UNESCO and Jamaica’s Container Project have launched a community multimedia centre (CMC) constructed in a wheeled garbage bin. The bin houses laptop computers, a radio transmitter, wireless internet and other peripherals. The bin will travel around Jamaica and be used to give creative multimedia workshops to inner-city, rural and otherwise marginalised communities.
The Container Project is an innovative, arts-driven engine for community empowerment through creativity. It is based in a bright yellow converted shipping container in the heart of Palmers Cross, a rural community noted for its poverty and associated social problems.
Continue reading ‘Mobile community multimedia in a trash bin’
More and more telephones come with built-in FM receivers but a new twist (at least for me) is Nokia’s Internet Radio Beta. It is software that you can install on certain Nokia phones in order to listen to streaming internet radio stations on your phone using whatever connection you have available. If you have a wifi connection at home or at a public access point, you can listen for free. If you don’t, you can also listen via GPRS or 3G.
Continue reading ‘Internet Radio on your telephone’
There is not much information on the site, but Dialup Radio claims to have been specifically designed for use by human rights activists in the deveoping world, with particular attention to security and keeping costs down. From the brief description, I think it could also be used as an alternative distribution method for radio news where stations don’t have access to the internet, but do have a telephone. They would simply call the (open source Asterisk) tepehony server and “order” news from a menu of options.
“Dialup Radio is a tool that distributes human rights and independent media via telephone. Brief radio-style audio files are uploaded and managed via the Dialup Radio website. These files are immediately available to callers who phone the project phone number. Our software automatically generates interactive voice response (IVR) menus that enable callers to naviage audio content using their telephone keypads. Dialup radio works with any telephone, and can be adopted for a variety of activist campaigns.”
Continue reading ‘Dialup Radio’
Ben Grubb sent me an article he wrote about the eTUKTUK for an upcoming issue of the Telecentre Magazine, published by telecentre.org. I won’t steal anyone’s thunder by posting it here, but he also included some interesting links to online videos. A tuk-tuk is a motorised rickshaw or three-wheeled motorcycle, a popular form of transport in much of South and South East Asia. An eTUKTUK is (you guessed it) a tuktuk equipped with a computer and an internet connection, and Kothmale Community Radio’s eTUKTUK which is not only a mobile telecentre but also a mobile radio station (with it’s own low-power transmitter) and a remote broadcasting unit that send a signal via its CDMA connection back to Kotmale’s main transmitter for rebroadcast throughout the region.
Continue reading ‘eTUKTUK - taking Kothmale a little further’
RSS Posts 