ABC recently ran a story which underlines how quickly the adoption of SMS messaging in the USA is further changing the way in which the Americans choose to communicate.
Obama supporters who signed up with the candidate received a text message reminding them to vote. The text message included a phone number to help them find their polling station. The personal effectiveness of SMS and the immediacy of the medium has really shone through “They’ve been using [texting] to get out the vote, which is incredibly smart because it gives people a way to take immediate political action,” says Julie Germany, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. “It’s just what mobile technology is suited for.” Not to be out done by their neighbours in the West Russians can now sign-up to receive text message updates relating to their country’s upcoming Presidential Election The information on the ballot and presidential election results in Russia will be available through SMS by a short code response mechanism. The number of votes collected by each candidate will be available by simply sending request to number 5503. Fairly standard stuff. However they can also learn the voting results at a certain polling station of a certain region, again by SMS request. For example, to find out the voting results in the Republic of Karelia 201 polling station, it is necessary to indicate 10 201 in your SMS, where the first two figures reflect the number of the Russian federal subject, while the numbers after the gap correspond to the number of the polling station. Advanced thinking? Maybe this is why they put the first man in space and we didn’t STUART