Global Mobile

So there are 2.7 billions mobile phone users and "messaging is the biggest app on the planet". Alan Moore and Tomi T Ahonen try to put it into perspective in their detailed post:

• 800 million cars
  
• 1.3 billion land line telephones
  
• 1.5 billion tvs
  
• 1.4 billion credit cards
  
• 850 million pcs
  
• 1.1 billion people on the internet
• 2.7 billion mobile phone users
  

He goes into these in-depth, but the sheer numbers speak volumes about where we are and where we're going. I expect the PC number will increase to over a billion once the lower cost pcs are produced. Nicholas Negroponte's project, One Laptop Per Child, or at least one of his competitors, will hopefully create exponential growth in the developing world.

But that's certainly not the point here. Mobile is the most profound technological achievement in terms of communication that we've ever known. And once the newer devices - the convergent devices, have proliferated, it's a whole new ballgame. How will we distinguish between a PC and a phone?

MobileActive.org

Kudos to Katrin Verclas and others on this site - focused on mobile phones for civic engagement. MobileActive delves deeply into what is being accomplished on this platform globally - the least of which is in this country, but that will soon change...

Second Life

So, there has been much debate on whether Second Life has a sustainable future. Marc Sirkin has weighed in on the subject, as has Clay Shirkey , and true, the sheer numbers may not be truly telling the whole story. It took me about 2 years to take it seriously myself, but now we are finally moving forward. Here's where I think the future lies for this: the integration between web site and deep link into second life. For now, the barrier is too great - you need to download a file, create your avatar, and figure out how to navigate. But once SL becomes more ubiquitous, that transition could be almost seemless.

Imagine for instance, that you are shopping for a house. You look on one of the real estate sites but want to take a closer look. You are teleported into the house itself - you can walk upstairs check out the closets - everything. Much less time and effort than making an appt and physically showing up. You don't have to see ugly furniture either!

That's where the value is for me, we just have to wait for the usability to catch up. It's a bit too techy for the average user, and I personally have felt the bugs each time I go in, but whether it is Second Life or some other virtual world - or tool, we'll be seeing more of it.

Sirkin is at it again. But I LOVE it!

npMarketing Blog: Convio Buys GetActive (and Kintera sends out an e-mail)

Going to vs. Pulling in your audience

I have been a big believer of late of finding your audience where they live. How can you fight with the sheer volume of some of the social networking sites like myspace or facebook? But, in some cases, the right place really doesn't exist. We are struggling with that now, and I think we might contradict my recommendation. The difference to me and the reason we built Share Your Story, is that you would build a space around a common interest, whereas the other social networking sites are built around individuals who you may or may not be connected to. There were no great sites for parents of preemies when we started Share so it was easy to justify. The other argument for "owning" the space is the safety and trust issue. When our name is on it, they know it is not for commercial purposes and we can protect the community. That's important to the members and a reason for coming back.

iPhone

Just when you htought it was safe to develop for SMS or .mobi platforms, Steve Jobs does it agin - he redefines convergence and we are right back where we started...

Change This

Another great site for challenging ideas - this one complete with manifestos:
Change This

Second Life

Ok - I finally went for it, inspired by the Alzheimer's association. Man, it is time consuming and a little scary. But there are 2 million members at this point and there were about 16,000 people live during my session. I must admit, I didn't get too far - I was overwhelmed by selecting my avatar's wardrobe and her "look" - I couldn't find the right pair of jeans, which is, I suppose a reflection of reality. Other stories from the MOD office: Rob found himself in a nigh club dancing and he couldn't turn it off - he is still dancing in limbo in Second Life. Susan found herself "naked" on an "island" and couldn't figure out how to geet dressed again. I'm so curious about certain things - is there crime? Where does your avatar hand out when you aren't there? And why isn't there an SNL skit on this?

Time Magazine Person of the Year

They chose it, and it's perfect.

You

Using Yahoo! Answers for public dialogue

Another one that I find fascinating... The creator of Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus, who was just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, posts a question on Yahoo Answers:

How can you help to create a poverty-free world?

Over 4700 people have responded - how is that for a town hall meeting?

Time Magazine Person of the Year Gets Real Voices

I love this. Time Magazine asks for videos of nominations for people of the year 2006 and this guy nominates the creators of youTube. "dejuan" , as far as I'm concerned, explains why YouTube is so popular perfectly.

Bits and Pieces
It seems that in our short-attention span society, there is a growing trend for pushing little solutions to little problems. Yahoo answers, Google answers, and Amazon's Mechanical Turk are all addressing this from a research perspective. Odesk and others are tapping into temporary programmers. It's a great way to have fluctuating on-demand resources and get little things done when you need them. And from the freelancer's perspective, this is the establishment of a new kind of workforce - blind, geopgraphically distributed, and you can take what work you want, do it in your pjs, and leave time to surf...

Ning

The evolution of social networking tools has arrived. Ning is a social networking platform in a box - plug and play. It's a great concept. And given that Marc Andreesen is involved, its got to be pretty sophisticated. Perfect for the non-profit sector - sleek and cheap. Let's see where it goes....

online fundraising tools

The age of the "build your own flat web page" is over - how do we give people their "my spaces" inside our events? And how 'bout layering in social networking? Imagine... you are at a walk and you find people who are on another team, but live in your neighborhood and have children the same age. Walk as a networking event...

WEB 2.0

I 'm blogging about this at the most apt venue, the Web 2.0 Summit in San Fancisco. It's a rather impressive group of speakers and people, still trying to out-cool eachother , evidenced by the very cool Google lounge and the Lou Reed concert sponsored by AOL. But hey, this thing costs a LOT so i'll take it.

The non-profit sector is pretty much not represented here, either because of the cost or the exclusive invitation process (I had to write an essay to get an invite), and thus people look at my badge with surprise. What can a "charity" possibly learn here? Of course, I explain that we, like all for-profit companies, are dealing with the same issues - how to be relevant in this world of social networking, user-generated content, and web services. Ironically, due mostly to ACS' innovation group, many of the big NVHAs have been talking about this stuff for almost 2 years now. Many of us have used wikis, have dynamic communities, pages on myspace, videos on youtube and photos on flickr. In fact, we just released our "Be a Coinstar" contest (http://www.marchofdimes.com/pad/contest.aspx), where we use a flickr API to pull in photos and people vote on our site. Every day at 3pm, the most popular photo gets published to the top spot. Not only is it user-contributed, it is user organized.

.Mobi Land Rush

We rushed. We bought what we could and we know what we'd love to buy at auction, if we can, but we have no idea how to use it or whether the domain will eventually mean anything to anyone. At the Online Communities Conference, we debated the "why" of .mobi as opposed to short codes. My argument is ... well... it's free vs. cost the the consumer - at least right now.

The next question we'll need to answer is whether we actually build a seperate plaform or just interpret where people are coming from as they enter the .com domain. We have no idea, but we know we need to figure it out. If someone can get content or donate from their cell phone or blackberry, why not?

I started this over a year ago on a different blog. I need to move the posts over...coming soon