Today we are happy to release version 3.1.6 of Ushahidi Android app to the Google Playstore. This release includes

• Integration of the Ushahidi Java SDK
• Updates to user navigation menus – including admin dashboard access from the app
• Support for Google maps v2 for Android.

Ushahidi Java SDK

We have removed the verbose code in interacting with the Ushahidi API to a stand alone Java library which we are calling Ushahidi Java SDK. This will enable Java developers to easily work with the Ushahidi API in their Java projects. We have gone ahead and integrated the  SDK into the Ushahidi Android app Core library in the spirit of eating our own dog food. What this means for developers is that, they can easily extend the core features of the Core library. You can head over to our github repository for documentation on the public APIs exposed by the SDK.

Google Maps v2 for Android

Additionally, we have-added Google Maps V2 For Android and removed support for the old Google maps for android. This allows us to take advantage of  the new APIs. We now have support for OSM and Mapbox tiles.  If you go to the settings screen, you should be able to set which map tile to use. By default Google is selected.

User navigation menu updates

We have also added Menu Drawer support to provide quick and easy navigation to other areas of the app, regardless of which screen you are on. To access the menu drawer, swipe from the left side of the screen  or  simply tap the Ushahidi icon on the action bar — top left.

You can access your deployment Admin Dashboard from the Menu Drawer. This makes it easier to administer your Ushahidi deployment on the Go.

There’s more…

As always, there has been a ton of bug fixes. See the changelog for the complete list.

Thank you

Big shout out to the  folks at geothings.tw for their immense contribution in the development of the Ushahidi Java SDK and many thanks to the Ushahidi community for their constant feedback and bug reports.

Interested in contributing?

Both the Ushahidi Android and Ushahidi Java SDK are open source projects. Check out their respective github repo to access the code. Your contributions are welcome.

Go on,grab this version of the app and take it for a spin.

Happy mapping!

Evan Sims – gif star

Our team was also drooling a bit this week over the shout out on a favourite podcast, The Frequency. Hope you can support them!

Reminder: Have Ushahidi developer chops? Please be sure to let us know if you’d like to do some contract work. We are often contacted by community folks who need a hand. We’d be happy to connect you. Drop me a line with some basic details (Hleson at ushahidi dot com). I have two pending requests on this.

Deployment of the week: Art, Junk and Bikes

Community building means connecting the offline to online. We love the work that Placeworks from San Francisco is doing. Congratulations to our Deployment of the Week. Could you do this in your city?

Also, hats off to Trashwag, a previous Deployment of the Week, for ongoing efforts to build their local community network in Toronto: make junk into art!

Imagination abounds – Ushahidi is being used for BIKE OPERA!

Upcoming Events

TODAY: Environmental Mapper Hangout featuring the Louisiana Bucket Brigade‘s project – I Witness Pollution and Wansoo Im on Community Mapping.

• The next Ushahidi community developer call is May 20, 2013, Join us (Africa and Europe friendly time zone).
• Upgrade day for v2.7 is May 30 and 31, 2013. Join the community and team to lend a hand to upgrading. We’ll be sharing more details on this event on Monday.

Community Updates

We love it when our community shines. Ajay Kumar and Svend Jonas Schelhorn have been at ISCRAM (Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management) this week participating in simulation workshop and being Ushahidi mapstars!

Joao Porto de Albuquerquem, Ajay Kumar and Svend Jonas Schelhorn

The @gdacsmobile simulation concluding discussion. Here’s the final @ushahidi sitrep #ios #iscram twitter.com/ajuonline/stat…

— Ajay Kumar (@ajuonline) May 15, 2013

Research and Paper reminders

Are you interested in research about open source, commons and open internet. There is still time to share your knowledge at the Creative Commons Global Summit 2013 (due May 24, 2013). or participate in Citizen Lab’s Connaught Summer Institute (due June 1, 2013). Keep us posted if you’d like to write about Ushahidi. We’d love to support your research efforts.

Thanks to Transparency International for their review on Technology against Corruption.

Into the Code

SwiftRiver

With work on the new UI almost done, team swift is working on integration of CrowdmapID into the system for purposes of authentication. Data migration from the old version to the new version should also be done in the coming weeks. Watch out for fresh documentation on the wiki, with code samples on the way .

