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Technology

'Texting' Takes Over The Philippines 186

Posted by timothy from the has-anyone-seen-randy-waterhouse? dept.
Logic Bomb writes: "The New York Times has an article [Free reg. req.] about how "texting" -- the sending of short text messages via cell phone -- is taking over life in the Phillipines. I mean really taking over. People are texting while they drive, at funerals, instead of conversing over dinner, during tests in school, even to avoid the potential embarassment of asking someone for a date in person. This is an interesting contrast to, say, Finland (home of cellular giants like Nokia), where cell phones are everywhere but people actually use them to talk. The article gives some economic reasons for this difference, and mentions that this may be a good way to start bringing some of the poorer but developed countries into the digital age. Any thoughts from the Slashdot community? Is this a good thing, or is it an unfortunate imposition of the depersonalizing aspects of technology onto an unsuspecting culture?"
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"Texting" Takes Over The Philippine More

"Texting" Takes Over The Philippine

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  • perl isn't meant to be fast, it's a scripting language.

  • Online talk replacing real life talk (Score:4)

    by linuxonceleron ( 87032 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2000 @06:49PM (#955032) Homepage
    The same thing that seems to be happening in the philipines with SMS is similar to AIM in the US. Many people (mostly teens) use AIM to communicate instead of the phone. This has many advantages, you can talk to more than one person at once and can do other things while talking to them. I have had bad experience trying to get to know Real World people online. There was this girl I know who I only talked to online, she was in a few of my classes, but we rareley talked, but we had many long insightful online chats. I eventually got to know her well, and decided to ask her out, which obviously didn't go well :( But after she rejected me (she was nice about it though) and I got over it, we actually got to talking in class and stuff instead of talking online, and we're actually pretty good friends now. But I think that online is *not* the way to get to know someone/ask someone out.

  • The only thing that should be sent by SMS are "short mesages" with accordingly small content. Asking someone out on a date is nearly guaranteed to fail if you're a boy. If you can't manage to ask a girl out in person then you probably won't be able to talk to her intellectually for an evening and just stare at her stunning beaty. By the way girls like to get attention and asking them out to a date is only going to get you a "no" or "yes". Or if they are really evil a "maybe next time". Which if you are in love fail to recognize as "never". SMS is perfect for telling you are late or the meeting place has changed. But anything else than that it can lead to so many misunderstandings. But as a way to learn new technology and as a cheap in both senses of the word communication it works perfect. Also since there is a 160 character limitation to SMS messages you are to bound to always cut out some vital information. One short advice: If start to send 2 SMS msg's in a row because you had so much to say then call the person.
  • Remember?

    http://www.cryptonomicon.com
  • In Norway it's now illegal to drive and use a cell phone. If the police catch you - they'll give you a 500NKR (63$) fine/ticket.
  • I wonder whether lagging behind is the appropriate term? I know w/ TV technology (not even HDTV) U.S. Acted as "pioneers," allowing others to leapfrog but in turn "surpass" us. I assume tis the same w/ wireless.
  • I live in the UK and have been gadget prone since I was a teenager. I have had endless computers and all sorts of other gizmos, but I have never had a cell phone. I just don't like talking to people on the phone, I find it unnerving, they always sound like they are taking the piss.

    OK. Maybe I'm weird, but I don't mind talking face to face or using e-mail. I even carry a good old-fashioned pager around with me. It just does'nt bother me the same. Maybe other people are the same and hence this trend.

    Or maybe it's just that the line quality is so bad.

  • But I think that online is *not* the way to get to know someone/ask someone out.
    I met a girl in the mid 80s on a multi-line BBS MUD. We teamed up to solve some of the puzzles and spent untold hours gaming online. A few phone conversations revealed that she lived about an hour away. We met on "neutral ground" for dinner and a movie. Despite some awkwardness from a real life meeting, we hit it off quite well.

    Tomorrow will be our 11th Anniversary.

    Its been a great marriage strengthened by life on several continents, twice as many cities, a war, and a handful of other life experiences. I'm more than grateful for the chance to interact with the people behind the dim glow of text, a computer, and a MODEM.

    YMMV.

  • Hey, well here in Britain we have something called "Pay as you talk" no monthly charge, and you pay for mins when you use them, you have money stored on the phone, it works great, I am surprised you don't have it, it really took off here, the only problem is that you now have 6 year olds running around with their own cell phones!!!
  • That depends what kind of relationship you mean.

    Long-distance romantic relationships don't tend to work well--and on the Internet, where "nobody knows you're a dog" and all, should not be encouraged for those who might not know what they're getting into.

    But long-distance friendships can grow and thrive remarkably well; some of my best friends are people I've never met in person; there are a couple where I don't even know what they look like.
    --

  • Here in the Netherlands we have five mobile GSM-providers.
    And like Italy there are almost as many mobile phones as telephone lines.
    I use a little perlscript on my Linuxrouter which checks some other routers and servers.
    If one of them goes down I get a SMS message and an email message.
    SMS is great.
    I'm paying Fl 30 ($ 14) and get 100 minutes free.
    If I call more I pay Fl 0,30 a minute.
    And SMS is around Fl 0,40 ($ 0,19) a message.
  • Spam in my email account is one thing; I pay for a service and if I request it at the ISP level, I can have bulk mail, mail without the @ in it, IP addresses and email addresses filtered.

