Find answers to Frequently Asked Questions about FrontlineSMS!
FrontlineSMS set up on a laptop. Photo credit: Ken Banks, kiwanja.net When people first encounter FrontlineSMS software, a number of questions come up again and again, both in person and on our community forum; ‘how do I access the software?’ ‘What does it cost to send and receive messages?’ ‘What can FrontlineSMS be used for?’ We’ve collated... Read More
Faster Channels of Communication: A Radio and SMS Initiative in NE Kenya
Infoasaid has recently shared some news about an initiative with Save the Children in Wajir, Kenya, which is using FrontlineSMS to communicate with field workers and community representatives. Meanwhile, the radio is being used to share information about health, education and food security. The objective of Infoasaid – a consortium of Internews and the BBC World Service... Read More
UN uses FrontlineSMS to help manage aid response in East Africa
By Lisa LaRochelle, FrontlineSMS Project Assistant FrontlineSMS is being used for social change in many different ways across the world. Common use case examples include election monitoring, provision of health information, and agricultural support – these kinds of use cases have direct positive impact on people’s lives. Yet here at FrontlineSMS we have seen increasing numbers... Read More
Malaria Diagnosis in Real-Time via SMS
Re-posted from the Malaria Consortium blog, with permission from Steve Mellor, Malaria Consortium Systems Manager Malaria Consortium, with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded CONTAINMENT Project, is pioneering a Day 3 positive alert system in Ta Sanh district, western Cambodia, using mobile phone and web-based technology (including FrontlineSMS) to facilitate... Read More
SMS inspiration: A view from the Central Independent States
Moldcell and Orange - the two main Moldovan networks I’m beginning this week in the small landlocked eastern European country of Moldova, talking to representatives of IREX-supported organisations running telecentres and internet access points across the region. We just had a short session on FrontlineSMS, explaining how it works, and starting to come up with ideas for how... Read More
CityCampLondon: thoughts on SMS and appropriate tech
This weekend has been spent at CityCampLondon, in a fog of coffee and beer, on Brick Lane and at the Kings Cross Hub, thinking and talking about using tech to make London better. I wanted to post a slightly more coherent version of my thoughts here. Mobile Phone chandelier, LBI on Brick Lane At the Mobile in the City panel, I reflected on the UK’s digital divide, which I’ve... Read More
Designing for the REAL 95%
As occasionally happens, Ken and I find ourselves on opposite sides of the world at conferences this week. Ken is at Mobile Web in Africa 2010, in Johannesburg, and I’m hereby asking him to tell you all about it here when he gets a minute. \o/ I’m at Design for Persuasion in Ghent, Belgium, with a room full of people who’ve never heard of FrontlineSMS – this... Read More
Your stories are our bread and butter
Friday morning saw me zooming up Portobello Road in west London, cursing the tourists and looking forward to a large flat white with some new acquaintances – I was meeting with a couple of people have just started to use FrontlineSMS for campaigning. This is an increasingly common, and always delightful, part of my job. I generally pepper people with questions, exclaim ‘that’s... Read More
Social Change – to go, please
In our twenty-fifth guest post, the lovely Jon Camfield highlights his past work to get FrontlineSMS running on an OLPC laptop. Anyone else running \o/ on an OLPC? Let us know! The recent Technology Salons have been on local and sectoral implementations of mobile technology in development. Mobile is hardly “new” anymore, but we’re seeing increasing tools for... Read More
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,... Read More
