FrontlineSMS

FrontlineSMS

FrontlineSMS allows you to send and receive text messages over a mobile network.

Browser-based and built to run on Windows, Mac and Linux, FrontlineSMS can send text messages via phone, modem or online SMS aggregator.

Using Frontline SMS, you can deliver announcements, conduct polls and automate replies to incoming SMS. You can also visualise incoming data, helping you to quickly understand the results.

FrontlineSMS integrates with Clickatell and IntelliSMS.

Image

Screenshots

What can I use it for

Conducting surveys and polls
Mobilising for demonstrations
Visualising voting choices

Pros

Designed for NGO use
Has good user support

Cons

Some limitations in message send rate when using USB modem (8 per minute)
Technical skills required for some database or connection issues

Platform (OS) Windows, Mac OSX, compatible mobile device

License FOSS

Website FrontlineSMS homepage

Difficulty Moderate

Training Materials

http://www.frontlinesms.com/user-resources/
Frontline SMS offers user support through their online forum http://frontlinesms.ning.com, for the most part within 24 hours after you post a question. Premium user support and consulting are also available, although these are paid-for services.

Other Resources

Case Studies

Alternatives

Commercial services such as Clickatell

Tool category

Collaborative

Mobile

Outreach

Just the essentials

An introduction to basic campaigning how-tos. This content is based on material from our previous guides, and 10 Tactics.

Who are you talking to? Know your audience

How to identify the people who will support your cause or help make a change

What are you trying to say? Frame your message

How to craft your campaign message to motivate change

Collaborative working: Build your network

How to expand and organise your network for effective outreach

Policies & practices: Create your content

How to figure out issues around licensing and copyright

Track your reach: Campaign analytics

How to monitor and evaluate the progress of your campaign

Top 5 tips for digital security & privacy

How to secure your information in the digital realm

Give me the Tools

Digital tools for info-activists.

Tools

Digital tools for info-activists.

Photo tips

Outreach tips

Security Tips

DIGITAL SECURITY TIPS

Print media tips

Tips on creating print media

Web2PDF

There are many online services that can convert webpages to PDF files. These may be of use for printing or archiving internet pages.

Collaboration tips

Mobile tips

Mobile phone security

Airtime: West Africa Democracy Radio

West Africa Democracy Radio

ownCloud: Sharing data and events

ownCloud

Creating a video remix or mashup

A mashup or video remix is created by taking multiple sources of video, audio or stills and mixing them up.

Automated cross-posting: Sunseed Desert Technology

Sunseed Desert Technology

Jitsi

Jitsi is a communications program that allows you to chat securely using well-supported protocols like SIP, XMPP / Jabber, AIM / ICQ, Windows Live,

ObscuraCam

ObscuraCam is an Android application that allows you to obscure faces or objects in photos or videos to keep certain information private.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

The details of users using live chat provided by Yahoo, Windows, Skype and Gmail are readily made available to law enforcement agencies by the comp

HTTPS Everywhere

HTTPS Everywhere is an add-on for Chrome or Firefox.

Tor

TOR is a network tool that allows you to improve your privacy and security on the internet.

K9 for Android

K9 is a stable and popular email client for Android mobile devices.

Screenfly

The proliferation of mobile computing devices in recent years has meant that websites can no longer remain static or stick to one screen resolution

Bambuser

Bambuser is a live video service that allows you to capture, upload and store video from a mobile phone or webcam.

Magpi

Magpi (formerly Episurveyor), is a web-based application that enables anyone to create a data entry form online, and then use this form to collect

Ushahidi

Ushahidi is a highly flexible platform for information collection, visualisation and interactive mapping.

FrontlineSMS

FrontlineSMS allows you to send and receive text messages over a mobile network.

Video tips

Video recording techniques

Etherpad Lite

Etherpad is an online word processor with formatting options.

Zxing

ZXing (pronounced 'zebra crossing') is an open source barcode image tool.

Booktype

Booktype is an open source platform for writing and publishing print and digital books.

Scribus

Scribus is a page layout program. It can be compared to Microsoft Publisher or Adobe InDesign.

LibreOffice

LibreOffice Writer is a word processing and desktop publishing tool.

ProjectLibre

ProjectLibre is a project management tool similar to Microsoft Project.

Thunderbird

Thunderbird is a popular free software email client from the Mozilla foundation.

CiviCRM

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a way of tracking a company’s interactions with customers and clients.

