SMS

U.S. text usage hits record despite price increases

SAN FRANCISCO--Despite a 100 percent price increase over the past couple of years, SMS text messaging usage is exploding in the U.S.

American cell phone subscribers are sending more text messages than ever, according to a recent survey released here Wednesday by the mobile industry's trade association CTIA. About 75 billion SMS text messages were sent in June, averaging about 2.5 billion messages a day, the report said. This represents an increase of 160 percent over the 28.8 billion messages reported in June 2007.

Short message service, or SMS, text messaging first became popular in Europe … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 795: New Zealand judge misses entire point of Internet

In the news today, NBC fails to medal in its online streaming of the Olympics, but Google never fails to meddle (by driving up and down your private roads). OK, that was a Tom joke. Also, the Obama text dissected (but not in a political way), the Pentagon and its fake cat brains, and how to vote better. Listen now: Download today's podcast

EPISODE 795

FCC outs HTC Dream’s dimensions: It’s smaller than the iPhone 3G http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/25/fcc-outs-htc-dreams-dimensions-its-smaller-than-the-iphone-3g/

iPhone 3G reception just fine, say curious Swedes with engineering degrees http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/25/iphone-3g-reception-just-fine-say-curious-swedes/ … Read more

The Obama SMS: (Un-)gratifying instantification

So the SMS went out to hundreds of thousands of Obama supporters. Not everyone got it at the same time (according to Textually.org, it took about 15 minutes for the bulk of the messages to get through the carriers' systems) or, in some cases, at all, but overall, the pre-announcement buzz (including some fake VP announcements -- "Michael Phelps!") was palpable and the word was spread.

"Be the first to know whom Barack picks as his running mate," had been the campaign's promise. The only problem: Those who had signed up to be the … Read more

Twitter kills U.K. SMS updates in cost-cutting move

European users of Twitter can no longer receive text message updates on their cell phones, in a temporary move designed to keep the start-up's telecom bills down.

Twitterers can still use its U.K. number, +44 762 480 1423, to send updates to the site. But that number will no longer deliver text-message updates back to users, and recommends that they use the Twitter mobile site or a third-party client like TwitterBerry, Twitterrific, TwitterMail, or Cellity.

"When you send one message to Twitter and we send it to ten followers, you aren't charged ten times--that's because … Read more

Kwiry puts Netflix, Amazon in your pocket

This morning, SMS reminder service Kwiry is adding a new tool to its repertoire called shortcuts. It goes beyond the original implementation of adding keywords and photos to look up later, and turns it into a tool that links up with various Web services you might be using.

The first implementation of that is with Netflix. If you're a subscriber of the DVD-by-mail service, you're now able to simply send an SMS to the service with "Netflix" and the movie title and it will automatically be added to your queue. This is one of those things … Read more

Texting champ wins $50,000

Parents may want to rethink scolding their kids for texting at the dinner table, since it could win them a ton of money.

A 20-year-old college student from Cleveland State University just won the $50,000 grand prize in a national texting competition held in New York this week.

The winning text that Nathan Schwartz sent was, "Does everybody here know the alphabet? Let's text. Here it goes ... AbcDeFghiJKlmNoPQrStuvWXy & Z! Now I know my A-B-C's, next time won't you text with me?" Schwartz completed the text in 50 seconds with no mistakes.

Cell phone … Read more

The rising cost of texting

If you thought gas prices were rising too quickly, check out what's been happening to text messaging.

Since 2005, rates to send and receive text messages on all four major carrier networks have doubled from 10 cents to 20 cents per message. This percentage of increase is on par with similar price hikes at the gas pump as crude oil prices skyrocket. In 2005, Americans paid on average about $2.27 per gallon for gas compared with more than $4 a gallon today.

Last October, Sprint Nextel was the first to introduce the new price of 20 cents per … Read more

Let go of my texts--all 75,000 of them! The 9th Circuit speaks

Being an attorney with an iPhone, I've wondered about the privacy of my SMS-text messages and whether they can be withheld from prying eyes. I don't mean that dinner date across from you, but in a larger sense. Think about what we've all begun to say via text messages: Carrie Underwood got dumped this way and Detroit's mayor was brought down by his text messages, for example. Like it or not, texting has become a communication medium that is here to stay, meaning that the contents of those messages are also susceptible to legal discovery, i.… Read more

The power of SMS in an age of Twitter

Over the past six months, I've discovered a great way to interact with my customers. It has been around for a long time, but it has only been recently that I've put it to good use. In fact, several of Alfresco's biggest deals have been closed using this technology.

Which technology? The lowly text message.

SMS doesn't have the buzz of Twitter nor, at only 160 characters per text, the length of an email. But SMS/text messaging has become my preferred tool to interact with prospects and customers (when not talking to them on the phone, of course).

Why?

Because texting is personal, direct, and virtually guaranteed to reach the intended recipient. It's also somewhat secure, since most people can't (or don't know how to) forward SMS messages.… Read more