This closer marriage between Mobile and Internet

The IAALD-AFITA-WCCA Conference in August 2008 in Japan highlighted the importance of mobile communication to bridge the digital divide. In the final declaration about “Theme 1” of the conference – Mobile Telephony in Rural Areas – one of the panel prediction was:

“mobile phones will be used as workstations and effective Web2.0 platforms“

I totally agree with this statement and I’m very curious to see how this topic will evolve and what ideas will come out of the special Online Forum on “Mobile Telephony in Rural Areas” – 17/28 November 2008, that I’m joining as Subject Matter Expert.

Since the beginning of this reflection about convergence between Mobile and Internet, I’ve seen two main directions where this relationship is going:

• In Parallel: offering to different user groups a few basic services with some points of contact (short term);
• Towards interaction and partial merge: with users accessing either or both technologies to collect and share data (medium term).

New cellphones, ad-hoc software (have a look at iPhone Appstore and android market) and enhanced services are necessary to sustain this integration process!

MobileActive 08

Mobile for development is definitely taking off and many events which celebrate its applications, can help collecting knowledge and experiences.

This is the time of Mobile Active 08, in Johannesburg, South Africa from 13 to 15 October 2008. Entitled “Unlocking the Potential of Mobile Technology for Social Impact”, this international fair co-organized by SangoNet, will gather everyone interested in the use and application of mobile phones for development projects around a quite interesting and intensive agenda.

How to follow it for afar? Many different ways, just choose one:

• read the blog,
• follow the updates on twitter
• watch images on flickr and videos on youtube.

The first competitor for the iPhone

A new challenge for the iPhone was launched yesterday: it is the first mobile phone with Android inside.

Even if not everybody seems to be so enthusiast about the product, more than everything else in the DEV perspective, at least, I see a very interesting trend for prices. The announced price is 120 Eur (at certain conditions) which is fine is compared with many other models and the iPhone itself. So, the tendency of prices to get lower is happening this time as well and we can really start thinking about a wide spread of these tools, also in developing countries.

Linking this news with the possibility of wider access available in two years time, than the scenario could be very much different in the near future.

Are WE going the same direction? Will we be able to provide good services for that time? How much time do we need to design new services for these devices? Are our Human Access Points ready to help us designing them?

Who is using mobile phones for development

Before the summer, I was looking for examples on the use of cellphones for development and I got plenty of them in a moment!

Here is just a short list of the first examples I found:

mDevelopment

The first way cellphones were used to sustain development is to deliver news about market prices. It is happening for agriculture and fishery, in Africa and Asia. The mechanism is simple: the users are usually farmers or fishermen interested in selling their products. Via SMS they receive information about prices on different markets in their area. In this way they can easily decide where to go to sell their products to maximize the earnings.

• IFAD is running a service of this kind in Tanzania: market spies called “shu shu shu” are scattered around the country to collect information about markets and share them via cellphones with the other members of the same organization.

• As the mission statement says, the Ugandan Brosdi wants “to empower the civil society through knowledge sharing using ICT as a medium sothat they can improve their livelihoods.” The idea is the following: information and common knowledge is collected during Knowledge Sharing Forums, written, repackaged and sent once a week to the subscribers’ cellphone numbers using both a mobile phone and Gmail services. The farmers record the SMS in a book, saving it for future reference. Other farmers without mobile phones at their will can access this knowledge and further freely disseminate it within the village.

• Information market can a source of revenues everywhere and Reuters got the point: so, last year the company launched in India a specific mobile information service for farmers in the State of Maharashtra. Reuters Market Light, RML, a short messaging service costing 60 rupees ($1.50) a month, offers Indian farmers up-to-date, local and customized commodity pricing information, news and weather updates. In addition, after an agreement with Maharashtra’s Postal Circle, the service is accessible at the nearest post office for farmers without cellphone.

• The CGIAR ICT-KM has a pilot project focused on recognizing the value of farmer knowledge, to get farmers to value their own knowledge and ideas and find ways to share this knowledge between farmers. The main activity of the project revolved around the organizing of an International Farmers’ Conference with over 50 farmers attending. The farmers, instead of being passive participants, were asked to present their situations, knowledge, experiences, ideas and skills using storytelling. Their stories were recorded in video, audio and text forms to be disseminated in various ways and will be made available on the web. Additionally, the organizers uploaded small story clips onto mobile phones and showed the farmers how to send these to other farmers via cellphones. This to stimulate knowledge sharing and a farmer-to-farmer extension system to facilitate the spread of useful ideas, techniques and knowledge around agricultural activities.

