text messages
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Swedes to start text message-based postage system, girl with dragon tattoo reportedly pleased
The Swedish Postal Service has announced that it will soon replace traditional postage stamps with a text message-based system. The system will work pretty simply -- customers will send a text message to a particular number, and a special code will be texted back to them which they can then write on the letter. A spokesperson for Posten AB, the Swedish Postal Service, says the system will work for packages weighing up to two kilograms, and that it will be just as secure as traditional postage. That's all well and good, but how will they adorn their letters with famous Swedish crime writers?
China sent 23 billion text messages during Chinese New Year
23 billion text messages in one week, with 13 billion from the first two days alone. Pretty mind-boggling, isn't it? And this 10 percent growth in the number of gung-hey-fat-choi messages is the work of just 747 million phone users in China -- imagine what would've happened if all 1.3 billion people in the country had a phone during Chinese New Year. Throughout the same period, China also produced 1.33 billion MMS messages -- a staggering 40 percent increase from last year -- while China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom operated 127.6 percent, 19.5 percent and 15.7 percent more voice calls respectively. Looks like someone's bagged themselves some extra red pockets here. Now, any guesses for next year's figures?
FunMail adds instant images to Facebook status & MMS
At the risk of invoking a round of reader rage, I'll admit that I've never really been that hyped on the idea of MMS on the iPhone (and, by the way, get off my lawn). If I want to send someone a picture, I've got their email address; I'll just send them a picture. No big whoop. I do have some friends and colleagues who 'came up' on mainline camera phones and they gleefully pop pics back and forth via MMS. I also appreciate the ability to decode the snapshots my wife sends from her Motorola RAZR, but overall I wouldn't rate it among the top iPhone features I was eager to get from AT&T (not like the ongoing lack of tethering, which is making me grind my teeth in my sleep). That prejudicial attitude may have made me a little skeptical when I met with FunMobility's CEO Adam Lavine this week to get a preview of his company's new free app FunMail [iTunes link], which promises to leverage the Semantic Media Project and add appropriate imagery to your MMS messages, short emails, Facebook wall posts, et cetera. It's available in the US App Store as of last night. Sure, the app is simple enough to use (once you register and accept the company's TOS, which may subject you to occasional text messages from them if you don't opt out) -- type in your message, and the system gives you the text (up to 140 characters) atop your choice of image from a list of five, sourced from FunMobility's licensed libraries along with Creative Commons remixable content from Flickr and other repositories. If you want to include a hidden search term, putting it at the end of the message with a double-hash (##) will tell FunMail to search those words without including them in the sent message. You can send it to any mobile phone number in your address book, to email recipients, or to your Facebook friends or wall via Facebook Connect. The result is a little bit inspirational office poster, a little bit LOLcat, and in some ways strangely intriguing... but not really, you know, useful.
kwiry adds TiVo scheduling, social networking support
kwiry's been helping texters remember things for well over a year, and now it's about to help them schedule TiVo recordings and update their Facebook / Twitter statuses. A few new kwiry shortcuts have been announced to make the lives of text messaging fiends more enjoyable, with a one-time account link between your handset and your TiVo Series2 / Series3 enabling a "tivo 30 Rock" SMS to trigger that very action. Additionally, users can now tap into Yelp and email contact information on the go, and as always, the service is completely free to end users. Hear that? Free.[Via CNET]
O2 sees a record 166 million text messages fly during New Year's celebration
If Americans really send twice as many text messages as Europeans, we'd hate to see the figures from the Big 4 here in the States. According to O2 UK, a record 166 million text messages were sent over its network in a 24-hour period that ended at 7:30AM on January 1, 2009. For those not exactly near their abacus, that breaks down to around 1,900 messages per second. Furthermore, over 16 million texts were saved by O2 subscribers using its own Bluebook backup service, though we can't imagine "HNY09!one1!1" messages being all that compelling to revisit, say, every day after 01/01/09.[Image courtesy of Israelity]
The obvious truth about text messaging: you're getting ripped off
C'mon folks, does it really take an in-depth research study to figure this one out? On the whole, per-use SMS rates have doubled from $0.10 to $0.20 in the span of three years, and carriers have shown no shame in pushing messaging packs (the "unlimited" one in particular) in an effort to snag more revenue per user. We already knew that Senator Herb Kohl was looking into the matter, and a new piece in The New York Times clearly explains just how lucrative these bite-sized messages are for carriers. We're told that most consumers simply assume that it's costing operators more each year as the volume of texts sent increases; according to University of Waterloo professor Srinivasan Keshav, "it doesn't cost the carrier much more to transmit a hundred million messages than a million." You see, SMS messages are elusively hidden within the so-called "control channel," which is space already reserved for the operation of the wireless network. So long as messages are kept concise (say, 160 characters or less), they can be sent without any real implication on the channel. Will this epiphany somehow change the way we're being gouged? Tough to say, but don't think for a second that carriers won't figure out another way to nickle-and-dime you if the hand is forced.[Thanks, Jeevan]
