Twitter for disaster alert?

The Southern California earthquake on Tuesday morning had many Twitters twittering about it. Indeed, the response was so fast that VentureBeat's Eric Eldon reportedly said that some folks in SoCal heard about the earthquake through twitter before the tremors even reached them.

CNET's News.com noted that landline and cellular phone lines can be heavily congested as callers jam the lines. As such, twittering, or texting, could well be the way to go in an emergency. Agreeing, John Britton, an AT&T spokesman noted, "If you're on a wireless network and you can't get a call through, often the texting network won't be as congested."

Ironically, in text message crazy Singapore where I live, the situation is completely reversed. The midnight of significant public holidays or celebrations such as Christmas or the Chinese New Year often sees a deluge of text messages by friends and loved ones. The flood of messages leads to unpredictable results, and it is not unheard of to have messages arrive several hours after they were initially sent. Some well-wishers have started sending out text messages between six and 12 hours ahead of time to ensure smooth delivery.

In other news, HotHardware did a comprehensive review in which they pitted VIA's Nano against Intel's Atom processor. They concluded that VIA's Nano performs better across a variety of workloads. I must say that I have been eyeing the Mini-Note 2133 from Hewlett Packard--which packs a C7 processor--as a gift for my wife. If HP were to release a new version with the pin-compatible VIA Nano, I could well be sorely tempted to change plans and just purchase it for myself, instead.

Shhh... - Paul