Often the methods available to us of ‘helping’ those in the developing world is limited to donating to charities, often large organisations where it is difficult to feel that our contributions are making a difference at a grass roots level.

But there are organisations out there who are harnessing the power of social media, social networking, and crowd sourcing to make a real difference to people’s lives in the developing world, while enabling us in the developed world to really see the difference we can make by ‘giving’ in a non-traditional sense.

Give Now
A new iphone app was released this morning which allows users to help refugees get paid for completing small pieces of work.

The app has been developed by Samasource, an organisation which aims to empower people in developing nations by providing access to paid (often digital-based) work, and CrowdFlower, which connects companies to a crowd sourced workforce. The system benefits workers who are paid for completing small ad hoc tasks, and organisations who can outsource tasks to an unlimited workforce as needs arise.

The Give Work app works on the principle that a few minutes of your time, and a few minutes of time spent by a refugee in a camp in Dadaab, Kenya, means that the refugee is paid for that work. The Give Work app supports these refugees by asking you to complete some short on-screen tasks on the iPhone, which refugees in Kenya are also being trained to complete. This ensures quality assurance for the companies paying for the tasks to be completed, and thus payment for the workers in Kenya. Although the payment amount is small to the western world, to refugees who receive the payment it is a vital source of income.

The app is available to download from the iTunes store right now –it would be great if after you read this you go and get the app and let us know what you think. Its free and wont take more than a few minutes, so do it!

Kiva
Kiva is effectively a crowd sourced micro-financed organisation that supports entrepreneurs in the developing world – lenders are individuals who provide a small loan of about $25 US which you can choose to lend to a goat farmer in Turkmenistan or a fruit-seller in Peru.

The amount of money an entrepreneur needs to borrow is gradually provided by a number of lenders, and the loan is always repaid, and the lender then has the choice of withdrawing the loan or re-investing in another entrepreneur.

Most lenders choose to re-invest the loan, so the initial gift just keeps on giving!

Jolkona
Jolkona aims to address the need for individuals to feel connected to those that their donations will be helping – it allows donors to select small projects individually, and to track the impact their donation is having by directly connecting them to organisations on the ground who make use of the donation.

For example, $100 US can rescue a young girl in Nepal from slavery – Jolkona has partnered with a grass roots organisation in Nepal who use the donation to rescue a child, and then send the donor a picture of the child who has been rescued so the donor feels the direct impact of their action. It is hugely motivating for many people to see the huge impact on real lives of even small amounts of donated money.

It is amazing that small actions taken by individuals can have such a large impact on those who most need the support. And when the power of digital and social media is used by innovators who see the potential to do great things with the technology, amazing things can happen!

If there are any other such initiatives that you know of, we’d love to hear your comments below.

Related links:
http://mashable.com/2009/10/13/give-work-iphone/
http://www.samasource.org/iphone/
http://crowdflower.com/
http://www.kiva.org/
http://www.jolkona.org/

Su Debnath, Account Director

Labels: iPhone, Social media

Google Mobile App for iPhone, now with voice recognition

Here are five reason’s why the iPhone trumps the Blackberry:

1. Touch screen – the interaction on the iPhone is totally awesome, and it’s all thanks to the fantastic touch screen, you can type super fast once you get used to it and the pinch, scroll, zoom stuff is simply brilliant


2. Operating System – the iPhone OSX is basically a mini version of the Mac operating system, the best OS in the world


3. Multimedia – the iPhone is a truly multimedia experience, sync with iTunes and get music, video and podcasting joy, but the real gem is the App store, stay tuned for the updated Google Mobile App with voice recognition


4. Browsing – you can pretty much access any Web site as you would on a desktop computer, but more importantly many companies are optimising their sites for the iPhone because it’s the first decent mobile browsing experience


5. Cool factor – let’s face it, the iPhone look and feel is second to none, it’s a truly beautiful device


6. Bonus – Enterprise integration, ok so the iPhone may not offer as many features as the Blackberry for Enterprise, but unless you’re a door to door salesperson, who needs all that additional functionality anyway!

Carl Panczak, General Manager Sydney

Labels: iPhone, Mobile, Web Apps

Yes, it’s another iPhone post.


The Apple site has a directory of iPhone web apps, but it's full of toys and games. It's difficult to find the useful web apps.

So this post is a list of good web sites that leverage web functionality, and tailor the interface for the iPhone:

News & Feeds

Google Reader
http://www.google.com/reader/i
A great way to read multiple feeds rather than bookmarking many different blogs and reading each separately.

Ninemsn
http://m.ninemsn.com.au

News
http://iphone.news.com.au

Google News Australia
http://www.google.com.au/m/news

Reuters mobile
http://us.mobile.reuters.com

Yahoo
http://au.m.yahoo.com

Zdnet
http://m.zdnet.com.au

The Age
http://m.gfg.theage.com.au/HomePage.aspx

Engadget (thanks Damien)
http://i.engadget.com

Social

Facebook
http://iphone.facebook.com
Yes, we’ve talked about this before. I think the iPhone app is better, but the web app was the first.

Twitter mobile
http://m.twitter.com

LinkedIn
https://m.linkedin.com

Tools

digg
http://m.digg.com

Google Translator
http://translate.google.com

Wikipedia
http://wikipedia.comoki.com

Other Google stuff
http://www.google.com.au/m/products/

Banking

ANZ
http://www.anz.com
ANZ bank have been advertising their iPhone friendly site, which includes personal banking features.

Commsec
http://commsec.com.au/iphone
I haven't got an account to test this.

Bank of America
https://www.bankofamerica.com/mobile
Has some nice location based stuff that gets picked up by the iphone mapping.

Property

Domain
http://m.domain.com.au
The header could be smaller, but the functionality is nice.

Transport & Flight Information

Qantas
http://www.qantas.com/mobile
Check flight times. No e-commerce.

Public Transport
http://iphone.itransit.com.au
Tram and train times. Bookmark this if you use public transport.  You can add shortcuts to your popular stops on your homescreen.

Fashion

Chloé
http://www.chloe.com
Nice site for the women's fashion label.

Local Information

Docoloco
http://www.docoloco.com/iphone

Australian Weather
http://i.ozpda.com/ozweather/

Google Movie times
http://www.google.com.au/movies
Not really optimised for iPhone but still very cool.

Magazine

Womans Day
http://apps.womansday.com/womansday_iphone

Cleo
http://cleomobile.ninemsn.com.au/mobile

To Be Categorised

Bright Kite
http://i.brightkite.com
Ah, not really sure what this is good for yet, but I know it’s cool

Get Leaflets
http://app.getleaflets.com

Thanks to Carl, Dan and Damien for sending through some great links.

Post comments with your favourite web app URLs, and I'll add them to the list.


Matt Watson, Technical Director

Labels: iPhone, Technology, Web App