Originally posted on 17Nov11 to IBM Developerworks (11,306 Views)
This makes for an interesting comparison to the National Emergency Warning System (NEWS) that was implemented in Australia last year as a result of the Black Saturday bushfires.
Here is the URL for this bookmark: gizmodo.com/5857897/this-is-not-a-test-the-emergency-alert-system-is-worthless-without-social-networks
This makes for an interesting comparison to the National Emergency Warning System (NEWS) that was implemented in Australia last year as a result of the Black Saturday bushfires. Of particular interest is that the USA have avoided the SMS channel when in Australia, that has been the primary channel – alternates like TV and Radio are seen as not as pervasive and thus a lower priority. I don’t think that NEWS here in Oz is connected to twitter, facebook, foursquare or any other social networking site either, but that could be an extension to NEWS – the problem is getting everyone to “friend” the NEWS system so that they see updates and warnings!