The winner of the USAID Development 2.0 Innovation Challenge will be announced today at an award ceremony with Henrietta Fore, the administrator of USAID, in Washington, DC.  MobileActive was a judge for the Challenge.  The Challenge, a co-production between USAID's Development Commons and Netsquared, focused on mobiles in development. The three finalists are all innovators in this ...

We are very privileged to co-host MobileTech for Social Change New York, a barcamp on February 21, 2009 in New York.  We are especially pleased to co-organize the event with Hunter College's Integrated Media Arts Program. The second in the MobileActive barcamp series, we'll explore mobile tech to advance social development and social change goals. Expect this to be highly participat...

MobileActive.org welcomes on staff Patricia Mechael, an expert in mobiles for health, and mobiles for development.  I am personally so pleased to work with Patty! Here is a bit more: Dr. Patricia Mechael has been involved in the field of International Health for over 12 years with field experience in over 25 countries with a special focus on Africa. She holds a Masters in International Health...

I just came from the Global Forum for Media Development an Athens, Greece, where there is a lot of interest in how to use mobiles in media and journalism trainings, and in supporting citizen media efforts. I presented briefly our most recent work, A Mobile Voice, that describes how mobiles are used in citizen media. The dicsussions were lively and there were lots of ideas to take thiw work further...

Set aside any preconceptions of why businesses engage in corporate responsibility schemes, It is not often an opportunity arises to get funding to help improve the world through the very technologies and services which “SmartMobs” examines and challenges.  Katrin Verclas of  MobileActive has brought to our attention that the Vodafone Americas Foundation is launching a

On day three of MobileActive ’08, I attended a session led by engineer Blaine Cook, formerly Twitter’s Chief Architect. Cook summarized what the group was looking for: “We would like an ongoing, up-to-date tool. A migration tool that keeps us moving from one social network to the next so NGO’s can move and migrate from platform to platform. We need the ability for any one o...

On day two of the MobileActive ’08 conference in Johannesburg, I attended a session entitled "In the Elevator With Operators: How to Pitch New Service Ideas to Mobile Companies” that focused on how to pitch mobile development projects that present both a social and a business opportunity. It was moderated by Jesse Moore of the GSMA Development Fund, and panelists were Pieter Verka...

In our ongoing and ever-expanding series of how-to resources for NGOs and grassroots organizations using mobile technology in their work, we are releasing a new primer on "Mobile Surveillance."  Our reviewer, Melissa Loudon, gives an overview of mobile surveillance risks and tips and tools on how to prevent surveillance for secure communications. >> read more

In our ongoing reviews of mobile tools focused on the NGO sector, here is our latest edition: A review of FrontlineSMS, the much-written-about desktop SMs bulk messaging tool. We take a look at some use cases, outline technical considerations in using Frontline, and describe the tests that we ran. From the review:   Firstly, and most importantly for many users, FrontlineSMS provides a simple ...

We are pleased to release the newest MobileActive.org resource, A Mobile Voice: The Use of Mobile Phones in Citizen Media. In this report we explore the dynamics of the role of mobile phones in enhancing access to and creating information and citizen-produced media.  We explore trends in the use of mobile telephony with a focus on software and platforms that make content creation and broadcas...