Archive for the 'Mobile Communities' Category

I’ve been exploring the mobilesphere recently - partly for my own interest (since I got a new mobile phone with internet browsing, email and a camera all-in-one) and partly for a section on mobile phone marketing in my book New Trends in International Public Relations.

Websites are currently optimized for a browsing experience from your desktop or laptop, both of which these days have speedy and powerful processors so that the website loads very quickly on your screen. The consequence is that many websites - as well as blogs and other social media spaces - have been designed with a lot of features, including multi-media, so that a visitor has a top-notch experience on the site. All means that a lot of data (measured in bytes - as in byte, Kilobyte (Kb) and Megabyte (Mb)) is transferred from the website to your computer for every page that you access. Mobile phones at the moment do not have the same processing power so access to many websites can be very slow.

WiFi is often free at cafes, offices and some public spaces - and of course, if you visit someone’s house with WiFi, you can log on to their system there. So, using WiFi, you can access the web for free. But if you are someplace where you can’t access WiFi, you have to pay for data transfer to your mobile phone provider to use the 3G connection - this is charged on a per byte basis. You can usually buy a monthly package data package eg so many Mbs for £X and there are some unlimited packages (though read the small print: in the mobile world “unlimited” doesn’t actually mean that at all!).

Data rich websites and costly data connection means that surfing the web by mobile phone can be a painfully slow and expensive business. And yet, more and more people seem to be accessing the internet from their phones. You can see the appeal - the phone is the communications gadget that many people have with them all the time. And many people have a lot of time where they are hanging around in between home, office and seeing friends eg while on the train or on the bus. A good way to while away that time is to access the web - check or write emails, chat with friends online, faff around on a social network and all those other things that you would do on the computer.

To best capture this audience, there are applications that can minimise the time it takes for webpages to load as well as minimising the amount of data transferred so that the mobile browsing experience is fast and cheap - while at the same time maintaining an attractive user interface. I’ve discovered a couple of these applications so that I’ve enabled my two blogs, Fusion View and ZenGuide, to be accessed as mobile versions.

The first is via www.mippin.com. I signed up for a free account and created Fusion View Mobile at mippin.com/fusionview and ZenGuide Mobile at mippin.com/zenguide. Mippin positions itself as a mobile social network for news and blogs so that you can access such sites entirely from within the Mippin network. I like Mippin because of the attractive first page when you arrive at my blogs - there’s a list of simple headings with photos from the relevant posts. At the bottom of each post, you have the option to email the post, Twitter it or Share it on Facebook, which gives an added interactive, social media experience. The main mobile Mippin site itself offers you mobile-optimised aggregated news and blogs to read when you access it on m.mippin.com.

You can get ZenGuide on your phone via Mippin by clicking on the “Make it Mobile” badge on the sidebar on far right of the site.

The second mobilising application is www.mofuse.com, which also offers free accounts. I created Mofuse versions of Fusion View Mobile at fusionview.mofuse.mobi and ZenGuide Mobile at zenguide.mofuse.mobi. This applicaiton has one specific function, which is to optimise your site for mobile browsing. The first page when you arrive on my blogs offers a neat list of the post headings but without images. Clicking through takes you to the whole of relevant post with the photos as well. You can access the comments to the post directly within the Mofuse interface (in Mippin, you have to leave the Mippin interface to do that) but there is no social media element whereby you can email the post etc in the way that you can within Mippin.

You can get the Mofuse version by clicking on the blue “Mobile” badge on the sidebar on far right of the site.

Do check out both versions and let me know what you think. Do you prefer one over the other? Are you more inclined to email a post / Twitter it or Share it on Facebook - or are you more interested in interacting via the comments section?

I got a new mobile phone a few months ago and I’ve been slowly exploring all its functions - and in the process, I’m discovering a whole new mobilesphere (I have no idea if there is such a word but it seems an apt way to describe the world of mobile media in the way that blogosphere describes the world of blogs!). My new phone is also a mobile computer, running Windows Mobile and 80% of its front face is given over to the screen - the phone part of it has a virtual keypad for me to touch-type the phone number. It runs a mobile version of Word, Excel, Outlook and Internet Explorer. It has WiFi so so I can surf the internet as well as send and receive emails if there’s a WiFi service available - but I also splashed out and signed up for a monthly data plan so I could be connected wherever I am. With unlimited texting and a huge number of talk minutes on top of all that, the way I relate to my mobile phone has completely changed.

