Aid Worker Daily

Stefan Geens over at OgleEarth.com has an interesting post on a new service. DishPointer.com provides users with coordinates and settings for proper alignment of their satellite television dish. I am wondering how useful this would be for those of us with VSAT units?

I just wanted to let you all know that we are working hard on building out InSTEDD’s GeoChat platform to bring you a viable Twitter-like solution for sat phone users. I was introduced to Eduardo Jezierski and Daniel Cazzulino of InSTEDD through Evan, Mikel, Schuyler and Jesse (Many thanks to you all!) on Wednesday and since that time we have been working steadily to create a tool that will allow any Thuraya user to send their GPS coordinates via SMS and have it arrive as attachment in a designated recipient’s inbox. Daniel and Eduardo have been doing an amazing job and within 24hrs they had the server end up and running. As soon as we have something viable I will be sure to let you all know.

In the mean time check out http://www.teddster.org/ to get a taste of things to come.

First off, I apologize for the long delay.  I still need to review Cradlepoint’s PHS300 Personal Hotspot and a few other items and will try to do so in the next few days.  In the mean time I think I have come up with a way for aid workers using Thurayas (and I assume Iridiums) to send their GPS coordinates to their Twitter accounts.

The Thuraya FAQ section has step-by-step instructions for sending your GPS coordinates via SMS:

Send GPS Coordinates Through SMS…

• Go To “Menu”
• Select “GPS Manager”
• Select “Current Position”
• Upon reading the GPS Coordinates, press “Options”
• Select “Send As SMS”
• Type the Mobile Number you would like to send the SMS to.
  Press “Send”

What most of us may not know is that 40404 is only one of the short codes available to Twitter users and that there is also a long code available for all international calls: +44 7624 801423  Here is the info from Twitter Phone FAQ:

What are the Twitter phone numbers?
We currently have three short codes and one long code for those who twitter internationally. 

• In the US, use 40404. 
• In Canada, use 21212. 
• In India, use 5566511.
• Anywhere else, use +44 7624 801423

If you can get your location out there using Twitter you can also also use services like Fire Eagle, Dopplr, etc.  Thuraya’s SG-2520 runs Java you should also be able to run a host of location based apps like Google Maps for Mobile.  There are so many services and applications out there it would be great to hear more about what is and what could be.

RemoteX works well but not as well as I had hoped.  It is a bit slow, even over a broadband connection, and so cannot compare with services like LogMeIn.com.  However, it is easy to use so in a pinch could serve it’s purpose.

LINK

Of all the applications I have had the pleasure of using over the years one stands out above all the rest. Skype has been the aid worker’s friend for quite some time and has saved organizations countless dollars and perhaps even a few lives. The call quality is nearly perfect and you can’t beat the $0 price tag. A few highlights…

1) Sitting in my office in LA speaking with an associate in Chad who was sitting on a bed, at night, in the courtyard of her compound and connected to a VSAT via WiFi. I could hear the wind whistling through the tree branches above her.

2) We rolled out Skype at my previous organization’s HQ and found that for a 1hr conference call between two US cities, two European cities and one African city we were saving approximately $300/hr. We estimated a savings of $1500-2000/day with greatly increased communications.

3) After the Nias Island, Indonesia earthquake in April of ‘05 the mobile towers were jammed for about 1hr in Medan, North Sumatra. However, Skype was running just fine when we returned to our desks and within minutes I had found an associate in Portland, OR who was up early and I passed on all the specifics. He immediately threw together an email notification and sent it off to a number of organizations. About 30 minutes later the story slowly began to appear on the international news sites.

Skype is an invaluable tool and while it may have recently taken a big hit in valuation it sure has my vote as one of the best humanitarian tools out there.

Check out what Yahel is doing over at airjaldi.org.  I am pretty sure he told me he’s got one of the world’s largest mesh networks in and around Dharmsala.

We just received an iRobot Roomba 560 vacuum cleaner as a gift and man is it cool. I know they have been around for forever but to watch it in action is a fantastic waste of time. I’ve been discussing drones and UAV’s with some folks but now robots are on my radar. Check out robots.net for the latest news.

If you know of some other great sites please let me know.

Oh yeah, what the hell does this have to do with humanitarian work?  Not much.

I should have written about this long ago when I first heard about it but unfortunately this blog did not exist back then.  A fine Dutch gentleman in Indonesia mentioned that I might try it as he found it worked splendidly over low bandwidth networks and indeed it does.  What is it?  Shrink Pic is a simple little app that floats around in the back of your machine bothering no one and only steps up when you email a photo to a friend or send it via IM.  Shrink Pic automatically compresses the image before the transfer and what normally takes minutes now takes seconds.  You don’t see it, it doesn’t bother you and, best of all, it is free.

I love those folks who make our lives easier for free.  Download it here.

Check out Kara’s post over at AllThingsD here. $10 billion for Facebook? I opened a Facebook account several weeks ago which was about 10 years after I opened a Friendster account, all because of an invite from one person. Back then you had to enter a person’s email, now Facebook just sucks up your address book. Creepy. So far, absolutely nothing has come of it. I don’t even bother to check my account anymore. I think Mark Zuckerberg may have missed the sell out on this one. 40 million users but how many of those are active?

Skype is a different animal. Of course, EBay should have never bought Skype, Google should have. Skype has dedicated users that will stay with it because it works. It is still one of the most brilliant ideas to have ever come along and will remain so for quite some time to come. Skype is one of greatest tools to have ever fallen into the hands of aid workers. At one point Skype was saving us $300/hr. Facebook hasn’t saved me a dime. Facebook, I believe, will soon have a good number of virtual vacancies.

“One thing that most people don’t think about are the ‘dark hours‘ when VSAT have minimal load. These are usually the hours from 6pm-8am. The only thing updating are the machines that are left one and only if there is city power available since no one leaves a generator running when no one is there to use it. Plus, the neighbors hate it. This creates a secondary problem which is that almost every Windows machine automatically updates when the power is switched on and the networks comes back up at 8am. This includes anit-virus, anti-spyware, and every other application under the sun. Of course these problems can be fixed but for the most part they are just ignored and by 8:30am the network has all but stopped. I think it is critical that you keep these dark hours in mind when thinking about people in the field since there is a tremendous amount of bandwidth that just sits there every night not being used. If we could work through the night we would. Unfortunately, security and common sense don’t always allow to do so.”