I’m Kuo-Yu slayer Chuang from ITRI, a government funded research institute in Taiwan. We developed an open standard for exchanging location information via SMS among mobile devices called Open GeoSMS, which has currently been adapted officially by Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Several use cases of this standard are shown with the following video:

We introduce Open GeoSMS with a quick and real example. Noritsuna-san is a friend of mine from Japan and a guest researcher in our company. One night, I got an SMS from him saying that he can’t get taxi home since it’s too late. I had no idea where he was and he could not read the street names in Chinese. I thus asked him to send me an Open GeoSMS with our free application. I then got an Open GeoSMS with the coordinate embedded in URL that points to Google Map service. At the end I totally new where he was and drove my little car to rescue him.

In the previous case, Open GeoSMS sent as a peer to peer message between mobile phones. It can be also used between mobile and server in disaster management. Users who have smart phone with GPS for incident report can attach coordinate in SMS with Open GeoSMS format (usually, with an App such as Ushahidi app on Android that we hacked).

This feature enables users to do incident reporting without a data connection. We know some volunteers bring their own smart phones and work with expensive data roaming fee. This feature also enables the backend server to auto-process the geo-tagged report, and insert this POI to map automatically. Rescuing activity or the resource transportation tasks can be assigned with Open GeoSMS for more specific location information. Especially with the offline map supported such as Open Street Map, POI-based information exchange can be easily achieved through Open GeoSMS.

As for the notification, the server doesn’t need to care if the receiver is a smart phone user or not. Open GeoSMS notification is just an SMS and that works for almost every phone. On a smart phone, Open GeoSMS can bring out more information via URL. The latest spec and code are available on Google Code. If the SMS with coordinate is compliant to Open GeoSMS, other applications or services can easily parse it and get the x and y coordinates. Last month during a cyclone simulation of Samoa, PinPointAlerts provided Open GeoSMS as a notification option on http://www.SamoAlert.com so the simulation notification could be sent with this open standard. Our team also shipped five smart phones to Samoa with an Open GeoSMS enabled Ushahidi app installed or this Cyclone Simulation activity. As a result, not only could the general SMS-based incident reports be made, but also the Open GeoSMS style geo-tagged SMS could be sent to server for the possible automation afterwards.

Our team has hacked an Open GeoSMS enabled Ushahidi Android App, now we are working with Ushahidi mobile app team on additional projects to merge our technologies. Our next step is to implement a plug-in for Ushahidi to parse Open GeoSMS in order to gain the automated processing ability. Further objectives include working with offline maps such as Open Street Map (OSM) so users can have a better understanding re incoming Open GeoSMS. For more information and our latest activities, please visit our facebook page.

We really hope this tiny handy open standard can help people in various way

SMSsync - a simple SMS to HTTP sync utility from Ushahidi

SMSsync is a simple SMS to HTTP sync utility. It turns any Android phone into a local SMS gateway that syncs to the web.

SMSsync supports filtering text messages by keywords and can transmit the text message to a configured callback URL via HTTP POST request. We already used this internally in the Ushahidi Android app, and we decided that it was a valuable enough utility to create a simple app around it for everyone to use.

Instructions

• To start the SMSSync Gateway, you’ll need to specify a callback URL. This URL is where all incoming text messages will be transmitted to.
• For security you can specify at secret at the callback URL. If the secret doesn’t match, the callback URL will ignore the transmission.
• Additionally, you can specify keywords with which to filter incoming messages. Only matching text messages will be sent to the SMSSync Gateway URL.
• The SMSSync sends the following variables via the POST method:
  • from
  • message
  • secret

[Download SMSsync here]

Genesis

A couple months ago, on one of my trips to the US, David and I were sitting working in a coffeeshop and started talking about how we could make it easy for people without access to computers to easily send SMS messages to Ushahidi. Of course, you still need a phone, but at least in this case it’ll cost you less. Henry Addo, in Ghana, got started on it, and we’ve got the first release to show you now.

The design was to be able to send SMS reports to Ushahidi by just putting the deployment particulars into it. As long as your phone has an internet connection and power, you can just put it in the corner and let it chug away syncing incoming reports to Ushahidi.

