SMS applications, beyond peer-to-peer

• Ariel Poler (Textmarks), Miquel Hudin (Maneno), Angus Parker (wiserearth), Larry Sheradon, Gilbert Orser (Pinger), Roberto Sequeira (us411 user portal), Eugene, Jaime Bruner (inveneo)
• 41411 / nextmuni. Some ppl have trouble understanding ui, keywords..
• Use long tail to let anyone make apps (?)
• Miquel - allow blogging from sms, compile small messages into one. Also multilingual issues. How to get info in? frontline sms, runs locally
• Frontline (java, runs in win/mac/linux). Ushahidi? It uses a mobile phone connected to your pc, that talks sms. Not all countries have unlimited SMS (US has flat fee), and receiving is no prob but sending is gonna cost you.
• One guy broke down cost of sending data - they charge you 1000x more than what you pay on DSL, and it's free for them cause it just uses their signal anyway.
• Ariel on SMS UI - back and forth with real simple interactions works better than typing out longer keyword sequences. Even two-word commands people screw up a lot, because of typos & shorthand habits
• Miq - blogging local news/happenings. Want to allow Africa to have more of a voice rather'n channeled thru media. SMS much cheaper than net cafes there. One problem: numbers get blocked, by say, the government.
• How do you read your blog post once you've sent the pieces? Not quite sure yet! No GPRS phones there yet, SMS works fine
• How do you reach initial users? From internet cafes, get them introduced. Lots of people don't see the purpose of it yet; reach out to individuals to help them see they can use it to advertise their personal biz.
• With frontline a local netcafe owner maintains the service for the area
• Pinger: links IM, SMS & soc.nets into one interface. First iteration: async voice messaging, send alerts to group via SMS and people call to hear the message.
• Combined voice & SMS, use best of both worlds - e.g. call and speak driving direction requests, system texts you the detailed results
• In Africa nobody really uses voice - they SMS, or 'beep' you, ie call-and-hangup and they call you back (and pay). Behavior results from working around communications charges
• RS: How do you build an infrastructure knowing they can shut you down on a whim? Carriers don't like losing control, for example if you build a service on top of SMS. Do you bring Verizon into the fold saying 'this is actually good for you guys'?
• On Metro, average users send > 1400 texts a month. It's convenient.
• Low latency satellite net arriving in Africa is going to help
• Electrical power's a big issue: no outlets at home, and public outlets are super crowded with chargers. You can bring power there but people do steal electrical cables / equipment. Nigeria's power grid is terrible - voltage drops and spikes
• Jaime: low-power solutions, solar, battery banks. Work with organizations there, from UNICEF to small community schools. They primarily spread computer use, allowing e.g. hospitals & clinics to communicate. Working on bringing SMS to field workers to link with homebase.
• How do you secure solar panels from theft or vandalism? This is an issue! If the community feels ownership / connection with it they'll help you find thieves, work with you more to keep infrastructure safe.
• Phone net in remote areas is growing; much easier to learn, more people gaining access. A cell tower covers more ground, cheaper, than running cables. Even in Oroville CA they'll never wire it with broadband, but Verizon covers it.
• Uganda & Kenya: you can get them wireless but it'll still depend on one master switch. Let's consider how to make nets more resilient to censorship / control. Models to look into? Korea's network
• Ariel: You get scammers making fake content & subscribers
• Compelling use of SMS? Learn market & pricing information - fishermen, farmers, shepherds.
• Google's keyword system 'm soandso' or 'w elections', doesn't seem viable for a wide audience. Roberto says: use a portal to allow browsing of available content, shorter conversations. Natural language search will be big.
• How about a more friendly app that's a front-end on SMS - only runs on certain phones (Windows, Blackberry, etc) and these aren't available in... the Congo. Pricing for texts there is about a penny or two, depending on recipient's network proximity
• Phones are shared a lot in communities, there's an expectation to pass it around if you've got it & it can help out.
• Inveneo's funding: 60% sales, 40% from private donors. If you've got local partners you've trained to use hardware / Linux, it's much more efficient to support. So it's part a social mission to build local IT companies

