Swiftly.org

This week, on Wednesday 16th, we’ll be hosting an in-depth overview of the SwiftRiver software and SwiftRiver Web Services platforms in Nairobi, Kenya. You can register to attend that event (or the live stream) here. Myself, along with Technical Architect and Lead Developer Matthew Griffiths are really looking forward to displaying some of the technical aspects of the work we’ve been doing over the past few months. However, we realize everyone isn’t a developer and some people want a more accesible description of the project.

That said, here’s all you need to know about SwiftRiver (even if you don’t really care what the word veracity means)…

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SwiftRiver (http://swift.ushahidi.com) is a free and open source software platform that uses algorithms and crowdsourcing to validate and filter news.

Features

• Aggregate content from many sources (Email, Blogs and News, Twitter, SMS)


• Rate content sources (Email address, URLs, Twitter User, phone number)


• Sort content by authority (more trustworthy or less trustworthy)


• Post reports from Swift to Ushahidi with 1-click


• Plugin Architecture


• Swift Web Services already integrated (SwiftRiver does all the things SWS does)

Other Notes

• Open Source


• Easy to theme


• Allows instance admins to determine the sources they trust


• Speeds up the process of sorting through large streams of data


• Helps Ushahidi users manage news


• Needs to be downloaded and run from a web server (like Ushahidi)

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Swift Web Services (http://sws.ushahidi.com) is a suite of web apis that do different things. Each application does something different, and each are independent. SwiftRiver uses them all.

Applications

• SiLCC pulls keywords from any Text (including SMS and Twitter) and automatically sorts related text


• SULSa automatically detects location of incoming content/reports


• SiCDS automatically filters out duplicate content (re-tweets, blogs, text messages)


• Reverberations detects how influential/popular content is online


• RiverID allows Swift users to carry their Swift reputation with them across the web

Additional Notes

• Cloud applications (no download, no install)


• Web APIs


• Open-source


• Free for anyone to use


• Premium options available


• RESTful (for other applications)


• Fully integrates with Ushahidi


• Hosted (no download, no install)


• Available for Wordpress and Drupal

On April 15th at this year’s Twitter developer conference, Tim O’Reilly moderated a panel with Katie Stanton (White House Director of Citizen Participation), Anil Dash (Expert Labs), and Patrick Meier (Ushahidi) called “Twitter as a Force for Good”. They discussed how Twitter was an incredible platform for information gathering for emergency response organizations during the Haiti earthquakes. Other topics of conversation ranged from how the US government keeps up with the latest web technologies, tech innovations originating outside of Silicon Valley and the U.S., and leveraging crowd-sourcing as a way to improve policy decisions. Check out video of the full panel below…


Watch live video from Twitter Chirp Conference on Justin.tv

Turns out April is an incredibly busy month for the SwiftRiver team. Here’s a list of just a few of the events we’ll be represented at…

Patrick Meier will represent Ushahidi & Swiftriver on a panel at the CHIRP Twitter Developer’s Conference on April 14th and 15th, 2010 in San Francisco along with Jon Gosier.

Jon Gosier, Director and System Architect of SwiftRiver, will present at TEDxMission in San Francisco on April 15th along with Patrick.

Software developer Victor Miclovich will speak at Re:Publica 2010 in Berlin, Germany about Swiftriver platform and the role of real-time communication technology as a check for media in countries with oppressive governments on April 14th and 15th.

Jon will also speak on panel at the Media140 journalism conference in Perugia, Italy on April 23rd, 2010.

In May, Jon will speak at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda about Swift’s use of natural language processing to parse and sort real-time information from sources like Twitter, text messages and email.

For more visit http://swift.ushahidi.com/events/

In anticipation of the forthcoming Alpha release of the new Kohana-based Swift River codebase on March 30th, Meedan is sponsoring a hack night and discussion on Friday, April 2, 2010 at 5pm, at the Meedan offices in San Francisco, California.

Proposed goals for the open-invite evening include:

• getting the new app running locally on some developer machines


• making sure that new developers are clear on how to use the git workflow


• discussing new features and the roadmap


• discussing integration potential, future points of collaboration & code sharing

We will probably transition to conversation over dinner.

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WHERE?
There are two ways to participate in the hackup:

• In person. In San Francisco, at the new Meedan offices at 972 Mission St. See: http://www.inveneo.org/?q=mission_social


• Online. In the Swift River Public Skype channel

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WHEN?
The alpha hackup is sandwiched between Where2.0 and Wherecamp — starting at 4/2 5pm PST and last until late, as the Ugandan and Kenyan teams come online (the morning of 4/3 Eastern Africa Time).

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

• developers who are interested in getting started hacking on the new codebase


• developers with skills in PHP, MySQL, Python or Ruby on Rails


• our colleagues working on like-minded tools


• journalists or researchers who just want to learn more about the platform

RSVP
If you are planning on coming to the event in San Francisco just send an email to cgblow at gmail dot com — we will make sure you have a phone number so you can get in the Meedan office.



Hackathon Photo By SuperAmit