TXTMob was first developed by the Institute for Applied Autonomy for protesters at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston and the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City (see 2004 Republican National Convention protest activity). Tad Hirsch, a researcher in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Smart Cities Group and Computing Culture Research Group, continues to offer TXTmob cleaned up, packaged and released under the GPL via SourceForge.