The 5.4 magnitude earthquake that struck near Los Angeles is old news now. However, after reading articles about twitter’s ability to break news fast, I realized the importance of having multiple communication mediums. Sometimes, it seems like having a phone, blog, AIM, Twitter, and Facebook seem overly redundant, but redundancy is all too important in times of crisis.

As you probably know from my previous post, my cell phone broke yesterday, thus, losing my entire phonebook in the process. Being the great son that I am, I did not memorize my parent’s cell phone numbers. So, after I heard about the earthquake, I wanted to call them. I called the home phone (the only number I memorized); no one picked up. I could not reach them. Even though the earthquake was only 5.4, I started to worry.

So, I turned to my next sources. Email. I tried searching through if I recorded a cell phone number, nope. AIM. My parents don’t use instant messaging, so that was useless. Facebook. Again, parents don’t use facebook; however, I messaged my brother to ask for the number. If he’s anything like me, then he probably won’t receive or respond to my message for a few hours. Skype. I rarely use. Twitter and blogs. Yea right. Eventually, I was able to contact my aunt, who told me everything was alright.

Good thing I had all those sources to turn to. However, most these communication mediums are mutually exclusive. While this isn’t bad, things would have been a lot different if some of these communication devices were directly intertwined. For example, what if my mom had her cell phone stored at some central location, and I can contact her through many services, such as AIM, Facebook, or VOIP. Okay, some of these services already support that. For example, you can send some a text message through email. However, it’s such a hassle! No one uses it because it’s not easy to use. It does not make sense; it’s broken.

I want a solution that makes communication portability dead simple. Easy enough for my parents (very computer illiterate) to use. Any ideas?

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