Giladon-line » mobile phone

Analog Blogging

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:03:04 +0000

In Monrovia, Liberia a unique form of journalism exists where the news is written out daily on a chalk board for everyone to read as they pass by. Alfred Sirleaf established his chalkboard news service called “Daily Talk” in May of 2000, when he saw a need for direct, free and accessible reporting. Because of his provocative style of reporting the truth, the Daily Talk was destroyed twice before he finally fled into exile in Ghana. As peace returned to the region, so did the Daily Talk, and today it is one of the most read News Sources in the capital with thousands everyday taking the time to stop as they walk or drive by to get the breaking news. The Daily Talk in not only a board, but includes a small news room in the back, where he works on the next set of “articles” as viewers read the current set (using a rotating double-sided chalk board). (link)

Alfred Sirleaf is the managing editor of The Daily Talk, a white plywood shed trumpeting the latest headlines along Tubman Boulevard, one of Monrovia main thoroughfares. “Those who don’t have opportunity to buy newspaper, go on the Internet, who can’t afford to buy generator to buy TV,” he said, describing just about everyone in this battered city, “I do all the dirty work for them, and I just give them exactly what they want.”

Alfred’s solution to dispersing information to the people around him is simple yet highly effective. He also seems to have made a business model out of this board, charging for advertisement space on the bottom. Alfred wants to make sure every Liberian can keep up with the news and play a part in the country’s young democratic government, but in a way that wholly depends on what type of information he displays.

But there are so many advantages to providing “analog” news:

Alfred serves as a reminder to the rest of us, that simple is often better, just because it works. The lack of electricity never throws him off. The lack of funding means he’s creative in ways that he recruits people from around the city and country to report news to him. He uses his cell phone as the major point of connection between him and the 10,000 (he says) that read his blackboard daily. (link)

[tags]mobile, development, blogger, analog, africa,news[/tags]

Mobile Phones, Third World and User Centered Design

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:40:48 +0000

If I could be anyone at this moment, it would definitely be Jan Chipchase, Nokia researcher extraordinaire. Chipchase travels around the world and focuses on user centered design for mobile phone in third world countries. I’ve been following his blog for a while now, and was excited to read Sara Corbett’s article ‘Can the Cellphone Help End World Poverty?‘ published yesterday on the NYT website.

Mobile communications change the way we lead our lives, yet have a substantially greater effect on third world users, where they serve as an introductory communications device. In the majority of these locations it makes more sense to implement mobile phone networks rather than a land-lineÂ alternative. It took about 20 years for the first billion mobile phones to sell worldwide. The second billion sold in four years, and the third billion sold in two. Eighty percent of the worldâ€™s population now lives within range of a cellular network, which is double the level in 2000. And figures from the International Telecommunications Union show that by the end of 2006, 68 percent of the worldâ€™s mobile subscriptions were in developing countries.

These numbers are just mind-boggling. And it is inspiring to see just how phones in developing nations are changing people’s lives for the better. It is remarkable that even very poor families invest a significant amount of money in ICT (information-communication technology). What theyâ€™re buying are cellphones and airtime, usually in the form of prepaid cards. Even more telling is the finding that as a familyâ€™s income grows â€” from $1 per day to $4, for example â€” their spending on ICT increases faster than spending in any other category, including health, education and housing. â€œItâ€™s really quite striking,â€ Hammond says. â€œWhat people are voting for with their pocketbooks, as soon as they have more money and even before their basic needs are met, is telecommunications.â€

Nokia is making all the right moves. Learning from its potential users and seeing how their technology is adapted within foreign contexts. The company is also working feverishly on a 5$ handset, which is planned to hit the African markets very soon. It is obvious that such a device will have a substantial effect in many parts of Africa and Asia, and help register an even larger slice of users and behaviours. In addition to hardware design, Nokia needs to put much work into its UI. Nokia’s menu systems are still difficult to navigate, clunky and hardly intuitive. The S60 platform very heavy on the phone’s memory, making the overall experience excruciatingly slow.

I am still a big Nokia fan, not necessarily for the current experience on its phones, but for its support and dedication to provide an open mobile development platform. Lets hope it keeps making the right decisions, as the company grows larger.

