rural

A Global Summit about
Mobile Technology for Social Impact
October 13-15, 2008
Johannesburg, South Africa

Register Now!

Wireless Technology for Social Change

Read the new report on trends in mobile use by NGOs:

Wireless Technology for Social Change.

The report was commissioned by the UN Foundation/Vodafone Group Foundation Partnership and written by Katrin Verclas and Sheila Kinkade.

MobileActive News Aggregator

Jul 18: StoryBank – using mobiles to share stories in an Indian village
Jul 18: Switching on: Connecting the world
Jul 18: Anthropologists are a vital tool in developing mobile phones for the third world
Jul 17: Mobile development in a hurry
Jul 16: And then on mobile phones and e-health initiatives from Chetan Sharma

MobileActive's del.icio.us Feed

Jul 25: Zimbabweans Use Blogs, Texting to Exchange Info
Jul 22: Openmoko Signs Koolu to Distribute FreeRunner Open Source Mobile Phone
Jul 21: Sri Lanka Bans Lending Mobile Phones to Friends
Jul 18: Mobile Livecasting Faces Off: Qik vs Kyte vs Flixwagon
Jul 18: Mob4Hire - Crowdsourced Mobile Application Testing

CAM

file under:
application, barcodes, information, rural, tapan parikh, 4. SOFTWARE PROVIDERS/DEVELOPERS

operates in:
United States

contact:
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~parikh/projects/CAM/index.html

CAM is a mobile application framework for the rural developing world.

The key design elements of CAM are:

Tight linkage to paper processes - barcodes link CAM to familiar paper formats
Camera and multimedia-driven UI - accessible to rural users and the constraints of mobile devices
Easy to program and use - easy to localize, even if phone doesn't support target language
Asynchronous networking - using SMS and other SMTP-based protocols
Mobile phones as a computing platform - battery-powered, familiar, cheap, immediately useful
Agent-based - supporting distributed data collection and dissemination

References / Past Projects

Read more about CAM and related projects on the CAM website.

Culture of Mobiles In Rural Areas: Beeping, Flashing, Rapelle Moi - and Your Mobile as a Flashlight

September 28, 2007 | CorinneRamey

file under:
africa, beeping, call back, development, flashing, india, mobile phones, mobileactive, nokia, rural

The rural mobile market is growing, and carriers are working to meet the unique demands and challenges of this sector of the population. Even in the poorest countries -- like Sierra Leone, which ranks 176 out of 177 countries on the UN's 2006 Human Development Index -- mobile phones have become a growing necessity, creating a unique set of cultural norms and practices.