Mobile

We are all geared up for the release of v3.1.6 of the Android App on May 16, 2013. See the issues tackled in the upcoming release on the github issues page.

BRCK

It has been an incredible first week, we are truly thankful for all of you that have supported us and helped to spread the word. We are about 66% of the way to our goal with 20 days to go.That’s with 582 backers and $86,555 raised – thank you!! Here is a visual representation of how we envision the BRCK as an onramp for the Internet of Things.

You can read more on our recent update on Kickstarter.

Ushahidi Core

The team has made more strides towards having V3 API work done, including OAuth integration and Sets (to be merged in after review). Our docs are on the wiki and our github repository. Contact us via via the dev mailing list, skype chat or even personal email to dive into the code.

Crowdmap

Bug squashing is ongoing, so keep sending in your feedback to the team, as it will go a long way in helping make your experience on Crowdmap even better. You can also file bug reports and feature requests on our github issues page. Work on the API is also ongoing, and we’re aiming for documentation in the coming weeks.

Happy mapping,

Heather and Angela.

There was a general feeling of excitement and optimism about the new role of technology to promote transparency and accountability at the Transparency International SpeakUp! event which I attended in March 2013. There was quite a buzz about online denunciation tools in particular, and different Transparency International chapters are looking into ways to embrace new tools or improve existing ones to encourage citizens to report corruption cases.

Tarik Nesh-Nash

In February 2012, Transparency Morocco launched the online platform Mamdawrinch.com (which means “We will not bribe”). The aim was to provide a tool for anonymous denunciation to encourage people to speak up and discuss corruption in public. Today, corruption is becoming a mainstream topic and even the government claims to be ramping up the fight against corruption. We are considering moving Mamdawrinch’s mission beyond anonymous reporting to enable interaction with legal advice centres and educate the public on empirical cases and practical tools to fight corruption.

This blog post shares some of the thoughts exchanged on Transparency Morocco’s online reporting tool.

Technology cannot fight corruption. People can.

An online site is not a solution. It is merely a tool. One cannot iterate this statement enough. Technology can empower citizens, raise awareness and pressure authorities. Yet, technology cannot fight corruption; it cannot change cultures, detect problems, propose solutions or amend laws. People can. As we are building online tools, we should remember their raison d’être: they should be part of a broader strategy of engagement and participation.

The author as he explains the idea behind mamdawrinch.com at a global meeting of over 70 representatives of Transparency International’s legal advice centres around the world.

Measuring success

Closely related to the first point, it is important to set clear objectives to measure the platform’s success. In my opinion, objectives should move beyond statistics on the number of site visits to more functional goals. For example, one could look at the number of online visitors who meet with a legal advisor working with one of Transparency Morocco’s legal advice centres in person, the number of online visitors who pursue legal actions – or even better – the number of successes such as a cancellation of a corrupt tender or the dismissal of a police officer who solicited a bribe.

Responding to corruption – feedback and user interaction

Having a feedback loop is crucial. When citizens report corruption cases, they expect at least a reaction, if not a solution to their problem. This is one of the most difficult challenges to tackle when building a reporting tool. In the case of Mamdawrinch, citizen reports are currently published on the site, pinned on a map and shared on Facebook and Twitter. We are realising that this is not sufficient. Users often ask for guidance or label their experience incorrectly as corruption. The site should also provide documentation and interact with users.

A dedicated team

Technology has a cost. In addition to the cost of technical development, the cost of human resources should not be underestimated. Although there is a plethora of free open source software, a successful online experience requires technical work and it certainly requires human support and follow-up to keep analysing and reacting to the reports. Unlike other timely crowdsourcing efforts like crisis mapping or election monitoring where volunteers contribute their time and skills, fighting corruption is a long-term fight. The energy and the excitement tend to wind down with time. In my opinion, it is important to have professionals who keep building the community, bringing the topic to the spotlight and reacting continuously to current affairs. A high quality follow up requires professional dedication from legal advice centres’ staff.

In the case of Mamdawrinch, we learned the hard way that the site could not function without a dedicated team who provides daily support. Today, Transparency Morocco has a full-time person that manages its online presence, and a dedicated legal advice centre team which receives requests through its hotline and offices in Rabat, Fes and Nador. We are now looking into coupling the work of the legal advice centre and Mamdawrinch so that the internet will be another two-way communication channel for legal advice centres.

