As the world watches history in progress in Egypt, here is an example of how technology can facilitate the voices of the people in Egypt. Twitter messages have played important roles in a variety of political and human rights issues around the globe. Let us all hope for a peaceful outcome and that the Egyptians are heard.
Employees of new Google Aquisition SayNow built an application that converts voicemails into tweets. By dialing one of several international phone numbers, Egyptians can tweet via voicemail message or listen to other people’s “tweets.” The messages are posted with hashtag #egypt.
Google engineers did some work over the weekend creating a service that allows Egyptians to call a number, leave a message and it automatically gets translated into a tweet.
Last Saturday, though, the government also forced some mobile phone companies off the grid.