Outside of North America people use SMS (short messaging service) like crazy! In many parts of the world this cell-phone based text-messaging system is the only one that's readily available. There's no question that there's a long list of real world applications just waiting to be developed based on importing and exporting SMS messages to and from websites and cellphones. These applications range from coordinating people involved in democratic campaings and actions, to fighting farmer exploitation by providing regionally and nationally updated market data.

I think that Drupal is very well placed to take advantage of this opportunity as a result of both its increasing use in and amoung advocacy and community-building circles, and the modular nature of the code.

I know for a fact that this would be useful. I have extensive oveseas experience and have been approached in the past about the possibility of building web portals that would bridge the gap between SMS and the web.

Moreover, it seems to me that this souldn't be too hard to do in Drupal either. For outgoing messages, the (sms?) module would take advantage of existing web2sms services, allowing the user to enter or select the service provider of their choice. The incoming messages could take advantage of sms2mail (often provided by cellphone carriers) and mail2node (provided by the mail modules already available for Drupal) functionality.

But I can't undertake this project all by myself. I wouldn't even know where to start. Is there anybody out there who feels like lending a hand?

Comments

omar’s picture

omar commented
dublin drupaller’s picture

dublin drupaller commented

Good idea omar.

Here's one or two ideas to kick it off:

1. MOBILE PHONE-2-DRUPAL SITE communication

1.1 Text based content

Functionality: User submits text based content using their phone to a drupal based website. Such as, updating their weblog etc.

Solution: You can already do this using the mailhandler module which allows users to submit text content via email. All GSM and next generation mobile phones allow people to send a text or SMS message via email, so the mobile-2-drupal site communication would be very simple. Of course, I'm making the assumption that people tech-savvy enough to want to update a weblog or a website using their phone would be techy-savvy enough to send an SMS from their mobile phone.

1.2 Graphic/multimedia based content

Functionality: User with a mobile phone with an inbuilt camera/mic submits graphic/video/audio content to a drupal site...such as adding to thier personal image gallery. for example.

Solution: You can download the moblog.module from the following link. http://moblog.nullcraft.org/
This module allows drupal sites to accept different types of files from mobile phones....similar to the process involved in submitting text-based-content using a mobile phone, the moblog uses email to send a pic/video/audio file from the phone to the drupal site.

As far as I understand, the moblog.module is still under development.

1. DRUPAL SITE-2-MOBILE PHONE communication

Functionality: drupal-based-site user can click on a button - in a similar way to the private message module - to send another user an SMS message.

Solution: you could use the forms.module or the form_mail.module to do this in conjuntion with a SMS service providor.

Worth noting that sending SMS messages costs money. Regardless to whether it originates from an email or from another mobile phone, so an account with a SMS service providor is required. It's standard for SMS providors to provide the www-2-mobile html links and passwords that allows you to insert a simple form on a website that processes a single or bulk SMS messages through your account.

If you do a google search for "email2sms services" or web2sms you will find oodles of providors. A rule of thumb guide to price would be €200 (US$120) per month for account setup and a few thousand SMS messages each month. Usually it costs about €0.05 (US$0.03) per SMS after that.

3. Pay-per-view drupal based website using mobile phone as the method of payment

In europe, one of the most popular methods of paying for a music track online is using a mobile phone as the method of payment. check out the following website to see how it works:

http://www.buybandaid20.com

(the above links to the Bob Geldof/Midge Ure composed charity song "Do They know it's Christmas Time?" )

Basically the way it works is using REVERSE SMS. USer sends a product code to a special shortcode and is bounced back a username and password they can use to enter a site. In a very similar way to the way ringtones are bought, money is taken from the phone with the reverse SMS message in return for the username and password/pin.

very simple and very popular with consumers...especially for low value transactions.

The margins for low volume sales is very unattractive (less than 5,000 €1 euro (US$0.60) value transactions per month)...i.e. the split between the mobile phone operator and the drupal-based-site owner. Having said that, it could be useful for some applications to charge visitors a nominal fee, such as €0.50euro ($0.30) per week that will give them access to the drupal-based-site.

Typical margin splits would be 70:30 in favour of the mobile phone operator/service providor.

reverse SMS setup costs vary and are usually a few thousand euros (for each country/territory) to get started with a monthly fee...like the web2sms services, the mobile reverse sms service providors, as standard, would setup the "handshake" between your drupal site and the passwords it gives out to customers.

NOTES: Worth mentioning that I have had a lot of experience with SMS and bulk-web2sms experience from working in the music biz in Europe. It was fairly standard for bands/record labels to build up mobile phone number databases and bulk SMS the fans when a new release was due or there was a special gig coming up.

There are a lot of issues with this form of marketing - not just data protection acts, but basic ergonomics..i.e. consumers find SMS marketing too intrusive and over use or bad management of the databases can rapidly result in negative vibes.

Integrating moblog.module and implementing a user-2-user SMS form..not a bulk SMS form..would be extremely useful and practical in my humble opinion. Having said that, with the advent of more and more people using their mobiles and wireless devices it makes the need to SMS someone fairly redundant..i.e. most GSM based mobile phones allow emails already...

Hope that adds to your discussion...

Jason

dublin drupaller’s picture

dublin drupaller commented

oops...sorry..I forgot that the "Do They Know It's Crhistmas?" track is not available to pourchase using a mobile phone....check out http://www.7digital.com instead to see how music is being bought using a mobile phone at the moment in the UK.

At the moment the consumer pays using their mobile phone and downloads the track to their computer...but in time..they will obviously be able to download straight to the phone and from there transfer it to whatever..

Jason

omar’s picture

omar commented

Thanks a lot Jason, that is very informative. I'll have to look into some of these things.

praseodym’s picture

praseodym commented
Version: » x.y.z
Component: node system » other

Still no module available for this.

ricabrantes’s picture

ricabrantes commented
Version: x.y.z » 7.x-dev

Any activity???

catch’s picture

catch
he/him
Primary language English
commented
Status: Active » Closed (duplicate)

http://drupal.org/project/smsframework

Marking this feature request as duplicate of the module.

edemicity’s picture

edemicity commented

Thanks Jason, for this excellent piece of research, it has really help me. I am thinking of a modules which can help me on Pay-per-view drupal based website using mobile phone as the method of payment, I just started the site, I want to introduce affiliate, referrals and user user-point module with mobile phone method of payment. please look at www.advertghana.com and let me know if you have any tips or kind of help or advise for me.

Thanks

Edemicity