ZapitSMS Blog

Jetstar will soon allow passengers to check in with SMS boarding passes.   It is interesting to see that they chose SMS over MMS because it is the technology that more people use and understand.

SPAM comes in a wide range of flavours, email, post, Twitter, Facebook and now SMS. It shouldn’t be surprising, the same reasons that make SMS such a valuable communication tool make it deliciously tempting for spammers and wayward marketers.

In a world where our yearly SMS traffic has breached the 1 Trillion message mark, it was only a matter of time before Governments would start cracking down on SMS SPAM.

US Senators Olympia J. Snowe and Bill Nelson have introduced a bill into congress to establish an SMS form of the Do Not Call (DNC) list. The idea here is to make it illegal to send a commercial text message to a person on the Do Not Text (DNT) list.

While prohibiting SMS SPAM is a noble idea, the ability to fake the origins of an SMS makes the list ineffective. Technology has progressed to the point where consumer services exist to mask and hide the true source of an SMS, even Verizon, a major US telco, runs one. Like most government measures, this one aims to look like something is being done without much thought to the eventual effectiveness of the plan.

This plan could still have some effect. It is likely that the law will include specific penalties for the sending of SPAM texts. While the DNT won’t have much, if any, ability to catch SMS spammers, traditional law enforcement will have an easier time pushing claims into the courts.

It’s unfortunate that marketing overload comes at us from all sides these days, especially when the social benefits of SMS and mobile technology are so clear.

Still, no amount of SMS SPAM could possibly annoy as much as an ignorer.

While we have been outsourcing the writing of this blog, we’ve decided to bring it back in house to keep things a little more genuine.

We have a few things in the planning and development phases for ZapitSMS that we can’t mention just yet. I know, I know, you hate it when that happens but you have to admit that surprises can be fun.

Most recently we have added a ‘Tell a friend’ feature to the administration site where you can refer ZapitSMS to others. Feel free to use it, especially given that the more people that use the software the more you’re going to get out of it. 

We are also putting together a system for ZapitSMS resellers to use which will be launched in the near future. We’ve been putting a lot of effort into this one and hope it can help users get more out of the system. It’d be nice for our users to be making money, not just spending it. 

We’ve had a pretty big week here at Race River, though you could probably read about that elsewhere. Things are still moving along nicely despite the bumps and, well, community feedback is what really improves our work. 

Keep an eye out each Sunday for our new SMS Horoscope, a humerous view of the week ahead of you, divined by reading the entrails of dead mobile phones. Long live the PC.