[Foundation-l] Re: Access Wikipedia through SMS

Fri Jul 1 17:47:58 UTC 2005

Erik Moeller wrote:
> In developed countries, the callback could be paid for by the user, of 
> course. (One idea is that users in developed countries could sponsor 
> users in developing ones.) If you want to be involved, drop me or Angela 
> a line and we'll get you in touch with the relevant people.

This is a great idea, and with a slight modification you wouldn't even 
have to worry about callback costs. Simply let the user call your 
number, then they type the keyword on their phone, you detect the beeps 
and immediately read the article.

You could get a toll number and start grubbing money for the Wikimedia 
servers ;-)

I'd like to get something like that to work... But still one problem 
would be that it's country-specific, and me living in a small country 
(Switzerland, and to make matters worse, there are 4 official 
languages), I'd have some problems getting a large audience/user base. 
Perhaps someone in the USA, Germany or France could set up such a 
system, to see how many people would actually use it.

On the technical side, are there already working solutions?

-Stephan