This post was authored by Ariel Gilbert-Knight, Technology Analyst for TechSoup, and originally appeared on The TechSoup Blog.

I'm very excited to introduce a new Microsoft-funded project we're working on here at TechSoup, called "App It Up." Apps can be very helpful tools: they can help engage and inform constituents, tell your organization's story, and improve your internal workflows. However, many nonprofits and libraries aren't using apps, for various reasons. The App It Up project is here to help, by identifying - and even creating - apps specifically for nonprofits and libraries.

In the past couple of days, I have had the great pleasure of having post-N2Y4 conversations with John Zoltner (a project representative from DatAgro) and Emily Jacobi (a project representative from Digital Democracy's Handheld Human Rights).

My project can strongly help population in Africa with very low literacy (not able to use sms which requires knowing to read and write) by combining the voice associated to icons, the text(for those who are literate)  to do business, access market in cities...

Hi all. This is Ben Rigby from Mobile Voter. We’ve submitted the “Volunteer Now – by mobile phone” project to this year’s Mashup Challenge. I’m pretty blown away by all of the support that has come to this project already via the Net2 website – and we’re not even at the conference yet. We’ve already found coders, strategists, volunteer coordinators, and even a specialist in mobile phone volunteerism (would you have believed there was one out there?).

Hello again from Swaziland.  I wanted to clarify a bit about my previous posts....I am the founder of YouthAssets, and organization dedicated to connecting orphans, particularly those of child-headed households to the information and resources that they need.  We are exploring the use of mobile phones to provide access to support systems and information that is valuable to them.

I just attended a 3-day conference with southern African leaders working to support orphans and vulnerable children - the conference was to develop sustainable strategies to help with the orphan crisis here.  Although no mention was made specifically of ICT tools used currently, the delegates defined a GREAT need for collaboration, information sharing, data collection, and instant communication.

To do with the price of fish

May 10th 2007 From The Economist print edition

How do mobile phones promote economic growth? A new paper provides a vivid example.