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News filed on the spot - thumbs permitting

Posted: 06/05/04 By: Jemima Kiss
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The possibilities of reporting by mobile phone are being fully explored by Norwegian journalist Øyvind Woie, who is planning his second MMS reporting project later this year.

Mr Woie writes for Oslo-based newspaper Vårt Land and is keen to promote the possibilities of reporting by MMS - multimedia messaging - because it allows journalists to publish online instantly and unobtrusively.

In March, Mr Woie's first MMS reporting project was posted from the CeBIT technology convention in Germany. He edited the text and directly posted images and text reports to the Vårt Land website.

The structure of the report was determined by an 'MMS dogma' devised by Mr Woie. This dictated that each text posting would be limited to 160 characters - the length of a standard Norwegian SMS message.

"My thumbs hurt! They were sore and swollen after typing 32 small reports on that phone," he told dotJournalism.

"But it was easy and as soon as it was posted I could move on. The equipment is also very light and anonymous."

Norway has extremely high mobile phone use; 86 per cent of the overall population and 100 per cent of 16 to 19 year olds have a mobile phone, according to recent research by Norway's national statistics office.

Mr Woie's next project will be to report from a large Norwegian music festival this summer, using a camera phone to post pictures and text to a web gallery.

Although sending reports from a laptop through a mobile phone is quite common in Norway, some publishers are still sceptical about new technology, said Mr Woie.

"Some of them still cannot use e-mail and 'SMS' is unknown.

"But if the publisher sees that it can save money, it is willing to do anything."

As mobile reporting technology becomes more common, traditional note-taking reporting will become a thing of the past, says Mr Woie.

"Journalists must be able to produce pictures, video, audio and web copy as well as use mobile technology and create stories and news for new broadband mobile media," he said.

"Readers don't read, listen and watch the news from the sofa anymore - the mobile phone makes it possible to read Norwegian news in Mombassa or be get entertainment on top of the Himalayas."

• Some of the technology previewed at the CeBIT conference could offer solutions for mobile reporters with sore thumbs: Siemens has developed a phone which projects a keyboard onto any surface using a laser. It is also launching 'Penphone' which is used as a normal pen but translates words into SMS and email messages.

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http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story814.shtml
http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story783.shtml
http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story572.shtml

See also:
http://www.vl.no/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200440319005
http://www.cebit.de/homepage_e?x=1
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=64868
http://www.smartmobs.com/archives/002910.html