W3C Seeks Partners to Explore Role of Mobile in Bridging Digital Divide

27 May 2008 -- Today W3C invites participation in a new group chartered to explore the potential of mobile technology to help bridge the digital divide. The Mobile Web For Social Development (MW4D) Interest Group will study the issues that rural communities and underprivileged populations face in accessing information and communication technology. The MW4D Interest Group provides an multidisciplinary forum for discussing these issues, and in doing so, contributes to the W3C mission of making the Web available to all.

Well, we might have one or two ideas on the topic:)

See also:
Workshop on the Role of Mobile Technologies in fostering social development: Paper Review

Graduates 'sms' in job l3tt3rs

University graduates are using text message abbreviations and gaming slang in their job applications, prompting alarmed employers and education institutions to run special courses in written communication.

But although many employers feel graduates are poorly trained in grammar and appropriate language, they do not want to confront universities because they want to keep good relations during the skills shortage, said Ben Reeves of the Australian Association of Graduate Employers.

[...] Annabelle Puddy, the national head of recruiting for Accenture, said it was a particular problem among students who had studied for a technical degree such as software engineering.

"We're absolutely dumbfounded at the amount of students who use very relaxed [language], as though they're communicating with their friends on text messaging or email, so everything's abbreviated in their applications," she said.

Very interesting and not supriseable to me. The blurring of the leisure-work boundary was initiated by companies themselves ("be flexible"). With the new generation it's a done deal and students with a technical degree are just the avantgarde what is yet to come for the mainstream.

In 2005 I wrote here:

As Mick Masnik notes, the boundaries between work/school and personal life will fall and the mobile device has a lot to do with it. The world we are coming from was one where physical space ruled our life – a place for home, a place for work, leisure spaces and in-between spaces. With the advent of the mobile phone, our life is no longer dependent on physical space and we can connect with others in whatever space we are.

Additonally in software engineering most students already have done projects for themselves and it becomes ever more difficult to say what kind of work is leisure and what is a job. Savvy individuals in this sector also feel that they have gained more power, especially when there is a skills shortage on the job market.

So I guess it's up to the companies to adjust as much as the employees. I predict however that in certain sectors companies will not have much choice.

Web on the Move - Landscapes of Mobile Social Media by Santtu Toivonen of VTT (PDF) (Technical Research Centre of Finland).

This report aims at providing a glance on how mobility, and along with it the important notion of context-awareness, has impact on social media. Moreover, the report seeks to analyze the potential business opportunities for mobile social media. The research was conducted in the form of expert interviews."

Via Forum Virium Naked

※ Local Copy of Web on the Move

The transcript Mob Rules: The Law of Fives and the Screencast from Mark Pesce

We live in increasingly interesting times. Half of humanity has suddenly dropped in (via cellphones) – uninvited and unannounced – crashing our private party, eager to participate in an exploration of the possibilities of human communication. Whatever they want, they’re going to get. That’s the way things work now. Fortunately, they want what we want: better lives for themselves and their families. How they get it – that’s in their hands. We can assist them, but they don’t really need our help. That mob will work it out for themselves. And in the process, everything will change for us, as well.

Mob Rules: The Law of Fives

1. The mob is everywhere.
2. The mob is faster, smarter and stronger than you are.
3. Advertising is a form of censorship.
4. The mob does not need a business model.
5. Make networks happen.

Somewhat related:
Putting people first - Experientia - Daily insights on user experience, experience design, and people-centered innovation

The post Nokia’s dilemma: operator friend or foe? is a great read and asks some hard questions.

The following passages I liked most. They also explain why it is so hard for "content" (and I would add marketing) companies to understand the mobile space. They have to think out of the box if they want to be players in that space.

Communication is king and presence is a prince

At Nokia’s own internal thought leadership conference in Helsinki nearly two years ago they had Andrew Odlyzko, mathematician and Internet philosopher, explain the future dynamics of the Internet and broadband. One central part of his thesis is that communication is king; content is secondary. When I take a photo of my kids at the zoo, and share it with my parents, that’s communication, not content.

Douglas Galbi (an FCC economist) takes the model one step further, with three basic modes of communication: presence (the sensuous sense of the other person being with you, as social bonding); storytelling (which includes the narrative of a game, the lyrics and emotions of a song, or the scenes of a movie); and pure information transfer (I want a taxi! What’s tomorrow’s weather?).

[...] Remember the day at the zoo? Nobody makes a satisfactory product yet for me to share the experience. It’s sure not MMS. I should be going round the zoo, snapping away, and each picture should become the new backdrop on both Nana and Grandad’s phones, as well as being downloaded to their digital picture frame at home. Yet who is going to integrate, retail and support such a product? Who will distribute it? Who do you depend on to embed 3G or WiMax or CDMA into each new connected appliance?