• On the software side FrontlineSMS, created by kiwanja, is a very useful tool to enables users to send and receive text messages with large groups of people through mobile phones. FrontlineSMS is the first text messaging system created to avoid a lack of communication that can affect non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in developing countries. By leveraging basic tools already available to most NGOs, as computers and mobile phones, the tool enables instantaneous two-way communication on a large scale.

mHealth

• Health is heavily targeted by many initiatives. ZMQ, an Indian software company, is launching a new service for women: once registered with the date of pregnancy, the person will receive weekly tips on what to eat, what vaccines to get, and when to get check-ups.

• On the other hand, GrameenPhone, in cooperation with Telemedicine Reference Centre Limited, offers an electronic health information and service called Healthline. The service, open to all GrameenPhone subscribers, is an interactive telephone consultation with licensed physicians. Subscribers can also find information on various drugs and pharmacies, on medical facilities and the doctors attached to them, and results from laboratory tests and recommendations, together with the standard form of medical consultation and advice.

• Cell-life is a South African company providing mobile services to fight HIV-AIDS. Cell-life uses mobile phone technologies in many innovative ways, to provide a free information service via SMS, and to address logistical challenges in developing countries such as booking clinic appointments. When someone is diagnosed HIV-positive, there is an interview for acceptance into an Anti-Retroviral Treatments program. Then the assignment to a therapeutic counselor, who liaise with 15-20 patients, collecting essential information on the basis of which a doctor will make a prescription and a care manager will direct a program of care. The forms were translated onto the cellphone: forms about adherence to treatment, about symptoms, about appointments and these generated SMS messages.

mEmergency

• Mobiles can also used to connect refugees to vital services. GSMA offers the possibility to connect refugee camps in northern Uganda to mobile networks to support family reunification, education, health care, economic activity and other needs. Refugees are provided with shared access to voice and data services. Under this approach, one of the villagers has the opportunity to establish a small business providing use of mobile phones, or computer terminals with mobile Internet access, to their community.

• The Bihar region and the recent floods offered a chance to local authorities and rescue teams to collect and distribute information on local condition and rescue interventions, as fixed communication lines have been hardly affected by the floods.

mBanking

• M-Pesa is a very popular service offered in Kenya to send money in an instant transaction via SMS. Every subscriber while depositing cash to one of the M-Pesa shops will receive an e-value cash voucher on the M-Pesa account. Later, the vouchers can be cashed at any appointed agent across the country. The impact seems to be so big and the service so popular that the company is expanding the system merging also with other type of banking, while traditional banks are complaining against this innovation.

• Following the example, the service is going to be replicated in Afghanistan. While now the next step is to use mBanking to trasform microcredit.

• Based on the M-Pesa experience, Concern organized with local partners in Kenya a targeted response to the food security problems that affected rural communities as a result of the post election violence in the early months of 2008. More than 500 households, whose livelihoods had been badly compromised by the violence, with the loss of livestock or homesteads, were selected to receive assistance through a community-based targeting process. Concern decided to provide assistance in the form of cash rather than food: using the M-Pesa system, the project aimed to provide each household with cash sufficient to purchase 50% of one month’s minimum calorific requirements through two transfers.

mGovernment

• Finally, an example of mobile application in the public sector: the eSeva project in Andhra Pradesh State of India is a one-stop-shop for many services government-to-consumer (G2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) services including payment of utility bills; reservations of train tickets; getting birth and death certificates, vehicle permits, driving licenses; transport department services; sale and receipt of passport applications; telephone connections; collection of small savings; ATM (cash withdrawal and deposits and issue of statement of accounts); mutual funds (collection of applications and transfer of shares); receipt of complaints or requests in connection with citizen services; cell phone bill payments, etc.

Mobile Phones for Social Change in Africa

Last thinking before going to vacation: how to use mobile phones to support social change in Africa, moving web activities towards the cellphones and possibly other devices.

In Almada we talked about future applications of KM on mobile phone. Communication Initiative recently dedicated its newsletter to initiatives involving cell phones in Africa.

Two weeks ago, I re-launched this stimulus to the km4dev list and received a long list of activities and projects already going on. Interesting!

