FreeSWITCH is an open source telephony platform designed to facilitate the creation of voice and chat driven products. It can be used as a simple switching engine, a PBX, a media gateway or a media server to host IVR applications using simple scripts or XML to control the callflow.
Tool Category:
Runs on a server
Key Features :
FreeSWITCH includes many modules which provide applications by default including conferencing, XML-RPC control of live calls, Interactive voice response (IVR), TTS/ASR (text to speech/automatic speech recognition), Public switched telephone network (PSTN) interconnection ability supporting both analogue and digital circuits, Voice over IP protocols including SIP, Inter-Asterisk eXchange, H.323, Jabber, GoogleTalk and others. Applications using the FreeSWITCH library can be written in C/C++, Python, Perl, Lua, JavaScript using Mozilla's SpiderMonkey engine, Java and Microsoft .NET via Microsoft's CLR or via Mono.
FreeSWITCH is designed to be modular, easy to use with scripting done entirely in XML, and more stable than Asterisk.
As smartphones proliferate around the world, we ought to remain cognizant of what information we share on those phones with applications, application developers, advertisers and marketers. Phones are incredibly personal, always on, and always with most of us. As a result, they can reveal sensitive information. In fact, it is time for smartphone users to put pressure on application developers, platform providers, and eventually legislators to protect private and potentially sensitive information.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently published a paper on locational privacy. Because smartphones know where we are (using GPS, and if not, using applications such as Google’s My Location service), they can reveal a lot of information about activities, patterns of behaviour, and relationships we have.
Avaaj Otalo - A Voice-Based Community Forum data sheet 19401 Views
In places such as rural India, small-scale farmers struggle to meet the challenges of fierce global competition, increasing costs of farm inputs, water shortages, and new diseases and pests brought on by a changing climate. To deal with these challenges, information has become a critical input to farming operations: faced with rapidly changing conditions, farmers need market information, timely technical advice, and alerts on new and improved techniques. There are currently few sources for reliable, timely knowledge. Television and radio have achieved remarkable penetration in rural areas and stand as an effective means of information dissemination. However, without a platform to discuss, debate, and relate personal experience, information is not actionable.
Our excellent and long-time MobileActive.org friends over at Development Seed have released a new light-weight open source SMS gateway that can run on a laptop or a USB stick.
From Development Seed's Tm McWright: "Using an GSM modem or cellphone, SlingshotSMS will send and receive text messages on behalf of your web application. It builds on the work of pygsm, an excellent Python library for dealing with AT-compatible modems. What this means is that SlingshotSMS is compatible with Mac, Windows, and Linux, and can interface with a wide range of GSM modems and cell phones - including many sub-$200 field-ready modems like the one we used for testing when we were field-testing last week as part of our participation in Camp Roberts experiments. All code is available on github.
Here is a breakdown of the SlingshotSMS workflow...
Commercial Tool; Free option with ads. TextMarks owns the shortcode 41411, and allows you to make use of the shortcode with a given keyword. When users send messages to 41411 with your keyword, messages can either be forwarded to everyone subscribed to that keyword message-list, or to a webpage (issues a http request which can be handled programmatically if desired) which can be used to send auto-responses back. You can also broadcast SMSs to all subscribers.
Tool Category:
Is a web-based application/web service
Key Features :
Provides a shortcode, which users can text with a custom keyword, and get to you. Many-to-many SMS discussions. Web-based auto-response to SMSs. Broadcast and feedback collection from userbase.
Avaaj Otalo ("voice-based community forum") is a system for farmers to access relevant and timely agricultural information over the phone. The system was designed in the summer of 2008 as a collaboration between IBM India Research Laboratory and Development Support Center (DSC), an NGO in Gujarat, India.
By dialing a phone number and navigating through simple audio prompts, farmers can record questions, review and respond to others, or access content published by agricultural experts and institutions. In addition to the Q&A forum, Avaaj Otalo includes an announcements board of headline-like snippets updated regularly by DSC staff, and a radio archive to listen to past episodes of DSC's popular weekly radio program.
Key Features :
IVR system for information access and sharing of experiences amongst small-scale farmers in rural India.
Setting up an SMS Campaign from your Desktop data sheet 14377 Views
Author:
MobileActive
Abstract:
This document describes the second way – bootstrapping your way to a texting campaign by using Desktop SMS Hubs on a tiny budget and with a minimum of technical expertise.
This method focuses on using software that you download and install on your personal computer that can control the texting software on your mobile phone. Using a simple cable from your mobile phone to your PC along with this software, you’ll have your own personal text messaging system set up in under an hour. Let’s look at a simple diagram that shows your laptop connected to your mobile phone, communicating wirelessly (sending and receiving texts) with any number of mobile phones.