I used my old mobile phone solely for voice calls - and I did not use it a great deal as I don’t like shouting out my part of the conversation in public while I’m on the bus or in the street. I hated texting as I am not very nimble on using the telephone number keys to type out words. My new phone has a Qwerty keyboard (ie like a PC keyboard) as well as letter recognition on a touch-sensitive screen. Now I can email or SMS to my heart’s content in public - an excellent way to pass the time on the bus or wherever I am in transit!

Being a writer with this new writing tool to play with, naturally, I was curious when I came across an article about mobile phone novels. These are apparently huge in Japan. According to Wired magazine: “A mobile phone novel typically contains between 200 and 500 pages, with each page containing about 500 Japanese characters. The novels are read on a cell phone screen page by page, the way one would surf the web, and are downloadable for around $10 each.” The novelists tend to be young twenty-somethings or even teenagers who type their novels via their own cellphones. According to the writer interviewed by Wired, she can type faster on her phone than on a standard keyboard. There’s even a first mobile phone novel award - sponsored by the premier site that hosts these novels Magic iLand: might you call it the MoBooker?

There has been one author in the West who has written a novel on his mobile phone. According to a news report, “Italian writer Robert Bernocco took advantage of his idle time while commuting to and from work by train, writing his 384-page science fiction novel, Compagni di Viaggo (Fellow Travelers is the English translation), on his Nokia 6630 phone, using the phone’s T9 typing system.” The book has been published in traditional book form by Lulu.com.

I have to say, I admire the abilities of these two writers to master the mobile phone keypad. Even with the mini Qwerty keyboard and letter-recognition function of my new phone, I do not have the patience to write more than a few short text messages or emails on the fiddly thing!

It seems to me, in the West, there has not been any novel specially written for the mobile phone, as far as I know. I don’t think that the reason is necessarily the difficulty of writing on a mobile phone keypad - presumably, one could write it on a PC, blog-style, and then post it to whatever mobile phone novel site there is around. I wonder if Wester writers shouldn’t try this potential new genre. It would be a great way for a new writer starting out to write 500 words at a time. It’s great for readers as most of us have our mobile phones with us at all times - it’s a handy way to read short bite-sized chunks. Writing short, gripping prose is pretty hard, to be sure, and reading a lot of text on a tiny screen can be hard on the eyes. But I think these are excellent challenges for a writer to evolve a writing style exactly suited to this new medium - rather like writing poetry to the constraints of the sonnet form rather than just sticking a few lines together in the modern free-form style.

Would you read a novel on your mobile phone? Do you know of any writers in English who have a written mobile phone novel? Would you, as a writer, be tempted to try writing one? Add a comment or email me and share your views.

Photo: thanks to europe.htc.com

Blogging about Facebook etiquette last week got me thinking about what I do on that social network and how much of a role it plays in my online social life - and to be frank, I don’t spend that much time there. You would think that I’d be a great fan, seeing as I’m such a social media aficionado. So why does it not ring my bells, as they say?

After mulling over this for awhile, a number of things struck me:

• For many people, especially those new to social media, Facebook feels like a safe, contained space for them to play in - the nice, white gated community of the internet. For me, I like the great open spaces of prairies beyond that offers a vast range of blogs, images, podcasts and video. 

• In particular, I really enjoy reading great blogs, which can be stimulating, intriguing, engaging, amusing - and I like joining the discussions by adding comments and sharing my thoughts around a thought-provoking topic. The interactions on Facebook are geared for chit-chat rather than longer, in-depth discussions.

• The activities most people engage in on Facebook seem to be fairly trivial - sending Hatching Eggs and the like. Which is fun and a way of saying to someone, “I’m thinking of you” that is different from sending them an email, where you feel obliged to say something more than those few words. I enjoy that from time to time but it’s becoming wearing when you are constantly inundated with variations such silliness - and especially when you have to download the application first in order to receive their greeting AND you know that the person sending you the interaction has just downloaded the application and hit “send to all your friends”. Having fun with your friends has never been so easy - or so automated.

