I'm a strong proponent of tools that empower individuals and groups. This includes Facebook and Twitter, both made viral by the real-time, always-on, hyperlocal, globally connected smartphone.  

So, naturally, I tend to side with those that say: of course Facebook and Twitter are aiding -- possibly enabling -- the massive protests that have been ongoing in the Middle East these past several months! How can you possibly say otherwise! Look at the feet on the street! See those crowds!

I only wish these same people, so smug, so quick to offer "proof" of their self-ordained rightness would show their faces now. Because Twitter and Facebook and Android phones and iPhones are still with us.

While another hundred Syrian protestors got shot down this weekend.

Via MobileActive:

Armed with a few Kodak Zi8 cameras, 6 HTC Wildfire mobile phones, energy, expertise in training citizen journalists, Small World News is working to share stories from Libya with the larger world.

Small World News is on the ground in Benghazi training Libyans to capture and tell video stories of events in this volatile region. Along the way, the team has also captured footage that no other main stream media outlet has been able to get. 

Small World News is a documentary and new media company that provides tools to journalists and citizens around the world to tell stories about their lives.  For communication purposes, mobiles “have not turned out to be particularly useful at this point,” Conley said. He and his partner originally brought 6 HTC Wildfire phones, but were not able to set 3 of them up. Text messaging is “totally disconnected” in the area, the networks have been “up and down” and there is no GPRS service. But people, especially journalists, have been using Nokia E72 and similar phones to capture footage.

Update: On Thursday, Conley reported that all mobile networks were down. Previously, they had a signal, but calls would not go through. Now, there is no signal at all.

Conley notes the important role mobile phones play in collecting and sharing video, especially over bluetooth. “That’s a prime way that we have been viewing videos from locals,” he said. “There is a big role for mobiles in media production and distribution, just not in terms of communication right now.” For now, on-the-ground communication seems best conducted person to person and via individual training.

[BRIAN: You probably do not want to watch the embedded video. I mean that.]

This guy takes a while to get to the point but I thought this was amazingly clever. A text message campaign, at essentially no cost, helping to get the word out about HIV and AIDS. In a country significantly impacted by HIV, with numerous pockets of extreme poverty, and an embrace of mobile phone texting. The awareness campaign messages ride along the 'white space' of many of the texts that South Africans send out everyday.

Wired reviews the official reasons why US federal courts typically do not allow smartphones on (or in use) during proceedings. Mostly, terrorism, but also other reasons, some of which suggest the smartphone is a great tool for journalism. As you already know.

Reasons above and beyond terrorism to restrict the devices from courthouses include the secret filming, recording or transmitting of court proceedings; the disruption of court proceedings; and that deliberating jurors might access the internet and research the case, the report said.

Considerations in favor of allowing the mobile phones in the courthouse are, in part, that they are essential to the practice of law, and they could allow the press to transmit the news if approved by the sitting judge, according to the paper.

The paper highlights dramatically different smartphone policies in courthouses across the country, but does not list them by name.

Still, the law prohibits taking photographs in federal trial courts or streaming live hearings.

Even with the advance of the mobile device, it doesn’t look like courtroom stills or streams will be allowed anytime soon despite our always-on society. That’s because many courts don’t even allow any internet use inside a courtroom.

The reason surrounds defining the term “broadcasting,” which is not allowed according to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 53.

“The contemporaneous transmission of electronic messages from the courtroom describing trial proceedings, and the dissemination of those messages in a manner such that they are widely and instantaneously accessible to the general public,falls within the definition of ‘broadcasting,’ “a Georgia judge wrote in 2009, when denying a reporter’s request to tweet from the courtroom.

You supported the "revolution" in Egypt and elsewhere. Do not back away from what is happening in Libya now because, in this instance, there may be real costs to you in helping to liberate its people. Videos taken with Android smartphones.

Hyperlocal is hyperglobal. The world is changing -- and your community feels its impact. Thanks to our smartphones, we can watch it unfold, as well.

All these were taken with Blackberry smartphones or Blackberry BBM was used to grow the ranks. Thank you, Blackberry!:

In Madison, Wisconsin, the Tea Party, er, government employee unions, fear political and economic changes will rob them of their *entitlement* to a middle class life.

A rare protest in Saudi Arabia. Saudi youth are not so unlike those in other Arab countries. Blackberry messaging is thought to have directly contributed to the relatively large numbers of protestors.

Below, one of many videos of protests in Cairo's Tahir Square:

Sometimes, few show up. Perhaps few care. Still, one person with a smartphone can capture the event forever.

Update:

Via BGR, Google launches Person Finder to help people in Japan find/locate missing persons.