textOK.com sends "I'm OK" SMS during disaster
posted Aug 8th 2005 3:33AM
The idea for textOK.com came in response to the London bombings, when it suddenly became obvious that people were instinctively turning to their cellphones in times of crisis. It's the brainchild of marketing company Refresh Media, and is a solution for British mobile users to let all their contacts know they're safe by sending an "OK" SMS via shortcode 60999. It costs 25p/45 cents to use the service, and all proceeds go the Cancer Research, Friends of the Earth, and NCH — they're aiming to raise £100,000/$178,000 for those causes. A couple of things about this make us leery about this over something like the recently-proposed ICE system ("in case of emergency"): you have to register all your contact names online (with a marketing firm…), and isn't a little odd to set a monetary goal that's predicated on the occurrence of disastrous events?
O.J. Simpson should be put to the test immediately.
Completely pointless as all one need do is post a message on your blog or website for ALL to see. For example, http://www.gonumber.com/555123
I'm ok!
I am dead.
one word Scam!
prevention is better than cure..right?
why don't just build a cooperative between the authorized officer and the citizen.use the same idea.instead leaving the police to guard and maintain safety, why don't let the community learn and do.plus, police will have more eyes and quick information flow.
this will likely reduce the chance of life-threating crisis.
anyway, that's my comment. surely there is better one.
Totally pointless - for several hours following the bombings, txting was almost impossible in central London
#2 Alex
"Completely pointless as all one need do is post a message on your blog or website for ALL to see. For example, http://www.gonumber.com/555123"
Please explain how you expect me to post a message to my blog or website, or even update a gonumber.com page if I'm stuck on London's Underground Service just after a Bomb has gone off.
Being able to send a text message to a SINGLE number, and have that info forwarded to a list of important contacts would be very handy especially in a chaotic situation.
However, I have my reservations about how they intend to use the contact information (they are a marketing firm) and also just realised that if I'm stuck underground, there will be no cellphone reception.
"Totally pointless - for several hours following the bombings, txting was almost impossible in central London"
Same thing happened in NYC during its last two major emergencies - 9/11 and the northeast blackout. Cell phone service is always the first thing to go. The system is built for the minimum amount of service required at any given time; if everybody tries to use it at once, forget it.
Give me a service that lets people automatically send such a message to all your recipients from a pay phone and then maybe you'd have something. Obviously, that's just too low-tech to sound cool enough to do these days, but it's something that might actually be useful in an emergency. It'd sure cut down the wait times at pay phones (assuming people used it) - during the blackout I had to wait in line almost an hour while people gabbed to their relatives about just how ok they were.
How do they do it when you're not ok? You probably get a message every hour with: "Are you ok?"
If you don't respond within 10 min, everyone gets the message: "He's dead!"
1€/sms
What about some sort of peer to peer messaging format? That could bridge the underground aspect, right? Text message jumps from peer phone inrange to peer phone in range until someone gets a signal/tower to push the message to.
What are the chances of being killed from a bomb? If you don't work at the place where the bomb exploded or there is no expectation for you to be in the area at the time, then why do you have to tell everyone you are alive?
It should be assumed that you are alive unless otherwise advised. Why should it be the other way around?
#11, I like that idea. Not just for disasters, but for everything! Not sure how it'd work though.
#7 & #9 are pretty much right, except for the fact that in an emergency the authorities _deliberately_ disable the cellular systems except for people with special SIM cards (e.g. emergency services crew such as police, fire, doctors, etc.). This is to minimise the risk of further bombs triggered by mobiles: apparently they make a good remote trigger if you hook it up the speaker, as seen here:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ioerror/177534.html
Indeed, the London bombs were rigged up with phones as the triggers according to the info accidentally disclosed by the NYPD:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4744211.stm