Reports from Iran say that SMS text messaging services have been unblocked for the first time since disputed presidential elections. The BBC reports.
Defeated opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi this week called on the government to end its interference in phone networks and the internet.
Correspondents say texting has been restricted since 11 June - the day before disputed elections which saw the controversial re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The lifting of the restrictions has been reported by a number of Iranian news agencies monitored by the BBC, including Tabnak.ir, a conservative website believed to be associated with former Islamic Revolutionary Guards commander Mohsen Rezai.
Tabnak said that SMS services, although restored, were still blighted by technical problems.Messages up to three weeks old were being sent out, and some users were receiving multiple repeated messages, it said.
According to Ghalam News and multiple Twitterers in Tehran, the text messaging system in Iran has been taken down, just hours before polls open for Friday’s presidential election.Breaking Tweets reports.
The Ghalam News report, translated from Persian, says that the popular network “was cut off throughout the country.” The action occurred just before midnight local time, less than nine hours before the start of elections. “All walks of life from all over the country” are discovering that “messages on different cell phone networks will not send.”
The disruption in communication occurred after reformist candidates have been increasingly using Twitter and text messaging to rally support, per The Wall Street Journal. Approximatey 110 millions SMS messages have been sent per day leading up to the election, according to The Tehran Times.
One Twitter account recently reminded people not to wear reformist color green when it heads to the polls, as the government has threatened not to allow such people to vote. It asked to spread the word via SMS but at least for now that is not possible.
The US State Department’s initiative to connect people abroad during President Obama’s speech from Cairo was a huge success and they used Clickatell (this blog's favorite sponsor) to make it happen.
With the help of Clickatell, the US Department of State built a website on www.america.go to register people wanting to receive SMS message highlights from President Obama’s speech from Cairo on June 4, 2009.
Thousands of people representing more than 150 countries opted-in to the first-of-its-kind SMS campaign, meeting the goals of the US State Department to create open, two-way mobile communications from global audiences – in essence, creating a “Mobile Town Hall Without Borders.”
Specifically for this event, Clickatell set up unique mobile routing and tapped into its own existing complex network infrastructure capable of reaching more than 775 mobile operators in over 220 countries around the world.
Clickatell worked closely with the US State Department to build the online website and registration process to offer opt-in services for global citizens wanting to participate during the live speech.
The service received registrations from thousands of people representing more than 150 countries in four languages, including English, Persian, Urdu, and Arabic. Comments directly from those having signed up to receive SMS speech highlights have been posted to the website at America.gov.
The success of the Obama Cairo Speech campaign was made instantly apparent during the successful ‘live’ speech excerpt delivery via SMS to enrolled participants.
In addition, participants from around the world replied back with their speech comments immediately. SMS-reply messages from enrolled participants with comments were received by Clickatell and immediately posted on the website of the US State Department.
Fascinating insight from Revolution Magazine on Scott Goodstein, the man widely recognised as President Barack Obama's digital guru, responsible for the biggest mobile and social media campaign in history.
My favorite part:
One of the highlights of the digital campaign behind Obama's election was the 3am text message sent to more than a million subscribers announcing Obama's running mate Joe Biden. It followed the famous TV ad run by an increasingly desperate Hilary Clinton, which went: 'It's 3am, and your children are safe and asleep. But there's a phone in the White House, and it's ringing - something's happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call.'
Goodstein and his web team were widely credited for coming up with a genius marketing ploy, with many claiming that this 3am text message signalled that Obama and Biden were the people to answer the ringing phone in the White House.
It has since emerged that this was not a deliberate ploy, and that the Biden text message was sent at 3am to prevent CNN breaking the news first. However, what the 3am text demonstrates is the incredible buzz the digital campaign created and the extent to which supporters and commentators were bursting to heap praise on what they saw as the most innovative Presidential campaign to date.
... For Goodstein, life has moved on too. He's not part of the administration and has instead set up a new venture: Revolution Messaging. It promises to provide (mainly non-profit) organisations with all the things he did for Obama. "A lot of non-profit organisations are scared to jump into social networks and user-generated content," he says.
"If you plan not to vote, just think about June 13 when you hear Ahmadinejad has been re-elected."
Young, urban mobile phone users in Iran are being bombarded with this and similar text messages in run-up to the poll on June 12 when hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will seek a second term. Reuters reports.
