Credit: SquareUp.com

TechCrunch reports that Square, the cell-phone based payment processor, is being used by at least two local political candidates to fundraise at events, as part of the service's beta rollout. (via Tech Republican) TechCrunch's commentators are appropriately skeptical. Aren't trend stories required by some higher power to have at least three examples? But since it's Friday, let's go ahead and indulge in a little harmless speculation about what the potential of Square might be in politics.

Having gotten a chance to play with an early version of Square, we can report that the whole process has been engineered, by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey, to be as easy as possible. The user experience is simple, for sure. But perhaps more importantly for Square users, Dorsey and his team have spent considerable energy streamlining the payment collector's experience on the backend, particular when it comes to engaging with a bank and payment processor. Think about the possibility of a candidate or advocacy group, just starting out, being able to carry a Square-enabled phone door-to-door, collecting small payments.

As TechCrunch notes, though, there's something hanging up Square's usage in campaign politics, and it's something that has also proven to be a hurdle in text-message fundraising too -- the ability to collecting donor information in the way the law requires. But TC reports that team Square is working on that:

[...] Dorsey says that they are releasing Square’s API to allow fundraisers to build additional applications on top of Square, where they could input all of the necessary data. Once this is enabled, Square will allows fundraisers to eliminate paper collection and payments all together.

Credit: iTunes Store

We noted on Friday that the Federal Communications Commission had released an official version of a web app designed to tell Americans just how fast and stable their broadband Internet connects are. Also worth noting is that there's now a mobile version of the FCC's Broadband Speed Test, too -- an iPhone app that uses your phone's built-in GPS capabilities to figure out where in the U.S. you are, and then tell just how robust your mobile Internet connection truly is.

If you're reading the tea leaves for policy clues, the FCC's iPhone Broadband Speed Test app is just one more reminder that this Federal Communications Commission intends to have its say over mobile broadband, not just the land-based stuff.

Credit:M+R Strategic Services

A new examination of text messaging data from six progressive non-profit organization finds that while their text messaging list grew by about half in 2009, only a tiny sliver of people who join a texting list -- just 2% -- do so by responding to a offline pleas to text a shortcode from their mobile phone. But, finds the study, once joined, those members can be responsive allies. Texters respond to requests to make an advocacy phone call at a rate some five times that of those folks who are called to action via email.

The report from M+R Strategic Services and MobileActive.org -- two firms working in the mobile space -- is called 2010 Nonprofit Text Messaging Benchmarks. The study examined the text message lists of the ASPCA, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the Humane Society, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Human Rights Campaign. The subtext of the report is that while much remains to be learned about what texting is good for and how it can best be harnessed to benefit organizing, early data can be plumbed for insights:

As the following pages will demonstrate, text messaging is especially well-suited for certain types of advocacy engagement, such as call-in alerts. At the same time, text messaging has substantial limitations. To start, the 160-character limit of a text message leaves little space to make a case for giving or taking action. Furthermore, in most cases, American mobile carriers charge both the sender and recipient for each text message. In terms of fundraising, it wasn’t until late 2007 that organizations could solicit donations from subscribers in the U.S., and even now supporters can only donate in amounts of $5 and $10.

By focusing on benchmarks, the report provides useful data that can help an organization determine whether their texting program measures up to other folks working in the field. Is your text unsubscribe rate, for example, above average, below average, or on par with some of your peers? You'll find out in the report.

Credit: iTunes Store

One step closer to the dream of canvassers everywhere to have a two-way, digital, portable voter file in their pocket is MiniVAN Touch, the just-released iPhone app version of the Voter Activation Network data program used to power a great deal of Democratic campaigns and the field organizing efforts of a wide range of progressive groups. The target audience: existing VAN clients, as it requires users to already have a way to log into the VAN.

"We definitely feel this has a broader audience than the Palm app it replaced," VAN new media director Mike Sager tells me, "because it is so easy to use and troubleshoot. We think lots of candidates themselves will carry the app when they go door to door."

Are we nearing the promise land of the paperless campaign? Perhaps not quite yet, but Sager says that the iPhone version of VAN can at least cut down on the vast amounts of time and effort that can get wasted during the course of a campaign's pounding of the pavement or working of a crowd. "The app is dramatically more efficient than walking with paper lists," says Sager, "as it eliminates all the follow up data entry -- press one button, and your contacts are recorded in VAN."

Credit: GreenWhiteOrange

A $200 router and $60 monthly wireless connection turns one Arizona school bus from a rowdy, sometimes threatening mess on wheels into a productive mobile study hall -- or at least a calm place to quietly play video games and mess around in GarageBand.

Similar thinking is behind the decision to set up WiFi in the House of Representatives.