• The Facebook mini-feed keeps you up to date about what your friends have been up to - but it mostly shows you what they’ve been doing on Facebook. It’s all about what Facebook applicaitons they’ve added, what Facebook groups they’ve joined, whose Facebook wall they’ve written on etc and not what they are really doing in their real lives. I prefer dipping in and out of my Twitter stream where my Twitter friends are sending out little messages about what they are doing and about blog posts or real world news stories they’ve been reading - and increasingly, videos of what they are up to. All this can be done from their mobile phones, including live video streaming via Qik.

• Facebook inundates you with ads in the sidebar and also with ad-items that pretend to be part of the min-feed. Its Beacon application which added users shopping activities to the mini-feed as if those users endorsed those products caused an outcry recently. So far, Twitter seems to be ad-free.

• Facebooks seems to be private but it is less private than you think. If you want to be sure about privacy, make sure you check that all your privacy settingsare enabled. This apparent privacy and the naivety of users inexperienced in web-safety has led to the recent hoo-ha over employers finding out about staff’s private indiscretions.  If in doubt, treat Facebook - and any other social network - as a public space.

• Inexperienced users have also left indiscrete messages on each other’s Walls, which can be seen by all the friends of the Wall-owner. It is also very easy to mistakenly send a message to “all ” your friends. When replying to a message sent to “all” from one friend, I don’t think there is an option to reply to that one friend - your reply goes to “all”. This is all potential for tension and drama between friends if someone sees a message they should not have etc….!

So, my final verdict is: Facebook is as good a place as any to start your social media exploration but it’s not as private as you think it is. As with any public space  - or semi-public space like your office, school, college or community space - take a moment to think abuot how what you say and do might be taken. And don’t leave private information lying around, in the same way you wouldn’t leave your wallet, driving licence, passport etc lying around the office or in a lecture room.

If you like to see what your friends are up to in terms of real world interactions rather than just their interactions with Facebook applications, check out Twitter - my Twitter feed  at www.twitter.com/fusionview may be a good place to start, and in particular you can see the mix of people I follow for the news items they share via Twitter and also the more personal daily activities that others I follow tweet about. br />
Photo: of gated community thanks to Dean Terry on flickr.com (CCL)

Laurence van der Posts book “The Bushmen of the Kalahari” instilled in me an awe for the skills of the bushmen trackers in the eternally magnificent African landscape. Now in the 21st generation, their ancient skill that has been passed down through generations is being enhanced by PDAs - personal digital assistants. According to the International Trade Forum:

The high-tech wildlife trackers have been used against poachers, in ecotourism, environmental education, research and monitoring. The free software that links up traditional knowledge to electronic data mapping has been applied around the world to social surveys, organic farming, integrated pest management and disaster relief.

I love this photo that shows how comfortably the uber-modern sits with the traditional.

Continuing my Twitter watch, I see that the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera has set up a Twitter account to bring its friends news updates direct to their mobile phones. You can sign up to Twitter and add them as a friend at http://twitter.com/AJEnglish.

The BBC also has a Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/bbcnews if you want to compare reporting styles and different cultural approaches.

For an American perspective, you can check out CNN tweets at http://twitter.com/cnnbrk

Related posts

What is …. Twitter?

Another presidential candidate on Twitter

With my background as a novelist, I’m curious to track the way the publishing industry is dealing with developments in internet and social media technology. The general trend seems to be slow. Book people seem to be still fondly attached to paper and hard copy texts.

A couple of years ago, a number of literary heavyweights loudly pooh-poohed blogs and sneered at how a teenager’s ramblings online could not possible be in the same league as great literature like Tolstoy’s works. (Unfortunately, I didn’t tag that article at the time I read it so I can’t link you to it here.)  Now, there are highly successful books derived from blogs eg The Julie/ Julia Project blog which became Julie and Julia, the book - and at least one publishing company, the Friday Project, that specifically seeks out blogs to turn into books. There is also the Blooker, an award - with a nod to the Booker - for books based on websites or blogs.

And traditional publishers are trying to catch up to new media, tentatively exploring e-books and other digital means to capture new audiences. A recent article on OhMyNews.com examines in-depth the issues facing publishers in the new media age and what some are doing to embrace the technology.