Emails and blogs are also playing a big part for the first time in a country more used hearing political messages blared through loudspeakers on small trucks, seeing gaudy posters and being herded to campaign rallies.
The government, whose support base centers on the rural poor, is sending its own texts and emails lauding Ahmadinejad's achievements, but is also showing signs of concern.
Hardline backers of Ahmadinejad have complained about the sometimes rude jokes aimed at their leader via text messages and the official IRNA news agency said the Tehran prosecutor's office would crack down on messages offending candidates.
North Korea has begun a limited State Internet service for mobile phone users, a state website reported Friday, five months after the secretive communist state launched a third-generation network.
Information available is news from the official Korean Central News Agency and other content.
According to Sify, sympathizers of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) have launched an SMS campaign claiming that their chief, Vellupillai Prabhkaran, is alive and will continue to lead the movement for a Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka.
European branches of the LTTE have been flooding local mobile users with text messages that Prabhakaran is alive and that the Sri Lankan Government used a body double to try to prove to the world that the LTTE chief had been killed in a two-hour firefight with Sri Lankan Special Forces near a lagoon in the northern part of the island-nation.
The text messages have been emanating from Norway, Germany and the United Kingdom, and are basically designed to lift the morale of LTTE sympathizers and ensure that the funding process for the rebel outfit does not dry up.
No politician has used SMS in an election campaign quite this way. In India, an SMS with the text 'vote for BJP, vote for God' doing the rounds in the Lok Sabha constituency has caused a furor, with Congress threatening to complain to the Election Commision, reports the Business Standard.
Congress candidate and Union Minister of State for Home Sriprakash Jaiswal alleged that it was a ploy by the BJP party to play the religious card in every election but the public could not be fooled by them.
BJP candidate Satish Mahan refuted the allegations saying no such SMS has been issued by the party or its workers.
Indonesia will broadcast the information of 2009 general election that scheduled on April 9 via SMS to around 155 million cell phone users nationwide. Xinhuanet reports.
According to the spokesman of Indonesian Communication and Information Ministry Gatot S. Dewabrata, a total 162 million phone numbers will receive election messages via SMS, consisting of 135 million cell phone numbers and 27 million wireless fixed phone numbers. The spokesman said that some SMS subscribers own more than one cell phone and wireless fixed phone number.
Indonesia's governments has used text messaging on a massive scale before, In 2005, Indonesia's health ministry launched a hotline to let the public report disease outbreaks and lodge complaints about health care using mobile phone text messages.
President Barack Obama's aides sent text messages to tens of thousands of people about crowd control, public transportation and even the weather Tuesday as he took the oath of office and immediately started building another massive technology-based list of supporters. Cellular News reports.
As a million visitors made their way toward Obama's noontime inauguration, aides worked with local officials, Washington Metro officials and military aides to send quick messages to the phones.
It was the latest move from Obama's technology team to connect with supporters.
Just minutes after taking office and stewardship of the White House Web site, Obama started to build another list — this time using official government resources — to keep people updated about his administration's efforts. His advisers see that list — and his 13 million person political list — as ways to harness public sentiment to outflank troublesome opponents, news organizations and rival interest groups.
On January 20th, Barack Obama will be sworn in as president. US citizens can Text HISTORY to 56333 to sign up for updates on how they can be a part of this historic moment wherever they are.
To the suicide vest, the rocket and the battering ram, those longtime staples of conflict in the Middle East, add the cellphone. USA Today reports.
Both sides in the Gaza war have employed cellphones as a form of psychological warfare, among other purposes — part of a trend toward using new media in a century-old conflict.
Hagar Mizrachi, a 25-year-old Israeli, recently received a text message that said rocket attacks on all of Israel's cities were imminent. The message was signed "Hamas" and the sender name was listed as "Qassam.hamm," he said. Qassams are rockets that Hamas militants have been firing from Gaza into southern Israel. "It's unnerving to receive something like that," said Mizrachi, an editor at an online news service. "It feels like they've invaded you."
Yaniv Levyatan, a psychological warfare expert at the University of Haifa, said cellphones are a natural tool since soldiers and militants are generally young and have grown up using them. Israel and Gaza are both small, densely populated areas blanketed by wireless service, making the phones' use even more effective, he said.
Scott Goodstein ran all the text-messaging and mobile communications for the groundbreaking campaign. LA Times Kate Linthicum recently talked to him in detail about the campaign's new-media strategy.
