It looks like Inspiron Logistics Corporation won the bid for SIUE’s emergency cell-phone notification service/system thingie. (Purchase bulletin) Interesting points to note are they got it for almost 6 times less than UIUC bought theirs, although that system was design for all the UofI campuses, not just Urbana-Champaign. Also, SIUE had 18 respondants to their RFP. That’s a lot of companies in a niche market of emergency rapid response. Seems like a lot of organizations are fear-mongering for solutions like this, and just as many small startups are catering to it. Yay capitalism. Boo fear!

What I’ve heard about the deployment of our system is that you can quickly hit bottlenecks if you don’t have mass-SMS agreements with all the different phone carriers. I guess many of the devices use email to the cell providers email-to-SMS gateways, and when you send out 50,000+ emails it can take a while for those to process. If you’re really looking for rapid notification, you’re almost better off going with a service offering instead of a purchased software solution so that you can leverage off a company who already has SMS-blasting permission and technologies with the big carriers.

But even then, it’s more elaborate than that. How do you craft a message in 160 characters or less that defines a situation and provides instructions/warning? And do it in the 2 minutes the flash demo on the Inspiron website? “Shooter in the bell tower, don’t go outside.” Maybe we should spend the time and the money educating people on personal safety, situational and environmental awareness, pre-existing channels for reporting and learning about emergencies, and stop feeding the fear machine. Yeah, the deaths at Virginia Tech were tragic but why don’t people realize if someone from the dorm or school would have noticed Seung-Hui was acting strange, or tried to talk to him or help him, things might have turned out differently. These are social problems, not technological ones. I’d rather live in a society where we try to help each other and pay attention to the hurts/needs of each other than one where we ignore ticking bombs but have nice, quick cell phone messages when they go off. Let’s quit trying to be so reactive and be a little more proactive.

You can start by smiling to a stranger to today, and helping someone who needs it. You never know what one little touch of kindness can do.

Tags: emergency

This is one of those posts where I follow up things that happen in real life with a blog posting so I don’t have to have the same conversation with three people, and give the other 1.87 readers a glimpse into my twisted world. If you were in my car last night, you heard at least part of this song, and then me singing it in the parking lot to/from the game.

WPGU has been playing a studio version of this song recently, but I prefer the acoustic version linked below.

http://www.conchords.co.nz/, Official site of Flight of the Conchords, New Zealand’s fourth most popular digi-folk paradists. Also, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_of_the_Conchords

Excited about American Gladiator coming back to TV? I am! New technologies, new show budgets, HD… that show is going to be great. I just hope it’s as good to a 29 year old as it was to a 9 year old.

As appealing as it sounds to hear how the Fresh Prince handles life when he’s the only person left alive in an urban jungle, I think I’m going to let this movie pass. The loss/inner struggle (with a doggie,) is interesting. However, the ‘healing the diseased’ and fear element seems too zombie-ish for my liking, so I’ll probably not watch it. I should probably watch at least I, Robot and Pursuit of Happyness first.

tee hee hee.

Sorry, I’ve been really bad about posting anything substancial about my life recently. Bad me. I can’t believe how quickly these last six months or so have flown by.

I’m going to the Rose Bowl! Things are falling in line — airline tickets, bowl tickets, housing, etc. It will be an unexpected expensive trip, but I’ve got credit and I’m not passing up the opportunity. I’m also loading up on the 100% juice and vitamin C so I can stay healthy this time. (I’m not missing 2 out of the last three bowl games.) I’ll wear a mask all through the Christmas season if I have to.

Anyway, the point of this post is the realization that I’d like to record this trip and my cameraphone is not the best camera. I know digital cameras are getting cheap now — and I don’t need the best on the market — but if I can get a sub $200 camera, it would probably be worth it. Any recommendations? My last camera was an old Canon, which was okay but really slow (both in po/po time, time-between-shots, and shutter speed.) I’d prefer as fast a “film speed” as I can get in a digital, consider I’m likely to take action shots and not be in the best light — or do people not even worrry about that anymore? Have digital cameras just gotten good enough? Size is important in that it must be pocketable (I don’t need a 10x optical, although I might really like one,) but it doesn’t have to be the slimmest camera available.

What P&S should I be looking at?