Other Uses

Realizing that SMSsync had a lot of value for other use cases beyond Ushahidi, we set simple parameters for it. For instance, you can create your own in-country SMS-to-Twitter app now utilizing SMSsync and the Twitter API. We’re playing around with this in Nairobi right now, and it works great. Another example, imagine a radio station using SMSSync to have users respond to something on air. There are hundreds of use applications for this.

We think there might be a good reason to create SMSsync for other mobile platforms as well. If you’d like to get involved with that, let us know.

We’re looking forward to seeing if everyone else finds this as useful as we do. Let us know what you do with it.

SMSsync is also built in as a plugin for the next release of Ushahidi (v2.0) “Luanda” coming out very soon.

Dale has been an influential member of the Ushahidi community, dedicating many hours of his time to release top quality code for the rest of us to use, and working with the others in the dev community to get things done.

It’s because of that latter trait that we started talking to Dale and asked him to join the Ushahidi team in a part-time role as Mobile Project Manager. In this position he’ll be working not only on the WinMo app, but also coordinating and helping the others around the world who are contributing to the Android, iPhone and Java apps.

If you’re interested in taking part on the mobile apps, start with these links, and then get in touch with Dale.

• Ushahidi Mobile on our Wiki
• Ushahidi’s Github code respository

Welcome aboard Dale!

Android
Josiah Mugambi is starting us off with an overview of the Ushahidi Android application. His phone is synced with the Hatari instance, which maps crime and corruption in Nairobi. The Android app seems to have a number of bugs, including the instance map is not syncing with the Android app’s map. You can help us fix these bugs, or create your own using the source code found here.

iPhone
Wilfred Mworia is here to show some of the development on the Ushahidi iPhone app. Of all the mobile apps, this is the only one that isn’t in production and ready to use. The source code is available on Github, for anyone who would like to help complete it.

J2ME (Java)
Jessica Colaco is showing the J2ME application for Ushahidi. It’s a very basic setup that works on all Java-enabled phones. This app gives us the greatest reach, especially beyond people with specific smartphone applications. The code is here.

Windows Mobile
Unfortunately Dale Zak wasn’t present to give us a demo of the WinMo app. It’s the one that has had the most feedback and iterations to its development, and is the most stable of the whole group. You can grab the code and extend it here.

Ideas

• A way to manage the administrative functions of Ushahidi from your mobile phone.
• Connect the mobile apps into social networks.
• Ability to pull up just specific people’s reports.

What would you do to make the Ushahidi mobile apps better?

We had three main areas that we focused on for this Goma; stability, speed and mobile apps. To introduce the release, here’s David Kobia:

Stability, Speed and Mobile Apps: Ushahidi’s Goma Release from WhiteAfrican on Vimeo.

What’s in Goma?

It’s not possible to track all of the minor upgrades, changes and additions to the platform here, but here are some of the items that are important for everyone to know about.

• Caching – map and database queries have been slowing load times down considerably. All pages with maps now have caching built-in.
• Alerts – email and SMS proximity-based alerts are now fully functional.
• You can now watch incidents play chronologically on the main map using the “Play” button.
• Refined the submissions page, simplifying the location chooser, date/time and other minor features.
• On the detailed incident report page the map shows other incidents by proximity.
• Admins can import KML or GeoRSS feeds, and these can show up on the map as overlays on top of the normal Ushahidi data. (delayed for a couple days, working out some kinks…)
• Admins can now download a CSV file of all their data.
• Admins can now do a “mass upload” of data into the database.
• We’re trying to make it easier to get a fresh install of Ushahidi up on your own server. To this end, we’ve moved the config.php items into the admin area for easier modification by non-techies.
• Improved feedback form, residing in every instances footer, that makes it easy for end users to send feedback to the admin. This shows up in their admin panel.
• Sharing of data between instances of Ushahidi is fully functional now.
• Added a “Comments” tab into the admin area for moderation.
• Added a new feature to track veracity and trust of users by the admin

Find a bug? Submit it to bugs.ushahidi.com
Have a question? Ask it on the forums
Want to pitch in? Start on the wiki or download the code

Mobile phone applications

A small team of dedicated devs put a lot of time into creating the new Ushahidi mobile apps that are available for you to run on your phone. The basic functionality of all the mobile apps are to sync with an instance of Ushahidi. It allows you to send reports with images and location information as well as receive alerts from others who have sent in reports to the site. With this, you can track what is going on in an emergency, disaster or crisis anywhere in the world.