Excerpts from the Q&A related to text messaging:
Is text-messaging geared to a certain niche?
It obviously skews younger. But 262 million Americans are using mobile phones. That's roughly 84% of the total population. It's one of the fastest-growing industries in the U.S.
And with the decline of TV viewership audiences, I think it's a must for campaigns to be using mobile technology. It's the only device that's truly with people for 15 to 24 hours a day.
Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert arrived one week ago in the Gaza Strip to assist Palestinian healthcare providers as the Israeli offensive drags on. With information limited in the Strip due to an Israeli ban on reporters in the territory, Gilbert has been sending SMS messages that are being forwarded to cell-phones throughout Europe. His messages have become an invaluable accounting of the dire medical situation in the Strip.
... His original text messages to a colleague eventually made headlines in northern Europe.
One message read obtained by MENASSAT read: “We are swimming in death, blood, and amputated victims. Many children. Pregnant women. I've never experienced anything so awful.”
In the SMS, Gilbert also claimed that Gaza's main vegetable market had been bombed on Monday morning, killing 20 people and injured 80.
Justin Oberman on Personal Democray Forum reports on the conflict in the Middle East and how mobile technology is now being used to rally people around the world during those 15 seconds.
As rockets fired by Hamas continue to fall into the Israeli city of Sederot where countless of innocent victims have 15 seconds to find shelter and or find their children and loved ones.
The National Council of Young Israel has set up a service called SMS Sderot or (Solidarity Message For Sederot). When the Tzeva Adom (Code Red) siren in sounded in Sederot, SMSSEDEROT will send you a text message that will read:
A Kassam Rocket has just been launched at Sderot. You have: 15 seconds to read Psalm 130. 15 seconds to give to charity 15 seconds to call the UN, the White House, your Senators and Congressman. 15 Seconds to pause and pray for the people of Sderot.
The Israeli army has forbid its soldiers taking part in Operation Cast Lead from making cell phone calls amid all-out aggression in Gaza. press TV reports.
Six hours before the Israeli ground incursion into Gaza on Saturday, thousands of infantry and armored forces were ordered to hand over their cell phones, an official has told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The order was "to keep the impending attack secret", an Israeli official was quoted as saying.
On inauguration night, Barack and Michelle will make their first stop – and dance their first dance – at a ball that will be Webcast to living rooms and community centers around the country as part of the Presidential Inaugural Committee’s plan to make this the most accessible swearing-in in history. Politico reports.
Some of the tickets will go free to District of Columbia residents, and some will be offered to grassroots supporters around the country.
Planners are borrowing from the house-party concept that the Obama campaign used to bring the excitement of the trail into the homes of grassroots supporters.
... The event, one of 10 official inaugural balls, will be held at the Washington Convention Center.
The Presidential Inaugural Committee is calling it “the premiere event” of the night, and trying to validate that by making it the new president’s first stop.
“The ball will also feature a robust interactive component, including webcasting and text messaging,” the committee said in its announcement. “The PIC will release more details soon about using technology to allow Americans who are attending neighborhood balls across the country to participate actively in this celebration.”
Text messages and phone calls add psychological aspect to warfare in Gaza Hamas fires threatening text messages at Israeli mobile phones while Israel bombards Palestinians with menacing phone calls. The Guardian reports.
Israel and Hamas have mounted psychological warfare on each others' civilian populations. Hamas says it is firing threatening text messages at Israeli mobile phones and jamming radio stations while Israel is bombarding Palestinians with menacing phone calls and leaflets.
"The messages say that the Palestinian resistance missiles will reach you wherever you are and your government won't be able to protect you," said Abu Mujaheid, spokesman for the Palestinian Resistance Committees.
Hamas says it can send up to 70,000 text messages but so far there have been reports of just dozens. "[Israel is] sending text messages and interrupting Palestinian radio and trying to scare Palestinians with their messages so we are running a counter campaign by sending text messages to Israelis," Mujaheid said.
According to Monsters and Critics, the Israeli Army has launched 'roof knocking' operations by which the occupants of the buildings in Gaza they about to bomb are warned beforehand.
Warnings, issued by telephone, voicemail or SMS, were intended as a means of limiting civilian casualties in the conflict, the Haaretz newspaper said. Civilians were given 10 minutes to leave the premises.
