Maker Faire Africa » google app engine http://makerfaireafrica.com Celebrating Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the African Continent Sun, 29 Aug 2010 13:34:08 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Register for Maker Faire Africa by Mobile Phone http://makerfaireafrica.com/2009/07/18/register-for-make-faire-africa-by-mobile-phone/ http://makerfaireafrica.com/2009/07/18/register-for-make-faire-africa-by-mobile-phone/#comments Sat, 18 Jul 2009 12:56:37 +0000 Erik Hersman http://makerfaireafrica.com/?p=401 Anyone planning on going to Maker Faire Africa can register by sending a text message with their name or email address to:

+233261685159

After you register, you will receive an SMS response containing a 8 digit hexadecimal confirmation number. When you show up at the event and give that number to us, you will be entered into a drawing where you have a chance to win a prize.

How it was made

Sirleaf with a phoneHenry Barnor and Henry Addo, two Ghanaians developers who are helping out with the organization of Maker Faire Africa, spent a late night hacking some python code. Then, with some early morning debugging and about $50 they got this SMS RSVP solution up and running.

The data is then made available in a Google spreadsheet for the organizing team.

We have a phone with a Zain SIM card connected to a laptop running FrontlineSMS. When FrontlineSMS receives an SMS it sends the data via HTTP to a python web application running on Google’s App Engine infrastructure.

The webapp generates the confirmation number and sends the response using Clickatell‘s SMS gateway API. The webapp also saves the data to a database and the Google spreadsheet.

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