I thought it would make sense for me to write my first tech column for rabble.ca on my iPod Touch, during a morning GO bus commute to Toronto.

First, the act tells you a lot about me: a nerd who doesn’t mind looking like a nearsighted hunt ‘n’ pecker with a flashlight in his lap. Second, and more seriously, it gives me a natural intro to my topic: mobile, touch-based interfaces and activism.

If you’re not familiar with the iPod Touch, it’s Apple’s new portable music/video/photo player that also does serious wireless web browsing. It only has one button and is controlled by using a collection of intuitive touch gestures.

It’s a game changer, but not because it’s the first hand-held touch device. It’s not. Apple’s own long-dead Newton, Palm’s original Pilot PDA, and, more recently, Nokia’s N800 Internet tablet, among others, have been there and have done that.

It shifts ground because by this time next year millions of people, especially young people, will be browsing online content on bright rectangles of light and silicon that respond as eagerly as small dogs to the taps and pinches of their owners. It will be mainstream and Apple may or may not dominate the space.

Now, you might argue that millions of teens, especially European and Asian teens, already use hand-held wireless devices (cellular phones) to stay jacked into the invisible social cloud that surrounds us.

True, but the touch interface, and wonderful web browser (Safari) on the iPod Touch and iPhone, brings that untethered experience to a wider, older, North American demographic which has had to suffer with brain-injured cellular phones running user interfaces that seem like they are designed by Klingons using Etch-a-Sketches in dark rooms.

As I’m writing this, I’m listening to Pictures at an Exhibition playing in the background. The virtual keyboard at the bottom of the screen is smart enough to know that I’m typing the word “typing” (not “tuounf”) and fixes it on the fly.

I just watched an episode of the videocast Webb Alert on this screen, listened to Nora Young’s Spark radio show, and caught last night’s CTV newscast. It was easy and worked flawlessly. When I get to a Wifi hotspot in Union Station, I can buy songs wirelessly from the iTunes Music Store.

What does all this have to do with activism?

Think about this device. We can now deliver podcasts, video content and web experiences and data right to gadgets that rest on peopleâe(TM)s palms, pump pure stereo sound into their ears and encourage them to donate to our causes, impulsively, on-the-go, with the touch of a finger. And, that finger can be primed for action thanks to our powerful, personal content tailored for the small screen.

Right now, the easiest way for non-profits to take advantage of devices like the iPod Touch or iPhone is to create a website or web application that is designed to look great on the tight real estate of a handheld device.

Facebook has created the model for this sort of user interface with a web application that serves up its complex information in finger-friendly chunks.

Come next February, when Apple releases the much-demanded software development kit for the iPhone, we’ll be able to create incredibly powerful applications for the devices.

Can’t afford that kind of development? That’s okay. At least make sure your site is generating a clean, standard RSS feed. An RSS feed allows users to subscribe to your headlines, podcasts, videocast or photos and have them sent right to them as soon as they’re published. Feeds are a mobile device’s best friend because they serve up content in controllable, scrollable chunks.

Writing heads and subheads that attract attention in a RSS feed, abstracted from their home website, is a skill we all need to develop.

It is also important to watch technology shifts, social media trends and communication politics for non-profit and activist opportunities. I like to call it living in the future. I try to do that whenever I can. This new column can be considered field notes from that experiment.

wayne

Wayne MacPhail

Wayne MacPhail has been a print and online journalist for 25 years. He was the managing editor of Hamilton Magazine and was a reporter and editor at The Hamilton Spectator until he founded Southam InfoLab,...