SMS safer than online, says industry leader

SMS technology could provide simpler options for government compliance and would be easier to implement than online systems that rely on 3G connections, a mobile industry leader has claimed.

Speaking at the recent World Computer Congress 2010 in Brisbane, Bond University Innovation Centre CEO and chairman of Bond Wireless, Dr. Clarence Tan, said the health, commerce and education sector could rely on SMS’ security and simplicity.

“Security breaches are not necessarily about the applications or the security of a site, but are often about the security of your internet connection,” he said. “A lot of people think they have the most secure applications, but what happens when you take your iPad and browse on a free Wi-Fi public network and you have no idea what’s actually behind that?”

“A SIM card doesn’t actually belong to you, it belongs to a carrier,” Tan said. “If you want to delete any information on it, you’ll have to basically get permission to re-flash it.”

“The two major issues with entering information onto your phone via SMS is obviously your handset is limited to a small keypad,” he said. “The other is there is no end user receipt for transactions done by SMS… there is no proof of the transaction taking place.

“In Australia if you’re a doctor treating a patient with a disease, by law you have to show the government that you’ve done your duty of care and communicate the results as quickly as possible,” he said. “Some 99 per cent of results are negative, so really a lot of doctor’s time is tied up with doctor’s calling patients to ask about their results.”

“I was approached by one health organisation and I told them to tell their patients, ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’... essentially what we came up with was an SMS solution.”

Tan helped one such company use SMS technology, with text messages providing an all-in-one solution and VoIP offered in addition to SMS as a way for older generations to participate.

“They’ve been using it for the past four years and have cut down the costs and provided a faster response time in serving the patient,” he said. “SMS [messages] are used as proof-of-receipt in order to comply [with government regulations].”

The insights come as CoastWatch shared its use of SMS technology at the congress, with general manager of research and development at the organisation, Chris Lane, successfully trialling SMS as part of its emergency management strategy.

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Please do not print this email, unless you really need to...

 “What do you know about this symbol? It seems to appear on various organisations’ e-mails. Where does it come from? Is it an official symbol? Can anyone use it?”

The short answer: Anyone can use it. It’s not an official symbol. It’s gained use by popular appeal.

Is it worth using? That’s an entirely different question…

How did this whole thing start?

I’ve yet to find the first recorded use. Unlikely that I will! Anyone help out? It got a boost from TreeHugger’s Take Action Eco-Tip in Email Signature: Help us Start a Meme! (2007-03-12). From the comments there, it seems likely both text and image were around for a while before, as the tip only mentions starting a meme by,

Add the following lines to your email signature: “Eco-Tip: Printing emails is usually a waste. Make this tip go viral, add it to your email signature.” There’s an optional third line for the really devoted TreeHugger fans: “For more eco-tips, visit www.TreeHugger.com”.

So… to use or not to use?

Lots of people really do print emails (not even considering attachments). Because: they can’t read them properly on screen; they’ve been emailed a meeting agenda; they don’t carry a laptop every where; it’s easier to write notes on paper than an email; they read print faster than on screen; there’s some rule in their office about having a paper copy of everything; they’re not sure that electronic stuff really won’t get destroyed too easily. We’re a long way from the paperless office!

Printing emails uses paper, ink and electricity. So anything that helps remind people not to print emails may be a good thing. Colour printing costs more than black and white; perhaps we shouldn’t use this symbol or text in green! Especially where you’ve got a printer that automatically prints in colour, just because there’s something in colour to print. And don’t type it in bold, that uses more ink. (Does it use enough extra for that to really mean anything?)

Get your own symbol

Pretty much anyone using Windows has it. The symbol itself – a tree and winding road – comes from Microsoft’s Webdings font, released in 1997 with Internet Explorer 4. (There’s a page about the minor update of Webdings, with a little more history. It forms part of the “Community” characters in the font.

Using Word, PowerPoint (in a text box), etc.: Insert > Symbol ; change the font to Webdings; locate the symbol in the pane of characters; select it and insert into your document. Change the text colour to whatever seems appropriate, though green is an obvious choice! However, before you change the colour, read the printing issues above and below.

If you want some HTML to cut and paste into emails, try this:

<font color="#006600" face="Webdings" size="+3">P</font><font color="#006600"> <strong>Please consider the environment before printing this email.</strong></font>

(The quote marks should all be ordinary double quotes, and don’t respell color as colour.)