Interestingly, OhMyNews.com is a news site that draws its articles and news updates from citizen journalists - anyone who wants to submit an article can do so by signing up to be a citizen reporter. It was founded by Korean Oh Yeon-ho in 2000 as a Korean language site and has now expanded into an international English language site as well. The concept of citizen journalists is very empowering, in particular those who live in nations where the press is tightly controlled and also for anyone who would like to write and read “news” outside of the traditional avenues. Again, the evolution of new forms of news publishing online like this site must only challenge the traditional models and expectations of what publishing is all about. The site has a good FAQ section if you are interested in finding out how to become a citizen reporter.

In related news, New Media Age reports that major publishing company Random House and supermarket giant Asda are teaming up for an multi-media launch for celebrity Chantell Houghston’s autobiography, using mobile phones as the main platform for the interactive element.

Photo: thanks to James Cridland on flickr.com

Following my post looking at the use of online multi-media by the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, co-ordinated by Team Hillary, I’ve just heard that her rival Barack Obama has signed up for a Twitter account.

You can now get his hot-off-the-press tweets of his campaign trail. Well, in theory anyway: his last update at the time of my writing post said “1 day ago”. He - or his staff - are going to have to gain a bit more momentum with Twitter to have any credibility at all with the technoscenti.

In contrast another presidential candidate, John Edwards, has been on Twitter for longer and has been tweeting much more prolifically.

You may have heard people say “Skype me” or “Are you on Skype?” and wondered what on earth that’s all about. Skype is the name of a company that provides a means for you to have voice conversations over the internet, using VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol - a technology that enables voice conversations to be transmitted over a data network using Internet Protocol). There are other companies that offer this service but Skype seems to have become one of the most well-known and well-used - particularly by solo professionals.

So what’s the big deal about Skype? Why not just use the good old-fashioned telephone?

Free voice calls over the internet

Skype - and other VOIP providers - offer free voice calls to other Skype users via your computer: the call is made from your computer and you need microphone and speakers plugged into your computer to use this service. You can also buy telephones that plug into your computer so you can maintain the familiar telephone interface and experience that you’re used to.

Low cost international telephone calls

The advantage of Skype, I think, is that you can also make cheap calls to landlines all over the world, using SkypeOut. You pay in some money to your SkypeOut account via your credit card and as you make calls, they take money out of your kitty and you will need to top it up from time to time. Calls to UK and USA landlines are currently 0.014p a minute - as are calls to Malaysia (where my parents live).

Call forwarding and voicemail for incoming calls

You can also use SkypeIn to get a regular telephone number which you can answer via your PC or forward to any other number eg your home or office landline or your mobile - and this comes with voicemail. You pay a sign up fee for this service and then pay for the cost of the forwarded call on a per minute basis as if it were a SkypeOut call. So for a small business or solo professional, this can be a useful feature if you want your clients to remember only one telephone number for you wherever you are. Having checked out other call-forwarding services in the UK, my view is that this is so far the most cost-effective for this kind of service.

Conference Calls

You can arrange conference calls with a number of callers - whether other Skype users or via landlines/ mobiles - using the control panel to initiate calls via your PC. This is handy for small businesses or solo professionals - but the sound quality is unfortunately not brilliant the more people you have on the call.

Text messaging

If you have SkypeOut credit, you can also use it to send text messages to any mobile phone anywhere in the world - I love this service because I can type my text message using your PC keyboard rather than fiddling with my mobile phone keys!

Chat

It’s also handy for text chatting with other Skype users - which is free as that is entirely handled over the internet, without interfacing with phones.

Practicalities

You will need a PC or laptop, of course. You will need a broadband connection - dial up connections are too slow for VOIP calls. You will need to go to the Skype website at www.skype.com and download the telephone software onto your PC or laptop - it’s an easy process and it’s free.

Even if your PC/ laptop comes with a built-in mike and speakers, it’s a good idea to get a headset mike - the sound quality deteriorates if you are using your speakers and mike on loudspeaker mode (due to feedback and echo from the loudspeaker mode). You can get headsets from around £15 in the UK, marked as Skype compatible.

You will need to download the Skype software onto your PC and/ or laptop (it’s free) and sign up to a Skype account online. Once you have the software, you can use it to access any number of accounts you / your family/ business partner may sign up on Skype - so each person can manage their own calls, rather like having separate online email accounts.