The mobile apps work in offline mode as well, so you can create reports and send them when you reconnect, or you can download and see the incidents that have been reported and still view them when you’re not connected.

Android – Henry Addo, our Ghanaian dev, has been part of the team since January, but he started fiddling around with Android well before that.

Windows Mobile - Dale Zak is an amazing Canadian mobile phone dev. He does a lot of cool stuff out there, and we were extremely happy when he volunteered to create the WinMo version of Ushahidi.

J2ME (Java) – Steve Mutinda is an outstanding Kenyan mobile app developer, he and his firm Shimba Mobile dedicated a lot of resources to see this app come into being. The J2ME app will work on any phone that runs Java, so it should work on the widest number of phones available.

This is their beta release, so there will be some bugs, submit them to bugs.ushahidi.com and they’ll be on them right away.

Major contributors

Projects like Ushahidi wouldn’t be where they are without the help of programmers who volunteer their time, brains and energy to solving some very difficult challenges. A BIG thanks goes out to all the devs who made this happen. Major contributors included:

• Jason Mule (Kenya)
• Brian Muita (Kenya)
• Soyapi Mumba (Malawi)
• Emmanuel Kala (Kenya)
• Henry Addo (Ghana)
• Steve Mutinda (Kenya)
• Dale Zak (Canada)

As of this week, Henry will be working on Ushahidi as one of the core architecture and development team members. As part of the volunteer development community that works on Ushahidi, he has already created the Ushahidi Android app, and is now doing some new discovery work in the area of using Laconica in conjunction with Ushahidi, and the use of microblogging and mobile networks in emergencies.

Basically, he has a long history of doing extraordinary work on Ushahidi, and he has the passion and desire we’re looking for to help Ushahidi continue to grow. He’s smart, and he gets things done. He’s a perfect fit, and we’re so happy to have him on board.

A word of advice for anyone else looking to join Ushahidi full-time as things open up in the future: we look to our most active and dedicated volunteer devs first. They are a known quantity, and prove by their actions their belief in what Ushahidi is about.

So far, the Ushahidi Mobile Team is working on J2ME, iPhone and Android apps. MMS messaging for images and videos is also being tested out, and we think we can get that into the first build too.

[Please continue to provide feedback on Ushahidi's mobile app interfaces and features]

Ushahidi J2ME (Java application for all GPRS phones)

I’m in Kenya this week, and was at a local tech conference. Of course, you can’t go 2 steps in any tech circle without meeting up with an Ushahidi developer, and I wasn’t disappointed. Steve Mutinda, the outrageously talented J2ME developer had been at it again. He sauntered up, whipped out his phone and started showing me the newest mobile phone integration for Ushahidi, with maps, lists, and full database integration.

(more pictures in the Ushahidi Flickr group)

This is one of the wonderful things about being part of an open source project. When you attract really smart and driven individuals, they tend to put out some amazing work.

Ushahidi iPhone application v0.3

Chris and Joe have been hard at work, using great feedback from the last post we did on the iPhone design, they’ve changed up the interface and have provided some notes on the changes. We’re going with this version for the first actual application, which Wilfred has begun working on already.

Changes, by image number on the image above:

• #1 Homepage has clearer, more obviously clickable buttons. Removed “13 events near you” text on the homepage to make it faster (not sure this is necessary)
• #2 Changed dropdown text to “all incident types”
• #5 Cleaned up the typography, simplified and removed some text.
• #6 Removed the three-part list (was at the bottom) in favor of just putting A) photos B) summary and C) two big buttons, “Read Incident Reports (1)” and “Add Incident Report.”
• #6 “email/sms/add” (triple button at the top) removed for this release. It’s just poorly specified how that should work, it’s probably complex to develop, and it’s not essential.
• #7, #9 Simplified the “edit location” button and made the camera icon much bigger.
• #10 Changed text of the buttons on the pin-dropping Gmap interface.
• #11 Added direct link to ushahidi.com

Ushahidi Android application

Rounding out our smart phone tri-fecta is Henry Addo, our Ghanaian developer, on the hot new Android mobile phone platform. Though I don’t have any screens to show, Henry is taking his lead from the iPhone design. We do this with all three operating systems to ensure some uniformity in design, features and actions.