Location

• Larry (mobile/mapping dev), Leslie Rule (ctr for Locative Media, KQED), David Sasaki (Global Voices), rigby (mobile voter), Newton Chan (Foothill college), Kristen Taylor (knight foundation), Susan (TechSoup), Stefano (Zipiko)
• Go ask conceptual artists what to do with this tech, they've got fresh ideas
• W3 - where/what/when
• 'locative media' from more artists & storytelling; location-based svc = commercial. 'How to find/tell/create/publish/locate the stories of your life'
• Augmented reality / virtual worlds - community of nonprofits in 2nd life, and if they're geographically proximate you can connect with them
• CLM in the educational sector mostly; mapping is ubiquitous / available, but not immersive (ie you're not there, you're at home). In an immersive app you wouldn't be interfacing with the device, it'd just be part of what you're doing.
• How does place-based content change the experience? What are boundaries that people would accept?
• Privacy concerns: digital traces, if your cellphone is on you're quite trackable, but people don't think about it much. (cell towers, wifi connection, gps)
• Larry: 3d environments meshed with GPS / mobile experience; connect in immersive environment
• Geotagging photos & youtube videos. Embedded & grassroots
• Pulse: community site about info needs, solving civic/social problems. Knight - community has a physical / spatial component to encourage civic participation
• Susan: help nonprofits connect with each other, figure out online community strategy. Get volunteers / membership, local participation.
• Organize real-time need & volunteering: 'I'm here, how can I help?' online event on digital storytelling in a few months.
• Couchsurfing!
• David: interest in aggregating content in smart ways. Everyblock maybe the best aggregator out there. Could use more media, though, and there's not a way to drop in a blog post. (You can post thru e.g. yelp or wikipedia). Great way to collect info on local ecology, for journalists
• DS is into brightkite because it's a small community, high signal:noise.
• There's not a one-stop all-content filterable map site, like friendfeed for maps
• Problem: it's a lot of bits of information but no context to it. Valuable to know e.g. of a robbery 3 blocks away, but it doesn't weave a story
• Stefano w/ Helsinki startup: zipiko, like twitter for the future ("this is where I'll be"). There's a geoRSS feed too.
• So there's geocommons / openlayers / georss feeds, but it's very spread out. It'd be super cool to have it ALL there where you find something by 'this neighborhood within the last 2 weeks, and this kind of content / tags'
• Airbed&breakfast. Like couchsurfing but do it for a little cash; rent out your space, share skills / cooking.
• Share resources with neighborhood - carpooling, freecycle. Yahoo's purple puddles (?),
• Degrees of privacy: brightkite & dopplr location private, yet you want to participate in communities. Sliding scale of fuzziness: be at this event / neighborhood / city.
• Oakland crimespotting: storytelling aspect, there are interviews with families of victims. BUT: it scares people in the neighborhood, like they see a big red cloud of 'danger!' Affects their sense of place and community identity, where they live, it's a sensitive issue. Ushahidi also successful, deals with violence, how do you make it a positive? Maybe not for the general pop, but the people doing work in that field can frame it that way. People want to like the place they live.
• Heroes story at MIT - got tired of the bad stories so started mapping the nice news.
• Aid workers (fire management, conservation) use mobiles in the field all the time, they could be documenting & mapping teir work. Become models & leaders in community. Blend worklife & cell-as-tool with personal community connections & leadership.
• Stories of empowerment don't... work... in communities like Oakland. Change there has to be economic. Survival. Training for jobs helps - civicorps.
• Use maps to connect people to their sense of place, then change can happen.

Documenting human rights advocacy / abuses

• Camille Crittenden (Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley), Larry Sheradon (mobile/gis dev), Heidi Quante (Burma work), Kristen Taylor (Knight), Elia Varela (Maneno), Adam (designer @ Google), Angus Parker (WiserEarth)
• They traditionally use paper polls / questionnaires in the field
• Video documentation
• Documentary about women in Cameroon - largely women lawyers advocating for w's rights in the courtroom.
• Use mobile as reference / education so people know their rights. Or for court monitoring, ensuring fair process / outcome.
• 'Do you know about the international criminal court?' or UDHR? Generally not. In Uganda surveys indicate it's improving 2005-07.
• They don't generally have phones - most communication through radio & camp leaders. If a town has a phone it's shared... in Burma it's more available.
• Again, Ushahidi. A result of a mashup challenge, used in Kenya to document violence around elections. See results on web.
• Upcoming conference on may 4 & 5 to run a mobile challenge, NetSquared with TechSoup.
• One issue in Burma: really hard to get information out 'cause they shut down computers. People have phones, it's more flexible.
• Maneno - blogging platform for sub-Saharan Africa. SMS.
• Adam / Gapminder - make all public statistics available / searchable / comparable. Interest in documenting / tracking advocacy data maybe? See also ManyEyes.
• Kristen: Knight / Pulse (see above summary)
• Statistics: they showed the pres of Uganda; people in power often don't have access to information. Where else is there a need for information?
• In Burma it's 1) on political/lobbying side being convincing, and 2) verifying that the stats/info are valid & verifiable. On gapminder, is it... reviewed, respected?
• Angus: Citizen bird counts: untrained amateur watchers upload sightings to a common database, and it's a pretty scientifically respected source. People generally don't lie about this, and are careful in their record keeping. There's some crunching / processing behind the scenes to generate statistics.
• That's a bit different from personal testimony or stories of local abuses, which are emotionally charged.
• Mobile photos documenting cyclone & government neglect were cool - but it turns out some of those were from a different incident.
• UC Berkeley collects data (surveys/stats) in a scientifically rigorous way so it can be used in criminal prosecutions. Is there another data presentation they could use, e.g. web, or published machine-readable formats?
• In Congo they compared 3 areas most affected by violence; would be interesting to track over time & visualize by something like gapminder.
• Getting results back to the local organizations / populations?
• Health advocacy org in Oakland collects data, offers SMS service for youth sex health tips and pointers to testing resources, etc. Anonymity.
• Data security: keeping it safe from governments is a big concern, and identities of the surveyed / contributors. Electoral intimidation, monitoring: yes there are photos & videos, but is gov actually accountable?
• 'Video your vote' on YouTube (today, Nov. 4) or CNN hotline
• How do you get information buried in PDF reports? Pick a few respected organizations and focus on them for now, work to get it available and used in other projects. (google/gapminder is using this approach)
• It's the stories behind the statistics that get a visceral emotional reaction: videos! Photos! Interviews! Rodney King initiated a whole investigation into statistics on police abuses.
• Personal storytelling via video/photos is nice but what do you do with it? Central places to contribute them would help, to give it a wider voice.
• WiserEarth: primarily wiki-based, great on the web but no mobile reach. There's an API launching in Dec. for the WE platform, so you can plug into it, grab data, often georeferenced.