A text message purporting to be from the dairy firms at the heart of China’s tainted milk scandal and widely circulated apologized for the damaged wreaked on the nation’s babies, reports The Times.
"We express deep sorrow, sincerely apologise, beg for forgiveness for the damage inflicted on children and society by the tainted milk powder," it said. "(We) are determined to use this as a warning to put an end to substandard products."
The message, received by several AFP reporters, claimed to be from 22 Chinese companies found to have sold the tainted milk, including Sanlu, whose former boss was put on trial Wednesday.
China’s milk scandal came to light in September and has had nationwide repercussions with at least six children dying and nearly 300,000 suffering from kidney and urinary problems after they drank milk tainted with melamine.
According to Tom's Hardware, Newly elected Thai Prime Minister decided to spam the entire nation of Thailand right before the holidays.
Abhisit Vejjajiva was elected the Prime Minster of Thailand on December 15,2008 and was formally emass SMS messagesndorsed by the Thai King on December 17,2008. As one of his first official acts as the political leader of the country was to send to a large portion of the nation’s mobile phone users.
He had assigned the deputy leader of the Democratic Party to enlist the help of three cellular network providers in sending out a message to all their subscribers. The message was a plea for help from the Prime Minister for assistance in solving the country's political crisis.
There was no cost associated with the reception of this message but it did urge those interested to respond with their postal codes at a cost of three baht ($0.10 USD). The massive spam message has already caused critisism from organizations such as the Foundation for Consumers, a similar body to the FCC.
After a five month ban text messaging has been turned back on in Kashmir, reports 160characters.org.
Confirming the lifting of ban, principal secretary, home, Khursheed Ahmad Ganai said, “We have withdrawn our earlier order banning the SMS services because we feel the suspension is no longer required.”
The service was closed down in August after it was alleged that some Hindu right wing activists were using SMS to spread rumours following the Amarnath land transfer controversy.
In 2011, Estonians will be able to elect their representatives using cellphones, writes Gizmodo.
Raul Kaidro, who is the spokesman of the SK Certification Center in Estonia, says that it will be easy and secure: The voters will just need to previously obtain a free authorized chip. This chip will have an encrypted digital signature, which will allow them to identify themselves and vote using a text message.
The mobile voting will not be the only way to vote: It will be an additional method to online and on-site voting, all of them connected to a central database for instant identification and registration of the vote.
Across India, SMS are being sent asking everyone to wear 'white clothes' on Monday as a sign of solidarity with those who lost their lives in the terror attacks in Mumbai. ZeeNews reports.
"Hey Indians, we all strongly condemn the attacks in Mumbai. In order to show our solidarity to the one billion strong population of India and to mourn the large scale loss of lives, please wear white on Monday (1st December) to your work/study place. This is a nation-wide request as this is the least we can do to show that we care and also to show that we are one. Nobody can divide us. Keep up the spirit of being Indian! Spread the word."
Much has been written this week about President-elect Barack Obama having to give up his Blackberry once he's president. He doesn't have to, but Newsweek explains why he should.
Statutes say that any official correspondence from the president becomes property of the office, not the man in it. The rules were drafted at a time when the president's sole communication was on paper, and there wasn't that much of it.
But now, with things like e-mail and instant messaging, the most mundane messages from or to Obama would become government property, and much of it would eventually be accessible to the public under the Freedom of Information Act.
For this reason, Obama earlier this month started to wean himself from his BlackBerry. If he wanted to, he could choose to keep it. But if he did, he'd have to acknowledge that a historian decades from now could study just how much time the president spent bantering with pals or gushing about the White Sox.
"He'll be restricted by how much information about him will become public property," says Lawrence Lessig, founder of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford. "This is an area where the statutes are far out of date for the current technology."
Security officials also worry about Obama using the device for official business, fearing a hacker could gain access to internal deliberations.
The mullahs' regime has imposed new regulations on SMS use in the country according to the Resistance sources inside Iran, reports Cellular News.
In the latest move to regulate its use, the Organization of Communications Regulations has putout new laws imposing restrictions on sending SMS. For a typical cell owner, he has to go through security checks by the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) to receive clearance for using the service.
Sending SMS deemed contrary to national security will be punishable by law. Any change of address by the subscriber of the service must be reported promptly to the relevant authorities. It is the security agents who decide which SMS are in breach of national security.
