

Wikipedia over SMS: Getting Wikipedia to the people who need it most - alternize
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/02/22/getting-wikipedia-to-the-people-who-need-it-most/

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austinc
This is hinting at the on-demand knowledge service to mobile handsets
worldwide that Robert Steele proposed in this (very interesting) talk at
Amazon: <http://goo.gl/LKlcr>

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dbaupp
This is awesome! I'd heard about it from a previous HN submission when it was
still quite small, but it looks like it is really taking off.

Interestingly, this is actually inspired by "Facebook Zero"[1], which may be
the best thing Facebook will do for humanity: inspiring free information
access for all.

[1]: [http://qz.com/5180/facebooks-plan-to-find-its-next-
billion-u...](http://qz.com/5180/facebooks-plan-to-find-its-next-billion-
users-convince-them-the-internet-and-facebook-are-the-same/)

~~~
mtgx
Wait. Facebook is inspiring "free information access"? Isn't that what
Wikipedia and even Google have been doing for a decade?

I think you're talking about free Internet access, which I think only works if
the content provider is paying for it himself. Are these Wikipedia SMS's even
free to the user?

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theanalyst
Generally won't sms kind of services are limited to 160 chars. by operators?
How are large articles etc. going to be handled

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masklinn
Concatenated SMS. A thing.

The standard allows 255 segments of 134 bytes, for ~39000 7-bit characters
(GSM 7-bit alphabet) or ~17000 UCS-2 code units.

~~~
smn
fwiw, it's built on Vumi which is Open Source
<http://github.com/praekelt/vumi>. Feel free to join us in #vumi on Free for
any questions.

~~~
smn
s/Free/Freenode/

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phil
"Communications tools don’t get socially interesting until they get
technologically boring." - Clay Shirky

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alternize
does anyone have some insight how that would work? the best rate i could find
for sending sms in europe is around 0.015€/sms at a large volume - still that
would probably be way too expensive for such a project. will Wikipedia Zero
have to rely on the cooperation of the mobile carriers for that distribution
channel as well?

~~~
dbaupp
There's more specific information in the main info page[1], but the answer is
yes: "In 2012, the Wikimedia Foundation signed Wikipedia Zero partnerships
with three mobile operators [...]. In January of 2013, we signed a fourth
partnership [...]" (from TFA).

[1]: <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero>

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jdrols
I'm extremely skeptical when I read an article that discusses growth
percentages without mentioning a single raw number.

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ianstallings
Well I was going to concentrate on getting fresh water to them but I guess
knowing the history of the Hapsburg dynasty is just as good.

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coob
Yes I'm sure <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_well> would be of no use at
all in that situation.

More seriously – once basic survival needs are met, the next most important
thing is education. Life expectancy, living standards, family size and income
all correlate highly to education level.

Want to stop HIV/AIDs? You can't do it just by handing out condoms. You need
the users to understand why.

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qompiler
Given more time the market will develop a solution if there is demand for it.
Just like mobile phones are actually being bought in developing countries,
something not really foreseen 15 years ago. Forcing something like this on
telecom providers will result in the a delay in providing internet access to
everyone, it will result in government interference with subsidies and cripple
the evolution of the internet not only in developing countries but world wide.
Patience is the keyword.

~~~
neilk
Woo, a TTL (time to libertarian) of 10 minutes!

This is being done by the carriers themselves, not the government. And by the
way, what makes you think the carriers don't understand their own business?
Here's a Wikipedia page to review: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader>
.

