Software update: v1.6.14 including Translation Manager!

Following another new release (now available for download from the website), a word from our lovely developer team. Alex is currently sunning himself in the south of France, so we'll hear from Morgan - who as fate would have it is currently hard at work in his alternative office... in the south of France. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the latest release of FrontlineSMS: v1.6.14.

(For a guide to installing the new version of FrontlineSMS if you’re already using an older version, click here)

As you might have noticed, new builds have been fairly frequent since we released FrontlineSMS v1.6! Now that we've changed the architecture of our code, and we have two full-time developers, we're trying to make things move faster.

A new releasing process

Our new work process is simple: we build a release candidate. Then, this version is tested by our wonderful testers (including Aleksei Ivanov in Russia, and Aptivate in Cambridge), and once we're happy with it, we release it to the public.

Then, we spend our time implementing new features, and fixing any issues you share with us on the community page. When a new iteration is finished, we build a release candidate, and then start all over again.

Now you are familiar with our process, let's talk a bit about FrontlineSMS 1.6.14 and its new features.

FrontlineSMS v1.6.14

First of all, we've fixed some important issues. You can now label fields in the Forms plugin, and send SMS using IntelliSMS once more. We also added a fix to several smaller issues.

But the main change in FrontlineSMS 1.6.14 is the new Translation Manager. This new plugin now allows you to help us translate FrontlineSMS into different languages.

As you know, FrontlineSMS is available in an increasing number of languages, and each has been put together by teams of volunteers. Up until now, incorporating a new language has been difficult, and has relied on support from the core FrontlineSMS team. Translation Manager changes all that, and allows you to create your own translations without needing to work through us. You can edit existing translations in case you find errors, or want anything changed. You can also create brand new translations, and then send us the files so we can include them in future public releases.

Please note, however, that this plugin is still in Beta, and it would be amazing if you could help us improve it!

Now it's time for you to enjoy FrontlineSMS 1.6.14. Altogether now, arms up! o/

Throw your hands up in the air

A little Friday fun in a good cause - as our Ken blogged yesterday, we think the photos that spontaneously started coming in from FrontlineSMS users and friends are really moving and uplifting - and we want more of them. We think the world is ready for a FrontlineSMS video you can dance to - so we will be putting these pictures to music, as soon as we have enough of 'em.

So as Ken says:

If you want to join in the fun, send us photos of you, your family or friends doing the o/ and you could be a star in the first genuine FrontlineSMS video! Just email them to videopics [at] frontlinesms.com and we’ll do the rest. And if you want to take it a little further, how about trying some fun photos with theFrontlineSMS:Medic and FrontlineSMS:Credit logos? +/ and $/?

Take it out on the tiles with you this Friday night and get the indie disco, the tango class, or the upper circle doing it - whatever your thing is!

Crossing the Digital Divide - FrontlineSMS in the developed world

I had a great discussion with some FrontlineSMS users this week as they gear up for their maiden voyage into SMS campaigning. Theirs is one of the larger UK charities, with a solid campaigning operation and a history of groundbreaking approaches - one of the first to run their own research project to spark real social change, back in the 1960s. But for one reason or another, they had never tried campaigning using SMS. Perhaps they went straight from snail mail to email? Perhaps the 160 character limit put them off? Either way, they are now taking their first steps towards integrating it into their campaigning approach - not as a standalone gimmick, but as another tool in the toolbox. We talk a lot on this blog about the potential of FrontlineSMS, and SMS more generally, to reach people in remote areas in the developing world, underserved by their governments. But I think it's worth remembering about the islands of vulnerability and isolation that can exist in the developed world too. At the end of 2008 there were 76.8 million active mobile subscriptions in the UK, or 1.26 for every inhabitant. But 10 million people in the UK (one sixth of the population) have never used the internet, and 4 million of them are among the least advantaged members of society (Independent). The UK now has a 'Digital Inclusion Champion', Martha Lane Fox, the founder of Lastminute.com, who is tasked with helping those 4 million people to get online by the time the 2010 London Olympics rolls around. For organisations working with some of this group, mobile could be a valuable communication and interaction tool.

