With the recent water bans an the lack of news coverage in the wee hours of the evening I was pondering if there was a better way for the City of Saint John to post urgent notices. And I had thought of using the technology of today, and an approach of making it easier to opt-in to these methods.

Part 1: Electronic Internet

Provide an RSS feed with no longer than a text message sized message detailing the urgent message. This would allow people the opportunity to place a box on the most common web portals that 60% of people use as home pages.

Secondly allow people to register their e-mail addresses to an urgent message list. This would allow people to get it by e-mail or text message as people can put in cellnumber@pcs.rogers.com or cellnumber@txt.aliant.net and have it sent to your cell (great for parking bans.)

Step 2: Phone

Have an Advisory line like the parking one and have a cheep automated text to voice system to read the RSS feed messages.