Decide on strategy before choosing technology

Cool technology is not necessarily the best. A common mishap is to pick the technology before deciding on the online strategy. Engineers are naturally inclined to prefer cool new technologies but this may not be the right fit for what is needed. Here are two examples of cool technologies that were debated when setting up Mamdawrinch: Geomapping and SMS.

Geomapping has become a buzz word and Ushahidi proved to be a powerful, accessible and mature platform. Yet we realised that geomapping hotspots may not be the best way to visualise corruption. It may even be counterproductive: the use of exact geo-location information can be defamatory and unless it is sustained with solid proof, it could lead to legal action. Also, the lack of incidents reported in a geographic area may be interpreted incorrectly as lack of corruption in that area. We are currently considering adding new visualisations to identify hot sectors and trends.

Another cool technology is the use of SMS. While the technical platform is available and mature, its implementation in Morocco would require a continuous payment to the telecom company and another non-trivial cost from the citizen. High costs from both the development and user side can hinder the widespread use of SMS, but with a 120 per cent phone-to-citizen ratio, it is definitely worth exploring.

Working with online leaders

Use social media and build online leaders. If we take Morocco as an example, many young people spend hours per day on social media sites. In this space, we are witnessing the emergence of new types of leaders: online leaders. People who believe in the cause and voluntarily promote the fight. Kudos to people like Layla Barrit, Rachid Adil and Selma Sabaa who are spontaneously raising awareness about transparency using social media and setting examples for other young people. This is an area that deserves more innovation. In 2011, social media users organised popular protests against corruption. This powerful energy should be supported to continue the struggle for transparency and accountability. Continuous improvement. There is no magic solution that can be successfully replicated. If we knew how to efficiently fight corruption, we would have already done so. We should promote innovation and risk-taking to come up with new alternatives. In the software development industry, the ‘Agile Software Development’ methodology is often recommended for problems with changing requirements. Corruption is a perfect example of a shifting field where as soon as we find an antivirus, the virus evolves and a new antivirus needs to be invented to fight it.

I am hopeful that technology will result in systemic change and strengthen transparency and accountability. With the growing use of IT by the government and all sectors, transparency measures will become embedded in the system.

Yes, we still need your help to get to 100%, and appreciate you sharing the Kickstarter link widely.

It’s been a big week at Ushahidi, with the launch of the New Crowdmap, along with the BRCK Kickstarter and the announcement of the MAVC partnership. Everyone on the team is taking a welcome respite from the blitz over the weekend, as we gear up for next week’s follow-up.

During these times of added attention, it brings other voices and eyes to your organization. Sometimes it takes other people looking at what you do, and then talking about it, to better understand yourself. That happened this week with a brilliant post by Nat Bullard titled, “Backup / On ramp / Good enough” where he crystalized what really makes us tick with this:

“We use technology to define the function.  Ushahidi uses function to drive the technology.”

The BRCK as backup generator

This idea of a seemingly simple problem of internet connectivity in the parts of the world which have shaky power and net infrastructure is what led us to question the solutions put before us: routers and modems made for the more developed parts of the world. That’s the first part of the story of the BRCK, and it’s the thing that drives us to make it real, as we feel this pain every day ourselves.

The BRCK as glue

The second part of the story on the BRCK leverages that idea of simple connectivity and pushes us to use our core competency, which is web development. It’s where we see that the BRCK is really the glue between the cloud and the internet of things, where you can connect your devices and sensors in the real physical world, and control them from anywhere.

In the Media

There have been some fantastic media pieces this last week, where it seems like the BRCK has struck a chord with people around the world. There will be a few more newsworthy items over the coming weeks before the BRCK campaign ends as well.

MIT’s Technology Review started the week off by digging into how this simple technology makes sense to come from Ushahidi, with our background in crisis/disaster.

Quartz really understood the value of third-party applications and hardware connectivity.

Forbes gets into the details about being offline when the power goes out, and why that doesn’t need to be true.

Since I was in Germany to speak at re:publica, it was great to have coverage by Spiegel.