The State Security Forces (SSF) - mullahs' suppressive police - has random checks in the streets to catch the violators. In a case, a man was arrested on random checks at a bus station in downtown Tehran for having sent a picture of a bus not fit for passenger use on Friday.
160characters looks into the way text messaging played a key role in reaching voters in this presidential election and how Obama used the mobile medium in innovative ways. Excerpts:
Whereas McCain used mobile phones for traditional telephone canvassing, Obama turned to the medium of messaging to promote new speeches, important TV appearances and major rallies. If he was campaigning in your area, he’d let you know.
Innovatively the campaign also had the foresight to register a common short code (CSC) that numerically represents the word ‘Obama’ (62262). This code was used during the mobile message alert opt-in process and delivered subscribers issue-specific updates on subjects such as health care policy, education, and the war in Iraq.
Obama’s mobile campaign has been one that has worked at every stage.
Text messaging has proved to be a powerful tool in getting American voters to the polls. It has reinvented the “get-out-the-vote” machines and at $1.26 per voter, has also proved a more cost effective alternative to traditional campaigning methods, such as automated calls and door-to-door canvassing (which cost around $20-$30 per voter).
... Text message reminders to new voters increased an individual’s likelihood of voting by close to 5 percentage points. This is an increase similar to ‘quality phone call’ reminders but at a fraction of the cost.
Barack Obama's campaign is counting on a potent new weapon for Election Day: the humble cell-phone text message. Bloomberg reports.
Texting may do for the Democratic presidential candidate what arm-twisting precinct captains did in years past: prod millions to get out and vote. The Obama campaign plans to use the millions of cell-phone numbers it has amassed over the past 22 months to blast its supporters with that message today.
The biggest concern for the Obama campaign is getting young people -- who have registered in record numbers and shown unprecedented interest in surveys -- to turn out. In 2004, only 45 percent of those under 30 showed up to vote, according to Census data, making them just 16 percent of the electorate that year.
... Studies show that texting is among the most effective and cheapest ways of getting supporters, particularly blacks, Hispanics and younger voters, to the voting booth.
Photo of a line of voters stretched around the corner at a polling place this morning from The New York Times.
Last-minute campaign calls are increasingly targeting cellphones, frustrating voters who say their privacy is being violated through political telemarketing to their personal mobile devices.
Telemarketing to cellphones was outlawed in 2003 so as to not penalize consumers, whose plans often require they pay for minutes. But an exemption in the law lets political candidates call people.
Defeated opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi this week called on the government to end its interference in phone networks and the internet.
According to 
"If you plan not to vote, just think about June 13 when you hear Ahmadinejad has been re-elected."
According to 
Indonesia will broadcast the information of 2009 general election that scheduled on April 9 via SMS to around 155 million cell phone users nationwide. 
President Barack Obama's aides sent text messages to tens of thousands of people about crowd control, public transportation and even the weather Tuesday as he took the oath of office and immediately started building another massive technology-based list of supporters. 
To the suicide vest, the rocket and the battering ram, those longtime staples of conflict in the Middle East, add the cellphone. 
Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert arrived one week ago in the Gaza Strip to assist Palestinian healthcare providers as the Israeli offensive drags on. With information limited in the Strip due to an Israeli ban on reporters in the territory, Gilbert has been sending SMS messages that are being forwarded to cell-phones throughout Europe. His messages have become an invaluable accounting of the dire medical situation in the Strip.
Justin Oberman on 
On inauguration night, Barack and Michelle will make their first stop – and dance their first dance – at a ball that will be Webcast to living rooms and community centers around the country as part of the Presidential Inaugural Committee’s plan to make this the most accessible swearing-in in history. 
Text messages and phone calls add psychological aspect to warfare in Gaza Hamas fires threatening text messages at Israeli mobile phones while Israel bombards Palestinians with menacing phone calls. 
A text message purporting to be from the dairy firms at the heart of China’s tainted milk scandal and widely circulated apologized for the damaged wreaked on the nation’s babies, reports 
According to 
In 2011, Estonians will be able to elect their representatives using cellphones, writes 
Across India, SMS are being sent asking everyone to wear 'white clothes' on Monday as a sign of solidarity with those who lost their lives in the terror attacks in Mumbai. 
The mullahs' regime has imposed new regulations on SMS use in the country according to the Resistance sources inside Iran, reports 
