I went to the Guardian Activate conference on July 1 and below is the summary of my thoughts on what I heard there.
The line-up of speakers was really brilliant – from Clay Shirky, writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies, Internet pioneers from the South representing Global Voices and Ushahidi to Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google.
The main take-away, which transpired from speakers from both North and South, is that the next big thing are mobile devices.
Eric Schmidt’s speech and subsequent interview by Guardian’s editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger summarised the day well.
“When you plan, start with the Internet and mobile. … Clever developers build mobile devices first, it used to be…..for Mac and PC platforms…. Mobile web is growing 8 times faster than the PC web”
According to Mr Schmidt, mobile devices will introduce new revenue generation models both for advertising and subscription: the world of downloadable content (like newspapers) opens up a whole new world of advertising.
The news will become more personal, i.e. served up based on your previous behaviour. So you won’t be served up information that you already know – just what you showed interest in over time. Is there a risk of making our world-view too narrow? Very possible, when I think about Clay Shirky’s figures on billions of hours humanity spends slumped in front of the telly in comparison to tiny amount we spend in creative process - i.e. using our brains.
The new technology is about “nowness” – this isn’t only about the rapid response and spread of information, but also about the technology – so called cloud computing – which enables different bits of software to talk to each other in real time. The example Mr Schmidt gave is what Google wants to make happen on mobile phones: Two people talking to each other in two different languages real-time using voice2text2translation algorithm. This is a mix of Google Voice (transfers voice to text messages, not available in the UK yet), Google Translate (one of the best online translation systems I’ve seen) and Google Wave (collaboration system which was one of the biggest disappointments after a major hype around its launch). Google Wave struggled mostly because it needs a lot of computers to work and the system was painfully slow. But adding computer power is no big feat and is plausible that this technology will actually be used widely in the near future.
So mobile devices are the stars of the future.
For the South smartphones and mobile devices mean being able to buy a computer and access the internet and other downloadable information. Iphones and Ipads are the current fad in developed countries, but they are too proprietary to become massive in the emerging markets where open standards allow for the development of applications which are accessible through any mobile device. Simple easy to use technology is what really helps the poor – to quote one of the speakers – The poor are too poor to tolerate bad design.
The other examples of use of technologies overseas were what we already know. However, it is good to see that this area of technologies for development is still going strong and growing.
The presentation from the founder of etsy.com – the online community shop where people sell their crafts - was really interesting and had some inspirational ideas. For example, their basket cross-sell is not based on “people who bought this also bought” but on “your friends liked/would like this”.
One of the scariest presentations was from Sharon Biggar, COO & co-founder, Path Intelligence. They tried to enable offline retailers to know as much about shoppers as online retailers do. So while online you can now pretty much everything about how people interact with your shop, when they drop-off, etc, offline this is all based on surveys and interviews which isn’t as reliable as people under or over-claim and there it doesn’t contain as much data. So Path Intelligence collects data of human behavior in real-life shops (via infra-red I assume), which is then crunched to get the results and then they decide how to design shops. I suppose the never heard of Mary Portas ☺
Showing posts with label sms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sms. Show all posts
Wednesday, 14 July 2010
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
Book review: SMS - mobile uprising in Africa
The request by BOND to review this book couldn’t have come at a better time. I was preparing for a trip to Nigeria to help the local Save the Children create a digital strategy for our child survival campaign. Mobile penetration in Nigeria is high. The country pioneered the use of SMS in their last elections in 2007 when they used Frontline SMS to report election violations. It is obvious that mobile should be the core of any digital strategy. But how has the technology developed recently and how is mobile now being used for social change on the continent?
“SMS uprising – Mobile activism in Africa” was exactly the book I needed to read. Opinion pieces from leaders in the use of SMS for development, from Ken Banks of Frontline SMS to Becky Faith of TacticalTech, combine examples which excite and enthuse with the harsh realities of the digital divide and the political and community contexts that have kept SMS from becoming a significant tool for mobilizing masses in taking action for change.
Yet technology is changing by the day and there is a lot of optimism about the lowering costs and accessibility of mobile phones. This will enable access to mobile internet and open up the benefits of the world wide web to more people in developing countries.
There are also examples of amazing innovation that people in Africa enjoy which we could only envy. Paying your electricity bill by SMS? Sending money to someone via text? Kenyans have been doing this for some time through M-PESA.
And then think about Kubatana in Zimbabwe. Operating in the atmosphere of total information black-out and censorship, this courageous organisation provided essential information and a space where people could voice their opinions and vent their frustration about the chaos caused by the last elections.
Following the 2007 elections in Kenya, Ushahidi – a mash-up of Google maps and SMS used as a reporting tool, enabled ordinary citizens to put violence hotspots on a map for everyone to see. This genius technology has seen wider use recently like in Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake.
