March 19, 2003
Smartmobbing the Coming Protests
This is pretty cool. In preparation for the inevitable antiwar protests, a Protest Text Message Service has been set up for people with cell phones:
What is this?
If you sign up for this service you can recieve updates on Portland's day-of-war protest as it happens.
What will I get?
Probably just things like "PEPPER SPRAY ON 5TH AND OAK". Possibly other things. It's hard to say, I guess.
How will it work?
People (you!) send emails from a protest using a wireless device (cell phone, pager, ???) to page@cocksalad.com. A dispatcher who is at home during the protest reads your message and distributes it to the entire network. (A dispatcher is used so that multiple alerts don't go out about the same thing, and to make sure that the network doesn't get abused.)
You can also sign up to simply have the messages sent to any email address.
Fortunately for me, my cell phone provider currently has an unlimited text messaging promotional plan, so the feature has been added to my phone and I'm ready to go.
Comments (1)
Rob Salzman on 19 Mar 2003
I just blogged this on SmartMobs, with a reference to your site. Thanks for letting me know about this!