Today the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced the winners of the third Knight News Challenge round for 2013, which focused on mobile projects to engage and inform communities.

And the winners are:

• Wikipedia mobile, $600,000. Creating new tools to allow people to access Wikipedia articles and knowledge via text message in multiple languages.
• Textizen, $350,000. Helping governments collect citizen input via text messaging. Textizen places survey questions on signs in locations such as parks and bus stops, where residents see them and can respond via text.
• TKOH, $350,000. Creating a simple tool for recording oral histories -- a mobile app which prompts people to tell stories when they see pre-selected photos or videos.
• WITNESS, $320,000. Helping newsrooms authenticate the deluge of photos and videos that emerge from news events, via an app which automatically stamps this content with identifying information (including where it was taken).
• Cafédirect Producers' Foundation, $260,000. Connecting small farmers in developing countries with advice and feedback via a platform which lets them ask questions and get quick answers from farmers in other communities.
• Digital Democracy, $200,000. Enabling residents of the Peruvian Amazon to document the effects of mining and oil drilling with a mobile toolkit for collecting and sharing data.
• RootIO, $200,000. Developing software that will connect basic mobile phones with a transmitter to turn them into micro community radio stations. Currently being pilot tested in Uganda.
• Abayima, $150,000. Creating an app that turns a cell phone SIM card into a storage device for news and information. This app may prove particularly useful during crises, allowing journalists and others to safely transfer information when communication networks are compromised or disabled.

Congratulations to these winners!

The Knight Foundation will hold two News Challenge competitions in 2013. The first, which opens in February, will focus on tools for open government. The second will open in the fall, on a topic which has not yet been announced. Watch for announcements on Twitter: @knightfdn.