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Mobile technology is being used by citizens all over the world as the most affordable and massively adopted piece of technology. How can we harness this technology for advancing human rights and civil society participation? This dialogue is a space to share and discuss many ideas for "Using Mobile Phones for Action."
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[Photo: from the Private Sector Development blog]
Using Mobiles | SMS (Short Message Service)
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Intro
Mobile technology is being used by citizens all over the world as the most affordable and massively adopted piece of technology. How can we harness this technology for advancing human rights and civil society participation?
Our outstanding resource practitioners for the November-December tactical discussion shared and discussed many ideas for "Using Mobile Phones for Action". You can still contribute your ideas, questions and experiences!
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Philippe Duhamel - in his interTactica blog - Harnessing new technology for new tactics provides some great examples to get our creative ideas flowing.
- Sending out an SMS -- Supporting human rights work and activism with text messaging, or SMS - Short Messaging Service - functionality
- Organizing demonstrations -- Such as the Orange Revolution in Ukraine
- Coup de text -- Like ousting a president, it happened in the Philippines
- Protest Ringtones -- Highlighting corruption, it's being used in the Philippines
Links from the dicussion:
Message delivery issues
Hi again, Ellene
I also experienced these kinds of problems while I was developing FrontlineSMS, and had to build extra code and an entirely dedicated module into the software to handle it. The heart of SMS is the message Centre (SMSC), which handles all incoming and outgoing messages. The SMSC sits with the network operator, and each has their own. There are people out there who are experts in SMSC's, and it can be quite a detailed and complex subject.
I have found that if messages are sent, and the recipient is either out of range or their phone is switched off, the message can be delayed for hours, even when their phone becomes active again. Usually turning a phone on and off can 'hurry' the messages up, but at the end of the day you are totally dependant on the network operator and the efficiency of their systems, message volumes, network coverage, traffic and so on.
These are the kinds of problems Sanjana raised in his posting earlier, and one of the key barriers to developing efficient and reliable early warning alert systems. See his posting at http://ict4peace.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/the-problem-with-mobiles-in-em...
Ken