About ForwardTrack
ForwardTrack is a new system created by Eyebeam R&D (redeveloped with the assist from Stamen Design) designed to promote on-line activism. The system tracks and maps the diffusion of email forwards, political calls-to-action, and online petitions. It can trace email forwards, map the impact of blogs, and facilitate web-based sign-ups and social networking. Our goal is to help people understand decentralized networks and see the power of "6 degrees of separation." ForwardTrack technology helps prove that one person can make a difference.
What's so great about the new release?
- All one language: this time it's all PHP, instead of 1/2 Perl and 1/2 PHP
- Possible (maybe even _easy_) to install.
- Well-written: this version is _not_ a total hack! It is well structured, somewhat documented, and should be not-too-impossible to extend and customize
- Templates: all HTML is generated using the PHP templating library Smarty
- More metrics: track multiple impact metrics through your campaign, not just the number of users who have participated
- Nice administrative interface.
- Core ForwardTrack PHP library: augment your pre-existing web application with the ForwardTrack core functionality.
Download ForwardTrack
ForwardTrack 1.1b is now available. Download ForwardTrack (forwardtrack-1.1b.tar.gz) here.
ForwardTrack requires PHP and MySQL to run. It has currently been tested under Apache 1.3 and 2.0, only under Linux and Max OSX.
To get a sense of whether or not you are up to speed installing and using it, please take a look at
the ForwardTrack documentation.
To see what has changed in the recent minor revision, please see the CHANGELOG If you have any problems, please contact us through
the ForwardTrack forums on SourceForge.net. And stay up to date on the project by joining the ForwardTrack mailing list.
Sorry for the delay, and thanks for your patience.
How ForwardTrack Works
Much like Friendster and other social networking softwares, ForwardTrack works by building a database of specific people and their connections to others.
By recording each person that participates in a given campaign, and who he or she has invited or emailed, the system is able to calculate and display the actual impact of every individual.
The hope is that by allowing people to track their own impact on a cause, it will motivate them to try even harder to spread the word.
ForwardTrack allows tracking over a variety of internet media. Participants can email friends through the ForwardTrack web application, post links to a personalized ForwardTrack page from their blogs and website, or send those same links over chat systems or email lists.
We hope that by obliging the multiplexity of the internet and its various communication systems, ForwardTrack will enable anyone with a good cause to reach a large audience.
Make a Donation
Support ForwardTrack and Eyebeam R&D
Eyebeam is a 501(c)3 art and technology non-profit. All donations are tax deductible. For additional information about contributing to Eyebeam, please contact Jonah Peretti, our director of R&D, at 900-765-4321.
Who is Using ForwardTrack
The first public beta test of the technology was recently launched at TomsPetition.org. Tom Mauser lost his son in the Columbine High School shootings and now he is using ForwardTrack in his fight to extend the assault weapons ban. His site provides a real world example of how ForwardTrack maps the impact of individuals forwarding the email petition.
Now that the software is publicly available, other campaigns are in the works.
Tom's Petition
SaveTheCourt
Oh! Speakup
StopGlobalWarming
Earth Day Virtual March
No Iraq Draft
Pledge Your Vote
Tide ColdWater
Sagarika.net
Network For Justice
About Eyebeam
Eyebeam is a not-for-profit media arts organization that enables and engages cultural dialogue practiced at the intersection of the arts and sciences. Founded in 1996, Eyebeam is dedicated to exposing broad and diverse audiences to new technologies and media arts, while simultaneously establishing and demonstrating new media as a significant genre. Eyebeam is located in New York City with interrelated programming in the areas of art production, education and exhibition.