NPR is the well-respected public radio service in the US, and many in the States depend on it for in-depth reporting, analysis, and entertainment. However, it’s not always easy to tune in to. NPR stations are local operations of varying power, and they choose which of the network’s offerings to broadcast and at what time. This makes tuning into a favorite show a potential challenge. Bottle Rocket’s NPR One app solves that by providing on-demand listening for all the great NPR broadcasts no matter where you are. There are challenges on the consumer side as well. Google and Nielsen did a study to find similarities and differences between mobile-content consumption and web- content consumption. They found that 40 per cent of all mobile searches were performed with local intent. And this is increasing. Mobile localization has more profound impacts in the developing world. A mobile service called Tone provides connectivity to underserved regions. In Indonesia, Tone gives local fishermen a kit with a phone, educational material and carrier access with subsidized data. Eventually the service will pay for itself for carriers and users alike as fishermen learn more as a result of services like GPS, weather and fish maps. Mobile first should always try to localize the content and make the content useful based on a variety of available data points. Think of space and time before simply reformatting any old available content. And align content with local context to increase its relevance. Calvin is a techie who likes pencils. His advice is always to start with a pencil, and a brutally clear understanding of what the small screen allows you to do. He calls it Lo-