Final Year Project - SMS orientated

digitaldeath

Hey guys,
I'm planning to start working on my final year project (Multimedia & Communications course) over the summer, just to get a little bit of a head start.
Anyways, all I know so far is that my project will involve users sending SMS (or maybe MMS) to a server. It's after this that I am looking for ideas for.
So far I can see a photo sharing service (like Flickr) would be handy, except that you could upload pics straight from your phone using a MMS, and all of your added contacts can see your pics on the site right away.
Or even a classified car site, you could take a camera phone pic, type a description and your car will go straight up on the site with all of the details.

But I need alot more ideas before I comit to anything, preferably something community orientated and something that I can still help grow and use after college.

Has anyone got any ideas? I wanna hear them all.

Digi.

Rollo Tamasi

mo-blogging - blogging by mobile phone. Write a java program or similar that runs on WAP phones that looks like a web editor. When you click on save it updates your blog online. Not an original idea but a fairly new one.

digitaldeath

That idea wouldn't work with txt msgs, or I'd have to write some serious WordPress plugin to parse the info sent to the server once the user has selected save (assuming you mean to then SMS the blog post) and then update their blog accordingly.
Plus this would require that the server hosting their blog is also hosting the SMS server etc.
Or, they could just email from their phone to their blog - alot cheaper and a quicker solution no doubt.
But thanks for the suggestion!

No I need something different, something not so "obvious" but still dead handy and something that you wouldn't mind using (ie. non advertising or marketing SMS crap!)

Anyone got any other ideas?

Digi.

cgarvey

SMS to X10 gateway .. so you can text your ReadyToGo phone at home which is hooked up to your PC which has a program which can parse the SMS and issue X10 commands to a connected controller.

TURN HEATING ON .. would be translated (by your parser) to an X10 command to turn on unit 1, for example. For bonus marks send a success/fail text message back to the sender. Go whole hog and extend to check status of X10 devices (like room stats).

You'll need to figure out how to communicate with the attached X10 controller (libraries in most languages exist to make this easy), figure out how to interface with the connected mobile phone and extract SMS messages from it, look at any security issues (fake caller id)

digitaldeath

You don't need to buy a Ready To Go phone and figure out everything. You just buy an SMS server box thingy (I have one here) you put a SIM card into it, and connect it via serial to your PC (if you don't have a serial connection, you can get a USB to serial dongle). The server software then runs on the connected machine, waiting to receive a txt and to get to work with it!

The idea above sounds good, but I'm nearly certain there are commercially available products that can do this already.
Really, I'm looking for a SMS service that ties into a web based application.

Digi.

The Corinthian

digitaldeath wrote:

I'm planning to start working on my final year project (Multimedia & Communications course) over the summer, just to get a little bit of a head start.

You don’t really need anything complex or innovative for your final year project, especially if you’re a bit of a novice in the area. I’d suggest an app that, as you suggested, would incorporate the interaction of a PC with a GSM Modem (SMS server box thingy to you) for two-way SMS. The software itself breaks down into three parts; the communisation to the modem, the business logic of handling incoming and outgoing messages and the business logic of the application itself.

Keep it to simple 7-bit text messages if you can. Consider an application that would leverage what SMS can offer that other mediums cannot - i.e. close to complete market penetration, push notification, mobility. An interesting point that was raised here was in relation to mobile blogging, that a J2ME interface would be better than SMS - or for that matter a WAP or iMode interface - as SMS is not always the best road to take.

Some simple ideas might include, off the top of my head:

• A Whois or domain check query service.
• A chat application (can be quite a complex beast to do)
• A Chess game (with another player or a computer).
• An SMS interface for an IRC bot.

But I need alot more ideas before I comit to anything, preferably something community orientated and something that I can still help grow and use after college.

Has anyone got any ideas? I wanna hear them all.

Heh. Not going to happen. It’s one thing to ask people for free advice for a college project, it’s another thing to ask them to come up with a business idea for you.