    This does not happen with cell phones.

    Recently I have been recieving text spam on my cell phone! A large portion of this spam is directly related to the use of my phone and long distance (I have recieved exercise and cruise ads too). No matter who I talk to at Cellcom (the provider that I use here in Israel, I cannot get them to stop any of it.

    My contract is ending soon.. perhaps it's time to switch companies.

    Rami James
    Guy with a grudge.
    --
  • I think everyone here who is less than 30 sends SMSs all the time. I receive tons of them everyday, even from people I really do not know. Broadcast messages coming mainly from the cell phone companies exist as well (but you can disable them), and many services are available through sms. During my last exams everyone had to show his own cell phone to the professors, so that they could see whether it was turned off or not and so that we couldn't be able to receive messages during the examination. It's not such a pain to type in your own message, because of the fact that new phones provide nice solutions to this problem: Nokia phones have an internal dictionary, so that you don't have for example to press the "2" key twice to have "b", you just press it once and when you finished typing that word, the phone looks up the various matching words. Ericsson provides a "chatboard", that is a small qwerty/qwertz keyboard that you can plug in to type your own messages.

  • Announcing it is rather different to releasing it. Having worked with the telecos, as it's part of my job, then current test implementations of GPRS are nowhere near 64k, more like 14.4, and in certain cases the base stations are drawing so much power, they catch fire (thanks Seimens).

    GPRS is nothing more than hype right now, it your speed is never guareented.

  • As SMS-messages are usually cheaper than a phone call, it's a way more convenient method of communication than the pay-per-second call.

    That's actually crap. I have had the use of SMS messages for over 4 years now, ever since Orange started trialling them in the UK. They were cool then because hardly anyone used the, and they were free. Nowadays I hate them. They are the most obnoxious, instrusive, tedious, annoying and expensive way to communicate in the modern day.

    Some of my friends seem to insist on having whole conversations via SMS messages. At 5p a time, a conversation can easily cost a quid. But because writing text messages is slow, tedious and restrictive (160 chars max), we could have the same conversation by actually PHONING each other for far less cost, because it would take a fraction of the time to say what we wanted to say. This is especially acute when you take into account the large numbers of free minutes of airtime which is often bundled into contracts.

    It is for this reason why I have stopped responding to text messages, which has brought new problems. People demand to know why you haven't responded, which is the intrusive part. If I don't want to accept a form of communication, I won't! I've already got too many damn phone numbers and e-mail addresses, I certainly don't need something as lame and annoying as text messages. I've dumped ICQ in a similar way. In my opinion, any form of "instand message" is bad. Get in the queue, cos there are 20 other people who wanted to contact me before you.

    Returning to the cost, I did sums once and worked out that it costs over £400 to send 1Mb of data over SMS. It costs £1.50 to send the same amount of data through your mobile through a 9600bps Nokia data suite (at peak times, assuming a cost of 25p per minute). And we all know how much it costs to send 1Mb of data over a 28.8kps modem and a land line.

    This cost is unacceptable considering it costs mobile providors absolutely nothing to send these messages. Phone calls use far more bandwidth and cost them far more. The odd text message is often more economical than a phone call, but a conversation of 15 messages each way is not. It's just annoying, and I *hate* typing out messages on a 12-button keypad.

    Down the pub, everything's changed. People constantly have their phones glued to their hands bashing out text messages under the table. And while this is going offtopic a bit, will people please note that it is NOT necessary to cycle through all the tunes that your phone can possibly play whilst in the pub.

    So please, don't SMS me. I long for the day when Orange introduce a service that automatically replies to people sending text messages with a message like "This person does not accept text messages, because they are lame, tedious, intrusive, expensive and annoying. JUST BLOODY PHONE THEM.

    xxx Stuii!
  • Well, I get /. headlines evey few hours to my cellphone through the text (SMS) system, it is great, now I only check /. when something I want to hear about is on it, which in turn reduces the load on the server, which in turn makes the world a better place :o)
  • No way man, I would slap these people with a lawsute so fast it would hurt, that is a pathetic idea, spam on my cell phone, I would like to see someone try, BTW, if anyone is intrested my cellphone number is +447730300034 fell free to spam me, have fun with it!
  • Text chat is much cheaper than voice chat.
  • Why does every slashdot article have to end with some variant of:

    Is this the end of [the net, government, taxes, civilization, the universe]?????

    Slashdot is turning into a luddite chicken-little mental-masturbation party.

  • In my country (I live in the Philippines) a sent SMS costs roughly PhP1.00 per message sent or US$0.02 (US$0.0228885 if you want to be exact using PhP43.69 to a US$1.00). At that price it is very rare for someone to make voice calls, which normally costs PhP8.00/US$0.18 to another mobile within the same cellular network. If you're curious on how much the pre-paid cellular rates are in the Philippines you might want to check out the website of the country's two predominant players, Globe Telecom [globe.com.ph] and Smart Communications [slashdot.org].