Below are quotes from the NYT article:

Chipchase gives example upon example of the cellphoneâ€™s ability to increase peopleâ€™s productivity and well-being, mostly because of the simple fact that they can be reached. Thereâ€™s the live-in housekeeper in China who was more or less an indentured servant until she got a cellphone so that new customers could call and book her services. Or the porter who spent his days hanging around outside of department stores and construction sites hoping to be hired to carry other peopleâ€™s loads but now, with a cellphone, can go only where the jobs are. Having a call-back number, Chipchase likes to say, is having a fixed identity point, which, inside of populations that are constantly on the move â€” displaced by war, floods, drought or faltering economies â€” can be immensely valuable both as a means of keeping in touch with home communities and as a business tool. Over several years, his research team has spoken to rickshaw drivers, prostitutes, shopkeepers, day laborers and farmers, and all of them say more or less the same thing: their income gets a big boost when they have access to a cellphone.

Robert Jensen, an economics professor at Harvard University, tracked fishermen off the coast of Kerala in southern India, finding that when they invested in cellphones and started using them to call around to prospective buyers before theyâ€™d even got their catch to shore, their profits went up by an average of 8 percent while consumer prices in the local marketplace went down by 4 percent. Public health workers in South Africa now send text messages to tuberculosis patients with reminders to take their medication. In Kenya, people can use S.M.S. to ask anonymous questions about culturally taboo subjects like AIDS, breast cancer and sexually transmitted diseases, receiving prompt answers from health experts for no charge.

â€œFor the first time, there are more people living in urban centers than in rural settings,â€ Chipchase explained as we sat in the shade outside the studio. â€œAnd in the next years, millions more will move to these places.â€ At current rates of migration, the United Nations Human Settlements Program has projected that one-quarter of the earthâ€™s population will live in so-called slums by the year 2020. Slums, by sheer virtue of the numbers, are going to start mattering more and more, Chipchase postulated.

How do you make a phone that can be repaired by a streetside repairman who may not have access to new parts? How do you build a phone that wonâ€™t die a quick death in a monsoon or by falling off the back of a motorbike on a dusty road? Or a phone that picks up distant signals in a rural place, holds a charge off a car battery longer or that can double as a flashlight during power cuts? Influenced by Chipchaseâ€™s study on the practice of sharing cellphones inside of families or neighborhoods, Nokia has started producing phones with multiple address books for as many as seven users per phone. To enhance the phoneâ€™s usefulness to illiterate customers, the company has designed software that cues users with icons in addition to words. The biggest question remains one of price

Motorola now provides free solar-powered charging kiosks to female entrepreneurs in Uganda, who use them to sell airtime. The company is also testing wind- and solar-powered base stations in Namibia, which could bring down the cost of connecting remote areas to cellular networks. â€œOriginally mobile-phone companies werenâ€™t interested in power because itâ€™s not their business,â€ Banks says. â€œBut if a few hundred million people could buy their phones once they had it, theyâ€™re suddenly interested in power.â€

[tags]mobile,jan,chipchase,design,third,world,development,phone,nokia[/tags]

WiMAX – the technology and its implications

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:36:29 +0000

Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access – a new technology aimed at providing wireless data over long distances for both point-to-point links and full mobile cellular access implementation. It is effective for enabling the delivery of last mile wireless broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL. For this reason, it is not surprising that the technology is extra-useful in rural areas and developing nations – as Motorola is set to rollout with the largest WiMAX mobile network yet in Pakistan.

In the United States, WiMAX remained largely a niche technology. A few fixed WiMAX providers, such as Clearwire, offered residential and business access in select areas, but there was never a wide-scale rollout.

Until now.

Sprint, already a provider of 3G wireless data service through its EVDO network, has decided to jump feet first into a mobile variant of WiMAX, 802.16e, as an early play in the world of 4G wireless data servicesâ€”and even as a quick fix for the expensive municipal Wi-Fi plans that have crumbled across the country. The service, given the name of Xohm, will offer speeds on par with cable broadband (2-5mbps) that can be received at 3-5 miles from an antennaâ€”far less than what was originally promised for fixed WiMAX, but still impressive. Weâ€™ll see a soft rollout of Xohm by the end of the year in Baltimore and Washington, D.C, and in Chicago. If all goes well, it will be extended to cities around the country after that. (source)

WiMax networks are also planned for the Australian continent, rural Canada and Taiwan, among several others, while it can already be found at sea in the gulf of Mexico (offshore oil platforms). The technology was one of the hottest displays at last week’s CES exhibit in Vegas, where Intel setup a WiMax network. Among its display was this networked van:

with these embedded wireless screen display inside the car:

So why is this important and what implications will WiMAX have?

