Popweekly: Digest for 01.25.10

sky train Bangkok mobile phone
On the sky train in Bangkok, everyone uses a mobile phone.

Texts, Tweets Saving Haitians From the Rubble

Relief workers in Haiti received an emergency text message Tuesday about a collapsed school, with children still alive in the rubble. A search-and-rescue team on the scene, however, couldn't find the right location.

Then a group of volunteers in Boston pinpointed the origin of the message, sent using the 4636 SMS shortcode. They rapidly relayed the information back to Eric Rasmussen, a former top naval medical officer working with rescue teams in Haiti.

A team was then dispatched to the correct grid location. The coordinates were accurate to five decimal places.

That small vignette, provided in e-mail update from Rassmussen, shows how volunteers are using social networking tools to aid relief efforts in Haiti. It's not a fix-all, but it does suggest that something new and unprecedented is happening in humanitarian response.


What is Mobile 2.0?

It's absolutely necessary that more connections are made between the players in the web 2.0 sphere (a.k.a. next generation web apps & services) and what some Mobilists are calling mobile 2.0. What we mean by 'mobile 2.0' is another (r)evolution, already started, that will dramatically change the web and the mobility landscape that we currently know. The idea is that the mobile web will become the dominant access method in many countries of the world, with devices that become more hybrid and networks that become more powerful - everywhere in the next decade to come.

Google has been thinking about the importance of mobile internet for a long time. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google:

"Mobile phones are cheaper than PCs, there are three times more of them, growing at twice the speed, and they increasingly have Internet access. What is more, the World Bank estimates that more than two-thirds of the world's population lives within range of a mobile phone network. Mobile is going to be the next big Internet phenomenon. It holds the key to greater access for everyone - with all the benefits that entails."


Connecting cultures through music - Rudy De Waele

Music brings diverse groups of people together, transcending differences and crossing cultures, and has done so ever since a prehistoric human first banged two rocks rhythmically together around the campfire, to the surprise and delight of the other members of his tribe. Yet mobile music as we understand it today is still very much in its infancy. The digitalisation of music, and the industry around it, combined with the rise of the internet and the power of the latest portable multimedia computers (Nokia no longer calls them phones), is set to radically change how people consume and discover music, and more specifically the way we share and relate to each other ... with music as the connector.

Although the idea of using our mobile phones to share and discover music is not quite ready for mass-market acceptance just yet, the use of mobile phones as a viral tool to spread "the message" is already an essential part of today's young urban cultures. We have seen examples of this being used to political ends in many countries, and the "macrobotellón" phenomenon in Spain (where young people use texting to organise mass open-air drinking sessions) or the rise of Flash Mobs have shown how it can be used simply for socialising as well. These happenings cannot be foreseen, and most importantly the authorities cannot control them - rather, they are communicated to target youth groups using secret messages over channels such as SMS and internet mailing lists, and they remain resolutely underground.


The iPhone Mom: Applications for Educating, Distracting, and Multitasking

There's been a lot of chatter over the past few months about moms becoming key technology decision makers in their homes. Most of the stories that I've come across make it sound like this is a new phenomena. Is it? In my home my husband is the uncontested go-to tech guy who can work wonders with a wireless router, Xbox, Netflix account and music via a home server. But I've always felt like I've had equal say when it comes to making technological decisions that affect our family. Especially when it comes to our kids. Maybe we're unusual and the news stories are right about this being a new trend, but I tend to think that it's nothing new to many of us moms.


Is texting valuable or vandalism?

Children who are heavy users of mobile phone text abbreviations such as LOL (laughing out loud), plz (please), l8ter (later) and xxx (kisses), are unlikely to be problem spellers and readers, a new study funded by the British Academy has found.

The research*, carried out on a sample of 8-12 year olds over an academic year, revealed that levels of "textism" use could even be used to predict reading ability and phonological awareness in each pupil by the end of the year.

Moreover, the proportion of textisms used was observed to increase with age, from just 21% of Year 4 pupils to 47% in Year 6, revealing that more sophisticated literacy skills are needed for textism use.

The study conclusions will come as a surprise to many who believe that textisms are vandalising the English language.