Introduction
Over the last several years, it’s become clear that mobile phones are becoming one of the most influential devices in our social, political, and civic lives. Savvy nonprofit organizations and NGOs are experimenting with using mobile phones as persuasive devices to recruit new supporters, organize groups, and advocate for causes.
Thus far, most of the successful mobile-phone campaigns have relied on text messaging as their persuasive technology of choice. It’s the only mobile phone technology that works reliably across the majority of mobile phones in most countries. In addition, most people in most countries are familiar with text messaging.
Many organizations want to use text messaging in their campaigns. However, the barriers to setting up a texting campaign appear to be steep. The process seems expensive, technical, and complex overall.
There is good news.
Setting up a text messaging campaign
There are two ways to set up a text campaign that require little technical knowledge – and one of these is inexpensive.
A comparison of do-it-yourself SMS hubs -- stand-alone systems which allows you to send and receive large numbers of text messages via the mobile phone network, without needing to be connected to the internet or to any other computer network.
Introduction
An SMS hub is a stand-alone system which allows you to send and receive large numbers of text messages via the mobile phone network, without needing to be connected to the internet or to any other computer network.
You need a laptop or desktop computer with a number of mobile phones or GSM modems attached. A GSM modem is a small device without a keypad or screen that you connect to your computer. It works like a mobile phone, but is controlled through the computer. Messages are sent and received using software installed on the computer which transmits them through the attached phone or modem to the available mobile phone network. Because SMS hubs do not need to be connected to the internet, they are very useful for NGOs working in areas where access to the internet is not possible or is unreliable.
Before starting your mobile advocacy programme, it is worth spending some time thinking about and profiling your audience and how that audience uses mobile phones. For example, if your audience is sharing handsets it may not be advisable to send or receive confidential or sensitive information.
In order to use mobiles effectively for advocacy, it's vital that your organisation keep an accurate and up-to-date record of the mobile phone numbers of your staff, members and supporters and that people agree to let their mobile number be used to contact them. If you have sufficient resources it's worth investing the time in setting up a database for the mobile numbers. You need to be sure that people opt in to receive messages and that you provide a way for them to easily opt out of receiving any messagig from you.
MXit is a mobile social networking service hugely popular with young South Africans who flock to it by the millions. Marlon Parker is a social entrepreneur and lecturer at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology where he’s doing his PhD who saw his drug-addicted brother go to jail. Put Marlon's personal experience together with the conversations happening on MXit every day, and you have DAS, Drug Advice Support.
In an article in South Africa's Business Times recently, Parker describes DAS:
Drug users can “chat” with the services’ counsellors when they feel the urge to use, says Parker. It is the first step in a rehabilitation programme run with nongovernmental organisation Impact Direct. The service, which is called Drug Advice Support, has since expanded to include advice on careers, rape and child abuse and an advisory service for those infected with HIV/Aids.
Who is Afraid of Citizen Journalists? data sheet 3353 Views
Author:
Hattotuwa, Sanjana
Publication Type:
Other
Publication Date:
Dec 2007
Abstract:
Large-scale disasters are growing. On the one hand, global warming and unprecedented
environmental change are resulting in disasters more frequent and calamitous than before.
Natural disasters such as earthquakes (Kashmir, 2005), floods (Bangladesh, India and
Nepal, 2007), landslides and mudslides (Bam, 2003; Chittagong, 2007), volcanic eruptions
(Merapi, 2006), tsunamis (South and Southeast Asia, 2005) and forest fires (across
Europe, 2007) continue to severely affect the lives and livelihoods of millions. On the other,
the iconic images of the London bombings (7 July 2006), the Twin Towers in New York on
11 September 2001, Madrid train bombs (2004) and the Bali bombings (2002 and 2005)
coupled with hundreds of gruesome local incidents -- including suicide bombings in coun-
tries such as Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Iraq -- are a stark reminder that man made disas-
ters, often the result of terrorism, are a permanent feature of domestic life in many coun-
tries.
But how do we make sense of such disasters -- their causes, their impact on those in-
volved as victims and perpetrators? How do we maintain compassion in a world with com-
peting human tragedies? Does the increasing availability and affordability of Information
and Communications Technologies (ICT) -- covering PCs, radio, mobile phones, blogs,
SMS and the Internet -- result in the coverage and awareness of disasters qualitatively bet-
ter than before? Or does reportage across a hundred thousand websites and blogs by
those who are untrained in professional journalism diminish the importance of and, by ex-
tension, the response towards a disaster?
