I got a CD in the mail yesterday with the final report from the World Electronic Media Forum (WEMF III) that was held in Kuala Lumpur last December. I was invited to speak in a session on Role of ‘own-time media’/’any place media’ in the service of development. The session was chaired by Abdul Waheed Khan, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information and the panelists were: Lucy Hooberman, Innovation Executive, Research and Innovation, BBC Future Media and technology; Seema B. Nair, Project Leader UNESCO India; Bruce Girard, Expert in community radio and local media, Comunica; and Kristine Pearson, Chief Executive, Freeplay Foundation.
The session report and a few photos that were included on the CD are below, along with a link to the full WEMF III report.
Continue reading ‘World Electronic Media Forum - own time / any place media’
I wrote about about FrontlineSMS a few months ago. It’s a piece of software that turns a laptop and a mobile phone into a powerful system for sending and receiving SMS messages and that I think should be part of the essential digital toolkit for local and community radio. FrontlineSMS creator has just come out with a new version of the program, as well as a new website.
I haven’t tried the software (although I have requested it and we want to test it at a community radio station somewhere in Latin America) but Sanjana Hattotuwa gave it a pretty good grade in a blog post on mobileactive.org, although she questions whether it might be too complicated for some grassroots organisations and complained about compatibility problems with her Nokia 3110 (one that FrontlineSMS does NOT claim to support fully).
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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’
I got a CD in the mail yesterday with the final report from the World Electronic Media Forum (WEMF III) that was held in Kuala Lumpur last December. I was invited to speak in a session on Role of ‘own-time media’/’any place media’ in the service of development. The session was chaired by Abdul Waheed Khan, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information and the panelists were: Lucy Hooberman, Innovation Executive, Research and Innovation, BBC Future Media and technology; Seema B. Nair, Project Leader UNESCO India; Bruce Girard, Expert in community radio and local media, Comunica; and Kristine Pearson, Chief Executive, Freeplay Foundation.
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