SlingshotSMS, by Development Seed, is an SMS Gateway designed to facilitate SMS communication with web applications. All you need is a GSM modem or cell phone, a computer, and a working Internet connection. The gateway, which can run from a USB drive, collects SMSs via the GSM modem, then pushes an HTTP request to any services you want. The gateway is built using Python.

MobileActive reports that:

The neat thing about this approach is that with a system like Drupal you can have new messages within seconds without waiting for cron to run. Some custom code for Drupal is on its way, but in the meantime, it’s simple to build: receiving a new text message looks just like a user submitting a form.

This approach should greatly simplify SMS-to-web publishing, allowing application developers to take advantage of the wide range of functions offered by CMSs like Drupal and WordPress. Development Seed has modeled location based news services using Drupal, but I see a wide variety of uses for this model, ranging from journalism, to crisis tracking, to political campaigns.

Development Seed is actively seeing developers to contribute to this open source project. Check it out on github!

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New SMS Gateway Runs Off Thumb Drive

August 18, 2009 |

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About the author: Theresa Carpenter Sondjo is an entrepreneur and web developer. She lives in Cotonou, where she and her partner run People Online. Their mission is simple: la mise en ligne du Bénin. Follow her on Twitter at @theresac.