But it turns out my aimless journeys around my over-crowded school can come in handy… And I came across a poster of major intrigue!

I love mobile services which are useful. Finding services, and then realising whether or not they are useful or not is what I like doing; mainly because it is rare that I will find something that has use far beyond making a company or un-named person a lot of money.

So when I found this poster, I was intrigued.

I doubt I’ll need to remind or inform anyone of the current issues with “Knife Crime” especially in London and Schools. And as a teenager myself I monitor the news locally and nationally to see what is happening. I often find that the government and their pleas to stop knife crime are only just pleas. Having Gordon Brown or any MP for that matter, talking about a subject to do with young people, doesn’t reach many people.

I hear you ask, what about this intriguing poster?

It’s advertising an “anonymous” texting service which can be used to inform the Police about people or persons with Knives.

I think this goes above and beyond what Gordon Brown, the Police Chiefs and the number of other people or institutions have said or done recently. It’s all too easy to say, “We need to get knives off of the street” and that we as citizens – of whatever age – should be doing our best to prevent deaths on the street.

I’ll admit, when I was in lower school I knew of someone who carried a knife, or at least a blade of some nature. There was nothing I could do about it, because I knew the consequence of phoning up the police – getting the boy, and specifically his group of cronies onto me – so I didn’t do it. And I know also many other people were highly aware of the issue too, and as far as I know, no one ever phoned up the police.

And why was that?
The Police come into school, sit you down, talk to you, make an issue of it, and highlight that you’ve highlighted an issue, and therefore it all backfires on you!

The beauty of this service is the anonymity that comes along with it. On the poster we’re told that the number is scrambled, and therefore can’t be traced so no one can reply, and whatever happens as a consequence, the texter cannot be held accountable for it.

That’s what I call brilliant.

What I like more about this service is that it’s gone a bit beyond a poster campaign, and little business-type cards are being handed out to all the lower years. Admittedly, I stole borrowed one of these cards (for research purposes, naturally).

This is what our Government should be doing, what they should be talking about and implementing. And if such a service had been in place say three or four years ago when I was a little Year Eight or Year Nine, when I was thinking “Oh bugger, that boy has a knife”, I certainly would have sent a text.

So I have to applaud the common-sense which has finally kicked in, and I hope that someone uses it.

Any questions, comments, suggestions or anything as usual send them to Samantha@mobileindustryreview.com.

I’m interested to say the least, because although the idea is very similar to Blyk, the essence of a complete “free network” is not there. And I’m thinking because of this, could SMSpup actually work?

I’m hoping that because SMSpup: Mobile is not completely free the service, reliability and customer care is actually a lot better than what is offered by Blyk in the UK. I also hope that they get the infrastructure working properly before opening their virtual doors to mobile consumers.

It also appears that SMSpup: Mobile will be available for everyone (not just 16 to 24 year olds), which means everyone can get in on the money saving action… Well as long as you’re in Australia.

I’ll be following SMSpup: Mobile, I’m interested to see how it compares to the (success) Blyk has had over here!

According to 4th Screen Advertising, which supplies Tesco’s ads, ads on the site, including promos for Bee Movie, ITV and Nivea got a click-through rate to campaign mini sites of between three and seven percent. The trial also showed that the average age of a visitor to the WAP portal is 36, with a majority of female users.

4th screen also said that 69 percent of users would click on a relevant ad. 69 percent click-through sounds like an amazingly high figure: I can’t remember the last time I clicked on web advert. Are mobile users more susceptible to ads than their internet counterparts, or has the novelty just not worn off yet?