We already have the excellent Birdline system. It falls down in two places. One
is getting the messages to your phone. Not a problem for the increasing numbers
of people who have email access on their phones.
The other problem, as Rob mentioned is the delay in getting submissions
accepted. Often it waits till evening or Sunday night - the volunteer
moderators can't be sitting ready 24 hours a day.
But there's another system, which I don't fully understand. You can log into
Eremaea and register for updates on any species, and I think you can specify
the region. When someone enters a survey in that region that includes any of
those species, you get an email. I'm not sure, but I think this is immediate
(i.e. it's not moderated). If so, the only delay involved is the time it takes
people to enter their data.
If this works as I described then all it needs is an email to SMS gateway to
get most people connected to it. Not sure if such things already exist, but
I've worked with automated email processing and automated SMSing, I don't think
it's that hard. The main problem would be how to charge people for the service.
Peter Shute
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