Aid Worker Daily

William Thompson is a photographer based in Seattle, WA. He also happens to be my uncle. Check out his photos here.

I watched a great presentation at Where 2.0 by Jesse Robbins and Mikel Maron about disaster tech. Jesse is a champion of what works and what doesn’t and is part of the team over at O’Reilly Radar. I first had the pleasure of meeting Jesse after watching him dismantle a well meaning (but totally off-base) individual at a local disaster tech conference some time ago. Mikel just spent some months working his way across India all the while working with locals to develop OpenStreetMap.org. I have to give it up to Jesse for introducing me to Eduardo Jezierski over at InSTEDD during my quest for a ‘Twitter for Thuraya‘ app. Eduardo and I spent several days hunkered over a desk, building out their SMS GeoChat platform at Where 2.0. I am hopeful that you’ll soon see a Beta product for field workers. If it wasn’t for Jesse and Mikel keeping the fire alive the mainstream tech world would probably let disaster tech drift away in the current.

Paul Currion is another straight shooter who continues to deliver reality to all of those starry eyed folks who believe laptops and Web 2.O are going to save the world. For a dose of this reality be sure to jump over to humanitarian.info.

p.s. - I’ll have the Cradlepoint MBR1000 review up in the next couple of days.

So latest news is that aid workers are being charged $1500 for a SIM card in Myanmar and that network is confined to Yangon and Mandalay(?). Also, sat comms are verboten.

Can anyone add to this?

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.