freecycle(tm) mobile - ota10

#OTA10

Freecycle/Freeglefor Mobile

Elliot LongKieran Gutteridge

Themes•Sustainability

•Environmental Protection

•Social inclusion

•Solving Real Problems

Unwanted Stuff...

....goes to landfill

Enter Freecycle

...and Freegle

Freecycle Yahoo group

The rules

No LivestockNo TradingThey’ll never take our “free”dom! Aww...kitties....

Yahoo groups - the problem

•Users complain of toooo many emails•No API or RSS feeds •Subscription and first email are moderated•No link between images and messages•No standard for subject lines

The Problem for automation: Subject Lines

What the subject lines should be:

Offered: Brown computer desk (BS5)Taken: Brown computer deskPromised: Brown computer desk

Examples of the reality:

Offered: single mattress: BrislingtonOFFER: Huge tub of freshly harvested white grapes (Dursley)Offer: half-height fridge freezer BS8Promised: Single Mattress: Brislingtonoffered two wooden chairsOffer: Modern Tropical Fish TankTaken: White tropical Fish tank

App + Fuzzy logic

Outgoing App (iPhone) Incoming App (Android)

Server-Side Email Monitor and Push (Perl)

Ericsson Labs - Mobile Push API

XML-RPC

Takes a photo, reverse-geocodes it and produces a properly formatted email to send to yahoo groups, e.g.“Offered: green rocking chair (BS5)“

Accepts keyword requests from Incoming appMonitors email account via POP3 for new offersSearches subject lines for keywords When found, sends call to Push API

Lets users add/remove keywordsTurn on/off push listenerShows dialogs when items arrive via pushLets user show results on google map

Push listener

“Outgoing” App (to submit data)

Allows constrained choices to make searching easier Assisted location lookup

Incoming App to review and alert

Add a search term to be alerted for Enable push notifications Display matching items on map

Suggested future development

•Matching of Offered+Taken messages (perhaps using fuzzy text matching)

•Image support (how i don’t know)

•Migration to a RESTful API(ditch Yahoo groups!)

•More devices and/or mobile web(bring it to everyone)

Demo