TMCnet News
Ushahidi's Ping APP to Help Users Check On Status of Colleagues(AllAfrica Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Ushahidi has released a private alpha for its new messaging app,Ping, that has already been translated into 15 languages and works with a variety of global SMS providers like Nexmo, Twilio and Clickatell among others. Ping with the private alpha will open the doors to businesses, municipalities, and organizations who are looking for tool like Ping. Inspired by the WestGate mall attack, Ping will help users quickly find out whether their families, friends, and teams are safe anywhere in the world and on nay device. Ushahidi says Ping has modules that work with a dozen carriers around the world and allows one to send messages via email or SMS and on any device. The app is now available in English, French, Spanish, Russian and more coming up. The service allows users to create and store contacts with multiple numbers and email addresses for each for multiple points of contact. Users can also add their contacts to a group so that they ping multiple people with the push of a button. A blog post done by Juliana Rotich, executive director, Ushahidi, states: "We love building software (and now hardware) this way: responding to a need, a community. Our products have been better for it, ourselves unable to see the whole path before us by trusting that by building communities before audiences, platforms/foundations before features." Ms Rotich states that so many projects in the technology space still seek solutions they should have by now. "Unique situations for the country and the context but not uncommon needs. Getting an immediate answer to the simple question of 'Are you okay?' should be one of them.There have been some excellent groups and apps working on this same issue. Ping is our contribution, a hosted service that doesn't require a certain device or a certain platform to send or receive messages. Set it up and, whether emergency hits or you just want to check in with your friends, family, or colleagues, type a short message and hit send. Your ping will go out to everyone at once and the service will update their status as they respond. Nothing to install or confirm. Simple, effective, immediate." She also explains that Ping is a contribution, a hosted service that doesn't require a certain device or a certain platform to send or receive messages. All users need is to set it up and, whether emergency hits or you just want to check in with your friends, family, or colleagues, type a short message and hit 'send'. Your ping will go out to everyone at once and the app will update their status as they respond. Nothing to install or confirm. Simple, effective, immediate. According to Ushahidi, Ping is basically a binary, multi-channel check-in tool for groups. The earlier version of Ping allowed Kenyans to create a list of your people (family, organization), and each person also adds another contact who is close to them then, when a disaster happens, you send out a message for everyone to check-in. The admin sends out a 120 character message that always has "are you ok?" appended to the end.This goes out via text message and email (more channels can be added later). The message goes out three times, once every 5 minutes. If there is a response, then that person is considered okay. If there's no response, then 3 messages get sent to their other contact. Each response is filed into one of 3 areas: responded (verified), not responded and not okay. Every message that comes back from someone in that group is saved into a big bucket of text, which the admin can add notes to if needed. Other apps that operate basically the same as ping is the 'I AM OK' app which is a web and mobile app that helps you quickly notify many people that you're "OK" or you need help. All it takes is a text message and a hash tag or two to convey the important information you need to get across. Ping's entire purpose is to send you notifications when certain events happen. It's essentially like an automated version of Yo! a social application for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. The app's only function was to send the user's friends the word "yo" as a text and audio notification, but it has since been updated to include user profiles and other types of notification. Copyright CIO East Africa. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). |