Skype

Skype is the most popular service around for voice calls over the internet. You can also use live text chat and send files.

Crabgrass

Crabgrass is an online tool which enables group collaboration.

ownCloud

Cloud computing, where data and services are stored online instead of on your local computer, offers a lot of advantages.

Status.net

Status.net is an internet-based piece of software for microblogging, and is an alternative to Twitter.

Cross-Posting Tools

Brdcst.it & ifttt are two online services that provide essentially the same thing.

Drupal

Drupal is a content management system (CMS) which can be compared to WordPress.

WordPress

WordPress is a tool used to create websites and blogs.

Screencasting

Screencasting software lets you record what is happening on the screen of your computer as a video file.

Online video editors

Because of some of the challenges of editing video on the desktop, it may be a good idea to try an online video editor.

Desktop video editors

Most video editors are similar in design.

Handbrake

HandBrake was created to convert DVD discs into smaller video files suitable for viewing and sharing on the Internet.

DVDStyler

DVDStyler is a cross-platform, free DVD authoring application.

Amara

Amara is a free online subtitling service.

Flickr

Flickr is a popular photo sharing site and one of the largest online image repositories.

Pixlr

Pixlr is one of many online browser-based photo and image manipulation services. It stands out as the fastest and most flexible.

Synfig

Synfig Studio creates 2D animation.

Inkscape

Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editing application, with capabilities similar to Illustrator and CorelDraw.

Xmind

XMind is software for mind mapping.

Gimp

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) can do just about everything that Adobe Photoshop can do, and it's free for anyone to use.

WordPress for audio and video distribution

WordPress is a system for creating websites and blogs.

CD burning software

Making a CD with audio files can involve two kinds of CDs. One type is a data CD, which is suitable for reading on other computers.

Mobile Media Converter

Mobile Media Converter is a free software application originally created to allow the transcoding of audio from early mobile phones into a format w

Soundcloud

SoundCloud is an internet service that allows you to listen to and share audio files.

Audio & sound tips

Audio and sound

Audioboo

Audio Boo has taken advantage of the recording and internet capabilities of smartphones and created a service which publishes audio to the internet

Airtime

Airtime allows you to schedule audio files in a calendar timeline.

Audacity

Audacity is an 'audio editor'.

I need inspiration

Info-activism examples from around the world.

Postage stamps document the revolution

To honor people and cities that had a profound effect on the course of the Syrian revolution, anonymous artists created special stamps and publishe

Exposing police torture

Journalist Noha Atef created TortureInEgypt.net in 2006 to document human rights abuses co

Kleercut

Kleercut was a campaign implemented by Greenpeace to end the use of virgin wood f

Blank Noise

Blank Noise explores the issue of sexual harassment of women by combining persona

Remixed presidential posters

Egyptians remixed images of President Mubarak into popular film posters. The images spread quickly on the internet.

The Bell Bajao campaign: Fighting domestic violence

The Bell Bajao campaign was conceived by Mumbai-based NGO

The Zero Rupee Note fights corruption

The Zero Rupee Note is a campaign tool that Vijay Anand created through his organisati

Putting torture on the president’s map

After the Tunisian government blocked video sharing websites, advocates responded by making an

All cases

Info-activism examples from around the world.

Postage stamps document the revolution

To honor people and cities that had a profound effect on the course of the Syrian revolution, anonymous artists created special stamps and publishe

Exposing police torture

Journalist Noha Atef created TortureInEgypt.net in 2006 to document human rights abuses co

Kleercut

Kleercut was a campaign implemented by Greenpeace to end the use of virgin wood f

Blank Noise

Blank Noise explores the issue of sexual harassment of women by combining persona

Remixed presidential posters

Egyptians remixed images of President Mubarak into popular film posters. The images spread quickly on the internet.

