Community Mobile Channels / News: Recent posts

We have decided to turn the new release into 0.2.0 beta. It includes a number of radical changes.

The first major change is around the complete redesign - Every single page has been individually addressed - we have adopted a highly optimised icon based front end which will work on the maximum about of mobile devices. To ensure that this doesn't overdo the bandwidth we have introduced caching of gif files.... read more

After a break we are back with a load of neat changes - some of these have been brought back into Community Mobile Channels from the AdAd.co.za implementation. The main changes are described below: -

* Overall CSS improvements
* Design improvements on home pages - both public and logged in
* latest sites stream
* channels page design improvements
* improved way of managing existing sites
* Profile improvements and linking on sites
* Removed use of description and lengthened title on mobile sites (1 less field to fill in)
* cut out a couple of unnecessary clicks on creating new mobile sites... read more

I have released version 0.1.5 alpha of Community Mobile Channels (CMC) - the 3 major changes on this release as detailed below: -

* MMS/email picture upload (requires gmail account and php imap module (usually installed))
* Desktop browser detection and no link to mobilised links from desktop (browser.ini used)
* Several Fixes around private channels and security

After a period of quite time on CMC - Version 0.1.5 will be coming soon, There are a number of minor tweaks but only one major enhancement - You will be able to upload pictures by sending them to an integrated gmail account - this will work through MMS or through direct email picture attachments.

0.2.0 beta will be coming in late June - It will include fixes and internal messaging.

Version 0.1.4 was a private release to a client site - some of the amendments and the bug fixes from testing will be included in the forthcoming 0.1.5 release

Version 0.1.3 alpha of Community Mobile Channels has been released. It is now getting close to a beta release and we encourage as much feedback as we can get. This version has a few important changes as well as a number of fixes and improvements.

The major new features are detailed below: -

New* RSS Channels --> these channels contain a single rss feed - each item title and description is converted into a m-site and the article linked to via the mowser transcoder. ... read more

The next version will be available on Monday 6th April 2009. It contains a lot of updates around rss and private channels together with fixes and usability improvements.

Please vote for community mobile channels in the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center Mobile Challenge hosted at netsquared.

You will need to register here - http://www.netsquared.org/user/register and vote for us here - http://www.netsquared.org/projects/community-mobile-channels

The demo is still at http://www.mainstreamingict.org/cmc and it now has a demo user so you do not have to register.

The login phone number is 1234512345 and the password is adapt.

There is an unlocked site called the sandbox which you are allowed to edit - alternatively you can create your own M-site.

Since the first alpha release last week there has been activity on the project. The latest alpha release (version 0.1.2) provides a few bug fixes and the following additional functionality.

>>Simple method of adding internal and external links. External links sent to mowser transcoder.
Automated site tweet sent to Twitter whenever an m-site is published.

>>Full audit trail of M-sites and undo facility for M-site owner and admin (essential for unlocked 'wiki style' M-sites)... read more

Community Mobile Channels has some basic integration with Twitter.

Set up you twitter account details in site options. Then when you publish a site - a tweet is sent with username, sitename and a link to the site.

This makes it easy for people to follow when new content is posted.

See the demo site feed here - http://twitter.com/comocha

Community mobile channels has a couple of useful web linking features.

To add an external link just type the link starting http:// and the site will create a link to a mobile transcoded version of the link.

To add an internal link just put m-s. and then the m-site number.

This is shown on a demo here - http://www.mainstreamingict.org/cmc/ms.php?i=18

I am very pleased to announce that the Community Mobile Channels Version 0.1 Alpha source code and demo is now available (on this site!). To visit the demo go to http://www.mainstreamingict.org/cmc

There are a few example M-sites (micro websites) loaded up onto the demo and you are free to register if you would like to upload content and publish a M-site of your own - a (very quick) guide to registering and publishing is given below:-... read more

The community mobile channels project is under development. One of the key pieces of functionality is the ability for people to upload media directly from their phones. This is fairly simple from a coding perspective but there are many factors to consider around security and size of files.

Security is the number one priority as uploaders could potentially put dangerous files such as c99shell onto the server. For the image uploads we are restricting uploads to jpg, jpeg and gif formats and then we are carrying out image manipulation on these files to ensure they are images. Also the image files will be resized to the following widths to minimise file size while retaining quality for the most commonly used mobile devices: -... read more

The community mobile channels project is under development. One of the key pieces of functionality is the ability for people to upload media directly from their phones. This is fairly simple from a coding perspective but there are many factors to consider around security and size of files.

Security is the number one priority as uploaders could potentially put dangerous files such as c99shell onto the server. For the image uploads we are restricting uploads to jpg, jpeg and gif formats and then we are carrying out image manipulation on these files to ensure they are images. Also the image files will be resized to the following widths to minimise file size while retaining quality for the most commonly used mobile devices: -... read more

There are a number of key permissions and functionalities within the proposed system to allow it to be flexible enough to handle most of the situations it would be deployed: - the key site settings are: -

* Allow anomyous upload (YES/NO) - In some cases in may be perferable to allow anyone to upload content. However in all cases, publishing and manipulation of content must be done by registered users.
* Allow all users to edit unlocked sites (YES/NO) - If yes - this would allow wiki style functionality; If no - this would lock any site to admin users and the user who created the site.
* Allow all users to create new channels (YES/NO)- If yes - any user could create as many channels as they want, this could be difficult to manage in larger communities; if no - Only admins could create new channels.
* Allow more than 1 phonenumber a user (YES/NO) - Many people use more than 1 number so we can allow accounts to have up to 3 numbers if specified
* User Registration Confirmation Required (YES/NO) - See user registration section above
* SMS account can be used for password reminders (YES/NO) - Handling forgotton passwords by SMS is more appropriate for our system than emails - however there is a cost factor in respect of the SMSs
* SMS account can be used to send out links (YES/NO) - Once content is published the most direct way to get people to view it is by sending an sms link - however again there is a cost factor in respect of the SMSs
* SMS account can be used for invitations (YES/NO) - If a user has a friend who they want to join then they can get the site to send them a invitation. This would mean that the friend would only need to choose a user name and password as their phone number has already been confirmed. Good viral marketing potential but cost implications again via SMS.... read more

A key feature of community mobile channels is that it is mobile based whereever possible. Therefore user registration is somewhat different from desktop style applications. The key data we need is the users phone number, a user name and a password. For most desktop applications user registration relies upon an email address and sometimes this is only sensible way to go. However a number of people we are targeting may well not have an email address so we only want to use email as a last resort - Here is the logic we are using.... read more