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A Global Summit about
Mobile Technology for Social Impact
October 13-15, 2008
Johannesburg, South Africa

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Wireless Technology for Social Change

Read the new report on trends in mobile use by NGOs:

Wireless Technology for Social Change.

The report was commissioned by the UN Foundation/Vodafone Group Foundation Partnership and written by Katrin Verclas and Sheila Kinkade.

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Using RSS to SMS for rapid notification of emerging information

May 9, 2006 | marshallkirkpatrick

file under:
IM, mobiles, net2, RSS, sms

I have a robot that constantly looks for select information online about my campaign. It sends me an SMS if and when it finds what I need.

The world today is clearly threatened by information overload, but that's far from the worst problem we face. The right tools for dealing with the barrage of information available can help us deal with the long list of other, more frightening problems facing humanity.

One new class of tools will do just that - by delivering new items in any RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed to your mobile device by SMS or to your IM client. (If RSS is new to you, there are intro links at the end of this post.)

What does that mean? It means that you can receive automatic near-real-time notification on your phone of, for example, any new internet search results for a query you've set up, any press releases or media statements from corporate or government adversaries or allies, or notification of any other new information that you've set one of these tools to be constantly looking for. Look once and subscribe. This does not require computer programming skills; it's only as new as e-mail was a decade ago.