I’ll spend the calm weeks of August reading and studying to understand what the needs are and what can work. 😉

Prices are going down. Are we ready to exploit new possibilities?

Last year we discussed about the value of the iPhone and the most common doubts were about the price of the device. Yesterday Mr jobs launched the version 2 of his jewel and ops!!!, now the price is right!! The suggested price is now 199 USD, that is to say around 130 EUR. It was 499 USD last year…

In the meantime, almost half of the population of the world has a mobile phone. The numbers are incredible and the increasing rate is astonishing: 3,3, billion subscribers (this number does not indicate the number of people but the number of lines). The first billion was reached 4 years ago and the second billion, only 2 years ago!

I really think we have to start thinking about the ways to move our applications and competencies to mobile. And I see that other influential people agree on this idea!

We have to re-think communication in terms of mobile devices, instant and everywhere access. The idea is that we will be able to exchange (information in my case) everywhere and in every moment. Are we ready to exploit this possibility? So far, haven’t we been too much conservative due to the lack of connectivity for PCs? have been our applications planned with the possibility to be delivered through mobile phones, as well?

I hope so. I don’t think so. I want to work on this from now on!

p.s. iPhone is the hardware AND Android, the software, is coming out pretty soon. I see so much in front of us!!!

Mobile and desktop PC: today married

Pc and mobile phone can easily go together. Take your desktop pc, add a small Bluetooth USB adapter (with a laptop you don’t need it), download the software from the site of the mobile phone company (if you have a Nokia as I have, you find it here), get the two devices connected!

At this step you can start synchronizing data in the two devices. You have two options: an easy way if you just prefer to manage the mobile phone on the big screen and comfortable keyboard of your PC; or  in a more sophisticate way, if you want to move up and down different kind of files.

Let’s see them:

– if you stored on the phone images got in the field, voice interviews made during meetings, videos recorded while visiting sites of interest, data collected in the field, etc., then, whenever in front of the desktop, switch on the Bluetooth connection (or you plug-in your connecting cable) and move the items from the phone to the hard disk of the pc. Once everything is there, you can start sharing the material with people who were not in the field;

– on the other side, you can think about connecting the mobile to the Internet and distribute your material directly from the phone. To do that you need some software on your phone. Some example? You want to access your mail box on Gmail? Today you can with the Gmail application. You want to verify if the stock of products created by artisans you support have been sold already? Download the eBay client from here. You need to chat and exchange files with partners? Use the Skype client for mobile devices. You want to verify your colleagues’ willingness for a meeting next Tuesday? Connect to the office common calendar and book the afternoon or check with the GMaps application where the meeting is.

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We have to go mobile

Things are happening in the market and I’m always more convinced that we have to start moving activities to be able to be delivered through mobile devices as phone and PDA.

Some examples of what’s happening? Very easy: it’s under everybody’s eyes. Apple just introduced the iPhone, a new phone that is substantially an iPod + a phone. Few days ago Apple relaunched and presented the new iPod touch, that is nothing less that an iPhone – the phone!!!

Funny but very interesting because it is the signal that the long waited CONVERGENCE is now going on. It is happening really. The hardware and software industry is now producing compact transportable devices which SUM UP many different functions all-in-one: phone, agenda, notebook, calculator, music player, video player, voice recorder, radio, web browser, email, etc. Almost everything can be done with a new generation device.

What does this means for us? Many things. Let’s say I imagine two possible scenarios: the first one more advanced and sophisticated and the second one, easier but still very interesting.

1. TOTAL use of mobile devices: it is characterized by the full use of the mobile device. Researchers, extensionists, consultants and other people which work for development will be able to have their office, and more than that, their knowledge and their relationships, in their pocket. Always in touch. Are you doing a meeting in the field and you need specific data? Browse the web and get the spreadsheet where you stored them. Need an answer from a colleague? Send an email or use the Instant Messenger. Want to share infos collected during the visit to the field? Upload immediately the images you shot or the interviews you recorded, etc…
2. PARTIAL use of mobile devices: Pretty much the same BUT everything will be done in two different moments. Shooting images, recording interviews in the field, taking notes and collecting addresses, etc. will be done in the 1st moment. Then, once back in the office, with a very easy connection between your mobile device and the desktop pc, data will be transferred on the web for the final sharing with the other people involved in the same network.

Easy? I would say yes. So easy that, the second hypothesis is already available with a very minimal investment in equipment, and the first one could be available in a reasonable time.