Crowdsourced Health Reports Make a Difference in Detroit

More and more, the way we talk about journalism is changing. Traditional print media are being joined by Google searches, whistle-blowing bloggers, and something near and dear to our hearts at Mobile Commons: crowdsourcing. The Columbia Journalism review touches on some of these new frontiers in an article called “Calling Dr. Crowd” about the ways crowdsourcing [...]

87,000 Phone Calls in 14 Hours Was Just the Beginning (A SOPA Press Roundup)

Last month, in opposition to the SOPA legislation, Tumblr worked with Mobile Commons to ask their users to take action. They used our mConnect click-to-call tool to directly connect over 87,000 people to their Congressional representatives. As Tumblr blogged, that translated into 1,293 hours of citizens talking to their representatives. Click here to see their [...]

Gizmodo: “It Just Got Incredibly Easy to Tell Congress that SOPA Sucks”

Over the past week, the Internet has been erupting with anti-SOPA advocacy. A number of organizations, including Tumblr, Google, Stack Overflow, Mozilla, and Creative Commons are working to get their users to petition Congress to vote against the bill. They’re using our click-to-call advocacy tool, which connects people directly to their Congressional representative Gizmodo just [...]

Jed Alpert on Reaching Underserved Communities

As part of their Digital Revolution and Democracy series, the Knight Foundation is posting videos that examine “the fast-moving trends transforming our lives.” Foundation vice president Dennis Scholl sat down with 17 people “who believe passionately in self-government — but have different visions of how it will evolve.” Click below to watch our CEO, Jed Alpert, on [...]

Text TEACHING to 30644 for Information about a New Scholarship

If you’re Latino and have a background in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM), it’s now $30,000 easier to get a Master’s degree in Education – thanks to a new scholarship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Hola! Arkansas reports, “It is estimated that by 2015, about 280,000 teachers in these fields will be [...]

Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice Uses Texts to Fights for Rights

The Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice is embroiled in a battle against Alabama’s HB 56 law – which a recent article from Worker’s World called “the harshest of the various state anti-immigrant laws.” The article goes on to explain, Among its 30 provisions, the bill makes it a crime to give a ride or provide shelter [...]

5 Tips to Remember for your Ladder of Engagement

Gloria Fong is one of Mobile Commons’ Account Managers, dedicated to helping our customers get the most out of mobile. On November 1st, she participated in a panel discussion at Salsa’s Community Conference. Here are some of the results of that panel. Earlier this month, at Salsa’s Community Conference in Washington, DC, I was fortunate [...]

Jim Colgan talks to Journalism.co.uk about Crowdsourced Maps and More

Hear our own Jim Colgan interviewed on Journalism.co.uk’s weekly media podcast, which they recorded while Jim was in London to speak to a crowd of like-minded digital pioneers at the Mozilla open web festival. Correspondent Sarah Marshall chats with Jim about two of Mobile Commons’ success stories: the recent earthquake preparedness map we created with [...]

Join Tumblr Now to Protect the Net

Today, Congress is holding hearings on two bills that could establish the first institutionalized censorship of the Internet. The Protect-IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are meant to fight foreign websites dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting. But in practice, they give corporations broad powers to shut down web content sites that [...]

Huffington Post Calls Mobile Donations “The Holy Grail” of Politics

As the 2012 election campaign heats up, candidates and political strategists are being confronted by a timeless question – where will the money come from? According to one recent article in the Huffington Post, more and more campaigns are answering that question with “mobile.” The article writes, Developing easy ways for people to donate to [...]