Knight Foundation selects Citizen Journalism via Mobile Services concept

Each year the Knight News Challenge Contest funds innovative projects that couple media with information communication technology that empowers local communities. The Mobile Service Platform (MSP) revenue share model for Citizen Journalism was selected for the second round to submit a proposal for the 2010 Knight News Challenge. The timing couldn't have been any better. I'm really excited in making this happen. The project partners are - Lanka Jathika Sarvodaya Society, Center for Policy Alternatives, Uniphore, Rural Technology and Business Incubator, Internews, and LIRNEasia.

Emergency communication over Radio Data System proposed to ISIF Asia

I put in a proposal to the 2010 Information Society Innovation Fund - on the concept of extending the information, usually easily available over the Internet, through Radio Data System (RDS) platform; specifically, communicating emergency information over RDS. It is a very small grant and the chances of getting selected are very slim (i.e. chance of 1 out of 20).

Sahana HF data platform for alert and situation reports

On my way to the IDRC meeting in Penang I spent two days with Prof. Ahmad Zuri et al in Cyberjaya, Malaysia evaluating the Sahana Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) messaging over HF spectrum data platform. Prof. Zuri's team through, a grant from the Malaysia Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and the support from Mr. Zolkhonain Norizan and Mohd Aris Bernawi of MCMC, a prototype of the transport and application layers were developed by June 2009.

The lab setup was replicated at MCMC with two HF radios connected to two laptops through Pactor II modems; one acting as the remote client and the other as the IP-HF gateway transforming the HF data to the Internet. A third laptop was hosting Sahana on the LAMP stack. A CAP message sent through Sahana could is first received by the IP-HF gateway, which resolves the string and relays it to the remote station transported as HF data.

Other than a few flood incidences, Malaysia (MY) is perhaps one of the least disaster prone country in the Asia-Pacific. With that in mind, the idea is to setup a hub in MY to transport Sahana specific emergency information through the HF spectrum. As of now, Maldives, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka have agreed to pilot this system. We await hope a Pacific Island or New Zealand may join the consortium. Proposal is in the working to seek funding.

A short video demonstrating the concept