Drew Cogbill | Thesis Blog

Here’s two conferences from 2007 that I should spend more time looking into:

Web2ForDev (many of the presentations are avaliable on video on the site)

UN meets Silicon Valley

The article “Recent immigrants driving advanced mobile phone use, both in Europe and in the US“  states “immigrant workers are the most advanced users of communications technology.”

TextMarks provides free many to many text messaging services in the US.  Free routed SMSs have an ad attached to them, but for a fee messages can be sent without the ad.

They’ve considered many issues of interfacing with more complex menus with just SMS.

Reliance Global Call, which recently called from Reliance India Call, provides low cost, international phone service.  You have to sign up for the service online.

(Thanks Sandyha and Meha!)

I’ve begun rapid prototyping out the Pigeon system using Voxeo’s CallXML.  I have the beginnings of the system from my previous work, so I’m starting by adding the next essential features.  Yesterday, I worked on making it so you could actually sign up for a Pigeon account (with a 9-digit member number, and a 4-digit pin number).

This “sign up” working version is available via Skype at +99000936 9996079834 or via a direct line at (845) 521-7421.

signup.zip contains code as of that implementation (contains 7 php files, one xml file).

*All developmental versions of Pigeon are and will be prealpha and hugely buggy.  The point of posting small prototypical builds is to document the process of development.  Phone access may or may not be active.

(graphic from Rabia)

1. MobileActive
2. IEEE Computer
3. Mobile Communication Technology for Development
4. ICTD
5. New York Times Technology
6. Clinton Global Initiative
7. Open Source in Mobile
8. My Hearth’s In Accra
9. Good Magazine
10. Better by Design
11. Timbuktu Chronicles
12. ICTlogy
13. PICNIC
14. Ars Technica
15. Innovations
16. Web2ForDev D Group

Ken Banks is co-chairing a W3C group for mobile web for social development.  A recent Economist article, “The Meek Shall Inherit the Web“, quite articulately discusses this new group and Internet delivery via mobile phones generally.  It makes a case for the growing demand for mobile web content, covers past successes, and cautions that web access will continue to be mediated through the simple mobile phone interface for quite some time.  It also advocates the use of business to ensure effective development and sustainability.

In China, for example, over 73m people, or 29% of all internet users in the country, use mobile phones to get online.

One conclusion from the workshop was that promoting social development through the mobile web will mean engaging with businesses.

The Telemegaphone is loudspeaker installed in Norway, which projects a caller’s live voice “out across the fjord, the valley and the village of Dale below.”  The project is certainly a different take on international communication.

One woman said: “This is great. I will sit on my porch with a cup of tea and listen to the world.”

Another woman said: “We like things a little bit crazy here in Dale.”

(Thank Chris!)

cogbill_14_sept_brief.pdf

The following are rough implementation prototypes exploring system maps.

This is a edit and expansion of a previously developed system map for Pigeon.  The contacts, direct message, and groups sections are new and have yet to be technically implemented.  As this is a phone based system, the numbers on the map represent the digit to pressed to access that feature.

The beeping system would have quite a different system map.  I decided to consider registration via text message from mobile phones for the system for now, so the system has two cases, if the incoming is a SMS or a call.