Mobilizing Youth

FrontlineSMS wins major grant from Packard Foundation

This is big news from the folks at Kiwanja who just won a 400K for 2yrs grant to continue the work of FrontlineSMS. It's another testament to the great work that has gone into this SMS application. If you've got a low budget and low throughput needs, Frontline is one of the best options out there. And some of the options on the new release enable folks with high throughput needs to meet needs as well. I did a review of Desktop SMS tools some time back in which I reviewed FrontlineSMS - and it came out on top. Here's info from the press release:

“The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation have today announced a major grant in support of kiwanja's ongoing activities. The grant, worth a total of $400,000 over two years, will see the ongoing support and development of FrontlineSMS, the creation of an MMS (multimedia messaging) version of the platform, FrontlineSMS outreach, the creation of a non-profit online text messaging aggregator, and the scaling of thenGOmobile competition

Notes from Mobiles for Change Session

These are a little late in coming, but here they are - notes from the session that I facilitated on mobile phone application development at the M4Change conference in San Francisco on Nov 4, 2008 (organized by Katrin Verclas from MobileActive.org). We had a strong contingent of developers there - some who had recently built mobile apps for some of the leading companies in the valley. So, lot's of good information was shared.

Prime takeaway: Due to various factors, the best foot forward right now is to develop an app for the iPhone, but to rely heavily on the platform's Web-integration tools so that you can be ready for a quick transition to other platforms when those platforms become viable.

So, ok, what are these various factors?

#1: Distribution & montetization

Even though many other phones are in the hands of many more people, when it comes to mobile apps, the iPhone is #1. People use their apps more on the iPhone, consumer more data, and download more apps.

#2: Controlled Platform.

Love it or hate it, the iPhone platform and system is dependable. gPhone is not really a gPhone. It's a gOS bundled with tMobile - and without Jobs the dictator, things do fall apart. For example, I followed a link on Google's site to purchase the gPhone a few weeks ago and I got to an area of tMobile's site where they had me login, which i did, and then they told me that the gPhone was not available for me to purchase. Just one example of how when the Dictator is not in charge, the process isn't as smooth. Developers in the group said that they had had similar experiences. 

Other stuff we talked about:

* It would be cool to have a Yahoo Pipes for mobile apps. [The Extraordinaries project that we're working on comes close, actually]. Yahoo's Blueprint and Tarpipe.com were mentioned.

* We mentioned TacticalTech's Mobiles in a box. It's a lot of great info about running mobile apps and campaigns.

* The problem with developing just a mobile web site is that you don't get access to any of the nifty phone APIs

* We talked about developing countries - saying that there really wasn't anything significant you could do with mobile apps quite yet. 

* Someone mentioned that in Japan people use their apps primarily to consume - while in the US, people use their apps more as utilities, for doing.

* Someone noted that iPhone penetration among lower income brackets in the US is increasing.

Citizens, Media Use Social Media to Monitor Election

Tech-wise, the Election is worlds apart from just two years ago. In 2006, I was consulting with a handful of organizations all trying to set up text message based Election monitoring systems. Organized by a centralized nonprofit organization, these programs aimed to put reporting tools into the hands of voters and volunteer poll watchers alike. None of these efforts got off the ground.

Now, two years later, none of this infrastructure needs to be built and it doesn't need anything more than a guiding hand to make it happen. The tools are more mature and well known: Twitter, YouTube, etc. Now, it's just a question of marketing... letting people know that they can use these tools in a particular way that strengthens the integrity of the voting system.

My sense is that none of these efforts will pull through in a major way for this election. The marketing effort doesn't have enough reach. But that they will set the stage for substantive efforts next time around.

Simon Owens reviews many of these efforts in this excellent writeup:
Citizens, Media Use Social Media to Monitor Election
Two of the most interesting projects he covers are:
PBS's Video Your Vote project and Nancy Scola's Twitter Vote Report (note that I read a lot of Scola's work in preparation for writing Mobilizing Generation 2.0 - and have a pithy quote in the virtual world's chapter from some of her work).

Note that one of the ideas Jacob had for The Extraordinaries is to enable citizens to record audio/video as one of the short-term volunteer tasks that we'll offer through the mobile phone app. Thanks to all of these great projects for going through the fires first!

Mobility Project

This just came across my email-reader. It's one of the best ideas I've heard in a long time. Kind of like the Processing for mobile apps... in fact, I wonder if it could be fit into the processing framework? I just bought the Make Controller, which has a few plug and play apps for it - and is easily extensible via Flash and Processing, Java, C, etc... Strikes me that controlling the phone from a set of premade apps that plug into eachother like a puzzle pieces with configurable parameters is much the same. Great work Ken.