In the US:: A “big-bang” introduction of this technology in the states, with the impending launches in several international locations as well as a launch of Sprint Nextel XOHM and Clearwire services in the US, might provide a critical mass for prices to come down sufficiently. Just as WiFi changed the landscape first in the use of computers and now mobile phones in just a couple of years, I expect we will get to witness a similar shift with WiMAX over the next two years. It was not surprising to read that 70 percent of cell phone usage occurs within a building or the home. Why would we need services from a structurally closed and expensive cellular network if 70 percent of all calls are being done from inside a building, especially with the growing amount of WiFi access and WiFi enabled cellular devices?

The Cellular Argument:: The crux of the mobile provider’s campaigns is that cellular coverage follows you as you exit the building without any need for re-authentication or reconnections. However, with the possibilities of municipal Wi-Fi networks (still waiting…) and now WiMAX, that argument would no longer be valid. There are no mobile operators in the world that are truly offering broadband to the home at the all-you-can-eat price points that are being offered by the fixed WiMAX carriers. This problem emerges out of the cellular’s narrow bandwidth, which carriers are desperately trying to stretch. The networks just aren’t optimized, and the mobile frequencies are expensive and scarce.

WiMAX vs. Cellular:: It is not clear if Mobile WiMAX is positioned to give 3G cellular a solid beating when it comes to broadband access. Even though the technology offers much faster broadband-class speeds and is set to support congested subscriber areas, there exist only few working mobile WiMAX trials. On the other hand, there is lots of data capacity now available on the cellular side, and metro-scale Wi-Fi systems are quickly emerging that could fill in any speed gaps that exist.

My Hopes:: Firstly, I hope mobile operators open up their networks, provide better self-suited plans, cheaper & faster data plans (perhaps by collaborating with municipal WiFi networks) and do not keep us locked down in years of contracts and ’service plans’ just because we have no other choice. Secondly, my hope is that with the experimentation and implementation of mobile WiMAX in the developed nations, its price will substantially come down, and enable the rapid development of rural data networks for the third world.

Finally, for all the MAC lovers out there, take a look at these rumors that Apple may include WiMax in an ultraportable 13″ notebook computer, and possibly across the entire MacBook Pro line.

[tags] WiMAX, mobile, cellular, WiFi. CES [/tags]

The Kaywa Reader – 2d code scanning

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 00:04:30 +0000

The Kaywa Reader is a 2D Barcode Reader to install on your mobile phone. Once installed, you can scan 2D Barcodes and the content of the 2D Barcode is then immediately resolved on the phone. This idea is not new at all, semacodes have been around for a while. What I really liked about this site, though, is their explanation images, demos and user scenarios. Definitely worth checking out. They present the user scenarios clearly. What they don’t really go into is the difficulty in getting the software onto people’s phones (always the difficult part of creating software for mobile phones).

QR Codes (=> Quick Response Codes)

are 2D Barcodes (two dimensional Barcodes) developed by Denso and released in 1994 with the primary aim of being easily interpreted by scanner equipment in manufacturing, logistics and sales applications.

These codes are useful for holding different types of information: a URL, SMS message, phone number, email address or any other text-based data.

And here’s how it works:

(nice nails…)

In comparison with other Barcodes, QR Codes combine several advantages:

they can hold a very large capacity of numbers or letters in any language
their printout size can be very small
they offer high speed reading
they can be read from any side (omnidirectional or 360Â° scan)

Mobile Phone Operators: Watch Out

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 06:08:36 +0000

Blyk is a pan-European free mobile operator for young people, funded by advertising. Launching first in the UK market in mid-2007, with other markets to follow. They offer brands an opportunity for direct engagement with 16-24 year old audiences, offering real-time feedback.

Their claim is that the mobile advertising industry will be growing fast in the near future. Their tactic is to offer advertisers a â€one stop shopâ€ for their mobile marketing activities: 1) a wide range of products 2) a rich consumer database for highly targeted messages 3) tools for campaign planning, tracking and follow up.