The Foleshillfields Vision Project in Coventry, West Midlands, UK, uses FrontlineSMS to keep in touch with their volunteers and community group members, informing them about timings and activities. For the people they work with, as for many of us, phones and texting are an intimate part of daily life - it's how they arrange to meet their friends, find out what's going on, arrange playdates for their children. It's entirely natural that their community organisation is there too. The Project was already using SMS, and FrontlineSMS has made keeping in touch easier and faster for the team. You'll hear more about them in a future guest blog post.

So what should you think about when considering using SMS in your work in a developed country? In my meeting the other day, we discussed a few things to run through when shaping your FrontlineSMS intervention:

• Who is your audience? How well do you understand how the group you work with use mobile, and SMS in particular? Young mums, teenagers, and people with learning disabilities are all groups I've heard about recently as enthusiastic 'texters' and great candidates for SMS communications - but could you say the same for most older people?
• How can your SMS communication with them have a real impact? Can it form part of a wider campaign with an established 'ask' such as signing a petition, which could be easily done with a keyword reply to a broadcast SMS from you?
• Who can you reach with SMS that you can't reach through other means, and what would you most like to get from an interaction with those people?
• Whatever you want to achieve, it's important to think through whether it will work well with SMS. For example, it's hard to disseminate large volumes of information in a text; similarly referring people to a website using SMS won't work well unless they have a smart-phone with a good data service. But SMS is great for reminders (that your radio programme is coming on, or that they have an appointment), passing on helpline phone numbers, or doing a straw poll - 'have you experienced bullying at school today?'

What other issues should we think through? We'd love to hear from you, and we might be able to pull your advice together into a Get-Started Guide for this kind of work - so do get in touch!

I guess my main plug is this: Don't make SMS just an add-on to your communications. This is a powerful tool that can reach the parts other media can't - how could you use it to start new conversations in your community?

SMS:Gov - Local Government Interface for Constituents via SMS Text Messages

In the twenty-third in our series of guest blog posts, Wayan Vota from Inveneo reflects on the potential of SMS - and FrontlineSMS - to hold local government to account in the developing world. Local governments in the developing world face a serious communications problem. As Roomthinker tweets, there is currently no easy mechanism for constituents to communicate with their elected officials - in urban or rural and underserved areas:

Mass media can quickly inform or educate but radio, TV, and newspapers are usually state controlled by national organizations distant from local needs or decisions. And none of these media are two-way communications. Just one-to-many broadcast mediums.

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In addition, local governments can be ignorant about constituents' changing needs and interests - especially marginalized communities that have been historically ignored or under-represented. Local governments may produce services that they find interesting or please national politicians without any feedback from the people they are expected to serve.

Yet there now exists a technology application that could give feedback on the needs of a community, even providing for targeted two-way communication between local governments and their citizenry. This technology is easy to implement and can be easily modified with changing needs: SMS text messaging.

SMS:Gov as 311

Local governments could set up automated SMS systems in their offices and then promote the phone number so citizens in need could text for local government assistance.

Using tools like FrontlineSMS, the local government would set us a simple menu tree for incoming text messages - each keyword would generate a particular response, leading to a new keyword. The system would track mobile phone numbers, allowing for a basic census of constituent needs and interests.

For example: someone texting "Weather" would receive a basic forecast & could respond with CropForecast, FishingForecast, or National Forecast for specialized weather forecasts in each area. This would both educate the respondents and track how many citizens were interested in each area.

Multiply this over the many local government services and a single FrontlineSMS instance could become an automated information service similar to the 311 service in New York, San Francisco, and Washington DC in the US, at a fraction of the cost.

SMS:Gov as Citizen Pulse

Smart politicians try to stay engaged with their electorate - keeping in constant communication with them to gauge their mood and needs. Yet how can a local politician know what his geographically dispersed constituents need and inform them of his efforts?

Again, using a FrontlineSMS system, officials can easily gather citizen input via SMS, grouping constituent interests by keywords. Then, based on those keywords, informing them of his actions in their interests. Think My Barack Obama, but via text message.

