Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » mobile phones

EditorsWeblog: Emerging nations favour mobile internet access

Judith Townend — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:08:58 +0000

The Editors Weblog looks at an article from the Wall Street Journal which indicated that "mobile phones are the primary way of accessing the internet for people in 'emerging markets,' or those with poor fixed-line telecommunications." Countries, such as Indonesia, have many areas 'lacking high-speed cable broadband connections, DSL lines or even regular phone lines for dial-up service,' the Wall Street Journal reports.

NewsNow goes mobile

Laura Oliver — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:46:54 +0000

News aggregation site NewsNow, which includes articles from newspapers, magazines and TV news, has launched a mobile version, according to a press release.

The service, which runs using mobile browser Opera, aggregates around 200,000 articles a day, organising these into 2,500 subject-specific feeds.

Chairman of NewsNow Publishing, Struan Bartlett, describes the tool as a ‘killer app’ for mobile phones.

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Beeb development producer blogs his way to Russia

Judith Townend — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:31:24 +0000

BBC development producer Matthew Cashmore (about to leave his job for a new role at Lonely Planet) is chronicling his trip to Russia with two of this friends , using JTR video – they broadcast live from wherever they are every day at 19:00 BST from their mobile phones.

The player on the site allows followers to watch their progress, live or from previous uploads, and users can also follow their blog and podcasts.

The trip is described as ‘3 blokes, 3 bikes, 3 weeks’ and is in aid of the Everyman charity, which supports research into male cancer.

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Innovations in Journalism: Moblog – instant publishing on-the-fly

Laura Oliver — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:00:44 +0000

In our Innovations in Journalism series, Journalism.co.uk asks website and technology developers to pitch their projects to us. This time it’s Moblog and its mobile toolkit for blog publishing.

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
moblog:tech Ltd operates a community website, Moblog and a technology licensing firm.

Our team has been offering mobile blogging services since 2003, both to consumers wishing to blog from their phones; and to brands and businesses, who want to use mobile blogging as part of their marketing and promotional mix.

The service is a web and mobile service, so anything you post online is immediately accessible on your mobile as well.

Moblog as a platform is capable of instant publishing of content from in the field via voice (voice is converted to text and posted along with the original audio), MMS, SMS, email and via the web and mobile browser. This makes the service a perfect place to publish multimedia when it is time sensitive. This can happen direct to the picture desk behind a firewall or via RSS, it can be public and collaborative by allowing the public to post to your stream.

It is an exceedingly flexible system designed to bring web and mobile experiences together so that it no longer matters where you are publishing, reading or accessing the service.

The platform can be a complete install, such as Channel 4’s Big Art Mob (this is a build using our Participation Toolkit that we did for Channel 4); or can exist within Moblog itself as part of the network of moblogs. It can also be a standalone site in it’s own right such as the ‘Promotional Moblog’ for Dispatches.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
Journalists are facing perhaps the greatest upset to the model and means of reporting that has occurred since the advent of the printed page. New audiences and new ways of reporting the news are fast becoming the norm.

Blogging is a big part of this transformation. With mobile camera phones and mobile web becoming the norm, the ability to generate images and video from mobile devices, along with audio and text, and share in a well structured manner to web and mobile sites whilst in the field is another tool now available – not only to journalists, but also to the public.

We have seen some game-changing shifts happen in how content is created, shared and disseminated, and the role of the public in adding to newsgathering and creation.

A critical example of this was the first image that emerged from within the tube tragedy on 7/7/2005, captured by Adam Stacey, which was first published on Moblog. This image became one of the seminal images associated with the event. More than this, it helped to define the emerging trend of so called ‘Citizen Journalism’.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
The platform is feature rich and it’s difficult to describe the possibilities (visit this link for a listing of Moblog’s features).

It’s worth mentioning that all posts can be geolocated on an integrated map on each moblog and that all moblogs are highly customisable, as reflected in the Dispatches program example above.

The platform is constantly evolving and we have a development pipeline that includes an API and other features that will be useful to individuals and clients.

4) Why are you doing this?
We started the site for fun back in 2003, with a shared passion for all things mobile, and for bridging web and mobile. We remain focused on enabling individuals, groups and clients to engage audiences on web and mobile with instantaneous, wonderful and useful content generated from their mobile phones.

5) What does it cost to use it?
It’s free to use non-commercially at Moblog, and we operate a ‘freemium model’ so that people can subscribe at Moblog for more features. Commercially, our licenses are yearly and range from £3,000 for mobile blogging solutions such as our Promotional Moblog.

6) How will you make it pay?
Our client base at this time comes predominantly from the entertainment and third sector. We intend to expand our client base for the Participation Toolkit and Promotional Moblogs. Licensing fees from these mobile blogging platforms, coupled with advertising and subscriber revenues, is how we generate revenue.

