VIDEO HUB blog

Steve Safran of Lost Remote writes:

I like it whenever I come upon contrarian points of view. And newassignment.net has a doozy. Steve Fox writes about Virginia Tech student Jamal Albarghouti’s cellphone video of the shooting at Virginia Tech. Here are some of his thoughts:

As everyone steps up to applaud the “citizen journalism” that occurred yesterday, with kudos upon kudos give to the cellphone video made infamous by CNN… Consider this: the video had no inherent news value and told no story. It did have sounds of bullets being fired and screams. Those were bullets that killed, maimed and injured students and faculty members. This wasn’t a video game. Is such video responsible journalism? Are these the types of Citizen Journalists that people want to see? Are we doomed to create “citizen journalists” to play the I-patsies for cable television?

A poster in Fox’s piece also points us to Paul McCleary’s thoughts from CJRDaily called “What Happens When an I-Reporter Gets Hurt?”:

Arguably the most stunning thing about Albarghouti’s footage is not what he was filming — it took repeated viewings to figure out exactly what it was that he captured — but the fact that he seemed to run toward the gunshots. We applaud — scratch that — we expect any cameraman worth his salt to move toward the action, but a grad student with no experience in these situations?

I will respectfully disagree with Fox’s take on this. There is plenty of news value in a firsthand, eyewitness account of a major news story. Just because Albarghouti wasn’t in the classroom doesn’t mean what he captured wasn’t news. He had sound and he had pictures of police moving in. We show pointless exteriors of buildings hours after a crime has taken place there. This was news video. McCleary’s point is more provocative. There will come a time when someone rushes to he scene of a tragedy to capture it on video and gets hurt. Does that mean we stop asking people to send in pictures? No. It means we - as you already hear - tell people to use common sense and not take risks. Mind you - If he were my kid, I’d scream at him. (And take away his cellphone…)

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 04:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

... good thing we're not squeamish.

Katrin Verclas of NTEN and MobileActive fame writes on the NTEN blog:

• Mobile phones should be used as part of an integrated campaign. As sexy as mobile marketing and campaigning is, it can’t yet stand by itself.
• Texting campaigns, especially with short codes on a professionally run platform, are still expensive and will not turn into ‘profit centers’ any time soon.

• Mobile phones are a great way to strengthen ties with your existing supporters and get immediate responses for urgent actions. For now these are the two most promising uses for mobile phones in campaigns, but I think it’s safe to say that we’ll see this broaden as mobile marketing takes off.
• Remember that most people still use their cell phone for calling. I know of commercial campaign that let people sign up by sending a text to an sms short code or by simply calling a number. Most people called the toll-free number. Similarly, campaigns asking people to call to take some sort of action have shown promise.
• Mobile messaging needs to have a clear call to action or valuable content. But what makes content valuable? Well after giving it some thought, I’d like to get the headlines from the NTEN blog, asthma and smog alerts from the American Lung Association, and traffic alerts from my town on my mobile phone, to name a few.
• Be creative. I am fascinated by SMS graffiti and public sms displays, and I’ve written about it over at MobileActive.org. Playing is ok - this is an emerging field where innovation is possible and much needed!
• Evaluate your work. If you are running a campaign or considering one, be in touch, share your results, and do not be shy to experiment. We are constantly on the lookout for good data to share (even anonymously).

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 06:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here are the figures from TVWeek:

The potential for social networking on phones is huge. MySpace, the biggest social networking site on the Web, now commands nearly 5 percent of all Internet visits. Audience measurement firm Hitwise reports that one of every 17 Internet visits is to a social networking site, with MySpace commanding 81 percent of those visits.

With 2.8 billion mobile phone users out there it's predicted that 2007 will see more people will accessing the internet via a mobile phone than via a PC. Huge potential for social networking on phones? You do the math.

What should be interesting is whether or not that translates into the widespread use of mobile social media.

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 08:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The 3GSM World Congress is happening in Barcelona this week, and the BBC is covering it.

They've also put together a list of some companies to keep track of in the coming year. Not surprisingly, there are a number of companies offering services for user generate content producers.

UK based, YoSpace has created See Me TV - sort of like a YouTube for mobile phones, but creators get paid each time their content is viewed.

Tocmag allows users to create "magazines" that can be downloaded to mobile phones. I haven't been able to see anything since my Treo 650 doesn't seem to be able to render the wml properly, but if anyone gets a chance to check it out, let me know how it is.

