DudaMobile

DudaMobile has recently launched a new self-serve platform that allows existing website owners create a mobile version of their site by simply typing in the website’s URL. This is a simple and brilliant offering for small organisations, who haven’t got the time or resources to make sure their site is mobile friendly. The service includes a one-click website conversion, an auto sync between the main site and the mobile site, plus mobile-friendly features such as a click-to-call, maps and SMS widgets and even Google AdWords and mobile analytics.

Surprisingly there is a freemium service on the site that includes 10 pages and 500 MB of bandwidth. This service is ad supported so your charity might have to think about how appropriate corporate adverts would be to your mobile site. According to techcrunch the free version doesn’t include the aforementioned widgets, but for a simple and free way to optimise your website for mobile it’s definitely valuable. Professional sites are $9 (around £5.50 a month) and offer unlimited pages, a mobile URL and are add free. They also allow for more customisation.

Twitter photosharing for everyone

Twitter will now allow users to add images to their tweets. Users will now find a camera icon on the bottom of the “What’s Happening?” box on the official Twitter.com site. This is another hint at Twitter’s attempt to reign back control of the site from developers and improve its commercial offering as it renders sites like TwitPic worthless and keeps users on the main page.

Twitter third party developers are more anxious than ever as the social network is trying to become more commercial and bring back users onto official Twitter.com services.

Google+ face recognition hackers

We posted two weeks ago that Apple had announced that iOS5 will have moving images facial recognition built in and how it would affect the sector. Whilst we mused that this would be helpful for data capture and other abstract ideas, we jokingly warned about the privacy issues around it.

In light of the upsetting and inexcusable actions of some people on Monday night, a group of hackers called “London Riots Facial Recognition” was created on Google+ and it sparked controversy across the web. According to technology blogger Sarah Perez, the group was keen to bring looters from around the city to justice by using CCTV footage and ripping facial recognition APIs to find those responsible through their social networks.

Hacker, robhawkes, posted online “I just hate to see technology lying around doing nothing when it could genuinely help the situation. We have the data, we have the technology. Let’s put the two together and actually help the situation, rather than sitting around moaning.”

This is a rather scary vigilante mindset that is spreading across the web. If people were able to do this (illegally) it could incite a misuse of this technology and a genuinely worrying online trend. As much as everyone would like rioters to be brought to justice, where is the line? I want to know how seemingly easy it is for hackers to gain enormous amounts of personal information about people from a photo still and if it will hamper the legal use of this technology. Sarah sums up, “can you crowdsource justice?”

Visa NFC payments

We’re unashamadely excited about NFC (near field communication) technology, the natural successor to the QR code with heaps more potential including a payment platform where people can scan their smartphones to buy goods. Yesterday Visa pushed NFC payments closer to reality by announcing that it was going to accelerate the migration to EMV contact (think the Barclays advert with the man who waterslides home from work) and contactless chip technology. This is apparently to prepare US businesses for NFC-based mobile payments by having the infrastructure already in place.

We’re interested in NFC payments not only because we are a bit geeky about new technology, but also because any new payment method has potential to become a new donation method. Especially if it’s quick, easy and spontaneous.

And finally …

Water.org will hand over access to its 425,000 followers to the winner of a competition they have named ‘Twakeover’. Anyone can enter by following @water on Twitter and sending a short message on why they are right for the job.

The charity, whose core remit is empowering people to make change, will let the public vote on which entrant should win the competition.

In order to keep control of the project and to stop spamming, personal tangents or innappropriate content, all tweets will have to be sent to Water.org‘s Chief Community Officer, Mike McCamon before going live. While totally appropriate and understandable, I can’t help but cringe at the idea of getting every tweet approved by one person. Yes, it cuts out the danger, but also the freedom and the ability to have conversations in real time. But still, we’re interested in the idea and they’ve gained at least one follower curious to see how the takeover will go

Lucy J

We’d also love to commend the people who pulled together through Twitter this week using #riotcleanup and @riotcleanup, helping to mobalise groups of people to clean up the streets of places affected by the awful events of Monday night. The account gained a huge 87,000 followers in under 2 days. Personally, I think it would be lovely, as the account now has such a huge audience, if it continued to be a page that incited people to clean up communities even after all of the riot debris is cleared.

Tags: Apple, beautiful bytes, donation, donations, Facial Recognition, Fundraising, Google, Hackers, Hacking, mobile, mobile marketing, NFC, NFC Payments, technology, Twitter