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FrontlineSMS and Cell Alert Unite!
How to Use Cell Alert from Israel Kloss on Vimeo.
To download a 1-page PDF of how FrontlineSMS Alerts, works click here.
Information Atrophy vs. Information Overload
We are focusing on 2 major problems that the Internet presents for both the developed world and the 3 billion people living on less than $2/day (see http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp):
1) Those with the Internet have information overload (developed nations)
2) Those without Internet have comparatively no information (developing nations)
We are focusing on taking the glut of information in developed nations and delivering some of the best and most essential and time-critical of it to those people in need among the quickly expanding cellular phone users worldwide.
We do it through the use of 2 tools which we want to integrate for use one the ground, worldwide: FrontlineSMS and Cell Alert.
What is FrontlineSMS?
FrontlineSMS is free software that turns a laptop and a mobile phone into a central communications hub. Once installed, the program enables users to send and receive text messages with large groups of people through mobile phones. What you communicate is up to you, making FrontlineSMS useful in many different ways.
What is Cell Alert?
Cell Alert is a free information tracking and delivery tool that sends alerts to cell phones and email when anything you want is located online (sales lead alerts, apartment alerts, iphones, crimes alerts, travel alerts, transportation schedule alerts, corporate and personal reputation alerts, etc.)
FrontlineSMS + Cell Alert = FrontlineSMS Alerts
With Ken Banks, the Founder of FrontlineSMS, backing and helping push forward this project, our next step is to combine the success of FrontlineSMS with the power of Cell Alert. With Ken's vision for the continent of Africa and his success in use of new innovation for some of the most vulnerable populations in the world, we see great potential in this partnership to create FrontlineSMS Alerts.
Our Tools
We have created a whole new suite of information tracking and delivery modules called Grant Alerts, Regional Conflict Alerts, Genocide and Blockade Alerts, World Food Aid Alerts, Economic Aid Alerts and more!
Our Trials in El Salvador and Pakistan:
These tools are particularly powerful when used with FrontlineSMS. Our recent trials proved our concept in El Salvador and Pakistan. Essential and timely market data that is unavailable in rural El Salvador and rural Pakistan due to a lack of Internet access. Through our trials, we used Cell Alert to locate and deliver essential market data to our beta testers in rural areas with FrontlineSMS.
Our Plans If We Win N2Y4 2009
Project 1 – FrontlineSMS Emergency Alerts (prototype only – needs funding)
The FrontlineSMS Emergency Alerts system is currently sketched out and ready to build. We currently have a customized prototype of Cell Alert that can monitor Emergency Alerts that can deliver nearly instant, on-the-ground notification to mobile devices.
The Cell Alert team has some exciting new developments!
1) Cell Alert is currently working with Ushahidi to integrate with our source code with the Ushahidi project in order to enable bi-directional SMS keyword-matching responses and notifications, expanding on their current crisis crowdsourcing services.
2) We've joined the Swift App development team to expand on its crisis meme API and information overload filtering collaboration between developers from Ushahidi.com, Meedan.net, Instedd.org, Google.org, Younoodle.com, Mapufacture.com and other developers of the emerging "Semantic Web."
2a) When the Mumbai bombing happened, Twitter lit up with memes (an idea or value or pattern of behavior that is passed from one person to another by non-genetic means) and viral re-tweets (signified by the letters RT followed by an @ symbol (a twitter representation of the source of a meme) and then the twitter handle (e. g. RT @cellalert: We're headed to San Jose!).
Those Tweets (120 character small comments by people worldwide) gave essential cues to the nature of the bombing, impending threats, recovering locations, emergency response methods, etc. And there arose an organic leadership of authoritative trusted sources called "digital curators" (see http://www.micropersuasion.com/2008/02/the-digital-cur.html). Those “digital curators” arose organically and were followed based on their authoritative body of knowledge about the situation in Mumbai and about the city itself and the people affected.
The resulting instant information distribution began to be tracked and noticed by the founders of SwiftApp.org and their vision for an organic, trust-based crisis information vetting and alert tool came together.
After additional improvements, this tool will scour the web for humanitarian- and health-related emergencies and feed them into our FrontlineSMS text-messaging blasts-- sending them right to the ground where the data alerts are needed most.
Project 2 – FrontlineSMS Agriculture Alerts (needs to be integrated – needs funding)
CellAlert and FrontlineSMS are also partnering to send text alerts with critical market information to farmers with cell phones. This tool has already served in some existing cellular clouds in El Salvador, Rwanda, Uganda, Bangladesh. We believe this technology also has tremendous potential for use with the Grameen Foundation's Village Phone in those countries.
Project 3 – FrontlineSMS Marketplace Alerts (needs to be merged – needs funding)
CellAlert and FrontlineSMS currently have (in private alpha testing) a module that is delivering essential commodity information between buyers and sellers of agricultural products by utilizing FrontlineSMS's two-way text-response features. It is essentially our collaborative Agro-product Text-based Trading Marketplace.
We believe this project could extend even into the dissemination of farming micro-loan opportunities through the FrontlineSMS Alerts Loan Clearinghouse.
Project 4 – Fair Trade Alerts (prototype only – needs funding)
Another goal we have is to expand this tool into Fair Trade Alerts by expanding on "The Fair Tracing Project", and creating a fair trade accountability and alert system for international businesses that are entering into ventures with farmers in developing countries worldwide. To see an applicable but basic view of how this technology can work with cell phones, please view the Google My Location video by clicking here.
Fair Trade Alerts could be especially important with oil-based crops in Africa that are quickly becoming an answer to American and International energy demands for biodiesel oil. This market is quickly expanding in Africa. For more information, please see the rapid expansion of African Biodiesel Crops: here and here
Fair Trade Alerts will create a connection directly between the vegetable oil sellers in formerly inaccessible regions and socially responsible companies outside the farmers’ home countries.
For example, the Safeway Corporation, switched their entire trucking fleet to biodiesel (http://www.biodiesel.org/news/bulletin/2007/090407.htm#6).
Socially Responsible Corporations (SRCs) would benefit from the community acceptance that Fair Trade Alerts offers them. Biodiesel feed stock farmers and merchants in Africa and other developing nations would benefit from the equal footing and negotiating power that corporate accountability that Fair Trade Alerts creates in the worldwide emerging biodiesel markets.
Please see our full Yahoo Green biodiesel proposal here.
Project 5 – FrontlineSMS Alerts Widget (prototype only – needs funding)
The FrontlineSMS Alerts Widget is currently sketched out and ready to build. We want it to become a multi-lingual viral widget for distribution of FrontlineSMS Alerts for non-profits that can use it for nearly instant, on-the-ground notification of the following:
Grant Alerts, Regional Conflict Alerts, Genocide and Blockade Alerts, Travel Alerts, Transportation Alerts, UN World Food Programme Alerts, etc. FrontlineSMS Alerts would scour the web for non-profit keyword and phrases and feed them into our FrontlineSMS text-messaging blasts-- sending them right to the ground where the data alerts are needed most.
Please Help FrontlineSMS Alert the Disadvantaged, Worldwide
You can determine whether FrontlineSMS Alerts can go forward as a partnership. If you think these ideas will help some of the developing world's 2.2 billion cell phone users to survive and eventually even thrive in developing countries worldwide, please vote for us so that we can go forward!
A vote for us will also help us expand into these additional FrontlineSMS Alerts:
Medical Supply Alerts, Free Item Alerts, Loan Alerts, Local Innovation Alerts, Social Entrepreneur Network Alerts, Regional News Alerts, Volunteer Alerts and more!