As frequent cellphone text users know, SMS text messages are good for more than talking to your friends, or signing up for alerts that dish out the latest media industry gossip.

This Reuters article gives lots of examples of how people are integrating the Web and their cellphones into everyday alarm and emergency alert systems.

"Honeywell recently upgraded a system used by schools to meet the needs of universities in alerting students to potential danger. The Instant Alert Plus technology can make 100,000 30-second phone calls and send 125,000 text messages within 15 minutes," according to the report.

Text alerts are the lowest common denominator of cellphone data services. Almost every phone out there supports them, and lots of people have already signed up for packaged message plans. This applies to everything from mobile media news, to mailing lists and local searches, and now to alarm systems as well.

Web alarms, mobile alerts aim to make you safer [Reuters via CNET News]