Jose's Cerebro

Mercurio and OS X's RSS Visualizer Hack

I demostrated this "hack" during my talk at MobileCampNYC, but now I want to share it with everyone.

Mercurio natively provides you with an RSS feed of your incoming SMS messages. If you are running it locally on your machine you can find the feed by going to http://localIP:3000/xml/rss. Using OS X's RSS Visualizer screen saver and Mercurio's RSS feed, you can hook up your laptop or Mac Mini to a flat screen TV or projector and utilize it in innovative ways:

Are you a DJ?
Have people send their birthday "shout outs" to Mercurio and have the Screen Saver running in the background displaying the latest incoming messages.

Song requests? Have them text it to Mercurio.

Feedback on a presentation? Send it to Mercurio and get the talk's "live vibe".

Want to empower your community? Set a huge billboard that people can text to share information with other community members.

Bottom line is that with Mercurio and its RSS feed and a Mac, you can turn any gathering into a two-way public event.

To set it up all you need to do is to bookmark your Mercurio RSS page with Safari. Then you go to System Preferences->Desktop and Screen Saver and look for the RSS Visualizer. Click on the Options... button and look for the RSS page you bookmarked. That's it.

Poor Man's SMS Gateway is now Mercurio

Update:New version of Mercurio is now available - read post here.

Update: Installation instructions for Mercurio S60 were added.

I promised at MobileCampNYC to give away the code I showed during my Poor Man's SMS Gateway talk. To give the app a name shorter than "Poor Man's SMS Gateway", and to avoid using an acronynm like "PMS Gateway", I've decided to rename it under the codename Mercurio. Below are the files and instructions you'll need to get it going on Mac OS X. Instructions for Linux are very similar and I can write a post for it if people request it.

So what's Mercurio?

Mercurio is a barebones SMS framework that can run locally on any machine as well as on a server to send and receive sms messages. It includes a Rails based application as well as a Python script for Symbian S60 users.

The goal is to give everyone the chance to create a mobile application without the hurdles usually associated with mobile development.

Mercurio's features:

Mercurio Web App:
Sends SMS messages
Receives SMS messages
RSS feed for Received messages
Written in a RESTful manner

Mercurio S60:
Client that sends incoming messages to Mercurio Web without user intervention
Makes any Symbian S60 phone into a little sms receiving gateway

Poor Man's SMS Gateway update

I've received tons of emails asking for the files behind the Poor Man's SMS Gateway. Files and instructions will be up later on this afternoon.

Sorry for the delay...

Poor Man's SMS Gateway at MobileCampNYC

Today I gave my talk at MobileCampNYC, called Poor Man's SMS Gateway. The goal behind the talk was to demystify the "magic" behind SMS applications. I basically showed how anyone can create a very simple SMS gateway with nothing more than a mobile and a computer.

I figure that the more people start utilizing these types of technologies, the more innovation and creativity will eventually emerge out of the mobile space. Moreover, as the general population begins to become more aware of what can be done today with simple technologies as SMS, the more receptive they'll become to new services and applications created by the new class of mobile startups.

The code will be released open sourced with detailed instructions on how to get it installed in minutes. I may even do a video for it.

Stay tuned...

MobileCampNYC Baby!

During the last MobileMonday, Alexis convinced me to present at the upcoming MobileCampNYC. I'll be presenting on what I call a "Poor Man's Sms Gateway." It should be fun. If you are a mobile developer, mobile enthusiast or just interested in this whole crazy mobile world, come check out MobileCampNYC.

Hope to see you there!