MobileNest

New York City is the first city to upgrade its 911 and 311 call centers to handle picture messaging. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to bring the new technology to city’s call centers to enrich the information provided during the emergency and non-emergency calls. Everyone knows that a picture is worth a thousand words.

“If you see a crime in progress or a dangerous building condition you’ll be able to transmit images to 911, or online to NYC.GOV,” Bloomberg said. “And we’ll start extending the same technology to 311 to allow New Yorkers to step forward and document non-emergency quality of life concerns, holding city agencies accountable for correcting them quickly and efficiently.”

Almost all camera phones have built in multimedia messaging (MSS) allowing sending images to a phone number or an email address.