Credit: BarackObama.com

At a fundraiser for low-dollar donors to the Democratic National Committee held in a DC hotel last night, President Obama fielded just four questions sent in by supporters through cell phone text messages or email, delivering policy-thick answers on his perspective of what needs to be done to pass health care reform (the gist: more vetting needs to be done), how government can help to grow small business (more lending), how we can keep America competitive in the future (more clean energy), and how the costs of higher education can be made more manageable (more loans and grants), in an event that had been billed by Organizing for America, in what was perhaps a bit of overpromise, as a "Conversation with the President." OFA Executive Director Mitch Stewart posed the questions to Obama at the tail end of an event that started about 20 past its scheduled 5:45pm EST start time, just after Obama wrapped up a speech to the crowd.

Leaving substance aside, performance-wise, aside from the event's Q&A-by-SMS twist what was perhaps most notable about the evening was just how fired up Obama seemed while delivering that speech. This Obama resembled more the candidate from the '08 campaign trail's most energetic days than the somewhat more staid president we've regularly seen over this past year. At one point, Obama just about yelled when admonishing the assembled crowd and those watching online to keep find, trumpeting, "Don't give up!" (Yes we can!, yelled someone in the crowd.) A passionate Obama continued. "The forces of the status quo might not give an inch," he said, "but we won't give an inch." Video of the full event is here.

Text BABY (English) or BEBE (Spanish) to 511411 and, under a project just announced by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (pdf), parents-to-be will get expert pregnancy and child-care advice from health authorities. Text4Baby is a program organized by the National Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Coalition, a group that includes not only the White House OSTP but dozens of local, state, and federal agencies; mobile phone carriers; universities; health-industry companies; and others:

“Text4baby is the first free mobile health service to be taken to scale in the United States,” said Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. Government. “We know that mobile phones hold tremendous potential to inform and empower individuals,” said Chopra. “Text4baby represents an extraordinary opportunity to expand the way we use our phones, to demonstrate the potential of mobile health technology, and make a real difference for moms and babies across the country.”

Chopra may well be right that this is the first time cell phones have been used in a big, big way in the U.S. to distributed health information. In some ways, though, we're playing catch-up; the rest of the world has been busy innovating in this space. For example, in South Africa, Project Masiluleke has been for years using cell phones to ping people with information on tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. A clever part of the Text4Baby approach is that people who sign up for the program will get customized health guidance specifically pegged to their baby's due date, pushed right to their pockets. New parents will continue to get the text messages for a year after the baby's birth.

After that, the kid's expected to get her own cell phone.

Those of those who remember the days back when the Zack Morris and his football-sized cell phone were cultural icons before they were the subjects of a Jimmy Fallon running gag might be most struck by one particular finding from Pew Internet & American Life Project's new report on social media and young people, ages 18-29: a full 93% of the so-called Millennial Generation in the U.S. personally own a mobile phone.

For those folks eager to connect with young people potential voters, the Pew report is chock full of useful insights. Blogging, for example, has held study amongst the fogey set -- 30+ -- since 2006, but has declined amongst teens, from 28% t0 14%. Younger people are more likely than their older peers to be on social networks, and the social site they're on is more likely to be MySpace (66% of younger people are on MySpace compared to 36% of over 30ers). Politicians ignoring MySpace are, it seems, not only letting class blindness get in the way, they're letting age-ism render them less effective.

As for Twitter? Just 8% of Internet users ages 12 to 17 tweet. But two-thirds of them text. Seriously, young people -- they love their mobile phones. Probably helps that they can fit them in their pockets.

Pity be upon you should you be the sort of person who has had a question for Barack Obama gnawing at your brain over the last several months, and yet you happened to be out traveling remote corners of the globe, underwater, or otherwise occupied for the last seven days. Following close on the heels of yesterday's chance to query the president through YouTube is a program from Organizing for America, the outgrowth of the Obama campaign, to text message in questions for the President. This "Conversation with the President" was itself announced through a text message from OFA that went out to at least part of the list last night. According to Organizing for America, Obama will answer some of the questions during a live session on BarackObama.com at 5:45pm EST this Thursday.

Obama is getting more practice this week in gazing into a live-streaming camera and responding to disembodied questions direct from the Internet than he's otherwise had over the first twelve months of his presidency.

Doing question-collection through text messages is pretty novel, but it does lack the transparency of doing it through something like Google Moderator. We won't know what questions people on the Organizing for America mobile list are putting to Obama unless they choose to make it public. It's an open-ended ask, so I'll be curious to see whether folks on the list ask general policy/political questions of the sort we saw during the YouTube session, or whether they instead home in on how the Obama grassroots operation has operated over its fairly embattled first year and where it might go from here.

W. David Stephenson is a government/enterprise 2.0 consultant, with particular interest in homeland security and disaster response.

Initial news out of Haiti after the earthquake came primarily through cellphones, gathered and disseminated by social media such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, and agencies such as the State Department have used Twitter and Facebook to spread news about the response. A survivor pulled from the rubble after 65 hours treated his serious injuries using a first aid app. on his iPhone .

As vital as these technologies’ critical role in sharing information is, there’s an equally important but less understood factor that no other communications medium offers: mobile devices plus social media  promote exactly the kind of ad hoc collaborative behavior that experts say is vital in disaster situations...