PublicStuff

We need transparency and accountability in government.   This is not just a social need, it is a federal directive. 

Currently, there are heavy, costly, untimely 311 systems.  There needs to be an alt to bridge divide between governments and their constituents.

Online platform that connects people and local govts
Public stuff = online portal, mobile app, and software system.

Differentiation is that they focus on the needs of the government and the citizen.

Social Impact: provides citizens with the tools they need to make changes in their communities especially with lower income areas and people. 

AMIS - Agricultural Information System
Bringing information to Cameroon farmers by sending sms messages.
The system is 2 way.  Can inform farmers about markets or can get information from farmers about pest attacks.  

Q. What is the feedback from the farming community?  What is the reaction? Challenges to adoption?
A. talked to community, gave them phones, did research about what kind of information they would want to know.

Q. What funding sources have you looked for?
A. We have talked to the government and they are willing to be partners but they don't have much money.

Q. Will phone providers send free sms?
A. There are certain times of the day when sms is free so we will make use of that.

Handheld Human Rights

Making human rights data accessible and actionable.

Working in Burma/Myanmar - less than 1% cellphone/internet penetration.  Neighboring bangladesh has much more cell phone penetration and reception extends into the border of Burma where some of the worst human rights abuses are occurring. 

HandHeld Human Rights will take their bangladeshi mobile phone and send a text message and it will be broadcast to a large network of human rights organiziations.

Q. What are the challenges to scaling to other countries

VozMob

Multimedia stories posted from your mobile phones.

We're developing a system based on customizing drupal and create multimedia stories directly into the site generated from lowend phones as long as they support MMS.

It is also 2-way.  Information can be sent from the site out back to phones.  People can rate and comment on the stories directly from their phones.

A physical paper newsletter was created from stories posted via VozMob.  It philosophically about helping people retake control of their own communities by voicing their issues.

SeeClickFix

Potholes, graffiti, small issues in your neighborhood, drug dealing, school bus problems.  It takes a while to figure out who to call to address these problems. 

How do we force accountability?  We created a tool called WatchAreas.  Freeformed bounded maps on Google Maps.  When an issue is recorded it sends an alert to the people who monitors that area.

Needs:
Mobile accessibility is the key to bringing this idea to the developing world.  SmartPhone apps would be nice, they need to develop an SMS gateway.  Also, translation is a need.

It requires users to create watch areas and link these areas to the people responsible

Q. Sustainability(business model)?

FrontlineSMS

FrontlineSMS is an SMS gateway.  CellAlert is a keyword matching job alert tool that sends info about positions that people in developing countries can bid on and help pull themselves out of poverty.

3 aspects to the project:
  Technical: Its 2 way sms
  Sustainability: focused towards the developing world but also can apply to inner city areas
  Grassroots: It directly enables people to help themselves

With FrontlineSMS is possible to bring 50,000 job alerts to people in the developing world. 

Q. There are plenty of for-profit services like you, how do you compare?

FrontlineSMS:Medic

Focused on very basic sms systems.  "The lowest common denominator".  In Malawi, 10% have internet access, 90% have mobile phone access, 93% of which are simple SIM based phones without data access.

Can do GIS modeling on things like disease outbreaks.  OpenMRS is an electronic medical record system, predominant system in the developing world but limited to being inside the clinic.  FrontLineMRS is the patch to this system to bring it to the village. 

Can do disease diagnostics with simple camera phones.

HopePhones.org - Can send in your phone and repurpose it for global health. 

SMSOne
Location specific alerts.

Focused towards school dropouts and financially backward youths. 

People have little access to information in India.  All media is national, not local.  30-35% unemployed.  Heavy competition in business. With the use of mobile, to connect every mobile user.  Designated youths goes around and collects mobile users data in his neighborhood, creates a db.  The youth now becomes a mobile journalist.  Earns the youth 5-10k rupies / mo plus prestige.  This model is operational in 300 locations in rural areas. 

Social benefits:
Digital inclusion, micromedia, social entrepenuership. 

Q. Have there been copycats or abuses?

SlaveFree

27million people enslaved - 2nd largest illicit crime in the world
Everyone is part of the crime, and everyone is part of the solution using mobile technology as the tool.

Slavery is in basically all of the products that we use.  The problem is that we need a way to determine if the everyday products we use were produced with slave labor.

Nobody wants to use products made with slavery
Nobody wants to produce products if its known they use slave labor.

Build a massive grid of consumer demand for slave free products by having people upload images of labels of products.

Q. The logic of taking pics of products that were already purchased. 

I got to the OpenStreetMap presentation a bit late so this blog post is a little cruddy, well more cruddy than the previous posts at least.  Here are my notes:

Roads are two way for israeli's but one way for palestinian.  How do you represent that in a database?

About a year ago, there was no map of Palestine.  No decent maps of Gaza as of Jan 2009.

To handle Gaza, had Yahoo sat imagery and could trace major points.  Pointed out to BBC that their map during the Jan 2009 Incursion into Gaza was wrong.  In 7 days, they had maps of Gaza.  Purchased sat imagery at 30m resolution, 5,000 Gbp.