Freelance writing & editing
Posted by MelissaUlbricht on Jun 13, 2011. It is an unfortunate irony that often the poorest people pay the most for the lowest quality energy. In many areas, the rural poor pay as much as 5 USD per month for kerosene or battery power. SharedSolar is a project that attempts to develop the technology and business case to connect… Continue reading SharedSolar: Mobiles and Micro-Grids for More Efficient Energy
Posted by MelissaUlbricht on Sep 12, 2011. This year, Chinese company Huawei launched an $80 Android phone, the IDEOS, through Kenyan telecom Safaricom. According to sources, the phone has sold over 350,000 units in Kenya, “a staggering statistic considering nearly half of Kenya’s population lives on less than two dollars per day.” We thought it important to take a closer look… Continue reading The March of the Little Green Guy: $80 Android Phones in Developing Countries
Posted by MelissaUlbricht on Jul 06, 2010. In 2008, Bruce Girard concluded in a MobileActive.org guest post that the addition of text messaging technology into the community radio toolkit was still in its infancy. SMS use at radio stations was informal, he wrote, and the few cases of more complex use of SMS messages accompanied political crisis… Continue reading Mobile Tech in Community Radio: Still Ad-Hoc and One-Off
Posted by MelissaUlbricht on Mar 23, 2011. SMSall is a service in Pakistan that enables mailing-list style interaction over SMS. It serves over 2.1 million people, and an average of 300 million SMS messages are sent every month (follow the total SMS count on the website). It is Pakistan’s largest SMS social network. The founder of the service,… Continue reading SMSall: The Largest Group SMS Mailing List in Pakistan
Posted by MelissaUlbricht on Jan 09, 2011. Mobile-based projects for social change can be found in any issue area: mobile health, mobile money, initiatives that promote advocacy, citizen journalism, democratic participation, and economic livelihoods. While projects vary in scope, objectives, and platforms, one consistency between many successful projects is a good working relationship with the… Continue reading How to Work With Operators (Part One)
Posted by MelissaUlbricht on Dec 10, 2010. Nearly 1.6 billion people in the world live without access to electricity. This is a quarter of all humanity. At the same time, off-grid power stations from mobile towers often produce excess energy. A new initiative from the GSMA Development Fund in partnership with Lighting Africa, International Finance Corporation and World Bank, seeks… Continue reading Harnessing Off-Grid Power from Mobile Networks
