FrontlineSMS

Last updated
FrontlineSMS
Developer(s) Ken Banks
Stable release
2.0.2
Written in Java
Platform Cross-Platform (Linux, Microsoft Windows, macOS)
Type SMS
License LGPL
Website www.frontlinesms.com

FrontlineSMS is a free open source software used by a variety of organizations to distribute and collect information via text messaging (SMS). The software works without an internet connection and with a cell phone and computer.

Contents

History

The software was originally developed in 2005 by Ken Banks for conservationists to keep in touch with communities in Kruger National Park in South Africa. [1] The 2.0 release is a deep redesign and is the first version to install a browser-based interface to the Java FrontlineSMS backend.

Usage

FrontlineSMS enables users to connect a range of mobile devices to a computer to send and receive SMS text messages. The software works without an internet connection by connecting a device such as a cell phone or GSM modem with a local phone number. FrontlineSMS can send and receive messages, group contacts, respond to messages, and trigger other events. If internet access is available, FrontlineSMS can be connected to online SMS services [2] and set up to feed incoming messages to other web or e-mail services. FrontlineSMS includes different features which enable messages to be filtered by keyword, or allows the submission of Java-based forms with FrontlineSMS Forms.

It has been used to monitor national elections in the Philippines, Afghanistan and Nigeria. For example, in April 2007 it was used by the Network of Mobile Election Monitors (NMEM) to oversee the 2007 Nigerian general election. [3] Volunteers with mobile phones sent back reports from election booths to a central hub in an effort to prevent vote rigging. A similar system was deployed to monitor the 2009 Afghan presidential election, [4] where it was combined with the crisis-mapping tool Ushahidi, to plot the reports on an online map.

After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, FrontlineSMS team members helped establish the 4636 Short Code through other related organizations (Ushahidi, InSTEDD) to allow people on the ground to report emergency information. [5]

FrontlineSMS and its sister organizations are also improving the provision of healthcare in developing countries, where bad roads, long distances, and a shortage of healthcare workers make delivering care difficult. FrontlineSMS:Medic uses the FrontlineSMS software to gather health data and assist in patient follow-up. Community health workers use FrontlineSMS:Medic to transmit information about symptoms and follow up with patients much more quickly and efficiently (by sending a text message rather than driving long distances over bad roads). When FrontlineSMS:Medic was first introduced in one area of Malawi, the local hospital doubled the number of tuberculosis patients treated over six months, while saving 2,100 hours in travel and work time and $3,500 in costs. [6] The tool is now being used in 11 countries, mostly in sub Saharan Africa. [7] In June 2010, FrontlineSMS:Medic team released a public beta of PatientView, which allows hospitals to manage patient information in rural settings where there is no Internet access. [8] The FrontlineSMS:Medic team is also working on a monitoring system to capture symptoms across different languages and spellings and detect disease hotspots, and are working with a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles to develop an addition that would allow remote diagnosis of malaria and some sexually transmitted diseases, including potentially HIV. [9]

License

FrontlineSMS is licensed under the LGPL. The licensing is defined on the software's SourceForge page. [10]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SMS</span> Text messaging service component

Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text messages. An intermediary service can facilitate a text-to-voice conversion to be sent to landlines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Text messaging</span> Act of typing and sending a brief, digital message

Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible computer. Text messages may be sent over a cellular network, or may also be sent via an Internet connection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mobile phone spam</span> Unwanted communication through a mobile phone

Mobile phone spam is a form of spam, directed at the text messaging or other communications services of mobile phones or smartphones. As the popularity of mobile phones surged in the early 2000s, frequent users of text messaging began to see an increase in the number of unsolicited commercial advertisements being sent to their telephones through text messaging. This can be particularly annoying for the recipient because, unlike in email, some recipients may be charged a fee for every message received, including spam. Mobile phone spam is generally less pervasive than email spam, where in 2010 around 90% of email is spam. The amount of mobile spam varies widely from region to region. In North America, mobile spam steadily increased after 2008 and accounted for half of all mobile phone traffic by 2019. In parts of Asia up to 30% of messages were spam in 2012.

