Just a few notes about things that have interested me lately
The latest ‘State of the mobile web report’ produced by Opera was very interesting regarding its focus on Africa - http://www.opera.com/media/smw/2009/pdf/smw042009.pdf - If you consider that pageviews in africa increased by over 400% April 2008 to April 2009 you can be sure that this mobile internet revolution is happening and any statistics you see are probably out of date by the time you read them.
The Knight News Challenge winner were announced - This is a great challenge and again there are some worthy projects but the slate looks very small this year compared to previous years and the money is very US channelled. Also the only real mobile focus is the $200000 (less than 10% - isn’t the future of news going to be mobile???) given to Katrin Verclas and Mobile Active - The Mobile Media Toolkit will offer media production tool sets for download and use on a variety of phones across regions of the world. The toolkit will include applications for video and audio recording, a distribution tool for mobile content to social media sites and detailed how-to information that outlines what users can do with the phones they have. I sincerely hope they focus more effort on the cheapest Java/GPRS phones rather than higher end models.
Building for mobile at the margins - a must see video blog post from Ken Banks (Kiwanja - http://www.kiwanja.net/blog/2009/06/building-for-mobile-at-the-margins/) gives a good introduction for any mobile developer working in resource challenged setting - I agree with everything Ken says apart from ‘Forget the Internet’ (see state of the mobile web and note 1. that in most parts of africa chat by GPRS data is 1% of the cost of SMS and note 2. that higher end phones are getting into a lot of very poor peoples hands through castoffs, relatives and aid)
The Sunday Times (SA) has a piece on Marlon Parker and his team - (MXit put to some good use) http://www.thetimes.co.za/Business/BusinessTimes/Article1.aspx?id=1017017
This is an example of how mobile IM counselling should be done and its done by the community for the community and done on a shoestring. It is no wonder they are getting a lot of interest and hopefully many lessons will be learnt by the development community from this project.
Just a reminder that Net2 Jozi is happening July 14th 2009 (http://www.meetup.com/The-Johannesburg-Netsquared-Meetup-Group/) - We are up to 21 members and 9 definately coming - let’s get up to 40 by the end of the month.
Netsquared Jozi will be held once every 2 months - These gatherings provide a networking and collaboration opportunity for all those interested in the intersection of social technologies and social change, whether you’re part of a non-profit organization or a for-profit organization, a funder or a consultant, a developer or an entrepreneur.
We aim to be an empowering community and want to promote and encourage initiatives around Johannesburg. We want to hear about your projects that are using Information and Communication Technology and as such we are formally calling for your presentations or demonstrations.
In the first instance please send your details and a brief overview of your presentation/demonstration to Rob Allen (robertsallen [at i.e @] gmail [dot .] com). The email subject should be “Net2 Jozi Presentation”.
Closing date for presentations to be considered for inclusion in the July meet up - 30th June 2009.
More information and details about Netsquared Jozi (including the venue) will be made available soon.