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.

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.

One of the purposes of this blog was to toss around ideas for how to use ZapitSMS in innovative and creative ways. An idea that I’ll be pursuing is the use of SMS in real life quest-like games.

Just by way of an explanation, there are groups around the world (such as those that play real life Pacman or even water-gun bounty hunting) that have sophisticated communication needs but can’t rely on those competing to have equally sophisticated gadgets. In situations like this SMS, as one of the most common communication protocols in the world, would be ideal.

Let’s make a game shall we?

Say there was a significant prize for the person who was able to track down and identify a certain person (the target) at a certain time, with clues being given to competitors when certain objectives are complete. They follow that trail of clues until a competitor or team of competitors successfully ‘captures’ the target.

While this may be an overly simplistic game, let’s have a look at the logistics of distributing clues to contestants.

Having human beings at pre-determined locations to hand out printed clues would be prohibitively expensive and require far too much preparation.

Walkie-talkies would be an effective way of coordinating a single group of people over a relatively confined region, but wouldn’t cope with a competitive group and wouldn’t scale to the area of a large city. Likewise they would be an expensive outlay for the game’s organisers.

Phone calls would be equally expensive and unless pre-recorded messages were used, the game would need a small call centre for any decently sized number of contestants.

Micro-blogging tools like Twitter would work if all contestants had phones with decent web access but this isn’t widely adopted enough yet to be fair on everyone that wanted to join in.

Given the fast paced or even heavy duty requirements of such games, it seems unlikely that any of these are an adequate option for communication and coordination. SMS beats these systems hands down because of;

• The low cost of sending a text messages
• The universal ability for phones to send and receive SMS
• The ultimately scalable range of SMS and
• The fact that one person could use a ZapitSMS console to coordinate an incredible number of inbound and outbound messages.

It goes without saying that trying to coordinate a game like this using a mobile phone would be beyond the capabilities of most, if not all mobile phone users, even if their phone had a QWERTY keyboard. That’s where the ZapitSMS interface comes in.

While I’ve used the example of a game here, it’s not hard to imagine how it would work equally well for other events, such as organising marshals for a cross country run or bike race. In the end though, making SMS easier to use opens up a number of possibilities of which this is only one.

There have been plans for years now to implement early warning systems for bushfire prone areas using SMS. Unfortunately, until the tragic fires that recently swept through Victoria, these plans have suffocated and died under a blanket of red tape. 

We provide a service that would fit this role well, especially in small to medium scale situations such as rural communities or school/university campuses. That’s our opinion anyway. 

Do you agree? Is an SMS warning system a good idea? 

Apparently there’s been a strongly positive response to these SMS warnings, even if the initial attempts had some people spooked. 

Victoria’s Emergency Services Commissioner, Bruce Esplin, says response to the text messages has been mostly positive. - ABC news

Especially in rural areas, the time cost of manually alerting hundreds or thousands of people is enormous. An auto-dialler would also be a consideration but when every second counts, being able to quickly punch out a warning requires the quickest mode of communication possible. An auto-dialler would also require a voice message to be recorded - far less efficient than typing a 160 character message through a web interface and remarkably less portable. 

Radio and Television warnings are both crucial, and I’m yet to see someone argue that they should be replaced by SMS. Indeed, after the Black Saturday fires it’s hard to imagine that there could ever be too much warning when some towns were engulfed in mere minutes. 

Obviously there are questions about how, when and to whom the messages would be sent. Early attempts have been effective but the tool is still a blunt one. We’re ready to hone and fine tune for this kind of application. It’s an important application regardless of our commercial interests. 

How would you use a PC based SMS service like ZapitSMS for emergencies?

Is there anything specific you can think of we should look into doing or changing for that use?

Greetings, take a seat. Would you like me to take your coat? Wonderful. Sit back, relax, and allow us to introduce ourselves.

We’re Race River. We know that we’re also individuals with separate names and personalities but we’ve decided to meld ourselves together for the most part here. We will occasionally be posting as ourselves and will try as often as possible to respond to comments as ourselves. For now, we’re the magical mystical being known as “Kieran.”

Why the blog?

We’re quite proud of ZapitSMS, it’s a great piece of software. We’re genuinely excited about the possibilities. That, by the way is why we’ve set up a blog.

We want to engage with you and see how we can keep ZapitSMS relevant to what you’re doing.

That’s why we make software, to create solutions. It’s also no use thinking that solutions can stand still - the problems sure won’t.  We don’t want this blog to be a one way street - we want to establish a dialogue. A civil, constructive dialogue, mind you. 

We’re still settling on a structure for how things will be posted here. We’ll blog whenever something interesting happens but we want to make sure there’s always something fresh here. Whether it be news about the SMS industry, changes to the software landscape - we’ll try and keep up. 

What’s the comments policy?

While we’re not going to moderate comments just for being negative, we do reserve the right to delete any that are abusive or could lead to any kind of legal action, just like on any private blog. We’re not going to learn anything by only accepting positive feedback, but it certainly helps with the motivation if we know what’s making you happy about ZapitSMS. 

In the meantime, why not try out ZapitSMS? We’re offering a free trial over at the main site - you might as well take advantage of it. 

- Kieran