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 04:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6319439.stm

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 05:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

CAPITALIZING on the popularity of camera-equip cellphones, a consumer watchdog group on Monday appealed to the populace to lend their hand in ensuring a credible and honest election this May by taking photographs of any violation of election laws using their phones.
Read more at The Sun

In a country where political sms messages are a norm and are able to rally hundreds of thousands to the streets of Manila in an uprising against President Joseph Estrada in 2001. It will be interesting to see what 'evidence' comes to light.

Posted by Tina Gongsakdi at 06:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The UmNyango Project will use SMS technology for rural women and men to access information to and report incidences of violence against women and children, as well as violations of women¹s right to land. This initiative will be tested out in Dondotha, KwaDlangezwa, KwaGcwensa, Limehill and Muden, and if successful, will be rolled out on a wider scale. As well as using text messaging, the project will be enable women in these areas to produce their own radio programmes which will be made available to local radio stations, as well as being distributed over the internet as 'podcasts'.

The UmNyango Project was established by Fahamu, a pan African organisation based in Cape Town, Nairobi, Dakar and Oxford.

I am very curious to see what the outcome of this project will be and whether they will be successful in getting people to report HR violations using SMS. I remember having a call with Firoze Manji back when we were still thinking about the functionality of the Hub. Fahamu has definitely done alot of phone based advocacy and research work and had lots of very insightful feedback. I believe they are on our list of potential allies for the Hub.

Posted by Tina Gongsakdi at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There was an interesting article in today's New York Times about how important cellphones are in Iraq, not just for communication, but as a tool for self expression. Iraqis use their cellphones to pass around viral videos that poke fun at the Iraqi government, the US military, and energy shortages among other things.

Here's how cellphones are being used in a Human Rights context:

For human rights workers in Iraq, cellphones play a darker role. Omar al-Jabouri, who heads the human rights office for the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, said he often received pictures of men tortured or killed by death squads, many of them taken with the cellphones of witnesses or the victims’ relatives. At bombings, Iraqis are often seen recording the carnage in pictures or short videos.

Cellphone technology seems to be relatively affordable:

The prices the phones command are rather high for Iraq, of course. But with a booming aftermarket in cellphones, people can sell their old ones for nearly the original price and move up to a fancier model. Service is relatively cheap, with most people relying on $10 and $20 prepaid cards rather than the more expensive monthly plans.

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 02:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week, Bryan and I had a call with Erik Sundelof, a fellow of the Reuters Digital Vision Program at Stanford University in California. Erik had set up a test page for WITNESS on his inTheFieldOnline.net site. After a short registration process,users can send images, video and text straight from a cell phone. It was quite impressive although it was still a test site. Thefact that certain parts of the interface were not in English made things a tad confusing for non-swedish speaking folks. Erik had to cut the call short as "CNN" was on the line.

Anyways, here's an article about Erik's other project. Presumably this is what CNN was calling about....

Cell phones: A new tool in the war-zone blogosphere
Empowering technology also raises safety, credibility issues
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/08/01/newblogs/index.html

Although the immediacy of being able to send media through a cellphone is extremely attractive, it is currently one of the least secure ways to send information. Especially if you are registered in a system that stores your number. A group of ITP students (Freeformed.org) who are also working on a mobile uplaod project had the interesting idea of using a 'phone relay'. If you want to remain anonymous, you send your media to a relay which would then resend it without storing any of your data. Now if we can set up local relays...that would solve the long distance calls. Apparently it cost Bryan 30$ to send a video from his phone....

As for our test page. If any of you folks are travelling, we would love to get some test results from people abroad. Check out our test page at: http://www.inthefieldonline.net/witness/

Continue reading "Reporting from the Field" »

Posted by Tina Gongsakdi at 04:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Looking around to see what sort of things exist to help keep mobile uploading of video secure, I ran across this article from OhGizmo about a GSM phone that uses 1024 bit Diffie-Helman encryption. I don't know anything about encryption protocol, but it sure sounds impressive. While this phone doesn't protect the user's identity it is a step in the right direction as it protects data from being intercepted during transmission.

Here's a phone from Italy that attempts to hide the caller's identity through a combination of anonymous sim cards and changing the phones unique ID number (IMEI) each time a new sim card is used.

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 01:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)