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"Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all. How do we define this lively darting about with words, of hitting them back and forth, this sort of brief smile of ideas which should be conversation?" ~ Guy de Maupassant ~

Thursday, October 20, 2005

SMS to Blog in Disasters

There have been lots of interesting developments around the recent activities around the most recent earthquake in Pakistan and India. I haven't been able to blog much around them, but here's a little communications system set up by the members of the TsunamiHelp, KatrinaHelp and AsiaquakeHelp team :

"An SMS reporter blog has been set up - mail sms2blog@gmail.com or send an SMS [to a Pakistan cellphone number, Imran Hashmi] at +923008568418 and he will forward it to the blog. Your reports will not appear on the blog instantly, because of a blogger glitch, but the blog admins will take turns republishing the blog as often as possible. Your post should appear on the site within an hour, on the average.

The SMS Quake blog is dedicated to first person reports from the affected area, and is open to anyone. Repeat: Anyone. You don't have to be a member of the blog."



This should be automated - its something we're working on. More documentation at the wiki.



We couldn't use Skype this time round, since Skype doesn't have local numbers in India or Pakistan for us to buy a SkypeIn account for people to call into.












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Copyright 2006 Dina Mehta

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