Blyk will be a so-called mobile virtual network operator, or MVNO, meaning it will market service under its own brand but use the wireless network of an operator still to be named. MVNOs such as Virgin and easyMobile have proliferated in Europe, but nobody has done it as a free operator, which is the main difference here.

Their CEO is Pekka Ala-PietilÃ¤, the former president of Nokia, and the roster of other Nokia veterans on the staff includes Marko Ahtisaari, who was previously director of design strategy for the Finnish mobile giant. If the company’s approach proves successful, industry watchers say, it could dramatically affect the mobile phone industry and pose a serious threat to existing operators. Ad-supported mobile service is not a completely new idea. In the U.S., for example, Xero Mobile is planning to offer low-cost mobile service to college students who agree to watch a certain number of ads. But Blyk co-founders Ala-PietilÃ¤ and veteran ad exec Antti Ã–hrling promise that their offering will be different. Instead of a reward system, the messages will be targeted to users and be integrated seamlessly with the handset.

“The fundamental principle is that advertising never interferes with primary function of the phone,” says Ã–hrling, chairman and CEO of Contra Advertising, which has offices in London and several other cities around the world. “If you do it in the right way, it’s not just how much [advertising] can you tolerateâ€”it’s something people find useful and fun.” The adverts on Blyk are likely to run the full range from videos and interactive content aimed at top-end phones, to text and voice services for cheaper handsets.
Orange has been running adverts on its Orange World portal since September last year and early indications are that consumers are willing to interact with brands through their phones. It carried adverts from companies including Cadbury’s, Microsoft – for its Xbox games console – and Jaguar. Some of the adverts let customers download free content such as games, wallpapers and video.

In a survey of a thousand users, Orange found that up to 23% had purchased or were more likely to purchase the product advertised and more than half said they would be happy to see more advertising on their mobiles. That compares to a ratio of just one in ten for advertising on TV. Less than 6% of those surveyed said they disliked advertising on mobile phones. “The response from our customers has shown more than just an acceptance of mobile advertising, there’s actually a real appetite for it,” said Orange’s head of third party services, Steve Ricketts.

A fine line between informing and boring

Giving companies more opportunities to bombard people with ads and special offers may sound an unattractive proposition to anyone over the age of 30 but Blyk is targeted at a younger audience who often rely on their parents to finance their mobile phone habits. Those in this younger age group have grown up with advert-supported free services such as MySpace and Bebo on the internet. They appear much more willing to accept the trade-off between putting up with marketing and getting something for nothing. Whether their parents like it or not, they are also heavy mobile phone users, reliant on pre-pay tariffs to text and call their mates.

Stelios Haji-Ioannou is planning to start a new MVNO under the name of easyMobile.
Before every phone call Stelios wants to play an advertising message, which is not necessarily an easy business model, he admits. â€žTo found a cheap MVNO is easyâ€œ, he says â€žbut the trick is on the advertising sideâ€œ. In his plans the advertising should be location based, at least on city level, and requires a lot of personalization. â€žA person that every thursday night orders at Pizza Hut could be played a Domino’s advertisingâ€œ, he jokes. But to use all the personal data that’s necessary for such a service the new easyMobile needs ample permissions from its customers. â€žPeople are aware that they give away their data in exchange for free phone callsâ€œ, Stelios dismisses any doubts.

Actually he is looking for the right advertising partner to provide the necessary technology and data. He even asked me for a recommendation. When I mentioned Google/Doubleclick he said â€žyes, but Google today is very much into everything.â€œ

(source: goebel.net)

Some uses of mobile data information in India

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 07:19:32 +0000

Taken from Gnanapriya C and Puneet Gupta’s online paper on relevance of mobile based information services in India:

Infosys mobility solutions with a strong Indian context:

1. Insurance for Rural India

One of the more significant challenges that organizations face, including those in the insurance sectors, is the ability to serve the client base in small towns and in rural areas where it is not practical to extend the company’s presence by setting up physical infrastructures. Many of these places are not well served even from an internet connectivity perspective. Surprisingly even the remotest of these areas are today being served by mobile networks. We have been working on creating technology platforms that enable creation of solutions that leverage a low cost mobile device that a local, employed by the company as its representative, can use to provide several services which were hitherto possible only when a customer were to visit the nearest office in one of the towns. The field representative can use her/his mobile phone to access services like getting customer information, receiving alerts related to due dates for renewals and updation of premium payments received, just to give a few examples. Thus by using a low cost mobile device, the field agent can provide all critical services even in areas where setting up of basic internet infrastructure can be a challenge. Advanced synchronization techniques supporting both SMS and wireless data technologies offered by GPRS as well as CDMA networks, ensure that the cost per transaction can be kept extremely low.