------paste below----
Hi all

Over the past six months or so I have been talking with about a dozen high-profile mobile companies, IT companies and mobile specialists to gauge interest in a new project, one which builds on the work of Nathan Eagle in East Africa (see http://web.mit.edu/eprom for details). I have also been speaking with a major US Foundation, who have expressed interest in funding the initial scoping phase of the project.

The challenge was this. How do we empower individuals in developing countries to develop and build their own mobile applications? EPROM has already been teaching computer science graduates in a number of East African universities, but how can we scale this initiative, allowing universities in other parts of the developing world to do the same? And with software development largely taking place on desktop computers, how can we empower users to build applications on the phones themselves? And if we could, what would a mobile-based programming environment look like?

Within the next couple of months or so, “mobility” hopes to start exploring these questions. The potential is huge if we can find appropriate, sustainable solutions.

There is a holding website in place, which describes the thinking behind the project, at http://mobility.kiwanja.net. This will be replaced by a collaborative Wiki once the project commences.

Anyone with skills and experience in mobile applications development, mobile education or software tools development are all welcome to get in touch.

Feel free to share this news with your own networks and lists. I will begin posting names and details of the founding partners once the project starts to move forward. Please join us.

Many thanks.

Ken Banks
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end paste

What you can do with mobile phone positioning data

This comes as no surprise, but there is a rich set of data concerning peoples' movements, habits, and behaviors that is being generated by mobile phone usage. This article discusses how it can be used to prevent disease outbreaks:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7433128.stm

I wonder what the mobile phone companies are doing with this data now - they've had it for years. Mashup up with a map of retail locations, you could tell at which stores a person shops - which can then be used to infer political orientation (as shopping choices have been shown to be highly correlated with political leanings).

Amazing iPhone stats

Holy moly. These iPhone stats are out of this world. 50x number of searches on iPhone than any other mobile device? this just shows that when a device lowers the barrier to entry so much - it releases a latent torrent of usage. thanks to Orielly for this tip.

 

Mobile Social Networks

Good review of companies trying their hand at mobile social networking here: http://www.techcrunch.com/tag/brightkite/ - there are tons of companies trying - seems like an idea before its time. Techcrunch make a good point which is that getting a critical mass is the most critical part of the problem for these networks.

It seems that we see the same lesson over again - that marketing is really the key to these cutting edge apps. Without something like a mega SXSW mega hit (like Twitter), it's the same old reach & frequency game.

I'm still waiting for the app that will let me poll the Vegas cab line for someone going to the same hotel as me.

Added 4/24/08:
Just heard about these guys: http://www.lightpole.net/user/readmore - looks like a pretty solid app. Have got to give it a go.

TxtMob Under Fire

Some serious privacy issues are at stake in the Govt. Vs. TxtMob. Creator of TxtMob, the service that allows people to exchange texts in a group, is being subpoenaed to turn over records surrounding the 2004 RNC convention. Apparently the state of NYC is pulling out all the stops to show that it is not at fault for unceremoniously arresting hundreds of people and jailing them without trial, cause, or charge for over 24 hours in sub-standard facilities. It may go so far as to contravene additional civil rights by seizing these records.

More info at Mobile Active is here

Phones Will Soon Tell Where You Are

Article in the WSJ on Friday about location services on phones. I haven't seen any news about LBS hit the popular press - I wonder if this means that the tide is finally starting to turn? The article mentions hard grilling and restrictions placed on Loopt in order for them to offer an LBS "friend finder" service on Sprint's network. And also that young people are more comfortable giving away a lot of personal information - whereas the people running the carriers are not in this mindset. Given the high potential for revenue on these services, however, they're taking the risk.

Services mentioned:
* Loopt
* Whrrl

They mentioned a Yahoo service called oneConnect (haven't heard about this before), but didn't mention Yahoo's FireEagle

Article is here.

nGOmobile text messaging competition

Interesting results from this competition. Details here: http://www.160characters.org/news.php?action=view&nid=2547

The winning selections highlight the dramatic differences between texting in the US (and other countries with a robust communications infrastructure) and the rest of the world. All of these winners are using texting to provide a communication mechanism where *none existed* prior. Text messaging itself is not actually important here - it's the fact that it's a cheap, reliable, and accessible form of passing information between people. If email were extant, it would have exactly the same effect.

So in developing global SMS strategies, one has to be aware of this stark difference. What works in Pittsburgh may be completely irrelevant in rural Uganda. The issues at stake are not even vaguely similar. In Pittsburgh, the issue is - how can texting supplement existing communication tactic, such as email, phone calling, mailing, etc. In Uganda, it's more of an explosive recipe - adding communication to a comm-disenfranchised scenario. I imagine that a majority of SMS campaigns in non-comm areas will look similar to these over the next decade... whereas US-based campaigns will be a lot more specific and narrow in focus...