The Virginia Tech campus shootings in 2007 are a tragic, real-life reminder of the technological limitations that 911 is now saddled with. Some students and witnesses tried to text 911 during that emergency and as we know, those messages never went through and were never received by local 911 dispatchers.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski • Evoking the 2007 Virginia Tech school shooting to explain why 911 needs a texting function. 911, a system around in its current form since 1968. And it’s one that hasn’t kept up with the fast pace of technology, either with mobile phones (which are now the primary source of 911 calls) or broadband technology: “Many 911 call centers don’t even have broadband, and some are in communities where broadband isn’t even available,” Genachowski said. “That is unacceptable.” All this stuff is on the list for things to improve thanks to the stimulus plan, by the way. source
Our friend (and reader) Shawn Vulliez sent this clip along to us, which features MC Paul Barman (a guy you might know if you follow underground hip-hop) noting the dangers of cell phones over animations that Vulliez (a well-known artist himself) created. Sleep with your cell phone? Keep it in your jeans? You may want to consider not doing that. source
That sound you hear is the sound of some clever company attempting to sell an overpriced phone with a pen and a pad of paper as something innovative. Move along.
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No, Mark isn’t building a phone. But the Facebook CEO does have some very bold, audacious goals for mobile: He basically wants to allow phone-makers (and end-users) to use Facebook to automatically personalize phones on the fly. “On phones we can actually do something better,” he told the dudes at TechCrunch. “We can do a single sign-on if we do a good integration with a phone, rather than just doing something where you go to an app and it’s automatically social or having to sign into each app individually.” That could be pretty friggin’ rad if that’s the case. Or friggin’ scary. source
