Hi Russell,
The Birdpedia SMS Sighting Notification service is just that. The subscription is NOT time based. It is SMS unit based. Just buy 100 SMS units (currently AU$24 per 100 units) and you will receive reports as long as you have units available. You can turn the service ON and OFF at will. Your credits do NOT expire. Restrict your receipt of messages to rarities only if you wish. As always the notification via email is free and immediate – there is not mediator involved. You can send to multiple addresses at the same time. You can contact the poster directly – you do not need to request permission of contact information from Birdpedia. Being able to contact the SMS sender however depends on them adding their mobile number to their account (and not everybody does).
But in my opinion SMS notification will never really catch on. The short length of the message limits the amount of data that can be sent. With new phones you can receive emails directly on your phone – much more useful as there are very few restrictions.
But, as you said the problem is that there are many reporting services and not everybody reports. I doubt we can ever get around that.
Regards,
Martyn Price
Birdpedia.com
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au
http://birding-aus.org ===============================