Using Mobile TXT Messages to stage spontaneous events

[Pat McCotter]

Ideally, a spare blank Hard Drive of some kind would make life easiest, but it's not essential.

I have a blank hard drive available here - 40GB. What would you like to do with it? I can install Linux to it and run what you would like.

[Russell Kanning]

Can't you just call or message someone and have it spread?

[PowerPenguin]

Not if you want it to be instantaneous and accurate  . Besides, then we wouldn't have any cool toys to play with!

[Russell Kanning]

I forgot about that factor.

[PowerPenguin]

Yeah you're not in IT are you BTW, patmccotter, the software I think we should try using is called Asterisk@Home. It is a self contained Asterisk VoIP server setup based on CentOS, and looks fairly easy to set up. Just download and burn the ISO image and the rest of the set-up seems pretty easy. If you need any help, I can give you whatever info you might need. All told, I know a lot about Linux, but Asterisk itself is new to me (thus I want to screw with it in order to find out and tell all the rest of you).

Thanks!

PS- If this works ok, I'll be glad to help you with any IT problems you might have in your life down the road

[Pat McCotter]

Ideally, a spare blank Hard Drive of some kind would make life easiest, but it's not essential.

I have a blank hard drive available here - 40GB. What would you like to do with it? I can install Linux to it and run what you would like.

Never mind. Haven't been able to get Linux working on this machine.

[Dave Ridley]

well i hope we can get this working, and if we do i will be a mong the first to sign up to receive calls!

Organization we may never excel at but i think we are already doing well at communications and it would be awesome if we could take that to the next level.

[Kat Kanning]

You don't need an evil cell phone to receive the calls, do you?

[Recumbent ReCycler]

Hey Kat, if you don't like cellphones because you can be tracked when they are on, you could always go with an anonymous prepaid cellphone.  Just buy the phone and prepaid card at walmart or other store that sells them.  Pay with cash, and use a public computer, like at a library to activate/add minutes.  I bought a Nokia 1100 TracFone, which for some reason costs less to use than other tracfones.  Incoming text messages are free, outgoing text messages are about 3cents each, and I don't get charged extra for roaming.  When you register the phone, it will ask for your name, address, email, etc., but you can leave those blank.  While you are using a public computer at the library, you might want to get an anonymous email address, and use it when you register the phone, because if you register the phone with an email address, they will send you email offers for free airtime (the anonymous survey that they send to new customers' email addresses can get you quite a few free minutes).  If you don't have access to an anonymous computer, you can come to the Dimond Library at UNH-Durham and use one of the non-cluster computers to access the internet anonymously.  Because free parking is basically impossible to find on campus before 6pm on weekdays, you could come here Monday - Thursday between 6pm and midnight or Saturday 10am to 8pm or Sunday 10am to midnight.  I am usually at the computer clusters on the main floor at the Dimond library on Monday (after 8 pm), Tuesday (after 5pm), and Thursday(after 8pm) nights.

[Kat Kanning]

Nope, I just don't like cell phones.  I don't really care to talk on the phone at all, so having one follow me around ... horrors!

[Dreepa]

That isn't good for Kat... put it is a good idea for others.
Of course it will probably be illegal soon because 'terrorists' use those types of phones.

(When I hear that argument it makes me sick--- I am working on banning cars... Terrorists used cars to get places.)

[Kat Kanning]

Karma for Dreepa for trying to protect me from the infernal devices.   

[mackler]

This is a technology that makes in easy (maybe a little too easy) to instantly send a text message to all your friends' mobile phones.

http://www.dodgeball.com/

You add people to your friend list by texting their phone number to the dodgeball phone number.  After that, they will get any messages you send to the dodgeball number, and you'll get any messages from them.  In other words, it's not like a list where everyone is either on the list or not.  Each person chooses whom s/he wants to send to and receive messages from.

Unfortunately it's not available in NH (yet), but someone with the right skilz could set something like this up.

[Neal Jiutai]

When Ed & Elaine were under what appeared to be an assault, I sent out a volley of text messages, about 30 of them.

We don't need any central system as long as Porcs share their numbers with each other.

Do we want to come to rely on something so centralized, only to find out in a moment of crisis that the service is down?

(PM me if you'd like to exchange numbers.)

[CNHT]

Dear Friends, You may or may not heared of doing this before, but one guy I work with out here told me that in some countries in Europe, etc. they call sponteneous rallies/protests by sending out mass mobile phone Text Messages (TXT). If you get people from all over the area to convene at a specific place on short notice, any unhappy authorities will be literally unable to stop it unless they set up roadlbocks everywhere a head of time and started MGing people down or something.

Does anyone have experience with this and if so, how do you go about doing this? For it to work, there has to be a way to message dozens of people at once not just one at a time as that would take forever and blow cover in tense situations.

The RP network has this :-)