Social networking getting bigger on mobile phones
This is a big duh to anyone (like me) who's switched to a smartphone within the last year or so, but according to "new research" (I've never heard of them either), social networking applications and websites are blowing up on mobile phones, including none other than the iPhone. Things are going both ways -- social networks are reaching out to mobile users with mobile versions of their sites and device-specific applications, and mobile phones are reaching back by allowing quick and easy ways to take pictures or upload text or video. That dude on his phone in the bar next to you is just as likely to be texting his entire network as he is texting that friend he's waiting for. The end of The Guardian's article about this notes that search is up on mobile phones, too. Throw one more tick on the list of ways the iPhone has influenced how, when, and where we're using the Internet on our phones. [via textually]
Group Messaging / Presence to keep your messaging sessions rich
Not sure if you've noticed, but text / video messaging has remained fairly constant while web browsing, multimedia playback and navigation applications have all steadily improved. Thankfully, The Wireless Association and its awesomely named Enhanced Messaging Action Team has a thing or two to say about that. The group has just released its Final Set of Use Cases and Call Flows for the development of Enhanced Messaging solutions, which have reportedly been agreed to by every major US carrier. This provides said carriers with "a complete set of the tools and information" that they can use to develop interoperable Enhanced Messaging products, enabling both Group Messaging and Presence functionality. The former enables "multiple users to interact with text based communication on their mobile devices, as well as support multimedia files in group communications," while the entire Enhanced Messaging platform is said to be "a presence-enabled mobile messaging service that allows for richer real-time text messaging and communications than traditional mobile messaging." Hard to say when any meaningful developments beyond this will occur, but we're clearly just years away from SMS telepathy.[Image courtesy of Cast-Online]
British surgeon saves life by obeying SMS instructions
Not that we haven't seen text messaging save a life before, but this situation was clearly more intense than anything we've heard of in the past. British vascular surgeon David Nott was volunteering in the Democratic Republic of the Congo when faced with a 16-year-old boy that had "his left arm ripped off." With the knowledge that it was "badly infected and gangrenous," he relied on SMS instructions from a colleague in England in order to perform a forequarter amputation. Out of respect for your stomach, we'll spare you the details (believe us, plenty are in the read link), but the end result was that the boy was able to survive thanks to the text-based how-to guide. Who says messaging has no practical purpose?[Via textually]
London teacher contacts 14-year-old student through World of Warcraft
This story is really only tangentially related to our game, but we'll mention it anyway: a London teacher has been accused of sending sexually-related text messages to a 14-year-old student that she contacted while they were playing World of Warcraft together. Apparently the woman met up with the student in Azeroth, and then was able to somehow get his phone number from him. Later, the boy's father discovered explicit text messages from her on his son's phone, and she now faces jailtime as a result.Of course, this says nothing at all about World of Warcraft -- there are man, many ways of communication on the Internet, and the game happens to be just one of them (and shame on the Escapist for even suggesting this is an argument against games in education -- the fault here lies with the teacher, not the game). You should be cautious about who your children are corresponding with no matter where they are or what they're doing, and in fact, this boy's father was.
Verizon could charge content aggregators 3-cents per text message
Whoa, boy, this could get ugly. A few days back, a notice was revealed to the public that explained Verizon Wireless' new $0.03 fee that would be charged to all content aggregators who sent out mobile terminated messages on its network. After the expected backlash hit, the carrier then issued another statement informing us all that the note was simply an internal memo that was meant for internal discussions alone, but that doesn't change the fact that it's at least considering the plan. Of course, it would only affect for-profit aggregators, but still, imposing such a fee could certainly shake the foundation of that sector -- particularly if other carriers follow suit. And you know how other carriers love to follow suit, now don't you?Read - Original memoRead - Response to memo
Yet another iPhone security bug
Just when you thought your iPhone was more secure than ever, you might want to think again. Programmer Karl Kraft's 12-year-old son was the one to uncover the security risk of the iPhone displaying text messages while in emergency call mode. With the iPhone locked with a passcode and text message previews disabled, you can still see an incoming text message while you are in the emergency call mode. The iPhone should just show the generic "New Text Message" preview, but instead it will show the part of the message (or whole message if it's short enough), and sender information.You can get the full details on this bug, and screenshots of the iPhone from Karl's blog. Now we must sit and wait for Apple to fix it. Hopefully this won't take as long as implementing copy/paste for the iPhone. [via Ars Technica]
Timberland and GSI cough up $7 million to settle text spam lawsuit
