Israelis are already notorious for having their cell phones permanently attached to their ears. And that's before they got a hold of a new service by the start-up Cellact. The company is sending out text message warnings to Sabras of "a missile or bomb attack, shooting, or other emergency announcements," Globes reports.

The system enables key emergency services staff (police, firefighters, rescue teams, and stand-by details) to be paged from anywhere, including the field, by SMS through any licensed cellular phone. The service will be charged at NIS 0.20 [$.04] per message...

Cellact VP sales and marketing Gal Biran said, "After the shelling started, Cellact made a decision to harness its technology for the benefit of residents and companies in the north. SMS use meets two requirements in the event of an emergency; timely warning and distribution, and high reliability even in the event of heavy web traffic or poor reception. The system also provides ongoing communications when people are indoors or in air raid shelters, and can be used to easily relay information such as the opening hours of specific bank branches, or any important announcement that the public will not be able to see on notice boards because they are confined to their homes."

FEMA is working on a similar system here in the U.S., with a twist. FEMA's text messages will "tell you to get to a television or radio because something unfortunate has happened that you need to know about." Sounds like Cellact's straightforward alerts make a little more sense.

(Big ups: Sam)