The UC Berkeley Human Rights Mobile Challenge Awards Announced at The Soul of the New Machine Conference

Berkeley, CA—The UC Berkeley Human Rights Mobile Challenge, an international competition to inspire new projects using mobile technologies to advance human rights research and prevent human rights abuses in real time throughout the world has named three winners. UCB Human Rights Center Executive Director Camille Crittenden announced the top three projects at the Soul of the New Machine Conference in Berkeley today. They are:

First Place

Guardian: Secure, Private, Anonymous Telephone
Google Android's open-source mobile telephony platform provides the foundation for a new type of phone that cloaks its user and their data, both on the device itself and as it communicates around the world.

Guardian Contacts
Jigme Tethong (Students for a Free Tibet) - lhadon@studentsforafreetibet.org
Nathan Freitas - nathan@freitas.net

Second Place

Freedom Fone
Freedom Fone is a free, open-source software tool that can be used to build a dial-up information service in any language. Its easy interface lowers the barriers to using Interactive Voice Response for outreach. It empowers non-technical organizations to build automated information services that are available to the public 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Freedom Fone Contact
Amanda Atwood amandlazw@gmail.com

Third Place

Digital Democracy's Handheld Human Rights
Handheld Human Rights empowers human rights groups based around Burma's borders to share critical infor ¬mation and document violations on a map to spur international advocacy. HHR uses SMS gateways to connect people reporting abuses to a web-based hub, efficiently leveraging the work of existing projects through a cen ¬tral communications point.

Digital Democracy Contacts

Mark Belinsky mbelinsky@dtwo.org
Emily Jacobi ejacobi@dtwo.org

All UCB Human Rights Mobile Challenge projects submissions can be viewed at: http://www.netsquared.org

Honorable Mention

Bug 4 Good

Background

Fifty new projects were submitted from 23 countries to the Mobile Challenge in a worldwide competition sponsored by our partners at NetSquared. The top ten were selected by an internet vote and the final three by panel of experts. The top three will receive awards of $5,000, $10,000, and $15,000, plus in kind technical support to develop their mobile projects. The top ten finalists presented their projects in The Soul of the New Machine, Human Rights, Technology and New Media Conference Exhibit Hall.

More information and webcast of Soul of the New Machine, Human Rights, Technology and New Media Conference at: http://newmachineconference.org