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.