The book also has a significant focus on the issues of women’s access to technology. While women are the main actors of development, their access to technology is often through their male head of family. Also access to technology can change their status within a family – by using mobile phones to earn small amounts of money, women can reach positions of power which then can lead to increase in violence against them.
In summary, a fantastic book which provides a window into current and future (mobile) technology in Africa and, by extension, a lot of the developing world. As it shows a plethora of SMS uses in development projects, this book is a must-read and a guaranteed inspiration for NGO professionals.
The book published by Hivos and Pambazuka press.
“SMS uprising – Mobile activism in Africa” was exactly the book I needed to read. Opinion pieces from leaders in the use of SMS for development, from Ken Banks of Frontline SMS to Becky Faith of TacticalTech, combine examples which excite and enthuse with the harsh realities of the digital divide and the political and community contexts that have kept SMS from becoming a significant tool for mobilizing masses in taking action for change.
Yet technology is changing by the day and there is a lot of optimism about the lowering costs and accessibility of mobile phones. This will enable access to mobile internet and open up the benefits of the world wide web to more people in developing countries.
There are also examples of amazing innovation that people in Africa enjoy which we could only envy. Paying your electricity bill by SMS? Sending money to someone via text? Kenyans have been doing this for some time through M-PESA.
And then think about Kubatana in Zimbabwe. Operating in the atmosphere of total information black-out and censorship, this courageous organisation provided essential information and a space where people could voice their opinions and vent their frustration about the chaos caused by the last elections.
Following the 2007 elections in Kenya, Ushahidi – a mash-up of Google maps and SMS used as a reporting tool, enabled ordinary citizens to put violence hotspots on a map for everyone to see. This genius technology has seen wider use recently like in Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake.
The book also has a significant focus on the issues of women’s access to technology. While women are the main actors of development, their access to technology is often through their male head of family. Also access to technology can change their status within a family – by using mobile phones to earn small amounts of money, women can reach positions of power which then can lead to increase in violence against them.
In summary, a fantastic book which provides a window into current and future (mobile) technology in Africa and, by extension, a lot of the developing world. As it shows a plethora of SMS uses in development projects, this book is a must-read and a guaranteed inspiration for NGO professionals.
The book published by Hivos and Pambazuka press.
Thursday, 12 June 2008
Signing up to Twitter feeds without a Twitter account
Doh!
I am probably the last person in the world who figured out only now that you can sign up to follow a Twitter account without creating a Twitter account.
You just need to do is SMS "follow [username]" (without inverted commas) to +447624801423 - US number has a shortcode.
A good explanation of how it all works is here:
http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/topics/can_non_twitter_users_follow_by_sms
Why am I so excited?
It means that charities can use Twitter as a free SMS updates tool. For example I am at a rally or at an event and I can sign up to get updates on what's going on on the other end of the rally or in negotiations about the issue we are rallying about, etc...
Updates would have to come from people who have Twitter accounts and are friends with the main account (the one that people are following)
Things to investigate....
1) If someone who follows me anonymously (which is what happens to people who sign up in this way) when I publish "me and friends" RSS feed - if they sent an update to the twitter number - will it show in this feed?
Because what you really want is to be able to use twitter in both ways as a broadcast tool but we could also ask supporters to post a message to a politician via Twitter SMS. This is then published as an RSS feed with everyone's messages (again me and friends feed) on a charity blog or website as well as on the Twitter page.
2) Can you set up a shortcode that would go to the twitter number? Is it possible to have many shortcodes for one mobile phone number/SIM card?
I am probably the last person in the world who figured out only now that you can sign up to follow a Twitter account without creating a Twitter account.
You just need to do is SMS "follow [username]" (without inverted commas) to +447624801423 - US number has a shortcode.
A good explanation of how it all works is here:
http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/topics/can_non_twitter_users_follow_by_sms
Why am I so excited?
It means that charities can use Twitter as a free SMS updates tool. For example I am at a rally or at an event and I can sign up to get updates on what's going on on the other end of the rally or in negotiations about the issue we are rallying about, etc...
Updates would have to come from people who have Twitter accounts and are friends with the main account (the one that people are following)
Things to investigate....
1) If someone who follows me anonymously (which is what happens to people who sign up in this way) when I publish "me and friends" RSS feed - if they sent an update to the twitter number - will it show in this feed?
Because what you really want is to be able to use twitter in both ways as a broadcast tool but we could also ask supporters to post a message to a politician via Twitter SMS. This is then published as an RSS feed with everyone's messages (again me and friends feed) on a charity blog or website as well as on the Twitter page.
2) Can you set up a shortcode that would go to the twitter number? Is it possible to have many shortcodes for one mobile phone number/SIM card?
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