SMS Messaging Applications Dimuth Kulasinghe Mentor Nirav Merchant

SMS Messaging Applications Dimuth Kulasinghe Mentor: Nirav Merchant Affiliated with: Stealth Health

Introduction Worked in U of A project Stealth Health Goal is to educate youth about physical activity and nutrition by using pervasive geospatial technologies Use of smart phone with GPS capability and data, text messaging plan. Primary pervasive and ubiquitous device provided to youth in the study.

Problem Statement SMS text messaging often limited to one-to -one correspondences No standard system for group text messaging Dearth of flexible and simple to use SMS broadcasting systems

Solution Create smart phone application that allows users to broadcast messages using traditional LISTSERV functions Application simply has to be installed, and system is ready to go Application cost based only on the administrator’s text messaging plan User costs depend on subscribers’ respective data plans

Application Users register with application Users then subscribe to desired topics Application allows user to broadcast messages to all subscribers in the topic Specific members can be met and messaged directly New topics can be suggested Topics represented as traditional twitter hashtags (#)

Subscribe to #veggies User 1 User 2 Message about #veggies User 3 Message about #veggies User 4

Trials Tested at Model United Nations Conference Facilitated communication between speakers at conference Major improvement over traditional walkie talkies

Aspirations Many other potential use cases Classroom environment Farmer’s market Neighborhood Watch

Special Thanks to Nirav Merchant for introducing me to Stealth Health Dave Parizek for assistance with programming logic James Vancel and Stealth Health team for useful feedback NASA for the opportunity