Stephen Wellman speaks about Google's mobile behaviour groups in Google Lays Out Its Mobile User Experience Strategy. Compare this with The problem with mobile social networks.

Understanding users, anywhere, anytime

Rechis said that Google breaks down mobile users into three behavior groups:

A. "Repetitive now"
B. "Bored now"
C. "Urgent now"

The "repetitive now" user is someone checking for the same piece of information over and over again, like checking the same stock quotes or weather. Google uses cookies to help cater to mobile users who check and recheck the same data points.

The "bored now" are users who have time on their hands. People on trains or waiting in airports or sitting in cafes. Mobile users in this behavior group look a lot more like casual Web surfers, but mobile phones don't offer the robust user input of a desktop, so the applications have to be tailored.

The "urgent now" is a request to find something specific fast, like the location of a bakery or directions to the airport. Since a lot of these questions are location-aware, Google tries to build location into the mobile versions of these queries.

Via Daren Twiss

PS: I just made a post with three QR Codes pointing to swiss services for the "Urgent Now".

Mimi Ito: Portable Objects in Three Global Cities: The Personalization of Urban Places

From the abstract:

The mobile phone has become the central node of the ensemble of portable objects that urbanites carry with them as they negotiate their way through information-rich global cities. This paper reports on a study conducted in Tokyo, Los Angeles, and London where we tracked young professionals’ use of the portable objects. By examining devices such as music players, credit cards, transit cards, keys, and ID cards in addition to mobile phones, this study seeks to understand how portable devices construct and support an individual’s institutions.

Our focus in this paper is not on the relational communication that has been the focus of most mobile communication studies, but rather on how portable devices mediate relationships to urban space and infrastructures. We identify three genres of presence in urban space that involve the combination of portable media devices, people, infrastructures, and locations: cocooning, camping, and footprinting. These place-making processes provide hints to how portable devices have reshaped the experience of space and time in global cities.

Via Nicolas' new blog at liftlab

Mobile Life 2012 by Younghee Jung from Nokia

Younghee Jung leads a multidisciplinary research team at Nokia called “Insight and Innovation.” She talks about what to expect next from your mobile phone, the newest ideas in the pipeline, and the questions that Nokia is asking women.

According to Younghee Jung, there will be a shift in the near future from getting connected to whom we are getting connected to and how and when we are getting connected.

Handbag designers should listen to the cellphone-handbag discussion from the workshop.

Via Bryan.

PS:
Presentation is also available as a podcast on iTunes

Video from Atelier Asie (BNP Parisbas. Read also the great articles which go with it.


Via imodOpen

PS:
And here is the QR Code to access their mobile site (asie.atelier.mobi):

Mobile Communication in Everyday Life - Ethnographic Views, Observations and Reflections
By: Joachim R. Höflich, Maren Hartmann (Eds.)
Frank & Timme, 2006
Table of Contents

Mobile Communication in Everyday Life takes a closer look at the mobile phone as an object of inquiry in the tradition of the so-called media ethnography. Consequently, the benefits and limitations of such research designs are the focus of the book. Some contributions focus on the tension between private and public communication, others on cultural dimensions.

Extract from Virpi Oksman's Mobile Visuality and Everyday Life in Finland: An Ethnographic Approach to Social Uses of Mobile Image

In recent years, as camera phones and digital cameras have become more common, sending visual messages has become increasingly easy. Visual communication is used most importantly between members of the immediate circle: MMS creates closeness between friends and family members and adds emotion to the communication; messages are often humorous and they function to maintain and enforce relationships and social bonds. Mobile visual communication has become one means of communication to complement the more traditional ways of keeping contact. For instance the news about the arrival of a baby or a new pet is delivered immediately through MMS, whereas before sending photographs in a letter was perhaps the most commonly used method.

[...] Photos are mailed only to intimates such as a lover, a spouse or a very close friend. Decisions about sending an image or what kind of a photo to send are made based on social relationships (Okabe, 2004:10). Van House identified four traditional uses of photos:

• constructing a personal
• and group memory;
• creating and maintaining relationships; and
• self-presentation. On the basis of camera phone studies, a fifth category was also identified:
• functional images.

From their data, the researchers concluded that camera phone use encourages experimentation with a more expressive use of images (Van House, 2004:3). Kindberg et al. (2005:46) observed in their study that the most common reason for capturing a mobile image was to enrich mutual experience by sharing an image with those who were co-present at the time.

Authors with Websites/Blogs:
Lee Humphreys
Mimi Ito
Bella Ellwood-Clayton
Richard Ling
Santiago Lorente
Richard Harper
Steve Hodges
Friedrich Krotz