Text messaging and the San Francisco Earthquake

There was an earthquake last week in San Francisco. Not a huge one. No bridges splitting in two, no huge craters opened up in the ground, just a 5.6. Nevertheless serious, though. I picked up this piece by Kevin Ho over at CNET who blogged about it, his iPhone and text messaging.

Obviously the phone networks went into temporary meltdown after the quake — but text messages got through. And hopefully the medium earned extra respect and attention from those who benefited from it that day.

Link: SMS Texts: The way forward, especially in a natural disaster made easier on the iPhone | Living with the iPhone – CNET Blogs

So much so that I was willing to pay $.50 a text sent from Australia! But on a more serious note, there was a 5.6 earthquake here in the Bay Area on Tuesday night. I was at dinner and I thought my dinner date was shaking the table or that there was a washing machine somewhere that went awry. But no, it was a bona fide earthquake. While there was no damage and it was minor, we both got text messages from our friends as soon as it happened:

“Earthquake?!”

“Did you feel that?”