In this – the fifth in our series of FrontlineSMS guest posts – Gary Garriott, Innovation Program Officer in the “Digital Futures for Development Program” at Winrock International, talks about their implementation of FrontlineSMS as part of a wider agriculture-based initiative in El Salvador Background “Winrock International is a social enterprise which describes itself as … Continue reading Farmer to farmer. Phone to phone.
Month: March 2009
@twitter meets @frontlinesms
@jack – inventor, Founder and Chairman of Twitter – meets up with @kiwanja – developer of FrontlineSMS – at the “Symposium on Technologies for Social Action” (e-STAS) conference in Malaga last week, where they both spoke about elements of citizen empowerment. In their quest for globally-available, affordable (free!) text messaging, the Twitter folk are not … Continue reading @twitter meets @frontlinesms
Time to eat our own dog food?
Is the future of social mobile an empowered few, or an empowered many? Mobile tools in the hands of the masses presents great opportunity for NGO-led social change, but is that the future we’re creating? In “The White Man’s Burden – Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and … Continue reading Time to eat our own dog food?
The microscopic world of mobile chip art
I’d heard about “chip art” before, but not really paid much attention to it. Then, over Christmas I saw a programme on Finnish TV which sparked my interest. I wondered – was there any ‘mobile’ chip art out there? What is chip art? For the uninitiated, “chip art” is created when silicon chip designers use … Continue reading The microscopic world of mobile chip art
Radios. Batteries. Solar. Implications
Things rarely stand still in the mobile world, but a number of fairly significant announcements have been made in the past few days alone, many of which have significant short- and long-term implications for mobile users in developing countries. Here’s the top three which caught my eye. #1 Radio The powerful combination of rural radio … Continue reading Radios. Batteries. Solar. Implications
Neighbourhood Watch FrontlineSMS-style
Not only established non-profit organisations can benefit from “long tail” mobile solutions. In this, the fourth in our series of FrontlineSMS guest posts, Georgia Popplewell – who manages a community-lead neighbourhood watch scheme in Trinidad and Tobago – talks about the innovative use they found for the software “Blue Range is an upper middle-class suburb … Continue reading Neighbourhood Watch FrontlineSMS-style
Our breathing earth.
Breathing Earth is described as a “real-time simulation which displays CO2 emissions from every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates”. The data used comes from reputable sources, although the site admits that a simulation on this scale can never be 100% accurate. Worryingly, they note that the CO2 emission … Continue reading Our breathing earth.
Missing the point?
[Appropriate] technology. It’s not the fact that it runs on low-end devices, or the latest Android phone, or is platform independent, or seamlessly connects with the “cloud” or the rest of the solution ecosystem, or that it has the smartest user interface ever designed, or that it meets recognised data compatibility standards. It’s whether or … Continue reading Missing the point?
Chipping away at the SMS literacy barrier
With all the excitement surrounding Monday’s launch of FrontlineForms, we almost forgot the other improvements we’ve made to the FrontlineSMS software. As well as support for IntelliSMS – another Clickatell-style online aggregator – we finally got round to adding Unicode support which, to the non-technical, means you can now send and receive messages in foreign … Continue reading Chipping away at the SMS literacy barrier
FrontlineSMS: Now with Forms
It’s been a hectic few months, but we’re finally there. Today we’re excited to announce the release of the new FrontlineForms, an SMS-driven data collection tool which seamlessly integrates into our existing and growing FrontlineSMS platform. Sure, data collection tools already exist, but many require mobile internet access to function, degrees in Linux to get … Continue reading FrontlineSMS: Now with Forms