For all time I spend talking about the world is getting flatter, occasionally I’m reminded how it’s not.

We’re working on a SMS notification gateway with a client right now, and have been trying to test the notifications.  Oleg & the development team have built out the notification system, but were having trouble testing testing it.  They couldn’t send SMS notifications to Russian cell phones on the system, and they didn’t have US cell phones to test the reciept of the messages on.

Enter Google Voice.  I love the system, and we set up accounts so that the Flatsourcing team can test the system by sending & receiving messages in Google Voice.

So now we have a US-based phone number that rings in Kazan thanks to Vonage, and a Google Voice number that receives texts.  World Flattened.

But, we’re even taking it a step further by sending several US-based cell phones from different carriers over to Kazan so that we are sure that we are testing this application with all carriers for this client.  It’s a committment that we want to make to our client to make sure that we have phones over there to test.  So this afternoon I’m buying 3 pre-paid cell phones and FedExing them over to Kazan which ain’t cheap. World Flattened.

One last thing.  We’re currently working on plans to bring Oleg, Timur & Alex over to the US for a conference and to work in our office here in New Orleans for a stretch.  I’ve been over to Kazan the last 5 years, and Peter went with me this year.  Now it’s time to bring them over here.  We’re looking at a conference calendar, maybe SXSW, FOWA RailsConf, or something else.  If anyone has any great ideas, please let us know.  Help us flatten the world even further.