The Bell Bajao campaign: Fighting domestic violence

The Bell Bajao campaign was conceived by Mumbai-based NGO

The Zero Rupee Note fights corruption

The Zero Rupee Note is a campaign tool that Vijay Anand created through his organisati

Putting torture on the president’s map

After the Tunisian government blocked video sharing websites, advocates responded by making an

Phone Story: Reveal your phone's secrets

An Italian software collective, Molleindustria, in collaboration with Ame

Mapping Harassment on the Streets of Cairo

Harassmap is a movement which uses a mashup, Ushahidi

Comedy Skits Expose Discrimination and Corruption

Sheno Ya3ni (which translates as “What’s that?” or “So what?”) is a group of actors from the Arab Gulf and the Middle East who created a series of

Revolutionary Cartoons Expose the Regime's Brutality

In response to the Syrian regime's brutal suppression of the revolution, a group of artists are producing political cartoons and comic strips and p

Visualizing Palestine

Visualising Palestine (VP) uses public information about

Chevron thinks we're stupid

In 2010 Chevron, the second largest oil compa

Spoof Website Challenges Official Versions in Syria

As the Syrian regime continued its brutal suppression of the revolution, while publicly denying such violent actions, anonymous activists launched

We the Women

To draw attention to laws banning women from driving cars in Saudi Arabia,

Field Reporting the Mumbai Terror Attacks 2008

Using text messages and mobile phone photos, local people self-organised to find and share information that wasn’t available in the media during th

Presidential Plane Spotting

Tunisian bloggers collaborated on a mapping project that revealed the presidential plane was being used for extensive personal travel.

The Targuist Sniper

The Targuist Sniper was an advocate who filmed police officers in Morocco repeatedly demanding bribes from motorists and published them on YouTube

Gathering Citizen Reports of Violence

Citizens of Madagascar sent SMS messages to Foko about reports of violence by the military and police during demonstrations against a takeover of t

Monitoring the 2010 Burma Elections

Women'sNet: Digital Storytelling

Digital Stories for Transformation documents stories rarely told, and rarely heard.

ARASA: Show us the Money for Health

Wanting to raise public interest around the funding crisis for health in Sub-Saharan Africa and extend their support base to a young audience who w

Animating Folklore with a Feminist Twist

Artists and advocates from Egypt created a short animated video based on traditional Arabic stories re-told from a feminist perspective.

The Pink Chaddi Campaign

The Pink Chaddi Campaign from India was a response to a right wing group's

Using a Friendless Profile for Visibility

In Lebanon, an LGBT advocacy organisation (not to be named here for privacy reasons) created a Facebook profile with no photo and no friends to saf

A Duty to Protect: Justice for Child Soldiers

This documentary film produced by Witness in partnership with AJEDI-Ka,

Caught Between the Tiger and the Crocodile

The Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW) used digital video to document abusive c

MyQuestion, MyAnswer

Young people in Nigeria face obstables in getting accurate sexual and reproductive health information, due to stigma and taboos. A collaboration b

TheyWorkForYou

TheyWorkForYou is a website that connects citizens with Members of Parliament in the U

Top Goon: Puppets take on politicians

Top Goon: Diaries of a Little Dictator

ZA News: Puppets take on politicians

ZA news is a satirical

Occupy George: remixed dollar bills

As the Occupy movement gained ground in 2011,

Fair Play

Using Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, Fair Play gathers invoices and othe

Infonet: Budget Tracking

Citizens from Kenya can get information on government funding for development projects by sending a text message to

“Give Lukashenko his own Lu-net!”

Belarusians created a group of websites they called LuNet, in mock honour of President Ale

Zenga Zenga: Gaddafi's speech as a dance tune

In February 2011, after watching the late Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi give an hour-long speech in an attempt to regain control, Israeli D

IamJan25: Documenting the Egyptian uprising

The website Iamjan25.com collects images and videos captured by demonstrators in Tahrir Square,

Balloon Mapping the Gulf Coast oil spill

In 2010, a community monitoring project in New Orleans led by activist group Louisiana Bucket

Visit Gaza: A virtual tour of life in the strip

To provide a visual representation of the problems that the 1.7 million Gaza Strip residents encounter on a daily basis, an Israeli NGO,

Women2Drive Campaign

Taking up the baton from Areej Khan's '

Grass-mud horse: Circumventing Censorship

In order to circumvent internet censorship in China, bloggers have created a lexicon which makes puns out of words and phrases in the Chinese langu

Morsi Meter

Before the Egyptian presidential elections in May 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohammed Morsi, proposed a 100-day plan for reinvigoratin

The Info-Activism How-To Guide

Strategies and tools for digital campaigning

The Info-Activism How-To Guide

Strategies and tools for digital campaigning

Just the essentials

Just the essentials

Show me the big picture

Show me the big picture

Make your Issue their Interest

Make your Issue their Issue

Make your Issue their Action

Make your Issue their Interest

Make your Issue their Issue

Make your Issue their Action

Give me the Tools

Tools

I need inspiration

I need inspiration