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WAN 2008: Microsoft’s e-reader technology open to all publishers

Laura Oliver — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:33:42 +0000

Microsoft has opened up the technology behind the New York Times’ e-reader to all publishers.

The Times Reader format, which creates a digitised version of the paper browsable on or offline, is now freely available to publishers.

The system has already been implemented by some publishers, Michael Cooper, director of advanced reading technologies at Microsoft, told delegates at the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference.

“What took Microsoft and the New York Times 18 months to develop has been adopted by other publishers in less than six weeks,” he said.

The technology, Cooper said, will allow publishers to deliver content to a range of devices in one go.

The growth of the mobile internet will not eliminate the need for the e-reader technology, he added, because of the format and offline accessibility to news it offers.

However, the next stage of the technology will be to develop it for use on mobile phones.

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Nashua Telegraph experimenting with Qik

Laura Oliver — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:21:29 +0000

The Nashua Telegraph is experimenting with live video from mobile phones on its website using streaming service Qik.

The Telegraph is using the tool to stream footage from N95 handsets to provide behind-the-scenes coverage of its online food show, The Doorbell Gourmet.

Qik’s popularity with publishers seems to be growing – last month the Sacramento Bee used the service to create a broadcast channel for reporters to cover protests over the Olympic torch relay.

Here’s Journalism.co.uk’s interview with Qik founder Bhaskar Roy.

UPDATE - The Telegraph has posted its first ever breaking news coverage using Qik.

Live footage of a police evacuating residents was captured using mobiles and streamed to the site using the service.

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Innovations in Journalism – live streaming video from mobiles developed by Qik

Oliver Luft — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:09:14 +0000

We give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on. Today, it’s live video streamed over the web from mobile phones from Qik.

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
Hi. I’m Bhaskar Roy, co-founder of Qik.

Qik’s vision is to enable anyone with a camera-phone to stream live video from anywhere in the world to the web, TV, mobile phones, and gaming consoles.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
For news – immediacy of information is very important. Qik enables journalists to capture and report news live from wherever they are – without having to wait for the news truck to arrive.

It enables journalists to conduct better interviews by taking questions from anywhere in the world. It provides the ability for viewers on the web to send real-time chat messages to the person streaming the video straight to their phone enabling a high level of interactivity.

As a result journalists are able to conduct richer, better interviews. It also enables journalists to leverage anyone who may be at a particular event to capture the story for them.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
We are just getting started!

In our current invitation-only alpha release, users with Nokia smartphones can stream live video from their phones to anywhere on the web and playback their Qik videos from their phones.

We are working on addressing other smartphones and Java-enabled phones. We are also working on providing the ability to stream live from phone to phone.

4) Why are you doing this?
We truly believe that sharing and experiencing moments of your life with your friends, family and/or your world is invaluable.

5) What does it cost to use it?
We are currently in a free, invitation-only alpha stage.

6) How will you make it pay?
We are at a very early stage of bringing this innovation to market and focused on ensuring that we deliver high value to the billions of camera phone users globally.

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Innovations in Journalism – live geo-tagged video broadcast from Seero

Oliver Luft — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:00:23 +0000

We give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on. Today, live video streamed over the web with extra geographical information mapped in real-time from Seero.

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
Hello, I’m Justin Cutillo, co-founder of Seero. It’s a geo-broadcasting platform that fuses live and on-demand video with GPS mapping.

Our technology is a response to the convergence and proliferation of video and GPS features in the flourishing mobile device market.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
Seero was built to reflect the core needs of video bloggers and online journalist. The platform incorporates tools for live mobile broadcasting with additional real-time GPS tracking and static location marking.

We also have a geo-information/advertising server. This system allows us to geo-tag specific information to enhance any broadcasts near that location.

For example, if an online journalist was covering a fire in London, we have the ability to upload facts specific to the building and geo-tag them to the exact location. The information is served based on its proximity to the location of the broadcast.

All you need for mobile broadcasting is a laptop and a mobile broadband card. You can add on an inexpensive GPS receiver for the real-time tracking feature or use an Ultra Mobile PC is you don’t want to carry around a full laptop.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
We are currently working on some major build items. We should be releasing an embeddable flash player that includes the live video player and the full map functionality within a month. We are also working on a module to add course tracking to previously recorded videos.

Our largest project is to build a mobile broadcasting application for Symbian mobile phones to enable journalist to broadcast live video and GPS right from their Nokia phones.

Beyond that we have a secretive project that could really redefine how people interact with live video on the internet.

4) Why are you doing this?
When it comes down to it we are technology buffs. We came up with the idea on a vacation to San Francisco more than two years ago while thinking of ways to virtually tour a city.

