GOMOTEXT.COM - Mobile Marketing Solutions

‘Welcome to My Taxi - Let’s Do Business With My Cell Phone’

Roni — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:08:51 +0000

In cities across Africa, being an entrepreneur requires no office, business card or investors. All it takes is a cell phone, according to Adele Botha, a researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa.More than a convenience, cell phones have become a means of livelihood and information for people in rural communities across Africa. NGOs and researchers are studying their effects on rural communities.

Mobile phones have made deep strides into the African market in recent years, and are becoming important tools for helping rural and urban populations stay connected and promote business.

Kids Text Every 10 Minutes When They’re Awake

Roni — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:46:07 +0000

How long until schools are organizing D.A.R.E.-like anti-addiction programs to get kids off texting?

American kids under 18 send and receive roughly 2,800 texts per month, according to Nielsen, or about 93 per day. Assuming 7 hours of sleep per night, on average, that’s about 5.5 per hour spent awake, or one every 10 minutes or so. In the next two age brackets, text-message usage falls by more than half each.

But it’s people ages 18-24 who talk the most on their cellphones, according to Nielsen, averaging 981 minutes per month. These are probably the people most likely to not have landline phones, so this also makes sense.

Climbers rescued from Mont Blanc after text message alerts

Roni — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 19:29:52 +0000

Finn McCann and Tom Greenwood, both 23, spent the night in their sleeping bags 11,000ft up the Italian side of Mont Blanc in the Alps after being trapped by a storm on Wednesday.

However, they texted the friend in their home town of Shrewsbury, Shropshire, using a mobile phone that was rapidly losing its battery supply. They gave the friend details of their location and he then got in touch with the authorities. A rescue helicopter took them to safety.

The friends had earlier discovered that the emergency numbers they had keyed into their phones did not work and said they were ‘scared for their lives’.

Mr McCann and Mr Greenwood – who have both climbed the Alps, Himalayas and mountains in the Antarctic and were well-equipped – said they continued the climb up the south ridge using ropes. However, Mr Greenwood was suffering from a dislocated left shoulder. He added: “We were worried about hypothermia and with two bars of battery between us we were really panicking.”

Philippine doctors turn to mobile, web for artificial limbs donations

Roni — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:15:52 +0000

A group of Philippine doctors and health workers are fast-tracking their donations of free artificial limbs to poor and far-flung amputees with the help of a Philippine-made information technology that was developed for a telecommunication company, a local paper has reported.Doctors from the University of the Philippines – Philippine General Hospital (UP-PGH) have started to use a new program called Amputee Screening via CEllphone NeTworking (Ascent), which allows social workers to get data from beneficiaries who need prosthetics, then send the data they have gathered to doctors and to the manufacturers of prosthetics, Lyne Abanilla, executive director of Physicians for Peace (PFP) Philippines, told the Manila Times.

With the new IT program, PFP Philippines can extend its services to physical therapy and prosthetics care that are needed by their beneficiaries, said Abanilla.

Ascent was developed by the Ateneo (University) Java Wireless Competency Centre for Smart Communications Inc, the server of the country’s first-of-its kind mobile and web-based medical application.

A Tool for Activists Is Simplified for the Less Tech Savvy

Roni — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:35:36 +0000

Software that has been hailed as a powerful tool in response to crisis has become accessible for low-tech activists. Ushahidi, a technology which allows users to create maps from data drawn from messages from cellphones, news reports and the Web, is now available through a Web-based application called Crowdmap.

Ushahidi was built in the violent aftermath of the 2007 Kenyan elections, after a group of developers responded to a call for a platform that would allow people to post accounts of violence anonymously. (The name means testimony in Swahili.) The platform plots reports it receives on a map, drawing attention to individual accounts and giving an overall sense of the situation.

The platform has been used to track damage from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and to map election irregularities in Sudan. Perhaps its most notable moment followed January’s earthquake in Haiti. There, a number was established where people could send text messages with information about trapped earthquake victims. The calls were plotted on a map, which was then monitored by volunteers in the United States. The volunteers then relayed information about those in need of help to rescue workers on the ground.

English-Arabic Translations by SMS Offered in Jordan

Roni — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 01:45:20 +0000

Zain Jordan has launched an SMS language translation service for text from and into the Arabic and English languages. The translation software is being provided by Sakhr Software, who already provide internet based translations.

Offered for the first time in Jordan, Zain customers will benefit from the service by sending the text that needs translation to 93020. They will receive an immediate translation of the whole text, which would then appear as an SMS on their mobile phones at a cost of 10 piaster per message.

Zain’s Senior Data Manager Ziad Al Masri, said that this launch is a result of the increasing demand for the information services provided by the company. Al Masri added: “People today are required to gain knowledge of more than one language to meet all business needs that entail dealing with different nationalities.

Top picks for free smartphone apps

Roni — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:04:33 +0000

BlackBerry, Droid, iPhone — no matter which smartphone you have, it’s the apps, not the features, that make your phone unique.These little applications are customized programs that help run your life when you’re on the go. They can help you with everything from counting calories to checking Facebook to finding a good happy hour.

“Without my phone and apps, I certainly wouldn’t be able to do some of the things I do now, especially when it comes to travel and work,” said Microsoft employee Craig Parker while visiting Atlanta for a recent conference.

“Users love apps,” said Sascha Segan, lead mobile analyst for PCMag.com. “Apps are one of the things that propelled the iPhone to such success. You can customize your phone to do anything — it really is a little computer in your hand.”

Rape charges dropped after deleted messages recovered from iPhone

Roni — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:14:47 +0000

A MAN’S business and reputation are tainted, a young woman’s HSC and mental health are in tatters and prosecutors have been ordered to pay more than $30,000 in legal costs for a bungled rape investigation on Sydney’s northern beaches.

But it could have been worse still, if not for the trove of secrets stored in one of the world’s most popular mobile phones.

In what may be the first time an iPhone’s elephantine memory has saved someone accused of a serious crime, deleted data retrieved by a leading surveillance expert appears to have led to the dropping of five rape charges against a Sydney man.

Now You Can Bump iPhones to Connect on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

Roni — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:41:16 +0000

Bump, the app that makes it super simple to exchange information with other users by bumping phones, has just released Bump 2.0 [iTunes link] for the iPhone.

The app features an updated and refined interface plus the ability to compare calendars, instantly connect on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, and the ability to send messages back and forth without another Bump. Like its predecessor, Bump 2.0 is free.

Bump is a great app for people that travel in groups with lots of smartphone users because it makes it simple to transfer information without the need to pass out business cards. It’s easy to use; just open up the app and make the “bump” gesture with the device to share your contact information.

You can set up your contact profile in Bump by selecting your existing address book entry or by creating something brand new. You can then customize what information you want to include or exclude. We like that you can save multiple profiles, one of which you could use for, say, business contacts, and another for personal ones.

Orchestras Seek BFF by Cellphone Texts

Roni — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:28:41 +0000

Before the New York Philharmonic presented a concert in Central Park last week, the executive director of the orchestra had an announcement: Audience members could vote for an encore from the evening’s soloist by text message. The choices were a Chopin étude or, in honor of the guest musicians from the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, a traditional Chinese melody.

The Chinese melody won, and so did marketers for the soloist, the piano virtuoso Lang Lang. Voters swiftly received a reply offering a discount to “pre-order” his new CD set, “Live in Vienna,” and an invitation to follow him on Facebook.

The incident pointed to an increasingly common practice by orchestras: soliciting texts for marketing purposes, in what they consider a new way to connect with audiences.