Tactical Tech is a group of people working to help NGOs and human rights advocates to make better use of technology in their work. One of the ways they do this is with their excellent NGO in-a-box project, a series of toolkits complete with software, information about on-line tools, tutorials, case studies and lots of ideas for how to make innovative use of practical technology within the technical and financial grasp of NGOs. The latest addition to the series, Mobiles in-a-box, is a candidate for inclusion in our ICT / local and community radio essential toolkit.
Continue reading ‘Radio and Mobiles in-a-box’
Tag Archive for 'software'
I wrote about about FrontlineSMS a few months ago. It’s a piece of software that turns a laptop and a mobile phone into a powerful system for sending and receiving SMS messages and that I think should be part of the essential digital toolkit for local and community radio. FrontlineSMS creator has just come out with a new version of the program, as well as a new website.
I haven’t tried the software (although I have requested it and we want to test it at a community radio station somewhere in Latin America) but Sanjana Hattotuwa gave it a pretty good grade in a blog post on mobileactive.org, although she questions whether it might be too complicated for some grassroots organisations and complained about compatibility problems with her Nokia 3110 (one that FrontlineSMS does NOT claim to support fully).
“News Factory” software was first developed by Internews Russia in 1999 to help radio and TV stations manage many aspects of their operations, including programme production and advertising schedules. It has evolved since then and Internews estimates that it is in use by some 350 stations around Russia. Another software package, News Exchange, facilitates the online exchange of news and information among stations.
The two packages have apparently been used together to establish low-cost virtual news agencies in Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
More and more telephones come with built-in FM receivers but a new twist (at least for me) is Nokia’s Internet Radio Beta. It is software that you can install on certain Nokia phones in order to listen to streaming internet radio stations on your phone using whatever connection you have available. If you have a wifi connection at home or at a public access point, you can listen for free. If you don’t, you can also listen via GPRS or 3G.
There is not much information on the site, but Dialup Radio claims to have been specifically designed for use by human rights activists in the deveoping world, with particular attention to security and keeping costs down. From the brief description, I think it could also be used as an alternative distribution method for radio news where stations don’t have access to the internet, but do have a telephone. They would simply call the (open source Asterisk) tepehony server and “order” news from a menu of options.
“Dialup Radio is a tool that distributes human rights and independent media via telephone. Brief radio-style audio files are uploaded and managed via the Dialup Radio website. These files are immediately available to callers who phone the project phone number. Our software automatically generates interactive voice response (IVR) menus that enable callers to naviage audio content using their telephone keypads. Dialup radio works with any telephone, and can be adopted for a variety of activist campaigns.”
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