On your laptop, you can sign in to your Skype account anywhere you are in the world, via a hardwire connection or wi-fi. The same call rates as shown on their main website will apply - unlike using your mobile phone abroad, where call rates abroad are very high.

If you have a webcam, you can also make video calls - but note the issue with sound quality if your webcam works on a loudspeaker mode.

Overall View

The annoying thing about VOIP services is that you can only take advantage of free calls, generally, with other users on the same provider. Skype seems to have the advantage in that many people have signed up to it so it’s more likely that your friends, colleagues and business associates are also on Skype and you won’t have to sign up to loads of different providers in order to connect for free with different contacts.

The downside of Skype is that the quality of their voice service is sometimes unreliable - with echoing and intermittent sound break-up, especially on conference calls. So I wouldn’t rely on it entirely for all your business communication needs but it’s handy to have as a second line, for short conference calls and for use on your laptop if you travel a lot.

Overall, I use Skype regularly because I like the integrated PC and phone and messaging service - and also the cheap call rates, and many of my professional contacts as well as my friends and family use Skype.

Further resources:

Tech FAQ - what is VOIP?

Skype isn’t the only VOIP provider - you can check out other VOIP Providers (UK) here.

The world was horrified by the events at Virginia Tech last week when a student went on the rampage and shot fellow students and teachers at the campus, killing 32 people. Like many people following the unfolding of events, I am saddened by this tragedy and offer my sympathies to the families of those killed and injured.

Traditional media

When I hear about such horrific things in the news, I turn first to the press and traditional media. I expect to get from that source a reliable and factual reporting of events. We trust the traditional media because we know they cross-check stories and are careful to distinguish speculation from facts and opinion from reportage. Professional journalists arrive at the scene and start finding out what happened, talking to people who were involved, getting stories from witnesses and taking photographs.

New media

With email and social media tools like blogging and Twitter - and the ubiquitous mobile phone, the people involved and others who witnessed the Virginia Tech shootings began spontaneously to tell their own stories, in some cases even as the events were unfolding. The Guardian reported on 17 April that the traditional media was looking to websites for their sources:

News outlets turned to CollegiateTimes.com and PlanetBlacksburg.com, as well as to amateur reporters huddled in college rooms or near the scene who were sending frantic emails to friends and media organisations such as CNN.

CollegiateTimes.com, the website for Virginia Tech’s student newspaper, filed up-to-the-minute online dispatches.

Students were using Facebook and MySpace, social networking sites, to express their responses to what happened, sharing their shock and grief online as they might have done coming face to face in a crisis. ABC News reported these comments from students writing in Facebook:

~ If you are okay! Please update your status in facebook to say something like “I’m okay”

~ We need to get a facebook group started to keep this news story factual and not sensationalized.

~ I too started getting messages from people from different countries wanting more and more info about the incident. Some even went to the extent of asking me to record my reaction over a video cam and send it to them. Disgusting!

Suicide Video

Later, it emerged that the killer, Cho Seung-hui, had compiled a suicide video and digital photo album which he sent to NBC, a US television network. The Guardian reports that following the TV broadcast, the tapes were “rebroadcast instantly around the world on TV and online represents the sinister side of user generated content….The NBC video is the most visited story on the BBC news website and dominates the front page of the Sky News site.”

Plays posted online

Cho was a literature student and wrote plays which centred around murder, paedophilia and revenge killings, according the London Paper, which also reports that two of Cho’s plays “were posted on the internet by Ian MacFarlane, a former classmate of Cho’s.”

Two sides of the media

In this one terrible event, we see the two sides of the media, both traditional and new. The two forms of media can be a source of news and information - and also, a prompt to voyeurism and the unsavoury desire “to know all the gory details”. Social networks can be a place where people can support each other and talk about what happened on the path to healing - or a place for gossip, rumour, hate postings and dark rantings. We can gain fame or infamy by the mere fact of being on TV or online alone. It is hugely disturbing that killers such as Cho can become celebrities overnight for one heinous, savage act and their poor creative efforts pored over like great literature - where they might otherwise trudge on unnoticed and uncelebrated in their lonely lives if they had done nothing at all. For people like that, there is no reward in being good and a huge reward in being evil.

