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MobileActive has been in the news this week, including in a special section on 'mobility' in the Economist, titled "A World of Witnesses." The article discusses various ways that mobile phones have been used for social good, including in health, election monitoring, and recording human rights abuses.

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The newest addition to the MobileActive YouTube channel is a video interview with Tamaryn Nelson, the program coordinator for Latin America and the Carribean at WITNESS. In the interview, Tamaryn discusses the Hub, a website that she calls a "YouTube for human rights," which allows people to upload videos of human rights and create campaigns around them by adding context and joining discussion groups. The site has some videos taken on mobile phones and plans to add direct upload via mobile in the future.

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This video about women's rights is one of three mobile phone videos made by Egyptian artist Ahmad Sherif, designed to be spread virally on mobile phones.

The text, translated into English, says

Muslim? Great. Christian? Perfect. Jewish? Shalom. Veil? Why not. Niqab? Be my guest. No Niqab? Your choice. Atheist? Whatever. You're ready to die for God? It's your life. You would die for Adel Imam? Who wouldn't...

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A video circulated on Egyptian mobile phones begins with a picture of a couple holding hands. Images follow of condoms, birth control pills, and even the mouths of a man and woman kissing. "Love: so what?" reads the text. "Love before marriage isn't a shame. Egypt, start loving."

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With mobile phones become ubiquitous in developing countries and emerging markets, phone manufacturers istening to the unique design needs of users there. Younghee Jung , an anthropologist working for Nokia, spoke about the design possibilities for improving phones for the developing world at the LIFT conference in Geneva, Switzerland that addresses the "challenges and opportunities of technology in society."

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A new website called the Hub, calling itself "the global platform for human rights media and action," has its official beta launch today in honor of International Human Rights Day. The Hub, a project of human rights advocacy group WITNESS, hopes to create a new space for human rights related video content, including footage shot on mobile phones.

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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.

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Citizen journalism has been hitting the news lately, accelerated by the use of mobiles and blogging during the latest events in the Middle East. Something which has been around for some time is starting to become more and more mainstream by the day. Sadly, most seems to be centred around world trouble spots, but therein lies it's strength.

In the UK, the London bombings of July 7th last summer saw the sudden emergence of citizen reporters, most using their mobiles to make short videos of the immediate aftermath. No news teams in the world, however well equipped and connected, could ever have got this footage. The BBC were inundated. According to one of the News Editors that morning:

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