Drew Cogbill | Thesis Blog

works in progress.

Archive for the ‘sms’ tag

SMS Signup / Add contacts

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Below is a kind of “script” for signing up for Pigeon and adding contacts via SMS.

If first words sign up or signup (any variation of capitalization should be accepted):

  1. Response text: What would you like your 9-digit Pigeon number to be?
  2. [9-digit Pigeon number]
  3. Response text: What would you like your 4-digit PIN to be? Your PIN will keep your account safe. - or - Response text: Oops! That Pigeon number is taken! What would you like your 9-digit Pigeon number to be?
  4. [4-digit PIN]
  5. Welcome to Pigeon! Your Pigeon number is XXX-XXX-XXX. Call 713 574-9488 to make contacts and record your Pigeon message telling your world what you’re up to.

If first words sign up or signup (any variation of capitalization should be accepted) and then numbers:

  1. sign up [9-digit pigeon number] [4-digit PIN]
  2. Response text: Welcome to Pigeon! Your - or - Response text: Oops! That Pigeon number is taken! Please text your sign up again with another number.
  3. Welcome to Pigeon! Your Pigeon number is XXX-XXX-XXX. Call 713 574-9488 to make contacts and record your Pigeon message telling your world what you’re up to.

If first word add or addcontact or add contact or addcontacts or addcontacts (maybe addquick?):

  1. add [your Pigeon number] [your PIN]. [others Pigeon number]
  2. [Pigeon numbers] will be asked to add you as a contact when they next log on.

Or:

  1. add (or other version) [your Pigeon number] [your PIN]
  2. Response text: Text back all Pigeon numbers you would like to add as contacts.
  3. [Pigeon numbers] will be asked to add you as a contact when they next log on.

I’m going to test these by just having people text my phone and signing them up myself.  I’ll use the online dialog for quickly signing them up.  I wonder if there will be any trepidation in sending the PIN number in a way that is not secure.

Written by drewcogbill

October 7th, 2008 at 9:54 am

Posted in Prototypes

Tagged with ,

TextMarks

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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.

Written by drewcogbill

September 21st, 2008 at 10:35 am

Twitter SMS Service Stopped

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Twitter has stopped their SMS service in all but the US, India, and Canada (via White African).  The service was stopped due to the cost to the company.

Written by drewcogbill

August 24th, 2008 at 8:31 am

Posted in Context and Domains, Precedents

Tagged with ,

Entrepreneurial Programming and Resarch on Mobiles at MIT

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Entrepreneurial Programming and Resarch on Mobiles (EPROM) at MIT works on education, research and entrepreneurship for mobile phone programming in East Africa.

In education, they have developed a variety of courses in mobile phone programming which are being taught in a variety of East African universities.  They are training programmers and comuter scientists to generate localy useful mobile phone applications.

In research, students are developing applications that can be run from any GSM SIM card and can be used for medical data collection in the field, amongst others.

In entrepreneurship, the group runs a SMS bootcamp teaching how to launch SMS-based services and supports small mobile phone application-based services such as MoSoko, a SMS based Craigslist, and Airtime Banking, which transfers a certain amount of credit over a desired amount of time.

Written by drewcogbill

July 15th, 2008 at 10:57 pm

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged with , , , , ,

FrontlineSMS

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FrontlineSMS is a easy to use SMS gateway designed for use by NGOs from kiwanja.net and its founder Ken Banks.  Version 2 of the system just went live.  The system certainly answer the problem of communication in developing nations.

Coverage: Discovery News, White African, 160 Characters,

The Kiwanja blog and their Social Mobile Facebook Group.

Written by drewcogbill

July 13th, 2008 at 11:02 pm

Posted in Precedents

Tagged with , ,

prototype_0

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A role prototype about mobile banking.  It doesn’t say much more than what is possible with mobile banking right now.  You can currently transfer credit via SMS to another pre-paid account.  What I’m considering here is how people could use cell phone credit as currency.

I’d really like to pursue some project in mobile banking, but money issues may put research into that beyond the scope of possibilities.

Written by drewcogbill

July 6th, 2008 at 3:59 pm

Posted in Prototypes

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Scott Jenson’s “Why Phones Are Not Computers”

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Why Phone Are Not Computers” - Human-Computer Interaction Seminar (CS 547) Scott Jenson, Google

Response: Jenson is mostly talking about how the normal web can’t be translated to traditional mobile phones.  Even with more advanced phones, the screen is still much smaller than a computer screen.  This talk was pre-iphone but is certainly still applicable for people living in developing nations where phones are generally older, even black and white models.  Nonetheless, data plans are starting to come into these places.  Here in St. Lucia, you can now get a data plan and even Blackberrys.  Nonetheless, Jenson advocate for using phone applications local-based and people-based.

Notes:
Death by 1000 cuts: there’s lots of annoying steps to get content, value must be greater than pain
Default thinking: falling back on the thing we were just looking at
It is hard to use mobile phones
SMS- not originally meant to be for consumers
The Inside Text - ed. Richard Harper
Ergo myths: when you talk about phones, you have to talk about millimeters not pixels
- the mouse is gone
- focus on people in development
Examples:
- Swedish bank- sms alerts for low balance, deposit cleared
- mobile google maps- center button zooming

Arguing that people don’t want to get on the web as it is for the computer on their phone.  The phone experience is different.  Make it local based and people based.

Written by drewcogbill

May 20th, 2008 at 6:30 pm