Forum OpenACS Q&A: OpenACS System Wins Mobile Award

I thought you may like to know that on Wednesday night, an OpenACS based system won a prestigious mobile award.

The application, Texting Trails, received the award for Most Innovative Service at the annual Mobile News Awards.

This is a very prestigious industry award and we won it against stiff competition. The Mobile News Awards is supported by all the major players in the mobile industry in the UK and leading industry figures such as Charles Dunstone and Sir Richard Branson make a point of attending

Other award categories were won by the likes of BT Cellnet/Genie, SonyEricsson, Carphone Warehouse and Samsung - so we are in good company!

They'll be putting out a full press release in the next few days, but meanwhile I would like to thank you, the OpenACS community, for your efforts, help and support and I hope you feel a part of this award winning team!

I expect there will be a press release on-line soon, and I'll post up a link as and when that happens.

You may be interested to know that the application is based on the first alpha release, and runs on Oracle.

The Application
Texting Trails is actually a mobile (Text Message) based application that acts as a virtual Tourist Guide. Vistors to the City of Bath can purchase a voucher and a map of the city, they then register via a Text Message and are guided through a series of clues and questions that take them around the historic city. Prizes can be won, and opportunities to take advantage of offers from local business appear at relevant points on the trail.

Texting Trails is currently operating in Bath, England but the company for whom we developed this system intend to roll it out nationwide this year.

Why OpenACS was the right choice
As a company we generally use the acs at any opportunity, but in this case it was particularly effective because:

So if we can wait til then.....

I would like to know if you are planning to release a module that interact with mobile phones? any plans?

Another question about your project is how the users (tourists) get access to the system, I see that is through a mobile phone, but, if they are visitors (sometimes from other countries), how do they get a mobile phone to use your system?

=)

The short answer is yes, we do intend to release such a module(s).

The plan was to release the bits of software we've used, and also a short piece on how to build SMS based apps.

Unfortunately time pressure have set this back a bit, and also we wanted to look into integrating our queueing mechanism more directly with the ACS.

Its also reasonably true to say that there is no single/common way of creating these apps.. in brief there are three approaches:

- Use GSM modem equipment (or banks of them)

- Connect to a thrid party carrier. Usually an XML-RPC or TCP pipe.

- Connect directly to a mobile operator i.e. the Short Message Service Centre (SMSC)

Each of these alternatives requires different development, components and almost always an element of bespoke development. SMS/Text Message standard cover only the protocol i.e. format of messages etc. There is no similar standard for network equipment such as SMSC's. Therefore the problem of creating a general package/mechanism is compounded.

What we have at present is:

- An SMS Broker. This basically performs queueing, retry, transmission and sessions/protocol establishment with the end point.

- A number of small modules for implementing XML-RPC interfaces with third party carriers.

- Implementation of device modules for a few common GSM modem types. (still lacks receipt processing)

- A number of design/implementation approaches that we've used to extend the ACS core to work in this fashion. The main issue is always how we tie mobile number into the system in a similar way to the way email address is used now.

So, we do intend to pass this out when we get time to do a bit more on it. In particular, if we make it more ACS specific we also need to consider a number of small changes to existing stuff to cater for mobile numbers more readily. I thought it best to wait until we're at a more stable release.

Also, as a side topic, we'v not yet experimented with services in USA. At the moment we focus on Europe, and we are certainly GSM specifc. I know that GSM is now quite widely available in the USA, however my understanding of the American market is that is is highly fragmented and a lot more price sensitive that Europe. That has lead to a situation where there are numerous providers/carriers and therefore the diffculty in launching SMS apps is compounded.

This is only me tertiary understanding, so I'm always interested to hear of anyone doing this in the states, and what the situation is really like on the ground...

Cheers
Simon

Interesting.....

In the interim, it may be worthwhile you contacting my colleague, Peter, directly if you have any questions etc.. he's the guy who mainly looks after out SMS tech side, and I'm sure would be more than happy to chat about it.

Unfortunately he's off skiing for a week, so hopefully you're requirements not that urgent.

Our particular solution is aimed at siutation where we have to take more delivery responsibility. i.e. direct to operator or via modem, so may be more than you need, but its so simple to set up and works pretty cleanly (touch wood) thats its just as useful as a nice way to integrate an ACS with somehting else....i.e. qpage...

Please get in touch with Peter, I know he'll be interested..

I will try and hurry up a release of our stuff..

Cheers
Simon

PS
I don't know what you'd be paying for message delivery using qpage, but it might have a few good names and contacts for that kinds of thing if you wanted to mail me off-list