I was in two minds about writing this post. I didn’t want to this post to be yet another space where Cho and what he did is noticed and given airtime - “rewarded” with attention. Yet, it felt important to discuss the role of traditional and new media in this event - in reporting it and also in some ways, being a part of the story by being a means in Cho’s mind to air his grievances and justify himself.

Remember the heroes

So I don’t want to end this post on Cho. I want to end it talking about a hero. Liviu Librescu was one of the professors in the room that day. He was 76 and a survivor of the Holocaust. He blocked the doorway with his body and bought precious moments for his student to make their escape. The Guardian reports “Messages were posted on the web praising the professor. “No act could be more selfless.” one poster wrote.” Let’s remember Professor Librescu and celebrate him. Let’s remember and celebrate the 32 people who died at Virginia Tech.

Twitter is the relatively new craze that lets you post mini-blog entries via your mobile phone or your PC. The length is limited to 140 characters and your entries appear on the twitter page online that you’ve signed up for. You can add your “friends” to your twitter circle - they have to be signed up to twitter first. You can also opt to receive your “friends” updates on your mobile phone or on the webpage only. You can set it so that only your “friends” see your posts or so that it is public and anyone can see them - or receive them on their phones.

It seems to have taken the world by storm and different groups of people are using it in different ways. The main excitement about it is that it is immediate and brief and you can send and receive texts via your mobile phone.

# The top tech and marketing experts and commentators like Steve Rubel, Robert Scoble, and others are using it mainly to exchange “hot off the press” information about breaking news and new products within their industries. By linking to blog posts where an issue is explored more deeply, their use of twitter gives their readers an early heads-up on issues which can be followed up by going along to the longer blog piece for more detail and analysis.

# News companies like the BBC are posting minute by minute updates of news flashes.

# Monster.com, the recruitment website, is using to send out instant messages about new jobs.

# Professionals and consultants are updating their “friends” about their business activities and also offering a glimpse into their personal activities. You might find a tech consultant texting to say he is working on a software issue, heading off to an IT conference, meeting others in his business for a drink, chilling out in front of a DVD.

# Ordinary folks are sharing glimpses into their lives eg working in their gardens, seeing their friends and keeping each other updated about their daily lives.

# It is also a lively community for exchanging ideas, raising queries, sharing advice. So far it seems to be mainly the tech types (as you might expect) but as it’s use spreads, there should be more non-tech participants finding uses for it to suit their particular interests. In particular, its potential in developing countries like Africa where there are a lot of mobile phones but problems with broadband/ landline communications could be potentially empowering.

For me, I have a public twitter page at www.twitter.com/fusionview - in the context of my arts and culture blog Fusion View. Anyone can see my “tweets” and those of my “friends” on that page. (I also have a private one for my family and personal friends - only they can see what I text on that account: usually to do with what I had for dinner and what I’m up to at the weekend, the sort of thing that’s fun for a personal circle to know but banal in the wider context!)

I think the value in Twitter for business use could be as a brief heads-up on breaking news either within their sector or within their organisation and it might be useful for a team working in different physical locations to keep each other updated on time-critical tasks. For personal use, it can be fun especially if you want to keep friends and family quickly updated while you’re travelling or on holiday. For organisations, it can be used for disseminating information, advice and news eg for those networked only via mobile phones in developing countries, or organising events within a short time-scale and in real time.

You can read my further thoughts on Twitter on my other blog, Fusion View:

Twittering Away

Fusion View Tweets on Twitter

Mind Map

Here are some other commentators on Twitter:

A list of ways to optimise Twitter - http://slackermanager.com/2007/03/the-several-habits-of-wildly-successful-twitter-users.html

Top Twitterers list - http://www.twitterholic.com/

Someone may have been hired via Twitter : Justin.tv sent out call for someone to help and got 100 responses in a few hours - http://www.mdoeff.com/blog/2007/03/27/was-someone-just-hired-on-twitter/

Why Twitter is so successful - http://millionsofus.com/blog/archives/188

A real time world map of who is twittering where - http://www.twittervision.com

Here is someone who’s not so keen on Twitter (who’s picked up my posts on it on my other blog Fusion View - small world!) - http://digital-nomads.blogspot.com/2007/03/tumblr-online-usalbility-or-just.html