What is Nomad?

Nomad is an experiment in what it means to build a platform for publishing with S/MMS without the social network parts. That is, people using Nomad can only post using SMS, and there are no other interactions. You can read more about the motivations behind Nomad here.

How do I use Nomad?

In order to use Nomad, you must have an account set up first; as part of this, you should have gotten a phone number that you can text. Your posts will show up on the front page, but they also have a permament home. Clicking on the timestamp will open the permanent link to that post, if you want to send that post directly to someone else.

Your posts also show up on your user page - you should get this as part of the signup, but you can also click on your name on a post and it will bring your page up.

How do I get help?

Because registration is manual, you should reach out directly to the person who added you. They should be able to help.

What is Nomad's privacy policy?

Your phone number is never given out for any reason. Right now, the admins have access to the database and can see or change your number.

Any posts you make will show up on the global timeline with your username and on your page, along with the time you sent it. We don't alter any attachments you send except to possibly resize photos, so they will end up on the site as-is—this includes any location data you have attached.

Your account has the following information:

  • Your nickname (the name your user page is under),
  • A longer name that is typically your first name,
  • Your telephone number.

Of these, only your name appears on the site.

Requests show up with the information we get from Twilio, which includes the following information:

  • Body: this is the text you send
  • From: this is your phone number
  • FromCity: this is the city your phone number is registered in
  • FromCountry: this is the country your phone number is registered in
  • FromState: this is the state your phone number is registered in
  • FromZip: this is the ZIP code your number is registered in
  • Media content type: if you send a picture, we see what kind it is here
  • Media URL: Twilio gives us a URL to fetch the image from if you sent one
  • Number of media attachments: how many attachments you send; we only support one

This information is stored in Heroku's logs. We keep only the most recent 1,500 log entries and only keep logs for up to a week.