Combining live video and location info opens up new, exciting uses for online video. Needless to say we are very enthusiastic about the prospects.

5) What does it cost to use it?
Besides the hardware cost, which may be very little if you already have a laptop, the service is completely free to all users.

6) How will you make it pay?
We currently envision three main channels of revenue. The first channel involves white label sites built on the Seero infrastructure for promotional as well as professional and government services.

The second channel is geo-advertising. We have a proprietary geo-advertising system that provides a simple and powerful solution for correlating advertising to site content.

Beyond those revenue streams we also see potential for our geo-advertising system as a stand-alone service.

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DNA 2008: CNN says no ‘mojos’ for five years

Laura Oliver — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:13:34 +0000

Laurel Chamberlain, director of digital media for news at Turner Media, told delegates at DNA 2008 that CNN would not be adapting its journalists or content for mobile phones in the near future.

Chamberlain, who was speaking in a panel discussion on the business of mobile news, said there was currently no need to use specially trained mobile journalists or alter content for mobile.

“There are always ways of looking at how we can condense what we put onto mobile, but at this stage I don’t think it’s necessary,” Chamberlain said.

“If people only want to read the first paragraph of a story that’s fine by me, but so far we’ve found they’re reading five or six pages of one story.”

In the UK the Manchester Evening News has been experimenting with mobile journalism, giving reporters Vodafone handsets to file news copy and pictures on the fly.

Reuters has also been conducting its own ‘mojo’ trials since last summer with reporters equipped with lightweight Nokia kits producing multimedia coverage from the US Presidential primaries and the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

But Chamberlain said such experiments were not being carried out at CNN: “I don’t think special mobile journalists are coming soon for CNN, maybe in another five years when we are only thinking about the mobile space.”

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Online Journalism India: Moblogging is citizen journalism in India

pramitsingh — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:56:18 +0000

This week’s guest is Pramit Singh, blogger on the Indian new media scene and founder of Bighow.com.

To put it bluntly, India is mobile mad. Indian citizen journalism may thrive across a range blog networks, photo and video sites but what singles it out and makes it unique is the proliferation of micro and mobile blogging sites.

As of January 2008, there were 241 million mobile phones in India and every month 7.8 million new mobiles are bought.

In contrast, the total number with fixed internet connections in India hovers around the ten million mark.

So sites like smsgupshup.com and Vakow.com that allow users to send 160 character group SMS messages are unbelievably popular ways of disseminating information. They are the proxy ’social’ news services, similar in many ways to Twitter. But where traditional news providers have got in on the act quickly with Twitter, in India keen amateurs are happy to pump out news across microblogging sites and set themselves up as news providers.

The Newsweb SMS group, with no obvious traditional news credentials, sends alerts of live cricket score, news, stock market and latest happenings in the entertainment world. There are 5451 subscribers to this group.

Another similar group, called just News, has nearly 12,000 subscribers.

Some journalists are in on the act. A reporter in North East India is offering breaking news from his small town on smsgupshup.com. A news site in the eastern State of Orissa is offering breaking news via the same site and is one of the largest being followed with over 26,000 subscribers.

Other players have jumped in to offer mobile blogging services. Besides smsgupshup and vakow, other players are ActivMobs, and MyToday MOBS.

Reliance Mobile, the second largest mobile service provider, offers mobile blogging to cater for users that want to exchange short messages and who, on-the-whole, are just as happy to get fast-action, bite-sized chunks of news for things like cricket and entertainment from non-professionals.

Despite the range of voices, languages and the obvious thirst for citizen journalism no large newspaper has yet opened up a unique platform take advantage of the potential for citizen journalists in India.

Big papers flash mobile numbers and email addresses where readers can send in stories but they take their interaction with the readers no further. Television, however, is really getting in on the act.

India has more national TV news channels than any country, including the United States. The bitter competition that has ensued means that the channels go to lengths to stand out.

As a result, TV News citizen journalists are having a good run in India. Two news channels, which have adopted citizen journalism in an especially big way, are CNN-IBN and IBN 7, two sister channels from the same parent company IBN. CNN-IBN is in English and IBN7 is in Hindi.

CNN-IBN also recently spun off a CNN-IBN Forum for student citizen journalists to video and moblog. We also saw BBC launch an initiative to find citizen journalist editors for its bbcurdu.com, which offers news in Urdu language.

Another TV channel, Amrita TV in South India has launched a 90-episode reality show focused on nurturing citizen journalists.

I have left till last the two big non-newspaper sites that have tried to accommodate this thirst for citizen journalism.

Merinews.com was India’s first large citizen journalism website. Instablogs.com, which has been around since October 2005, is similar. Like, Merinews it also pays contributors, but has better design.

I would say that though. I was the founding Managing Editor.

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