Creating and sharing content using mobile phones

There are now many ways to create and share multimedia (videos, pictures and text) content from your mobile phone, either between phones or via the internet, and reach a broad audience.

Depending on the model of your phone, you can:

• Take photos or record videos to document events or provide evidence for advocacy work
• Record short interviews
• Share images with others via MMS
• Send text messages via SMS
• Send updates via the internet to micro-blogging sites, such as Twitter
• Upload content via the internet onto content-sharing sites, such as YouTube and Flickr, or onto Wordpress blogs

With mobile internet costs falling in some countries, mobile phones are increasingly being used to access the internet while on the move. Some mobile phone providers offer fixed monthly packages for internet use while others sell 'bundles' of mobile data.With a phone that has a wireless internet connection it is also possible to access the internet on your phone through free wireless 'hotspots'. NGOs can take advantage of this by creating specially adapted mobile versions of their websites. There are online services such as Wapple.net and MobiSiteGalore which can help you create mobile-friendly websites. To read a selection of case studies, showcasing a variety of innovative ways that mobile phones have been used by individuals and organisations, visit the Mobiles in-a-box website at http://mobiles.tacticaltech.org/taxonomy/term/4

Challenges

Updating a blog or website with content sent directly from your mobile phone often requires that you pay to sign up with a service outside your country; this means you may be charged the cost of an international message every time you use the service. You may need to connect your mobile phone to a computer to be able to download photos and videos and share them through the internet. The quality of video captured on most mobile phones remains low. Unless you or your organisation are prepared to invest heavily in a high-end mobile phone, the uses of video made on mobile phones may be quite limited. Sending MMS messages (i.e. image or video files from your mobile phone to another mobile phone or to a website) is still extremely expensive in most countries and it doesn't always work.