mwhitlock
03-05-2008, 12:58 AM
I'm a member of multiple neighboring Meetup groups, and I frequently get duplicate emails from people posting to multiple groups. I've also heard some people in my groups saying they haven't received certain messages that other members have received. As a software engineer, I set out to solve these problems and came up with a new tool to carry the R3volution forward!
Freedom Fortress — www.freedomfortress.net (http://www.freedomfortress.net/)
Freedom Fortress is a geographically aware discussion list service that I created from scratch to augment the Meetup system. Whereas messages on Meetup are limited to the particular county or city of the group, messages on Freedom Fortress are sent to members within a certain geographic distance of the sender.
This means there are no artificial boundaries. You can reach everyone within a certain range of you with one message.
Freedom Fortress also gives you the ability to block senders whose messages you wish not to receive and to block future messages in threads you don't care about.
And if you're concerned that someone could spam the entire world in one shot by choosing a really large distance for their message, I covered that angle, too. You can choose a maximum distance from which you will receive messages, regardless of the distance that the message was sent.
In making Freedom Fortress, I held privacy in high regard. You don't have to provide your name, your street address, or any other contact information besides your email address. And your email address will never be exposed to anyone, not even other members, not even when you post messages! (You can use your street address to help find your location on the map, but this is optional, and the system does not save it. Also, you can place your location as close to or as far away from your actual location as you wish.)
At the time of this writing, there were 57 active members on Freedom Fortress. The system is working beautifully, and now it is time to pump up the numbers. Freedom Fortress can be a great tool to organize our politics on a local scale, where our efforts are most effective.
In liberty,
Matt Whitlock
Software Engineer
Gainesville Ron Paul Meetup Group Coordinator
University of Florida Ron Paul Meetup Group Coordinator
Freedom Fortress — www.freedomfortress.net (http://www.freedomfortress.net/)
Freedom Fortress is a geographically aware discussion list service that I created from scratch to augment the Meetup system. Whereas messages on Meetup are limited to the particular county or city of the group, messages on Freedom Fortress are sent to members within a certain geographic distance of the sender.
This means there are no artificial boundaries. You can reach everyone within a certain range of you with one message.
Freedom Fortress also gives you the ability to block senders whose messages you wish not to receive and to block future messages in threads you don't care about.
And if you're concerned that someone could spam the entire world in one shot by choosing a really large distance for their message, I covered that angle, too. You can choose a maximum distance from which you will receive messages, regardless of the distance that the message was sent.
In making Freedom Fortress, I held privacy in high regard. You don't have to provide your name, your street address, or any other contact information besides your email address. And your email address will never be exposed to anyone, not even other members, not even when you post messages! (You can use your street address to help find your location on the map, but this is optional, and the system does not save it. Also, you can place your location as close to or as far away from your actual location as you wish.)
At the time of this writing, there were 57 active members on Freedom Fortress. The system is working beautifully, and now it is time to pump up the numbers. Freedom Fortress can be a great tool to organize our politics on a local scale, where our efforts are most effective.
In liberty,
Matt Whitlock
Software Engineer
Gainesville Ron Paul Meetup Group Coordinator
University of Florida Ron Paul Meetup Group Coordinator