There are no easy answers to these questions. Whether we like it or not, new technologies
are changing the manner in which we gather, store, disseminate, consume and comment
on news. The overall experience after the tsunami in Sri Lanka and the subsequent design
of ICTs for humanitarian aid suggests that ordinary citizens can play a pivotal role in facili-
tating the flow of information in relief and conflict management mechanisms.
The Promise of Ubiquity as a Media Platform in the Global South data sheet 3340 Views
Author:
West, John
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Publication Date:
Jan 2008
Abstract:
Mobile telephony will be the world’s first ubiquitous communications platform and
is getting there faster than anyone expected. Its major path of growth is now in the
global South where the mobile is not just a phone but a global address, a transaction
device, and an identity marker for hundreds of millions of poor people. is holds
unprecedented opportunity for media in developing countries to engage their core
audiences more deeply, reach new audiences on the edge of their current footprint,
and provide interactive and customised information services that are both profitable
and life-improving. But the opportunity is also a threat to traditional media, just
as the Internet has been – and on a larger scale in developing countries. If media
don’t address the mobile as a viable information platform others will, and within the
space of a few years media players there will have lost a large measure of their market
share, ‘mind share’, and standing in society at large.
mobile
id21 insights 69 l September 2007: Research findings for development policymakers and practitioners id21 insights data sheet 2334 Views
Author:
Donner , Jonathan
Publication Type:
Magazine or newspaper article
Publication Date:
Sep 2007
Abstract:
id21 insights is published 10 times a year and is online at www.id21.org/insights. Readers
may copy or quote from any article, providing the source (id21 insights) and author are
acknowledged
and informed. To subscribe, email insights@ids.ac.uk with your name and
address. id21’s website, www.id21.org, offers free access to over 4,000 research highlights
on development policy issues including health, natural resources, education and more. This issue focuses on micro-entrepreneurs in Nigeria, mobile ladies in Bangladesh, unequal gender relations in Zambia, getting beyond the three billion mark, mobile banking and poor households in Jamaica.
Generation 2.0 A Practical Guide for Using New Media to Recruit, Organize, and Mobilize Young People data sheet 2724 Views
Author:
Rigby, Ben; Godin, Seth; Exley, Zack
Publication Type:
Other
Publication Date:
Apr 2008
Abstract:
This practical guidebook is a must-have for every nonprofit and political organization interested in reaching youth. The book clearly and concisely details the ways in which new media has been used successfully –and unsuccessfully– to recruit, organize, and engage young people. Importantly, it ties online efforts to offline action. Chapter 4 focuses on mobile phones, using sms text messaging, what it is, how it works, and how to get started.
Generation 2.0 A Practical Guide for Using New Media to Recruit, Organize, and Mobilize Young People data sheet 2873 Views
Author:
Rigby, Ben; Godin, Seth; Exley, Zack
Publication Type:
Other
Publication Date:
Apr 2008
Abstract:
This practical guidebook is a must-have for every nonprofit and political organization interested in reaching youth. The book clearly and concisely details the ways in which new media has been used successfully –and unsuccessfully– to recruit, organize, and engage young people. Importantly, it ties online efforts to offline action."
Political Involvement in “Mobilized” Society: The Interactive Relationships among Mobile Communication, Social Network Character data sheet 2996 Views
Author:
Campbell, Scott W.; Kwak, Nojin
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Publication Date:
May 2009
Abstract:
In recent years mobile communication has emerged as a new channel for political discourse among close friends and family members. While some celebrate new possibilities for political life, others are concerned that intensive use of the technology can lead to small, insular networks of like-minded individuals with harmful effects on civil society. Drawing from a representative sample of adults in the U.S., this study examined how mobile-mediated discourse with close ties interacts with social network characteristics to predict levels of political participation and political openness. Findings revealed that use of the technology for discussing politics and public affairs with close network ties is positively associated with both political participation and openness, but that these relationships are moderated by the size and heterogeneity of one’s network. Notably, levels of participation and openness decline with increased use of the technology in small networks of like-minded individuals. However, these trends are reversed under certain network conditions, showing the role of mobile communication in civil society is highly dependent upon the social context of its use.
A company that provides charity text donation services is believed to be the first to waive its commission on donations to third sector organisations. Win handles ‘short code transactions', or texts to numbers of about five digits, between charities and donors. It usually receives between five and 10 pence per standard £1.50 text donation, but has said this week that it will waive the fee for charities and other not-for-profit organisations using its services. About 30 per cent of every text donation made to sector organisations in the UK is taken in charges by third-party service providers and mobile networks.