Mobile malware is malicious software that targets mobile phones or wireless-enabled Personal digital assistants (PDA), by causing the collapse of the system and loss or leakage of confidential information. As wireless phones and PDA networks have become more and more common and have grown in complexity, it has become increasingly difficult to ensure their safety and security against electronic attacks in the form of viruses or other malware.

Mobile marketing is a multi-channel online marketing technique focused at reaching a specific audience on their smartphones, feature phones, tablets, or any other related devices through websites, e-mail, SMS and MMS, social media, or mobile applications. Mobile marketing can provide customers with time and location sensitive, personalized information that promotes goods, services, appointment reminders and ideas. In a more theoretical manner, academic Andreas Kaplan defines mobile marketing as "any marketing activity conducted through a ubiquitous network to which consumers are constantly connected using a personal mobile device".

An SMS gateway or MMS gateway allows a computer to send or receive text messages in the form of Short Message Service (SMS) or Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) transmissions between local and/or international telecommunications networks. In most cases, SMS and MMS are eventually routed to a mobile phone through a wireless carrier. SMS gateways are commonly used as a method for person-to-person to device-to-person communications. Many SMS gateways support content and media conversions from email, push, voice, and other formats.

Skype offers a number of features based around calling, messaging, video chat, and file and screen sharing. The following is a partial list of Skype's features:

Chikka, short for Chikka Text Messenger, was an Internet-based instant messaging application that supports free SMS or text messaging between online users and offline mobile subscribers. Chikka was released by Chikka Philippines, Inc. in the early 2000 and eventually established its connection with the country's network operators Smart Communications (2001), Globe Telecom (2002) and Sun Cellular (2004). With up to billions of messages being exchanged between online and mobile communities worldwide through Chikka, it is probably the world's first commercially successful integration of web and mobile utilities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open Dental</span>

Open Dental, previously known as Free Dental, is an open source dental practice management software licensed under the GNU General Public License. It is written in the C# programming language compatible with Microsoft .NET Framework and was first released in 2003. Current versions of the software require Microsoft Windows. Earlier versions of the software had supported other operating systems, but Linux support has been dropped. The full function version is only available under the commercial license because it includes royalty-bearing, licensed materials from the American Dental Association (ADA), the Code on Dental Procedures and Nomenclature (CDT).

mHealth Medicine and public health supported by mobile devices

mHealth is an abbreviation for mobile health, a term used for the practice of medicine and public health supported by mobile devices. The term is most commonly used in reference to using mobile communication devices, such as mobile phones, tablet computers and personal digital assistants (PDAs), and wearable devices such as smart watches, for health services, information, and data collection. The mHealth field has emerged as a sub-segment of eHealth, the use of information and communication technology (ICT), such as computers, mobile phones, communications satellite, patient monitors, etc., for health services and information. mHealth applications include the use of mobile devices in collecting community and clinical health data, delivery/sharing of healthcare information for practitioners, researchers and patients, real-time monitoring of patient vital signs, the direct provision of care as well as training and collaboration of health workers.

Ushahidi is an open source software application which utilises user-generated reports to collate and map data. It uses the concept of crowdsourcing serving as an initial model for what has been coined as "activist mapping" - the combination of social activism, citizen journalism and geographic information. Ushahidi allows local observers to submit reports using their mobile phones or the Internet, creating an archive of events with geographic and time-date information. The Ushahidi platform is often used for crisis response, human rights reporting, and election monitoring. Ushahidi was created in the aftermath of Kenya's disputed 2007 presidential election that collected eyewitness reports of violence reported by email and text message and placed them on a Google Maps map.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jaxtr</span>

Jaxtr is a social communications company that melds together global calling, SMS, and social networking. Founded by Phillip Mobin and Touraj Parang in October 2005, jaxtr uses Voice over Internet Protocol to offer competitive rates as well as free international and long distance calling. Some key differentiators for jaxtr in its market include allowing phone-to-phone calls to and from any mobile and landline phones, offering social networking focused on voice, requiring no software downloads or access pins, and giving users local Direct Inward Dialing (DID) phone numbers. Offered in 56 countries, these numbers allow users in those countries to dial a local phone number which would ring a long distance or international destination phone. Jaxtr also offers users a set number of global SMS messages each month.

