China gets the message

The full extent of the damage caused by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit China's Sichuan Province on Monday afternoon is just starting to become clear, says Foreign Policy.

In order to reassure people and squash false rumours, the Chinese government is using text messaging as well as Internet postings to inform people that the areas where they live are not in the seismic zone.

Over a million such messages were sent in nearby Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Guizhou Province.

A report by messaging company Acision forecasts that revenue from mobile messaging will hit $165 billion globally by 2011, 40% more than the amount previously tabled by Analyst firm Ovum, states ITProPortal.

Acision is well placed to produce such forecasts since it powers half of all the world's text and multimedia messages and has been boosted by operators' desire to get more revenue out of messaging.

The biggest unknown remains how popular instant messaging on mobiles will become in the long run; should their usage boom on mobiles, then text and messaging could face a difficult future.

According to Times Herald, residents of Greenwood Lake and Greenville are among the first to benefit from a new, free mobile response system.

Those who sign up, get text messages with updates as simple as event reminders and important as road and school closures and severe weather warnings.

It's all part of a service offered by New Windsor-based 1st Responder, a company specialising in public safety communications.