2. Microfinance

MicroFinance is a solution provides a finance company providing micro-loans to help their field agents to track their customers, their credit limits, loans and payments. The situation involves a credit company providing “micro” loans where the loan amounts are very small. Therefore the cost of transaction per loan sanctioned or payment made should be extremely low. With the MicroFinance application, data is available with the finance company’s agent to monitor his clients’ loans and their payments. Transactions are offline and data is synchronized with backend server at a later time or when connectivity is available.

The key attributes of the solution is the way the technology solution deals with factors like:

Non-availability of network connection
Cost of network connectivity (air-time) to access data
Security of confidential data transmitted/received over the air
Speed of transactions
Data loss and recovery

3. Application of mobile real time data for dairy professionalsBased on TruSync, Infosys mobile synchronization platform, this solution is aimed at enabling field force of a dairy organization to enable us of mobile device like PDAs to provide nutrition, animal diet and wellness services as well as vaccination services to farmers who have no other effective mechanism to scientifically deal with animal care to increase net yields. The solution strength lays in the ability of underlying technology platform to deal with the complexities of the wireless connectivity infrastructure. The technology enables the application to work in offline situations when connectivity is not available or when the cost of connectivity is high. The technology involves opportunistic pre-fetching of data and by masking the disconnectedness from the end application by fetching the data from the local database, masking the actual state of connectedness from the end application. The solution is also aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of such mobile solutions both from technology and cost perspectives.

mInfo: Chinese Mobile Phone SMS service

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 22:21:22 +0000

“Will it rain today?” Apparently mInfo, a Shanghai-based mobile search startup, is working on a service that will be able to answer such a question on our phones.

They intend to understand natural language queries inputed by users on their mobile phones, and to deliver highly relevant answers. The service allows you to retrieve search results using SMS or WAP. Their revenue model is that of a common search service – generating revenues from target advertising and allowing clients to bid for search result ranking. I just wonder how well that works with SMS, since the length of each message is extremely short. I also hope this service has extremely good NLP (natural Language Processing) analysis, since we are ever more sensitive to span in our mobile phones. Somehow it is bearable in our email, but when it comes to phones, and users paying per message they receive, spam messages will not be tolerated.

(source: shanghaimomo)

This same company has recently acquired Guanxi, a city guide which allows you to SMS keywords in English, Mandarin, or Pin Yin from your mobile phone to search locations in cities right across China. The service responds to your SMS with the result/s of your search in the language that you used to search. If there is more than one matched venue for your search criteria, you will be sent a list of the matched venues, replying with the number of the corresponding venue from the match list will get you the address and directions of your selected venue. To get these details in Chinese simply reply with a C.

The service owns two short codes, one for China Unicom users:

and the other for China Mobile users:

Upon signing up to this service, you have to insert your China ID Card Number or your Passport Number in order to receive a one month free service. And that’s the part where myself and probably 90% of the other potential users click the x on the top right of our browser. Interesting service, especially for gwailos with minimal Chinese language skills. But still doesn’t seem ready for mass use.

SMS: Social Networking Tool in India

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 07:42:11 +0000

GupShup is an SMS based mobile application which attempts to bring social networking to the mobile world. It was introduced by Webaroo, who’s founder is Rakesh Mathur. People can create, manage or contribute to groups by either using the GupShup website or by sending an SMS to a local mobile phone short code. This application is centered around the creation and management of groups. Basically a group SMS feature, but one that has a short code, in a country where mobile phone usage, specifically SMS, is exploding. They claim that this service has existed in India for just over a month, and has some 10,000 members already – but is doubling in size every week. They also state that the use of this social networking service is critical in a country such as India, where most people cannot use the mainstream services such as myspace because of the difficulty to gain access to a web-enabled computer.

This sort of service ignited an interesting thought in my head. i could definitely use this short code (67673434 in India) and create an Indigi-Net group which would allow to share information regarding exchange possibilities and other local initiatives for travelers. Or what about just general travel information and recommendations. Since most people travel with mobile phones anyhow, and the cost of local messages, even when roaming, is low, this tool might have very interesting implications, specifically in India. Now I just need to go there…

Their business model incorporates ads which are attached to the group messages, and (supposedly) have some contextual relevance. Not sure how that will work – especially since SMS messages are quite short already.