Try out live SMS:Gov

Intrigued? Then text "LOCALGOV" to this phone number +1.202.506.0148 and you can test out our live SMS:Gov demo. Yes, really! Try it yourself from anywhere in the world.

This post was originally published on the ICTworks blog from Inveneo in March 2010. Thanks to Wayan for kindly allowing us to republish.

Guardian: Fast mobile-based messaging service boosts healthcare and cuts costs

After the free SMS software FrontlineSMS:Medic was used to track outbreaks of tuberculosis, the local hospital saved $3,500 in costs (mostly in fuel) and some 2,100 hours in travel and work time across six months, while at the same time the number of tuberculosis patients treated was doubled. The cost to the hospital of using the SMS messaging tool to gather health data was just $250 over the same period in text-messaging charges. "The community health workers were able to get the information to the right people about symptoms much faster," says Josh Nesbit, executive director of FrontlineSMS:Medic. "Now all patient follow-up is based on SMS messages, which means that less patients are dropping out of their drug programmes because they forget or don't know where to get the drugs."

Nesbit is developing other uses for mobile phones and SMS software, including a monitoring system that is using artificial intelligence software to auto-categorise messages sent from healthcare workers in the field. The idea is to catch symptoms across a number of languages and spellings (or misspellings) to detect outbreaks of diseases or hotspots for HIV/Aids, for example.

Read more on the Guardian website.

Guardian: Mobile Technology Takes Centre Stage in Disaster Relief

"The good news about mobile penetration is how you can interact with people at scale to serve a social good and be in touch with people's needs," says Josh Nesbit, executive director of FrontlineSMS:Medic, a software tool that was rolled out to health care workers in Malawi 18 months ago and is now being used across 11 counties, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. The service is a sister product of FrontlineSMS which helped prioritise SMS messages following the Haitian earthquake.

Read more on the Guardian website.

Newsletter: Competitions, videos, and the new version of FrontlineSMS

In case you missed it, here's our inaugural user newsletter, reproduced in full for your reading pleasure. Sign up on the right to receive updates from us (no more than once a month). Welcome to our first ever user newsletter. We hope you find it useful - and don't forget you can start your own discussions at our FrontlineSMS Community page!

FrontlineSMS 1.6 released

The new version of FrontlineSMS is out, packed with new features: an HTTP Trigger which allows you to use the software to send SMS to other applications; a plugin framework to make FrontlineSMS easier to adapt; new translations including Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, and Bahasa; and improved code behind the scenes.

Read more about these features and our plans for the future on our blog.

Feature in our new video!

We love the photos you've been sending in of your teams and supporters with their arms in the air, FrontlineSMS-style - o/ ! We love them so much, in fact, that we want to devote a whole video to them. Send in your photos to videopics@frontlinesms.com and we'll set them to music - and the first ten to send their photos get a free FrontlineSMS badge!

Get your stories, pictures and videos featured on the FrontlineSMS website!

FrontlineSMS is 100% funded by donors. Their support helps us continue to improve the software, and support you through our online community. But it's your stories that keep us going, and which shape our story, helping donors see how their money is making a difference out in the world. Telling us how you use the software and what impact it's had on your work, is one way you can help keep FrontlineSMS going - and in return, we can profile your work on our website and our blog. Submit your photos and stories by email to profilemyproject@frontlinesms.com (or just tell us you're interested!) and we will start working with you to showcase your work in the most appropriate way. That might be a glossy, jointly-branded PDF case study aimed at donors; a guest post on our blog; a starring role in a video about FrontlineSMS; or even a visit from a journalist. We can't wait to hear from you!

News update: FrontlineSMS gets new funding, Ken gets an award from National Geographic, and our core team is growing

It's been a busy time at FrontlineSMS. In May we were awarded significant new funding from the Omidyar network, which will allow us to increase our support to our user community; grow our developer community; and help us grow our communications and fundraising capacity so that we can become more sustainable. The following week, our very own Ken Banks was honoured with a National Geographic Emerging Explorers Award. And since March we've expanded the team, welcoming Morgan Belkadi, our new programmer, and Laura Hudson, our Project Manager.