Matt Berg wrote up a good post, on what excites him about the BRCK, and questions he has for the team.

There were a lot more, you can see them here:

• Engadget: Insert Coin: BRCK wireless router packs a fallback 4G connection, internal battery
• Geek.com: BRCK, emergency internet access that works without electricity
• All Things D: Ushahidi Raising Kickstarter Funding for Rugged Hotspot BRCK
• The Next Web: Meet BRCK, a piece of hardware that will bring you the Internet when all lights go out
• Tech President: Internet You Can Actually Stick in a Suitcase
• Digital Trends: ‘BRCK’ is a backup Internet generator for when the power goes out
• Discovery: Backup Device Keeps the Internet Up in a Disaster
• TechSpot: Meet BRCK – the rugged backup generator for the Internet
• Tech Central (South Africa): A new Kenyan project on crowd-funding site Kickstarter is garnering big attention and is fast raking in contributions.
• T3: Kickstarter for BRCK, connect to the internet without electricity, goes live
• Golem.de (German): Brck sorgt für Netz und Strom
• AIT News (Arabic): “BRCK”: جهاز جديد يوفر الاتصال بالإنترنت مع انقطاع الكهرباء
• Aliqtisadi (Arabic): تطوير جهاز جديد يوفر الاتصال بالإنترنت مع انقطاع الكهرباء
• Alibaba (China): 神奇的上网设备BRCK：无需电源也可连接互联网
• Origo.hu (Hungary): Egy téglaméretű kütyü segít, ha elmegy a net
• IT Web Africa: Ushahidi turns to Kickstarter to raise funding for ‘BRCK’

Google Hangout

We did a Google Hangout for the BRCK this last week too with Heather, Rob, Jon, Angela, and Nat this last week. Here’s the recording:

We’ve started to host more Google Hangouts to better support our busy, global community. Please share widely and keep the questions coming!

Deployment of the Week

The Pakistan elections are tomorrow, May 11th. We recognize Jaag Pakistan as Deployment of the Week.

Jaag Pakistan is a crowd-sourced citizen journalism effort to make a free and fair election a possibility in Pakistan by reporting each and every rigging incident in the country using an online platform. The rigging incidents reports, sent by PTI ground teams and general public, are plotted live on the map on the website by our team of dozens of GIS/Mapping volunteers.

Also, see the Haalaat map, which includes some election reports. This team has a wider mandate. Shan has been working hard on his deployment alongside our Ushahidi Developer community.

Upcoming Events

Our monthly Environmental mapper hangout is May 15th. Join us for an afternoon (or evening) session.

The next Ushahidi Community Developer call is scheduled for May 20th, 2013. It is scheduled to be Europe and Africa timezone friendly. Join us!

Upgrade day is scheduled for May 30 -31, 2013. Need help upgrading your deployment to v2.7 of Ushahidi? Join the community and team to lend a hand to upgrading. We’ll share more details as we move closer to the date!

Umati – Monitoring Dangerous Speech

The Umati team presented their ongoing results monitoring Dangerous Speech in Kenya. It is the largest project monitoring Hate Speech in Kenya. Their dataset is massive. Angela Crandall and Kagonya Awori shared results and answered questions in this Google Hangout to air:

Into the Code

Crowdmap is in public beta. Did you see the video demo/Q&A?

Kellie Merritz wrote this about her experiences:

With the new version of Crowdmap, it’s easy to predict that mobile users worldwide will collectively breathe a sigh of relief. Personally, I’ve always had a difficult time accessing and efficiently using Crowdmap while on my mobile phone. When I logged into the “New Version” for the first time I was ecstatic to see the improvement when I got to the beta page.

Have questions about new Crowdmap? See our wiki docs and drop us a line at support at crowdmap.com.

Introducing the BRCK!

We recently launched a kickstarter campaign for one of our newest products, BRCK. It will be the easiest, most reliable way to connect to the Internet, anywhere in the world. We’ve crossed the 50% mark in just two days, and are excited to see where this will take us. Thanks you profusely for all your support. We are already rolling up our “delivery” sleeves.

Take a listen to our Hangout for more details:

Ushahidi Core

The team is hard at work crushing bugs in preparation for v2.8, scheduled for release towards the end of June. The Usahidi 3.0 work continues. We promise to have some things to show in the next week. See the code in progress on github.

