[Imc-uk-features] SMS Service

[LordRich]

Hi,

The Indymedia SMS Service which got posted on the newswire yesterday has
received a lot of queries about it's legitimacy.  Let me allay some of
those fears and explain it.

Before the G8 I started looking at methods of getting Indymedia news
stories to people who are out and about, on actions with limited
internet connection, or just want to keep informed about what's
happening.

I used the G8 as an experiment for the sms service, setting up a number
of different tools to get news out, some of which worked well and some
of which didn't.  At the time there were just a handful of
Leeds/Bradford people receiving messages, now there are almost 30 people
subscribed.

The current setup of the SMS service is as follows:

Twitterfeed.com pulls in rss feeds from Indymedia.  Currently it is
pulling in the rss feeds from the ticker and from promoted newswire.
During periods of less activity it will also pull in news from the
features rss feed (although that typicaly only has old news during major
actions).

Twitterfeed then sends out the news to a Twitter account,
http://www.twitter.com/imcuk.  Twitter can be used as a microblogging
tool or, in this case, can be used to send out sms updates to anybody
interested without ever having to register at the website.  If users
would prefer to receive these messages via the twitter website (or
jabber) they can do so.

Neither I nor Indymedia get the phone numbers of people signing up to
this, only Twitter have the list of numbers.  Nothing apart from
confirmed Indymedia posts will ever be sent (unless Twitter change their
policies in which case we will seriously consider what to do next).  It
is not a service run by cops, and it is an entirely optional service
which runs alongside other cool methods of access such as wap, voip and
the phone infoline.

This is a totally free service, you only pay for the messages you send
to (un)subscribe.

I hope this allays some of the fears and concerns around this service,
and if you have any more questions don't hesitate to contact me.

-- 
Rich