Answering Service Blog | American Inbound

Answering services often use SMS to get emergency messages to service technicians and doctors. Now, police departments have found a new use for this technological convenience. Following in Boston’s and Cincinnati’s footsteps, Louisville is encouraging people, young people in particular, to text message anonymously the police about crimes. Among the crimes that have already been reported to the police sergeant are school vandalism and illegal dumping in the forest.

 For more on this new use of SMS texting, click here.

Mobile instant messaging (MIM) is poised to take over SMS. MIM is very similar to SMS, in that you can send and receive text messages on your cell phone; however, MIM is capable of more flexibility.

MIM is simply an instant messaging program stored on your cell phone. Think of Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, AIM or MSN Messenger for mobiles.

MIM provides many benefits over SMS. SMS cannot store user information. When you send an SMS, you can only tell the telephone number you are texting. With MIM, configurable profiles are available. These can provide information such as names, email addresses, home addresses, or any other info the messaging service provides.

Matthew Kirk points out on Textually.org:

“Of every 100 messages - including texts, emails and picture messages - sent by users without mobile instant messaging from their mobile phone or computer, 38 are text messages. Once consumers start using mobile instant messaging, the number of texts falls to 23 per 100.”

It is now possible to anonymously report crime tips to the authorities. mBlox, the largest mobile network, and Anderson Software, LLC, a leader in law enforcement tip software, are teaming to provide this service on a nationwide basis.

The application is very secure and it is encrypted, which allows the investigator to have two-way correspondence while maintaining the user’s anonymity.

TipSoft is currently deployed in 16 Canadian cities and they are currently launching in 32 US cities. Service will also be available soon throughout the UK.

Diet.com has unique service for mobile phone users. Anyone with a cellphone can text a quick message containing a restaurant item to DIET1 (34381), and they will text you back with its nutritional content.

A text with the message of “mcdonalds southwest chicken salad” will give you data on its calories, fat, carbs, and protein content. It’s true that most of restaurants keep nutritional information behind the register, but many times it is inconvenient to check. When ordering take-out on the road, for instance.

Dubai: Taxi-goers in Dubai now have an alternative to manually hailing cabs. The method they’re pioneering is SMS.

They’re designing this system to help passengers who want to order a taxi when waiting on the street. The neat part is they’re installing small boards around the city with location numbers on them. When you text for a taxi, you give the dispatcher the number on the sign closest to you.  They will respond will your reservation number which you give to them upon their arrival.

Well, assuming you live in South Africa.   Starting April 17, residents of Johannesburg, Cape Town, the Free State, Swellendam, and Paarl can check their traffic fines with their cellphone.

Apparently it’s as easy as texting “Register” then your ID number to 34010.  You will shortly receive a response listing all of your unpaid traffic fines. 

Very nifty.  It would be nice if we could get a similar service set up over on this side of the Atlantic.

 ”This service will no doubt go a long way towards making it more accessible and convenient for motorists to check their outstanding fines,” says Wayne Minnaar, the service’s representative spokesperson. 

Jaxtr just launched a free text messaging service on their website.  Anyone can sign up.  You do not need a cell phone.  Users state it only takes 5 seconds for cell phones to receive messages. 
Drawbacks include limiting messages to only 65 characters and messages may include text ads appended to them.

The initiative to create an SMS warning sytem has been approved by the FCC.  All US major cell phone companies are looking into its implementation, though it is not mandatory.  The service is also optional for individual cell users.  So if you would like to opt out of it, you will be able to.

More at:
www.teleclick.ca

technocrat.net

Federal regulators will determine this week whether or not a new cell phone alert system is instated.  This would be similar to radio or tv alerts and would be used when an emergency strikes. Cell phone users will receive text messages containing the warnings.

Impetus for this change has been attributed to Hurricane Katrina, college shootings, and the recent tornado tragedies in the southeast.  Currently all four national providers (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile) have stated they will take part.

Amazon is rolling out a new service they’ve named TextBuyIt. This is the first time I’ve heard of SMS shopping, but it’s a great idea. Users can text message “AMAZON” (262966) with a product name, author, artist name, ISBN, or UPC code. They will receive the top two Amazon search results back almost instantly. Pressing 1 or 2 will allow them to select the item for purchase, or pressing ‘m’ will fetch you more search results.

Amazon has promised to make the process smoother in the future. Right now it is fairly confusing to set up. Once TextBuyIt is running, it looks like you can do a lot of things with it. Here are a few their suggested uses.

• Pay your friends
• Split a restaurant bill
• Pay your babysitter

All from a cell phone! Very nice!