SwiftRiver

Team swift is looking into Launching the new UI, probably in the coming week. This week they hosted a large project event with a client. We’re looking forward to sharing more about this. The big headline is: A group has built an app on top of the new SwiftRiver API.

Mobile

Henry’s been working on a lot of UI changes for the Ushahidi Android app, including adding admin support into it. He’s also managed to fully integrated the Java SDK into the app, and is hoping to release the next version of the app in the coming week.

Happy Mapping.

Brainstorming session at a Ushahidi community meetup at the iHub in Nairobi, on strategies for Uchaguzi, 2013 Kenya General Election deployment.

Ushahidi is delighted to be part of the consortium, together with Hivos and IDS, which has been selected to manage the Making All Voices Count: A Grand Challenge for Development (MAVC) fund.

MAVC brings together Sweden, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and Omidyar Network (ON) to create a $45 million fund to support innovation, scaling-up, and research that will deepen existing innovations and help harness new technologies to enable citizen engagement and government responsiveness.

At Ushahidi we focus on creating technology tools that have both depth and reach. We understand that that to be able to create those tools we need to develop ecosystems that encourage innovation; that allow us to build quality products while maintaining the nimbleness and speed necessary to be able to lead in our industry. With our partners in MAVC we have the opportunity to create, support and grow the technology ecosystem in 12 countries. We will work to support organisations and individuals in those countries to create and execute strategies and tools to positively impact each other and their governments. We will work to develop, strengthen and implement strategies for governments to become more efficient in how they connect with the citizens, for example through opening government data in meaningful ways.

The first Ushahidi map was created in just 6 days to address a problem that needed an immediate solution. Some very successful Ushahidi maps have been running for over 3 years (and counting). From this we learn that each Ushahidi deployment is unique. The problem a Ushahidi map addresses, the opportunity a Ushahidi map seizes are unique to the circumstances in the country and community the deployment is covering. We also learn that each Ushahidi deployment is the same, making voices count for impact. We appreciate that each of the 12 countries that MAVC will work in is unique. By bringing the unique experiences and lessons from all 12 countries together we will discover what we have in common as we learn from each other on how to amplify the voices in our communities.

Ushahidi is a team of programmers and mappers who are constantly on the move. From cafes in San Francisco, to the iHub in Nairobi, to working in crisis situations like the Haiti earthquake.  The same goes for our community, a global network of activists, organizers, NGO workers, government personnel, and so many more dealing with these same problems.

Being constantly handicapped with spotty internet access has led us to realize that the way the entire world is connecting to the web is changing. We no longer only get online via desktops in our office. We have multiple, mobile devices which have, for many of us, become the primary means of connecting.

So Ushahidi set out to redesign the modem for the changing way we all connect to the web. We thought it was about time the modem got a makeover.

The equipment used to connect in Kenya, India, Costa Rica, or the rest of the developing world is the same as that used in New York and London, even though the conditions are completely different. The modems used around the world were designed for the USA and European markets; they assume ubiquitous electricity connection and years of fiber and DSL infrastructure. But this is not the case for the three billion people who are expected to get online in the next five years.

At Ushahidi, we face this problem all the time. We realized that what we really needed was a smart, rugged device that could connect to the internet any way it could, hop from one network to another, create a hotspot for multiple devices, while plugged in or running on battery power.

Enter BRCK: The easiest, most reliable way to connect to the Internet, anywhere in the world.

It works when the electricity goes out and it works when the Internet goes down. It is portable and easy to set up. It supports up to 20 devices, with WiFi powerful enough to cover multiple rooms.

Ushahidi’s mission is to improve the way information flows in the world and the BRCK is a natural extension of this. We build tools that help people collect and share data, information, and stories. In many ways the BRCK is the vertical integration of the data collection market. The modem is the gateway between our devices and the wide world of the internet, but it is has been left ignored blinking in the corner, looking much the same it did 10 years ago. As a software company, we are seeing that some of the most innovative products out in the world today are when the agile, intelligent aspects of software and data are brought to an outdated piece of hardware. Square revolutionizing the credit card swiper, for instance.

