Greetings,
Many of you may recognize the acronym in this blog title, especially if you have kids!
Based on my limited research "IDK" means "I don't know" at least that is what my kids tell me. I get this response from them via text message when I ask them almost any question, especially when I ask them when they are finally moving out.
It seems to me that most of my kids spend a ton of time text messaging their friends, a review of the cell phone bill detail reinforces this fact, it is amazing how many text messages my kids send, it is a wonder they have time for anything else, like eating, sleeping or trashing the house!
I too have been caught up in this form of communication, in fact I text my kids often, even if they are just downstairs from me. Sometimes this is my preferred method of communicating with them, the less "face to face the better"! (Just kidding).
I assure you my rambling has a purpose, albeit a bit too long in coming....recently one of our reps has been working with a large company who is looking at some of our level control equipment.
The customer loves our hardware and our inventory measurement software. During the meeting they mentioned that they would sure like to be able to get information from our system via e-mail or text message. I know e-mail notification is nothing new, nor is the idea of getting a message via an antique device called a pager, and even communicating information via cell phone is not novel, but what seems to be a bit unique to me is the text message request. I guess this is a sign of the times...maybe the next step could be bin level notifications on the screen during a Wii game.
I am curious if many of you are communicating for business purpose via text message, would you find text message notifiers concerning your material levels for example as something of value to you? Are you currently receiving process information from your plants in a manner in which it appears on your phone or your Blackberry-like device?
As I mentioned none of these are new technologies but I am intrigued by how it may have value in the field.
Please let me know your thoughts.
TLK2UL8R,
Scott Bonine
Technorati Tags: Level measurement basics bin level indicator level control solids level indicator
When discussing SiloTrack, I always advise that you can even set it up to receive a text message. This is done using the email notification feature. Since cell phones have an email address associated with them, it is easy to send text via email. The only thing to look out for is the length of the message as any email headers will be included in the 160 character text limit.
I believe this would be one of the best uses for alarm notification. Since just about everybody walks around with a cell phone, this will come in very handy. No matter where you are in the plant or out of the plant, you can receive your alarms right to your phone (as long as you have coverage).
Posted by: Robert Badajos | August 28, 2009 at 04:09 AM