We hope you've enjoyed the newsletter - we'd love to hear what you think. Let us know your views, your requests for future newsletters, and any other comments at info@frontlinesms.com.

o/

FrontlineSMS

FrontlineSMS is looking for a communications intern

Since the beginning of 2010 it's been a wild ride here at FrontlineSMS, with new funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Omidyar Network, new staff, new offices, a new release, and Ken's National Geographic award. We're delighted to have been joined recently by a new intern, Adam, and a few more kind souls are giving us their time to help us with specific projects. We're very grateful, as we're still growing, and there's a lot to do!

However we would love to find someone who could help to get the FrontlineSMS message out and capitalise on our momentum. We'd love to find someone who could help us with this, perhaps as a paid internship as they finish their mid-career Masters, perhaps as a project between other projects. We may be able to pay a small stipend to the right person.

We need someone to come up with a communications calendar, case studies, Q&As and key metrics; and develop and pitch features (together with partners). You can be based anywhere, as long as you're able to connect online or by phone easily so we can keep in touch.

If you have a passion for proactive and reactive communications, send us your CV and tell us why you're the perfect person to join the team at info@frontlinesms.com.

Feel free to share a link to this post with any lists or individuals you think might be interested. We can't wait to hear from you! o/

From Russia with Love

In the twenty-second in our series of FrontlineSMS Guest Posts, a bit of a departure from the norm. Aleksei is our star software tester, and as part of the testing he's been trying it out in his wife's "live environment". His story provides some interesting insights into how small enterprises of any stripe can make use of FrontlineSMS for staff coordination and management. His wife Elena Ovsiannikova, leader of a beauty consulting team, tells us how she has been using the software to support her new team members. “I work with a lot of people, and a lot of information. I advise my clients about cosmetics and perfumes from several famous international companies, and I have a team to help me. Sharing information about so many products with new team members is not easy. I have lots of lovely pamphlets for them, but carrying them all around with you all day in a little handbag? Impossible, they're too heavy. We are beautiful women, not robots!

Yet even with a smartphone with a good browser, and email client, and instant messenger services, keeping in up-to-date in the field can be a challenge for a new consultant. That's where FrontlineSMS comes in.

Aleksei Ivanov, my husband, has been a nut about technology and social optimization all his life. He's now an IT project manager and he suggested using my business to help the FrontlineSMS team test software and translate it into Russian. He showed me how to use the software to get information quickly, do surveys among my team members, support them and save them time.

"Although broadband Internet, Wi-Fi and WiMAX networks have good penetration in Moscow (Russia), mobile phones became indispensable personal devices so long ago that I can't honestly remember when it happened,' Aleksei says. 'It feels like we've always had mobile phones and GSM networks in our lives. The first GSM network in Moscow was only built in 1992 and it was very expensive, but now it's quite cheap and you can use several SIM-cards for different needs - from voice calls to 3G mobile internet in a USB-modem on a laptop or netbook. But for young people, text messaging is still the best known and most-used communication tool, and it seemed to me that it could really help Elena.

"Knowing all of that, I decided to help my wife to design and build a mobile database to help answer frequently asked questions around her activity, such as dates of marketing campaigns, dates of training courses for new representatives and coordinators, and so on. And it works really well! For example, not so long ago a new representative, meeting with a client, forgot the dates of the current campaign when 30% discounts apply. She sent the short message CAMPAIGN07 to our FrontlineSMS number - an ordinary mobile number which was written in her mobile phone address book. She got a response in less than a minute with dates of the beginning and the end of the campaign."

I also use FrontlineSMS for surveys. I have no time to meet every week with every member of my team to check up on their working process, and not all of them have email - but all my team members have mobile phones and are able to use them for one simple action – responding to text messages.

Finally, I use FrontlineSMS to coordinate team attendance at training courses. If I SMS the team to ask who would like to attend a particular course, using FrontlineSMS, those who are interested text back 'YES', and their names and mobile numbers are emailed to me using the Email option in keyword actions. They are then one conversation in my email, and easily forward to a secretary to book the right room the training.

We want to say huge thanks to Ken Banks - kiwanja.net founder - who realised this fantastic idea, and to all the FrontlineSMS team! o/