The BRCK is a software infused device, operating seamlessly with the BRCK Cloud, our website that you can access from anywhere to check how network connections and electricity are performing on your device and a portal to install new services like VPN, Dropbox, or any other app that you might create. It also syncs your BRCK with current data from cellular providers in your country. It can also hold 16GB of memory and you can sync your data directly to your Dropbox, other connected devices, or other applications. Furthermore, a BRCK device that is deployed in rural Indonesia can be fully managed from an office in London — or vice versa.

Of course, the success of our company is due simply to the software we’ve released over the past five years but to all of the creative, important, and inspirational ways our community has found new and exciting applications for it, from putting out fires to monitoring new democracies to fixing potholes. So it’s important to us that the BRCK and BRCK Cloud be extensible so anyone can develop apps for it.

The BRCK has a documented API for apps and hardware expansion capabilities that allow it to be used to connect with field hardware: monitoring security sensors, communicating with other electronic devices — including other BRCKs.  Securely managed entirely from the BRCK Cloud, the expansion ports can be programmed to periodically relay values from analog sensors or to provide an immediate notification when a monitored switch is activated.  With the ability to manage an unlimited number of BRCK devices from the same Cloud interface, the BRCK can serve to enable enterprises both big and small with remote connectivity and field data collection from a single, unified portal with your data in the cloud.

“If it works in Africa, it will work anywhere.” This has been one of Ushahidi’s favorite sayings, and it remains true for our new product. The emergence of a hardware product from an African company marks a phase-change point for tech invention. The BRCK shows that great ideas can come from anywhere, that innovation comes from solving real problems with constrained resources.

Change happens at the frontier.

We have started a Kickstarter Campaign to move the BRCK from its current prototype phase into a fully produced, field-ready product. We need your help to achieve this goal of taking the prototype to production. We have raised just over $40,000 USD in the first 72 hours but are still a ways off from our goal. Please spread the word and help make this truly remarkable story about an African tech company building a hardware product that the whole world could use a reality.

For more information, photos, and specs, please visit BRCK’s microsite at brck.com.

Brian Herbert and Evan Sims join us to give a demo, talk about Crowdmap and answer your questions.

(Note: There was only a small sound blip for about 30 seconds near the beginning. Then, the sound is great. Hang in until 2 minute mark for the full demo. We promise to share a easter egg too. )

Evan Sim’s blog post on why new Crowdmap on Medium: “One year later…throwing caution to the wind and building a dream.”

Some of the questions we answered:

• How does this ties in with the ushahidi platform?
• Is the new crowdmap completely independent from Ushahidi’s code?
• Is it open source as Ushahidi? Or will it be?
• Is there a way to filter content on maps through categories or tags like we could on Ushahidi?
• I work with social projects in Rio’s favelas (poor communities). Are you guys planning an easier version for children / not heavy users?
• I have a map in Google maps and wanted to know if you all had any thoughts on how to download and then upload the data to Crowdmap.

Feature requests:

1. Google+ Sign In, Facebook login
2. Google+ sharing
3. Custom Icons
4. KML support would be great already. Also opens opportunity to work with government open data

Keep the testing, questions and feedback coming. As Brian likes to say: “We are at the 25% point, we’ll keep iterating based on what you need.”

Stay tuned for more from Team Crowdmap!

Happy mapping!

(This video quickly explains maps and posts)

Crowdmap mappers requested greater functionality and flexibility for their maps and posts. Research prompted us to build a robust Crowdmap that is mobile first, post-focused with seamless integration across devices. Compare Crowdmap Classic and Crowdmap side by side on the wiki.

Key Features

• Responsive. The website will work on any web-enabled device. You can use all the features on mobile, especially map and post administration.
• Share everything. Your posts and maps are shareable on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere on the web with versatile embed codes.
• Simplified configuration. We’ve focused on the settings that are most important to our Crowdmappers like collaborators, moderation and map styles.
• Post independence. All posts live in the Crowdmap ecosystem, ready to be mashed up on any map.
• Nerded out. 100% of the site is driven by an incredible API that will make developers salivate. We’ll be dropping documentation on this soon.

Crowdmap and Crowdmap Classic will run simultaneously for the coming months so your Classic maps aren’t changing. If you are a current Crowdmap Classic user, you can login to new Crowdmap with your existing email and password. We have more information on how to switch in our evolving User Guide. Creating an new account is easy. Just set up and go! If you need help, our wiki is here for you.

