, but many content producers today are wondering whether to produce a mobile website or a mobile application (app) to distribute their content.
The Mobile Minute, our new daily feature, is here to keep you up-to-date on mobile-related news.
HP Labs India develops "SiteOn Moobile India" a program that allows users with basic mobile phones to access the Internet.
"Digital Diplomacy" The U.S. State Department's Jared Cohen and Alec Ross show how they use ICTs in foreign policy work in this in-depth New York Times article.
[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.]
BabaJob: Bringing Jobs to People at the Bottom of the Pyramid data sheet 4499 Views
Finding a job is hard but in India, BabaJob is making the process a bit easier for job seekers at the bottom of the pyramid.
Started in Bangalore in March of 2007, BabaJob is a matching resource for blue-collar workers looking for jobs. Sean Blagsvedt, co-founder of BabaJob, explains that the inspiration came from Anirudh Krishna’s research paper “Escaping Poverty and Becoming Poor: Who Gains, Who Loses, and Why?” Blagsvedt learned that most people moved out of poverty through job diversification. However, he noticed that most job-finding resources in India were designed for people seeking white collar jobs. Blue-collar workers and those at the bottom of the economic pyramid had to rely on word of mouth or luck in order to find the jobs that could help them move out of poverty. He decided to create a resource that would allow workers in India to find jobs in their fields and born was Babajob.
Branching out into the mobile space can have big rewards for media organizations that take the time to do it right. However, recognizing the right moments, investing in the right technology, and marketing to the right audience are tough to do. To learn how one mainstream media organization is doing it we called Robert Spier, Director of Content Development for NPR Digital Media, to talk about NPR’s mobile strategy.
Five years ago, NPR first entered the digital media space with podcasts. According to Spier, the lessons NPR learned from this first foray into the 'new' media world provided the jumping off point for later content dissemination and engagement via the mobile web and mobile application. He says,
After more than a year's work, the World Wide Web Consortium's Mobile Web for Social Development is releasing its final product: a roadmap that outlines where mobile for social development is today, and will be going in the next few years.
The document is long and dense at times, but highlights a few noteworthy trends and developments. As with any product developed by committee (and a small committee, in this case - no more than four or five people during the bi-monthly phone calls and drafting process, none of them actual NGO practitioners) this document is lacking specificity and actual relevant use cases, tending to be too esoteric to be useful.
Here are a few highlights of what we liked followed by a discussion of the documents shortcomings.
Data from Informa indicates that by 2010 half of the planet's population will have access to the Internet through a mobile device. Should you make your website mobile? We have heard recently from a number of organizations contemplating whether they should build a mobile site. Following is an overview of some points to consider and resources to draw on as you consider a mobile web presence.
A bit of background: There are now 4 billion mobiles phone subscribers around the world, according to the ITU, far outpacing Internet users worldwide. GSMA, the industry group for telecom companies, reports that more than 80% of the World population is currently covered by a GSM network.
This means that mobiles have become the most ubiquitous communication device in human history. It also means that a majority of the world's population will access the web via their mobile phones. And this means that organizations around the world need to think about what this means for their users, audience, and websites.
This afternoon I attended 'The Mobile Web': The potential and reality for developing countries, facilitated by Toni Eliasz.
There was extended discussion of the value of the mobile web to developing countries. Views hinge a lot on how one defines 'mobile web'. Some people had strong reservations about the potential of the mobile web, related to affordability, the need for high-end phones in order to browse the internet, the high cost of data access via cellphone networks, and ongoing problems with connectivity.
But many of these reservations can be removed if one defines the mobile web more broadly than accessing the Internet. One person proposed defining it as access to data and databases in whatever form. So if people are able to access data on the Internet, through tailored SMS services, for example, that qualifies as the mobile web.
Brough Turner is a renowned telcom industry professional with a passion for mobile and a very smart guy. We recently interviewed him about the mobile web for a paper on cell phones in citizen media. What he said is useful for thinking about this in the context for social benefit, so we post it here for you, before the release of our report. We will also have a workshop on the role of the mobile web for social development at MobileActive08.
You asked me to elaborate on today's mobile web and how it will change with the advent of 3G networks. Here we go: Mobile phone networks provide the best telephony coverage in the world and, for more than a decade, mobile operators have had a "data" story. Unfortunately, the data side of mobile telephony has been slow, expensive and limited in what it can access.
MobileActive is a member of a new working group on the 'mobile web' for social development. (Discloure: we underwrote a recent event in Brazil of the group). Now the Economist has written a piece on the working group. Here are some excerpts and some thoughts and critiques of this effort.
I attend an increasing number of keynotes where CEOs and EVPs of both major mobile handset manufacturers and mobile operators trumpet their role in bringing the internet to the bottom of the pyramid in the developing world. It's a total fallacy.
