#instedd

It seems so sensible: Add voice to text messages. A smart phone is still a phone, designed to transmit sound. Which is why I found myself completely entranced by utellit, a small Chicago startup, at a recent “pitch” evening sponsored local website Technori. 

Founder Rishi Khullar’s epiphany? Profound annoyance at the rote Facebook response to the news of a friend’s birthday, i.e. “Happy Birthday!” scrawled endlessly on the celebrant’s wall. “Lame,” thought Khullar. Wouldn’t it be nicer to leave an old-fashioned voice message, but in new-fangled way? 

Wouldn’t it be in nicer still, thought I, to use the tech for humanitarian work or disaster response? Imagine emergency workers surveying a neighborhood leveled by an earthquake, recording detailed messages of the scene, then tucking them into geocoded text messages as shortened urls? This could take crisismapping to a whole new level. 

So exciting were the the possibilities, I whipped out an email to some of the best and brightest I know working in the humanitarian space. “Am I having a morning coffee moment, or is this really a good idea?”

It turns out it’s a really good idea. 

So much so, that many have been working on it, using open source tools. Eduardo Jezierski, CTO of InSTEDD* wrote:

…As ICT4D (ed. note: internet and communication technology for development) / social media / apps reach lower and lower swaths of the “pyramid,” voice becomes an increased need. Maternal child health services are not for doctors anymore: They involve mothers. The best, most valuable information post crisis is generated by—and curated by—the affected populations themselves, in their own language. 

Except from some privileged areas where text-based systems don’t run into the literacy, scripting, and dialect issues; voice is the key to involving a broader set of the population.

But what was fairly easy for the utellit team to set up here in the U.S. is much trickier elsewhere in the world, where smart phones are rare, telco infrastructure spotty and API’s come with lots of strings attached. 

All of this leaves a huge empowerment gap—communities can’t invent and deploy their own voice-like systems…

At InSTEDD our interest is in enabling a hundred apps like these bloom (without a dependency on iPhones, at least until they are common in rural india), invented by those that are part of, or close to, the communities with the needs; and (designed to be) integrated into the likes of Medic Mobile and Ushahidi.

We want any developer (wherever… in Nigeria…) that comes up with an idea like utellit to be able to implement it in days.

Working with Google.org and USAID, Ed’s team has been busy simplifying the creation of voice services to make them easier to build.  

We are building on top of open source switches (Asterisk/FreeSWITCH) direct VoIP integration and in some cases hardware integration to help folks build voice apps. 

These apps can span DIY-level for a few users; to national scale services by taking an approach similar to what we did with Nuntium. 

We are providing a simple HTTP API anyone can code to from any programming language to build almost any app they imagine; and then below that API  we allow a mix of rapid-deployment or operator-class “gateways” for the calls. 

Nicolas di Tada, InSTEDD’s Director or Platform Engineering provides more background and detail: Verboice - Listen and respond to the voice of your community.

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When Steve Jobs died, Wired writer Tim Carmody wrote eloquently about the profound impact of the iPod in the life of his young autistic son: 

…It may be a stretch to say Steve Jobs invented the iPod Touch or most of the technologies contained in it. But Steve Jobs certainly put it in my son’s hands, both by making it a sub-$200 device (and in our case, giving it away free with a laptop) and by helping to create an ecosystem of software applications for people with disabilities — perhaps especially communication disabilities…

The iPod wasn’t invented for people with disabilities, but nonetheless proved an answer to many prayers. That led to an interesting feedback look. The demo video for Siri, the new voice-command assistant, ends with a blind woman using her iPod to confirm a dinner date. 

Too often, startup tech pitches focus on a single, narrowly defined “haiku” problem: 

Hate waiting in line? / Pre-order equals happy / Download app today

Yet true breakthrough innovation demands taking the blinders off and noticing other possibilities (think Robin Williams pondering the potential of a pink scarf). A single brilliant insight can address many needs and trigger cascades of additional insights.

To think bigger, first you must begin to see bigger.

—  J. A. Ginsburg / @TrackerNews

Despite being personally craft-impaired, machine-intimidated and electronically inept, Maker culture makes me happy. There is something deeply comforting about all that creative comradery and geeky can-do spirit.

My occasional visits to Chicago's Pumping Station One (PS1)—with its signature TARDIS tucked in a corner and quotes by Mandela and Burham adorning the walls—always leave me hopeful. This is Man and Woman at their tool-making, tool-using, inventive best. Something good will come of this...

The free-for-all multi-disciplinary mix and match of Maker spaces speaks to the philosophical heart of the TrackerNews' beat. Stories on Maker Faires and innovation labs have been highlighted on the aggregator ("Bar, Hack, Lab, Fix: The Genius of Play and the Power of Opportunity").

Still, it came as a bit of a surprise to read about the rising popularity of hackerspaces in China (HT to Helen Walters at "Thought You Should See This..."). By definition, hackers are rule-benders, a risky pursuit in a country whose government can be touchy about such things (see "Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei").

Yet in less than a year, hackerspaces have gone from a few tiny outposts such as the Beijing Maker Space, set up in a a room barely large enough to hold 10 people, a few tables and some gear-filled shelves, to a full-fledged movement blessed by the powers-that-be. 

Nov.24, 2011

Shanghai Government Technology committee has issued a call for a proposal to build 100 community hackerspaces with government funding for equipment. The communities in resident area are going to manage the spaces and pay for the materials. Each space is required to be at least 100 square meters, more than 200 days/year open, equipped with wood lathes, metal lathes, saws and drill grinding combined machine, milling machine and other tools...

Whether or not it is possible to mandate creativity, there is a certain "if you build it, they will come" magic to Maker culture. Clearly, the government understands the potential benefit—and at least this way, no doubt, figures it will better be able to keep an eye on things. 

From the genius of a faux MakerBot...

One of the interesting projects that they have worked on is a 3D printer that can amazingly make 3D objects. The original version came from an open source lab in America called MakerBot..."We found a local vendor to supply all the electronic parts, made a few changes and made it.”... They are even trying to print a plastic human! They are also working on a 3D scanner to scan 3D objects then connect it to the 3D printer.

—Technode

...to the genius of invention, everybody, not just the Chinese government, should be watching. 

“You’d also be surprised at how many people are willing to give away electronics they don’t use to experiment with...To them it’s junk. To us, probably the vitals of our next robot.”

  RELATED: 

iLabs: Community, Connection and a Culture of Innovation: a conversation with InSTEDD’s CTO Eduardo Jezierski