In the growing network of people in the MobileActive.org staffers and contributors, I am very pleased to welcome yet another amazing woman in mobile. Leigh Jaschke is our new MobileActive.org Fellow for the next few months. She'll be focusing on building out our database of projects and increqase resources and information specifically on formal and informal ways in with mobile phones are used for learning, public education, education, and training.
Here is a bit more about her: Leigh is an educator and trainer with 6 years of international experience. She has worked in international development, and in program and event management. She is currently researching the role of mobile technology in education sector capacity building. Leigh holds a degree in International Development and Economics and will complete her Master of International Education in May 2010. She is fluent in French, and has also worked in German, Spanish, Mandarin, and Bambara (Mali).
You are invited to CrisisCamp Ignite Session at the World Bank!
CrisisCamp DC is part of a global movement who is bringing together volunteers, academia, non-profits, companies and government officials to share best practices and lessons learned to advocate for further use of technology and telecommunications to assist citizens and communities during crisis.
Mobile Surveillance - A Primer data sheet 17202 Views
Author:
Melissa Loudon
Abstract:
Mobile Surveillance Basics
Mobiles can be useful tools for collecting, planning, coordinating and recording activities of NGO staff and activists. But did you know that whenever your phone is on, your location is known to the network operator? Or that each phone and SIM card transmits a unique identifying code, which, unless you are very careful about how you acquire the phone and SIM, can be traced uniquely to you?
With cameras, GPS, mobile Internet come ever more dangerous surveillance possibilities, allowing an observer, once they have succeeded in gaining control of the phone, to turn it into a sophisticated recording device. However, even a simple phone can be tracked whenever it is on the network, and calls and text messages are far from private. Where surveillance is undertaken in collusion with the network operator, both the content of the communication and the identities of the parties involved is able to be discovered, sometimes even retrospectively. It is also possible to surreptitiously install software on phones on the network, potentially gaining access to any records stored on the phone.
This is understandably disquieting to activists involved in sensitive work.
Obviously, the most secure way to use a phone is not to use one at all. Even so, most organisations, even if they understand the risks involved, find that phones are too useful to discard completely. The best approach then becomes one of harm reduction: identifying and understanding the risks involved, and taking appropriate steps to limit exposure. In this article, we try to identify these risks, and to offer some suggestions for securing your mobile communications.
Mobile Surveillance Basics
Mobiles can be useful tools for collecting, planning, coordinating and recording activities of NGO staff and activists. But did you know that whenever your phone is on, your location is known to the network operator? Or that each phone and SIM card transmits a unique identifying code, which, unless you are very careful about how you acquire the phone and SIM, can be traced uniquely to you?
With cameras, GPS, mobile Internet come ever more dangerous surveillance possibilities, allowing an observer, once they have succeeded in gaining control of the phone, to turn it into a sophisticated recording device. However, even a simple phone can be tracked whenever it is on the network, and calls and text messages are far from private. Where surveillance is undertaken in collusion with the network operator, both the content of the communication and the identities of the parties involved is able to be discovered, sometimes even retrospectively. It is also possible to surreptitiously install software on phones on the network, potentially gaining access to any records stored on the phone.
Budgeting for Mobile Advocacy data sheet 3029 Views
Author:
Tactical Tech
Abstract:
When your organisation decides to implement a project using mobile phones it is important to compare the cost of the project with the potential benefits it might bring.
If you prepare a budget and analyse how investment in a mobile advocacy project compares to investing in alternative methods, it is easier to make changes to existing budget allocations or to raise new funds in order to set up the programme or to keep up with the costs of running it. You may need to calculate pricing models if the project needs to sustain itself or generate revenues for the organisation.
Some reasons for investing in using mobile phones to support advocacy:
The increasing number of phones in use and greater reach of mobile technology has made it easier to reach bigger audiences more quickly and inexpensively than before.
Mobile phone networks cover many rural communities, and the use of mobile technology as an advocacy medium makes it possible to reach people in areas where traditional advocacy methods such as printed media weren't cost effective.
Budgeting for Mobile Advocacy is adopted from a How-To of Mobiles in-a-Box.
Overview
When your organisation decides to implement a project using mobile phones, it is important to consider the cost of the project versus the potential benefits it might bring.
If you prepare a budget and analyse how investment in a mobile advocacy project compares to investing in alternative methods, it is easier to make changes to existing budget allocations or to raise new funds in order to set up the programme or to keep up with the costs of running it. You may need to calculate pricing models if the project needs to sustain itself or generate revenues for the organisation.
Some reasons for investing in using mobile phones to support advocacy:
