Recently I was just writing about the old and the new in regarding the notification of the election of the pope. I saw this today and find this a nice implementation of the new.
Popealarm.com “When the smoke goes up, you’ll know what’s going on.”
You can choose to be notified by email, text message, or both. I had some concerns that this service could be a method to harvest emails and phone number until I saw that it was being run by FOCUS (The Fellowship of Catholic University Students) which I have a lot of respect for and no concerns.
While I am sure I will be watching for the news rather closely, I do have to work and I could even be in a meeting. Once the Habamus Papum alert goes out I want to be able to have time to get home and celebrate with my wife. So Pope Alarm looks like a good third-party solution.
One thing I would have suggested for this service is that they have a email registration system. As it is now somebody could sign up anybody without there permission for either their email or phone. While this is really not much of a problem, still it is generally a good idea to do so.
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The site does, however, immediately send out a confirmation text or email, which would presumably make it a fairly easy thing to unsubscribe…
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