China: SMS protest helps halt chemical plant construction

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 07:13:17 +0000

In the Chinese city of Xiamen, authorities have halted construction of a chemical plant after residents sent more than 1 million mobile phone text messages protesting possible pollution dangers. What is interesting here is that in such a regime where people have limited power when getting together physically to protest, ubiquitous technology such as SMS helps amplify their united voices, and in this case actually made a difference. (although I found these photos of a rally that happened there on flickr -> so not sure if only the SMS made the gov’t decide, or if it is just a nice title to have in the news…)

Part of a text message widely forwarded said the chemicals produced at the plant could “cover Xiamen in a nuclear bomb, causing the people of Xiamen afterward to live with leukemia and deformities. We want life, we want health!”
Across China, public awareness of environmental issues began to crystallize after an explosion at a chemical plant along northern China’s Songhua River in late 2005. The spill contaminated water for millions of residents in one of China’s largest cities and forced the government to begin to address the problem of widespread pollution.
But despite repeated vows of crackdowns, chemical spills and other incidents are near daily occurrences, according to the state’s environmental watchdog.
The heated reaction in Xiamen, a city with 1.5 million residents, shows how public opinion has changed. According to Xinhua, nearly one million text messages were sent protesting the plant’s construction, eventually forcing the government to capitulate.
Despite intense government controls, China’s Internet and cellphone texting remain a freewheeling space. The Xiamen texting highlights the use of a new medium to spread a message in China. Already, Chinese mobile phones are used to send text ads.
The city’s reversal is one of the most visible cases in China whereby texting — which is harder to block than Internet messages — was effectively used to quash a government initiative.
Yet, there were signs the government was attempting to clamp down. Xiamen residents contacted by phone said they could no longer forward the text message that discussed organizing a protest for June 1.
Other residents said some Internet postings about the project were being deleted. One worker at a local university said officials there had warned everyone against participating in the protest.
(source: WSJ)

SMS goes “spiritual”

Wed, 30 May 2007 04:43:36 +0000

What happens when technology merges with religion and culture? A whole new brand of opportunities which enable us to extend beliefs and stay connected even from a distance. This new service I read about allows believers to send wishes using an SMS messages to be posted at the Kotel (the Western Wall) in Jerusalem.

For those of you who have never been there, the Kotel is a fascinating religious relic, in close proximity to the Church of the Holy Scepulture (where Jesus is believed to have been buried) and the Dome of the Rock (where the prophet Allah ascended to the heavens). The Western Wall derives its holiness due to its proximity to the sacred Holy of Holies on the Temple Mount, which is the Most Holy Place in Judaism. This makes the Western Wall the holiest location in Judaism that is currently generally accessible to the Jewish people for prayer. The Kotel itself is dotted with hundreds of tiny paper notes, each holding a person’s wish. It is believed that god When in the area of the Kotel, the experience can get intense. People touch the rocks and weep. It is amazing to see the strength of hope that people carry, while touching these ancient rocks.

Last year I explored a virtual extension of this experience using interactive media and physical computing in my project: Kotel. I was interested by the fact that thekotel.org offers live webcams available freely online, where anyone could see the Wall and the prayer chambers at any time of the week (except during Sabbath).

But I wonder what happens next.

Now it is possible to send an SMS message directly to Jerusalem and for someoneÂ to place your wish in one of the cracks in the wall! Here is a quote from an article I found online:

SMS gets emotional and spiritual with a new initiative from Mobile Bridges and Mobile Whispers. SMS2Wall make it possible to deliver personalized messages to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, by SMS.

The new service collects messages, turns them into your own secret and totally anonymous notes and hand delivers them to the wall each Friday. Check out www.sms2wall.com for more info on how to send your message.

Mobile Bridges and Mobile Whispers, aim to â€œaid people all over the world in their spiritual and emotional needs, regardless of race, nationality or religion.â€ (source: newideasinmobile)

But what applications should we be expecting next? Perhaps a live webcam from the roof of the world – Mt. Everest? Or maybe a mobile phone app that points towards Mecca whenever prayer time approaches? …

Whatever it is, it will surely be fascinating.