Crowdmap is built on top of a robust new API that will empower developers to create amazing new applications. We will be opening up the documentation and example code in the coming months to allow users to build on top of the ecosystem.

Additional Resources

Your map adventure begins now. Here are some resources to get you started:

Screencasts
Crowdmap Transition FAQ
Crowdmap FAQ
User Guide

Get a demo

Later today we will host a Crowdmap Public Beta Google + Hangout. Hope you can join us!

When: Monday, May 6, 2013 @ 21:00 EDT / 18:00 PDT (Details on how to participate.)

Take a spin on Crowdmap

Questions or Feedback?

We’re as responsive as our design. You can reach us at support@ushahidi.com. Feedback is very welcome as we are continuously making Crowdmap more awesome every day.

Remember, this is a beta! We want you to map stuff and break everything! Let us know what you want to see, what you are enjoying and what you think needs work.

Please use our feedback form to submit bugs. If you’re a little more tech savvy, you can post issues directly on our GitHub issues repository.

We just want to give a HUGE THANKS to all the translators and beta testers for being early adopters. We’re super excited to share Crowdmap which wouldn’t be possible without your help!

Happy Mapping!

Brian, Evan and the whole Ushahidi Team

Crowdmap Classic users – your deployments have been updated. Brian, Evan and a thousand running hamsters have upgraded all your deployments.

IMPORTANT TWITTER UPDATES FOR ALL USERS (including Crowdmap Classic users): Twitter API has made changes all users(inclusive of crowdamp) to adjust their twitter settings on their deployments.  See this wiki article for instructions.

Mali Mosque, Bamako
© John Spooner (Creative Commons)

(Learn about Bamako, Mali.)

Ushahidi 2.7 includes the following updates:

• Use OAuth to grab twitter feeds – This is to comply with the new twitter api changes
• Theming changes – A few things here include handling all css and js through one library, split out the main css i.e themes/default/css/style.css and also added theme inheritance and css/js overriding
• Revamped reports upload and download  - this includes support for upload/download of reports via xml format
• More fixes on custom forms
• Better XSS protection through the use of HTMLPurifier library
• API fixes
• Optimization including the scheduler
• custom alerts fix

See all the github tickets for the 2.7 milestone

Security update

We strongly recommend that you add this Security patch to your deployment. Special thanks to Robb Driscoll for identifying this. See the Software Security Updates wiki article for the patches and instructions.

Thank you

Many hands made this release possible. We’d like to thank these folks and our amazing Translation community for their great efforts.

A special mention for all the work of Neil Horning and the Himalayantechies for their pull request to fix Alerts on Ushahidi. Your efforts will help many in the community.

Testing: Loren Bell, Brendan O’Hanrahan, Rose Kelli Merritz, Sara Farmer, Jaroslav Valuch and Vassilis Chryssos.

Security feedback: Robb Driscoll

Github tickets: Loren Bell, Brad Anthony, @fauners, @Doug Firr, Pablo Destefanis, Kunjan Shah, Scott Stadum, Vladimir Gorets, Aaron Huslage, Tal Galili, John Etherton, Ed Dodds, @Dexterua, @PoPoutDoor, Neil Horning and himalayantechies

Upgrade today!

Grab this baby, take a spin with the fixes and features of 2.7. We will schedule an upgrade day soon to help you get on the latest code. In the meantime, there are upgrade scripts for the different versions.

(Note we are investigating an issue with “upgrading” from inside your deployment. More soon.)

Download: You can pull the code from github or our download page. We recommend testing it out first before loading to your live site. To help you get upgraded here a few wiki pages:

Migrating to a newer Ushahidi version
Upgrading Ushahidi

To help you, here are some upgrade scripts:

Moving from 2.6.1 to 2.7

Moving from 2.6 to 2.7

Moving from 2.5 to 2.7

Moving from 2.4.1 to 2.7

Full 2.7 build

Plugins Compatibility

Plugins are created by community members and, sometimes, the team. The following is a list of compatible plugins for 2.7. If you are using a plugin that is not compatible, perhaps you could lend a hand.