Even Henshew-Plath is based in San Francisco, is a
lead-engineer for his day-job and counts himself as an
activist (with the independent media network Indymedia and
other organisations) out of his passion.

His email address -- evan@protest.net -- says it all. It's
based on a protest portal which "unites activists under one
URL", as the New York Times once described it. Protest.Net
calls itself "a collective of activists who are working
together to create our own media" and publishing their own
public record of political activities, so as to take a "stand
against the established media".

Indymedia, the independent media collective, started around
the WTO protest in 1999, notes Even, when people wanted to
create a people's newsroom. It was intended to be a
collaborative newsroom of alternative journalists. "It was
fairly successful," says he.

By now, Indymedia has a model of incorporating video, radio,
internet and newspapers (print publications). Originally it
focused on protest, and later turned into communications
support institutions for social movements.

Where does Even himself fit in?

"I set up the computer labs, and get the internet
connections, build the software, find the computers,
translate, sometimes even take photos and write stories. But
mostly I do things with the computers," the bearded
engineer-campaigner points out.

He has, by now, already written a bunch of different
applications. For Indymedia, he has done work on the several
different content management solutions (CMSs). CMSs allow
non-techies to easily update a website, by reducing this task
to almost a cut-and-paste job.

Indymedia's CMSs include Mir, SF-Active, Active and Dada.
"They all basically do the same thing. They're publishing
systems for people to publish content over the internet, in a
very free and open way," says Even. "I worked on all those."

Beyond that, he's also built applications for telephony. "So,
during a protest, you could, with your mobile phone, call in
and find out the latest news about what is going on. Listen
to radio stations. And find a calender of events. It's all
based on mobile phone-web integration," he explains.

Over the past few months, his attention has gone to
RiotTones. What's that?

"It is a free ring-tone creation and distribution system. You
would be able to create ring-tones, or upload audio files and
convert them to ring-tones, and send them to people's mobile
phones," says Even.

Indymedia activists in the Philippines started doing amazing
things with ring-tones, he points out. And haven't we all
heard mainstream media stories about politicians' voices
talking corruption via their ring-tones?

"But they didn't have the tools for it. This (attempt) tries
to build the tools, so that it can be used beyond the
Philippines. We're working out a site at riotones.org, but
it's not done yet. People have tried to do some applications
on that in the US, but it is not yet taken off. The music
quality and the mixing are very important. It has to be very
catchy, and have a beat," says Even.

How does one do it? If you're going to make a new tone, you
need access to the Free Software tool Audacity. Or, if you
don't have an audio recorder, some parties even have an
application which does in-browser recorder. Using Flash. You
can use that to produce and MP3s.

What does Even see as suitable online tools for activism? He
suggests civicspacelabs.org. It's useful, he says, if you want
a content publishing system for organisations of political
parties.

Indymedia applications are at mir.indymedia.org,
sf-active.indymedia.org, dada.indymedia.org Then, you can get
blog-hosting at blogspot.com or wordpress.com "It's not a
specific activist tool, but useful," says Even.

"Blogger.com works really well for a beginner. It works
really well and is free (as if beer, not free speech)," he
adds.

"I maintain blog-aggregatory sites (that bring postings from
various blogs onto one place), which have been very useful.
There's anarchoblogs.protest.net -- it's just an aggregation
of people who identify as anarchist in their blogs. It's very
useful, because when someone starts blogging, no one knows
about it. So if you bring together all their writing, it
raises everyone up," explains Evan. indyblogs.protest.net
does the same thing for Indymedia activists.

Even also believes in the potential of podcasting tools.

Podcasting, he explains, is distributing radio programmes as
MP3 files over the internet for listing to later. Usually,
this is put out on an Ipod or an MP3 player, but sometimes
just on a computer.

"The application I developed for Podcasting is Open Source in
part. We have an OS X dashboard widget, and that's GPL'd. But
the server side isn't GPL. It takes an RSS feed, with
'enclosures' (links to MP3 files), and you see it like a
directory of radio programmes you want to listen to. It's a
very pretty interface," says Even.

There's an application you can install on your desktop, and
it will download these radio programmes at night. It assumes
you have a pretty fast internet connection, though.

What's the best place online for content meant for radio, say
a small community radio station?

Says Even: "The best directory of community radio programmes
is radio4all.net You can also find programmes at odeo.com. If
you want sound clips and elements, you could go to the
freesoundproject -- freesound.iua.upf.edu -- which is all
Creative Commons-licensed, and has a tremendous collection of
samples, musical beats, voices. It's very good at adding
riches to programmes.

Protest.net, which Even is part of, notes: "We are standing
up and showing that serious activism is alive and well at the
dawn of the 21st century. Everyday from Kansas to India
activists are meeting, organizing, and protesting to demand a
better world for all. When the corporate media takes note of
our activities it is only to spit upon our struggle. We are
accused of being misinformed bleeding heart hooligans with
nothing better to do than march up and down blocking traffic.
Yet the rich get richer, and we are told to be complacent, to
wait for our due.

"They say the environment isn't being destroyed, it's OK to
kill millions of Iraqi's with vindictive sanctions, that the
billions living in slums just need to work harder, that
global domination by a corporate elite is the only way.
Activists around the world are fighting for a better world.
We can't rely on the media establishment to cover our
movements. We will rise up and seize the means of
communication!"

What does he see as effective tools for campaigners?

Says Even: "The most important tools for social change in
technology are not the complicated ones. They're mailing
lists, they're wikis. Blogs are the simplest ways of
publishing online. Email too."

How did Even get involved in activism? "It was a process.
Nothing in particular. It was my friends and the environment
at the university," he says.