We can now dynamically map and visualize real time SMS messages in Managing News using the new SlingshotSMS feature. All the code is available on github. This release is particularly exciting for us because it ties together two of our core projects in such a way that each is made better. SlingshotSMS is a lightweight SMS gateway that can be run off of a USB drive, needing only a GSM modem and an internet connection to act as a bridge between mobile phones and the web. Managing News is a powerful data aggregator and visualization tool that lets distributed teams work together to make large amounts of information useful. Together, they provide an extensible framework for teams conducting mobile data collection projects in the field.
Extensibility is key here because we need this to meet a wide variety of use cases in order for it to be useful. We have been particularly focused on use cases related to election monitoring, but this is just one of many possible applications. Here's a graphic that Saman made illustrating how the system works:
This technology is meant to accompany your existing processes of data collection. You have people in the field, they have cellphones, you have a phone back in headquarters, and they can text in messages to you that are then relayed to a visualization space, which helps keep you and your team on the same page.
Since SlingshotSMS runs on a USB drive, you just plug it in, plug in your phone, and set up what website you want to have the SMS messages sent to. The SMS messages are turned into RSS 2.0 and PUSHed, like as a fat ping. You computer just needs internet to send these messages.
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