Our Tools

InSTEDD's free and open source technologies enable seamless and reliable collaboration -- even in the harsh and demanding environments where you work.  Combining the power of the Web, the ubiquity of mobile computing, and a reliability equivalent to (or better than) the previous generation's paper forms and field radios, InSTEDD's tools will get your whole team on the same page -- and keep them there.

  • InSTEDD GeoChat is a unified mobile communications service designed specifically to enable self-organizing group communications in the developing world.   The service lets mobile phone users broadcast location-based alerts, report on their situation, and coordinate around events as they unfold, linking field, headquarters, and the local community in a real-time, interactive conversation visualized on the surface of a map.  Once you create a GeoChat group, you may use it as the text equivalent of a push-to-talk radio:  send the group a message on the Web, by email, or by SMS, and the rest of the group receives it.  GeoChat allows information to flow over multiple messaging channels, including dedicated SMS servers, a cell phone plugged into a laptop, a satellite phone, and even Twitter.  You may learn more about InSTEDD GeoChat here. Please join the online community around GeoChat here. GeoChat is hosted "in the cloud" via Amazon, so there is no server to deploy.  GeoChat has global SMS coverage through Clickatel, has a US domestic SMS shortcode, and may easily be integrated with gateways of local carriers.  Users have referred to GeoChat as “Email for the Bottom Billion”.
     
  • InSTEDD Mesh4X is an adaptive data integration platform designed to break down barriers to information flow, allowing organizations and individuals to share awareness reliably, selectively, and securely, with anyone, using any device, from any database, over any network. Using Mesh4x, every user knows what every other user knows. When a disaster relief worker notes in a spreadsheet that beds are available in a local shelter, that piece of information is automatically synchronized to all of the different websites, PDAs, databases, and maps of every organization cooperating in the response.  Mesh4x allows information to flow between established applications (like Excel, Access, GoogleEarth, MySQL, Oracle and many others), and between devices (laptops, smartphones, PDAs, and servers) reliably, selectively, and securely in a distributed "data mesh". If necessary, Mesh4X can synchronize data over nothing but a stream of SMS messages, merely by plugging an ordinary cellphone into a laptop. Mesh4X is hosted "in the cloud" via Amazon. You may learn more about InSTEDD Mesh4X here.
     
  • InSTEDD Riff is an interactive decision support environment that combines the power of virtual teams of human experts and advanced analytic, machine-learning, and visualization services to allow its users to collaborate around streams of information to detect, characterize, and respond sooner to emerging events.  In Initially developed as a biosurveillance tool to detect emerging infectious diseases, Riff is now under evaluation for a range of scenarios where human/machine collaboration could prove useful, including post-disaster news reporting, humanitarian early warning, and conflict early warning. Riff is hosted "in the cloud" via Amazon.  You may learn more about Riff here.
  • TrackerNews.Net is news for an increasingly uncertain world, a unique information service providing the humanitarian community with an in-depth, multi-disciplinary perspective on complex problems.