Mobile translation is any electronic device or software application that provides audio translation. The concept includes any handheld electronic device that is specifically designed for audio translation. It also includes any machine translation service or software application for hand-held devices, including mobile telephones, Pocket PCs, and PDAs. Mobile translation provides hand-held device users with the advantage of instantaneous and non-mediated translation from one human language to another, usually against a service fee that is, nevertheless, significantly smaller than a human translator charges.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ribbit (telecommunications company)</span>

Ribbit was a telecommunications company based in Mountain View, California. It was acquired by BT Group on July 29, 2008 for $105 million.

Direct text marketing is a form of SMS marketing. This includes using a medium which involves text messaging over a mobile device and can be done from a mobile phone or in bulk using an SMS Aggregator and distributor online. Some businesses provide the entire service including creating the messages and sending them via an aggregator on behalf of a business. Today, direct text marketing has been subsumed under mobile marketing, which includes rich media embedded into the marketing messages as well as those messages sent via mobile applications besides SMS.

Bulk messaging is the dissemination of large numbers of SMS messages for delivery to mobile phone terminals. It is used by media companies, banks and other enterprises and consumer brands for a variety of purposes including entertainment, enterprise and mobile marketing.

ForgetMeNot Africa was created in 2009, when ForgetMeNot Software joined forces with investment company Lonzim Plc to create ForgetMeNot Africa, a subsidiary that's solely focused on providing unified messaging and financial services in Africa, and began deploying its technology on the continent that same year, in Lesotho. Lonzim Plc owns 51% of ForgetMeNot Africa and ForgetMeNot Software own the remainder of the company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dimagi</span>

Dimagi, Inc. is a for-profit social enterprise based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, that delivers open-source software technology suitable for low-resource settings and underserved communities. The company designs clinical interfaces, health information systems, and mobile technologies to perform patient-level disease management, clinical decision support, and health system monitoring. It also provides implementation services on open-source information and technology. Dimagi became a certified B corporation in 2008 and an incorporated benefit corporation in 2012. Dimagi has additional offices in Washington DC, New Delhi, India and Cape Town, South Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Upptalk</span> Proprietary voice-over-IP service and software application

Upptalk was a proprietary voice-over-IP service and software application that provided mobile phone numbers in the cloud and allows users to call or text any phone for free whether or not the device receiving the calls and texts has the Yuilop application. The service was discontinued in 2017 and even its domain was abandoned.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IKeyMonitor</span>

iKeyMonitor is a monitoring program for iPhone and Android phones and tablets. It is designed for parental control and employee monitoring. Featured as a parental control tool, iKeyMonitor can be used to remotely monitor activities on children's phones, such as SMS, voice messages, calls, social chats, GPS and more information.

References

  1. ↑ "FrontlineSMS".
  2. ↑ "High Quality and cheap SMS Gateway - BudgetSMS.net". www.budgetsms.net. Retrieved 2021-09-02.
  3. ↑ "Texts monitor Nigerian elections". BBC News. 2007-04-20.
  4. ↑ Fildes, Jonathan (2009-08-19). "Web tool oversees Afghan election". BBC News.
  5. ↑ Bulkley, Kate (2010-06-18). "Mobile technology takes centre stage in disaster relief". The Guardian. London.
  6. ↑ Bulkley, Kate (2010-06-18). "Mobile messaging boosts healthcare". The Guardian. London.
  7. ↑ "Mobile technology takes centre stage in disaster relief". London.
  8. ↑ "PatientView Beta is Here". Archived from the original on 2010-06-27. Retrieved 2010-06-27.
  9. ↑ Bulkley, Kate (2010-06-18). "Mobile messaging boosts healthcare". The Guardian. London.
  10. ↑ "FrontlineSMS on Sourceforge.net".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.