River Alerts!! [NO SMS's anymore :-( ]

[Seanie]

What are River Alerts?
River Alerts is a system that aims to give Irish kayakers a warning about dangers on rivers or anything related (river warnings). River Alerts also uses posts from Irishfreestyle.com (river warnings).
The system aims to accessible from anywhere, via mobile phone internet, SMS texts, RSS and internet.
Example:http://www.smellykayaker.com/
To spread river alerts and to make them even more accessible, river alerts can be embedded on any website, viewed on any phone or available by SMS text (for free)./

Ways to get river alerts
• Free SMS alerts automatically sent to your phone
To sign up for free alert texts*
Set up a twitter account at http://www.twitter.com
Add your phone number (verify it too) and Turn on text notifications.
Then following http://twitter.com/iww_alert (make sure to turn notifications on for this.)
Before you do read the HOWTO I CREATED

HOWTO_river_alerts_from_twitter.pdf

How to sign up to river alerts on twitter

(323.57KiB)Downloaded 481 times

• On your mobile phone you can visit the alerts mobile site:
http://alerts.irishwhitewater.com
• Visit http://irishwhitewater.com/river_alerts
• Webmasters can place the embed alerts html code on your web page.
• RSS Feeds: http://www.irishwhitewater.com/river_al ... alerts.rss

Ways to make a River Alert
• Visit http://irishwhitewater.com/river_alerts
• Visit http://www.irishfreestyle.com/forums/info/riverwarnings
• Coming soon: submit by SMS text.

Some things to note:
1. Do not rely on this system!
2. This is only the start of this system; we have big plans in the future.
3. If you have any questions, problems or suggestions, please feel free to email or post a question on Irish freestyle or Irishwhitewater.com. [email protected]
4. Please tell me about an errors or problems, thanks.
*twitter is a free service now, and it has been for the past year, who knows if this will change. I don’t think this will be an issue in the short term.

[kev]

Thats a really good idea.

[Conrad]

Fair play! This looks like it could be a really useful service.

[Seanie]

Hi,

I'm sending you this note because you registered a mobile device
to work with Twitter over our UK number. I wanted to let you
know that we are making some changes to the way SMS works on
Twitter. There is some good news and some bad news.

I'll start with the bad news. Beginning today, Twitter is no
longer delivering outbound SMS over our UK number. If you enjoy
receiving updates from Twitter via +44 762 480 1423, we are
recommending that you explore some suggested alternatives.

Note: You will still be able to UPDATE over our UK number.

Before I go into more detail, here's a bit of good news: Twitter
will be introducing several new, local SMS numbers in countries
throughout Europe in the coming weeks and months. These new
numbers will make Twittering more accessible for you if you've
been using SMS to send long-distance updates from outside the UK.

Why are we making these changes?

Mobile operators in most of the world charge users to send
updates. When you send one message to Twitter and we send it to
ten followers, you aren't charged ten times--that's because we've
been footing the bill. When we launched our free SMS service to
the world, we set the clock ticking. As the service grew in
popularity, so too would the price.

Our challenge during this window of time was to establish
relationships with mobile operators around the world such that
our SMS services could become sustainable from a cost perspective.
We achieved this goal in Canada, India, and the United States.
We can provide full incoming and outgoing SMS service without
passing along operator fees in these countries.

We took a risk hoping to bring more nations onboard and more
mobile operators around to our way of thinking but we've arrived
at a point where the responsible thing to do is slow our costs
and take a different approach. Since you probably don't live in
Canada, India, or the US, we recommend receiving your Twitter
updates via one of the following methods.

m.twitter.com works on browser-enabled phones
m.slandr.net works on browser-enabled phones
TwitterMail.com works on email-enabled phones
Cellity [http://bit.ly/12bw4R] works on java-enabled phones
TwitterBerry [http://bit.ly/MFAfJ] works on BlackBerry phones
Twitterific [http://bit.ly/1WxjwQ] works on iPhones

Twitter SMS by The Numbers

It pains us to take this measure. However, we need to avoid
placing undue burden on our company and our service. Even with a
limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter
about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada,
India, or the US. It makes more sense for us to establish fair
billing arrangements with mobile operators than it does to pass
these high fees on to our users.

Twitter will continue to negotiate with mobile operators in
Europe, Asia, China, and The Americas to forge relationships
that benefit all our users. Our goal is to provide full, two-way
service with Twitter via SMS to every nation in a way that is
sustainable from a cost perspective. Talks with mobile companies
around the world continue. In the meantime, more local numbers
for updating via SMS are on the way. We'll keep you posted.

Thank you for your attention,
Biz Stone, Co-founder
Twitter, Inc.
http://twitter.com/biz

[J.K.]

Shit buzz, man. It was good while it lasted.