This week, on Wednesday 16th, we’ll be hosting an in-depth overview of the SwiftRiver software and SwiftRiver Web Services platforms in Nairobi, Kenya. You can register to attend that event (or the live stream) here. Myself, along with Technical Architect and Lead Developer Matthew Griffiths are really looking forward to displaying some of the technical aspects of the work we’ve been doing over the past few months. However, we realize everyone isn’t a developer and some people want a more accesible description of the project.

That said, here’s all you need to know about SwiftRiver (even if you don’t really care what the word veracity means)…

SwiftRiver (http://swift.ushahidi.com) is a free and open source software platform that uses algorithms and crowdsourcing to validate and filter news.

Features

• Aggregate content from many sources (Email, Blogs and News, Twitter, SMS)
• Rate content sources (Email address, URLs, Twitter User, phone number)
• Sort content by authority (more trustworthy or less trustworthy)
• Post reports from Swift to Ushahidi with 1-click
• Plugin Architecture
• Swift Web Services already integrated (SwiftRiver does all the things SWS does)

Other Notes

• Open Source
• Easy to theme
• Allows instance admins to determine the sources they trust
• Speeds up the process of sorting through large streams of data
• Helps Ushahidi users manage news
• Needs to be downloaded and run from a web server (like Ushahidi)

Swift Web Services (http://sws.ushahidi.com) is a suite of web apis that do different things. Each application does something different, and each are independent. SwiftRiver uses them all.

Applications

• SiLCC pulls keywords from any Text (including SMS and Twitter) and automatically sorts related text
• SULSa automatically detects location of incoming content/reports
• SiCDS automatically filters out duplicate content (re-tweets, blogs, text messages)
• Reverberations detects how influential/popular content is online
• RiverID allows Swift users to carry their Swift reputation with them across the web

Additional Notes

• Cloud applications (no download, no install)
• Web APIs
• Open-source
• Free for anyone to use
• Premium options available
• RESTful (for other applications)
• Fully integrates with Ushahidi
• Hosted (no download, no install)
• Available for WordPress and Drupal