Slashdot Mirror
Japan Considers '911' Calls From Twitter, Social Networks
itwbennett writes "The Japanese national Fire and Disaster Management Agency today hosted the first of 3 panels to discuss allowing emergency calls to be placed through social networks. For the event, Twitter's Japanese blog posted entries on how to use the service during emergencies, one of which advised: 'If your circumstances allow, please add #survived to your tweets. This will help when family and friends that are worried about you search on your welfare.'"
your social behavior is monitored for the severely unlikely event your in a emergency situation 24/7 instead of requesting for help
anyone see an issue with this?
Around 9 or 10 years ago, a guy I knew used ICQ (yes, really) to message a friend of his one night, when he looked in the mirror and saw his whole neck was swollen (his throat was 'a bit sore' but he didn't think it was that bad until he went into the bathroom and saw himself in the mirror). His phone had been disconnected that week (his roommates were cheapskates -- well they were all university students...) and he got picked up and they went to the hospital. Turned out he had acute tonsillitus and if he hadn't gotten to the hospital quickly it could have been 'curtains' that evening. So a 'net-based '911' may occasionally be a good thing!
Listen Americans, "911" is the AMERICAN emergency number. The rest of the world doesn't use it. In Japan, its "119", as TFA says. In Australia it's "000". In the UK it's "999". If you really think Americans are too dumb to understand that, just write "emergency number" instead of confusing everyone by trying to "translate" a number.
112 is the closest thing to an international standard.
How is twitter any better than texting in this situation? Texts will go through even if your phone connects for a fraction of a second, twitter will NOT. Texts can be sent from almost any cell phone made in the last 10 years, tweets can not. Texts can be redirected to local receiver stations if the upstream data link dies, Twitter cannot. EVERY cellphone has a texting number, only some have twitter accounts.
Twitter may be a little cheaper, but if it's not going to cover most users, but texting will. So it sounds like you'll need to implement texting anyways, so why spend extra money and confuse people by having 2 systems?