Not that we haven't seen victories over SMS spammers before, but this one is sure catching a lot of attention due to the names attached. GSI Commerce and Timberland have reportedly agreed to "establish a fund of up to $7 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought against them for allegedly sending unsolicited text messages to wireless telephone users in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act." The settlement has already received preliminary approval from a judge in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division, and while the aforementioned firms vehemently deny any wrongdoing, they concede that taking this to court would be "burdensome, protracted and expensive." More expensive than $7 million? Is that guilt we smell, or what?[Via mocoNews]
Avidyne's MLX770 provides pilots with two-way text messaging support
It's not that texting from planes is currently impossible, it's just not terribly reliable. Thanks to Avidyne's Q4-bound MLX770, however, all that is about to change. The two-way datalink receiver will not only enable pilots to have access to the radar mosaic for most of the world along with weather conditions, but it will add support for text messaging right from the MFD. And we're not talking about CPLDC -- we're talking bona fide SMS. To keep pilots from chatting away too much unnecessarily, the system will limit messages to 32 characters, and beyond that, each message sent will run between $1 and $2. And to think, we actually have the nerve to gripe about $0.20 texts...[Via FlightGlobal]
Verizon prepaid customers get new messaging plan
Heads-up, INpulse users! Okay, sorry for calling you out like that, but Verizon Wireless has a new messaging plan on the horizon that may please those of you texting your bill straight to absurdity. Beginning on July 14th, VZW prepaid customers can choose to get unlimited text, picture and video messaging to all other Verizon customers nationwide in addition to 250 messages to anyone else for $10 per month. Huzzah?[Via phoneArena]
82% of America never uses text messaging
While there has been quite the kerfuffle about banning texting while driving and educating Australian youngsters on text speak, a new survey shows that the vast majority of us haven't even sent a single SMS. Research firm Ipsos MediaCT polled individuals in a variety of countries and came to one general conclusion: If folks are using SMS, "they're using it frequently." On the flip-side, those who aren't savvy with text messaging aren't apt to just dabble in it. For instance, 82% of respondents in America said "that they never used text messaging, while 3% said that they used it monthly or less" and 15% reported using it "every week or even more. Who knows what that figure would be if carriers stopping charging an arm and a leg for per-use messaging.[Via Textually, image courtesy of ugo]
Survey finds 37% of Gen Y-ers text while driving
Oh sure, Americans are adamantly against texting while driving (in theory), but that's not stopping those mischievous Gen Y-ers from getting their SMS on while behind the wheel. According to a new survey of 1,200 people conducted by Nationwide Mutual Insurance (we know, we know), a third of the Gen Y-ers admitted to "always multitasking while driving," and while the "always" bit does indeed frighten us a tad, the real juice was in the next statistic: 37-percent said they sent text messages while driving. Before you start belaboring the imprudent youth, think long and hard about your own in-car cellphone usage -- remember that time you just had to reply "y w pep plz" in order to salvage your friend's pizza order? Tsk tsk. [Via About]
Would you elect the president via text message? 61 percent say 'Y'
According to a recent, sensational survey from Samsung Mobile, 61 percent of lazy, distracted, and impossibly ignorant cellphone users over the age 18 say they would be comfortable casting their vote for President of the United States via a text message. Meanwhile, the totally serious and meaningful survey found that eight in ten (or 80 percent) of teens under the legal voting age would use their mobile devices to cast a ballot in the election. Additionally, Samsung Mobile discovered that 90 percent of cellphone users would like an ice cream cone, while another 87 percent would like an ice cream cone only after eating a quarter-pounder with cheese. Soon Samsung Mobile hopes to determine what percentage, if any, of the people surveyed know who is running for the office of president.
Texting generation carrying spelling habits to birth certificates?
It's bad enough when exams have to cater to horrific spellers due to their SMS-based vocabulary, but we're doing everything we can to make ourselves believe this latest report simply isn't true. Reportedly, a social analyst in Australia somehow believes that the wide range in spellings in a few popular names is due in large part to the fact that we spend way too much time as a whole conjugating and hyphenating in order to get text-based messages across. Said analyst was even quoted as saying that "the use of a 'y' instead of an 'i' has hit epidemic proportions, as has the use of 'k' over 'c'." Realistically, we're not about to believe the SMS craze is actually affecting children's names en masse, but please, do your next born a favor and give him / her the vowels they deserve.[Via textually]
Finland's roadside toilets: now accessible only by SMS
While those in London can use SMS to actually find a lavatory, folks passing through Western Finland will be required to bust out their handset in order to relieve themselves in select public restrooms. In an attempt to curb vandalism, the Finnish Road Administration has implemented a system along Highway 1 which requires restroom visitors to text "Open" (in Finnish, of course) in order to let themselves in. The idea is that folks will be less likely to lose their mind and graffiti up the place knowing that their mobile number is (at least temporarily) on file, but it remains to be seen if uprooters will simply take their defacing ways elsewhere or actually excrete in peace. [Via Switched]
