“Cell phones will now tell Italians when the tide is high in Venice. The city government just launched a free text message alert system for the floods which frequently put La Serenissima under several feet of water.” Originally from Zoomata and highlighted by Textually.
I wonder how long it will take before the U.S. starts to realize that SMS-based alerts would be much more effective than radio and television alerts. There’s a whole generation that the public broadcasting alert system would miss who are listening to their iPods and watching IPTV instead of the networks.
I knew this sounded familiar. I thought I read someone suggesting sms for alerts. Instead, it was actually plans for U.S. alerts over SMS.
“The United States plans to create a national emergency alert system that utilizes text messages that will be delivered to mobile phones. CTIA estimates over 48 billion text messages are sent each month, so regulators believe this is a good medium to use when there is a national or regional emergency.”
http://mobilecrunch.com/2008/04/10/emergency-text-alerts-planned-in-the-united-states/