What can't a mobile phone do? First, it was mobile payments, then mobile banking, and now mobile phones have become a source of income, at least in rural Kenya. An article in The New Scientist describes a company called txteagle that pays people to complete short tasks via text message:
DAVID, a Masai herdsman from Kisumu in Kenya, answers a call on his cellphone. After listening to the message, he repeats a short phrase in his Masai dialect. He then listens to another short message, and repeats the new phrase. After 30 minutes, he ends the call, having earned enough for a week's worth of personal cellphone airtime.
David is working for txteagle, a service that allows rural Kenyans to earn airtime and money by performing small tasks such as translation and transcription using their cellphones.
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