    The only time I would think someone would make a voice call here would be when a message cannot wait. This is due to the fact that a country with a landmass of a small US State can generate more SMS traffic than the whole continent of Europe [inquirer.net]. With that in mind it normally takes a few minutes to hours before a sent message is received.

    Adding to the features zyzko mentioned earlier mobiles here allow IRC-like and IM-like functions, which gives users of certain networks the ability to chat with people of similar interests based on one's ASL (Age/Sex/Location) or communicate with people on your ICQ contact list using your UIN.

    Personally one feature I would love to see in the future is updates whether there are classes or not. Take for instance my case, my school is located along the University Belt in Metro Manila, which is regularly flooded whenever there is a typhoon. By the very nature of my school they do not cancel classes until the last possible moment, which is normally after lunch, and when they do they do not have the courtesy of announcing it over the school's loud speakers. This is a real pain when you find out a few hours later and you have to walk through 1 to 3 feet of flood water just to ride on a bus that's stranded due to the floods and not mentioning the horrors of 4-5 hour traffic jams.

    As reported by the New York Times, there has been a lot of controversy over SMS from the Department of Education banning them during tests, vehicular accidents, stalkers, anonymity and malicious jokes [www.gra.ph]. What the Times did not report is that SMS issued a libel case against three comedians and a manager of a basketball player [inquirer.net], caused the unintentional closure of a national bank [www.gra.ph], a political movement known as the 'Silent Protest' was spread via SMS and that drug traffickers use it to coordinate their activities. Even the Japanese had a similar problem when kidnappers used pre-paid mobile phones [www.gra.ph] to hide there identities from law enforcers.

    If you want more information concerning GSM phones in the Philippines you can check it out here [www.gra.ph].



    The Graph: Substance that makes techies tick

    http://www.gra.ph/ [www.gra.ph]

  • why not have this feature for use with a palm pilot? then you could just "write" the text message.

    of course, nothing beats the spoken word. so, when will slashdot take posts via audio files?
  • Well I'm a Filipino and indeed, people here I think do send more text messages than all the other countries combined.

    I think the fad of txt messaging comes from its very affordable rate. You can get an sms capable phone for around P3500 (less than $85.) Free text messages are alloted usually at 100msgs /month (or more) with an excess rate of P1 per msg (less than $0.03.) (I think the very attractive rate appeals more than a computer with an Internet account which will cost you around $19 /month for around 30 hours.) A cellular voice call costs around $0.19 /min. Long distance rates internationally are as low as $0.40 /min.

    I must say that the rates here are cheaper than more technologically advanced countries developing these phones and protocols.

    The drawback, there are around more than 2 million GSM subscribers. Txt messages always lag (like the net - it sometimes take hours and even days for a party to receive a message) and networks are busy (even on the same carrier.) There are more people subscribing every minute than the carrier can keep up by upgrading their facilities.

    Cellphones are more affordable in terms of digital communication than the Internet (here.) Landline and computers cost too much.

    If prices were as cheap as what foreign carriers provide here, cellular communication would really boom. Vice versa, if Internet and computers are very cheap, Internet services will really boom!

    Johnlaw
    - from the Philippines

    "Mabuhay!"

    Authors note: I am not a text addict and I don't have any cellphones, beepers, or PDAs. I just 'use' other people's phones to text. :-)

  • When?

    When I'm driving -- especially on the highway or other multi-lane road -- I can easily get a better position for passing the alert-challenged, cell-chatting weenie in the next vehicle. It never fails. The person who's talking (or texting) on the cell can't possibly maintain as much concentration on their driving as I can. And I grin each time at them as I pass their vehicle. Their smug expression quickly vanishes. Mine does not. ;-)

    Admiral Yamamoto [mailto]

  • Texting is popular outside of the Philippines. I recently interviewed Akseli Anttila of the Nokia Research Center who describes the booming popularity of texting in Finland, despite fairly high costs. Full interview is at http://www.onlinecommunityreport.com/features/antt ila/ .
  • title says it all.
  • This is off-topic, so don't flame me. But why do you feel it should be free? You pay for the paper version of the Times, the on-line version has the same articles, yet somehow it has to be free since it's online? I don't follow your logic. You don't want to give personal information? I can appreciate that..... It's just that last half which I'm confused about. I've been on the web for a while, so I understand the motto of a free internet, but does that really apply to things like this?

    Feel free to take this to email if you'd like, if you don't feel like posting off-topic.
  • It's worse than that. People 4.5 feet away send SMS' to each other saying "Wassup!?"
  • Check out some of the newer Nokia 'phones. They have predictive test input whereby you press each key one and the 'phone tries to make up a word out of the available letter choices on each pressed key. forex, pressing 6-4-6-3 will give you "mind". Since "mine" is also spelt by using the same keys, you can cycle between all qualifying words. Saves a ton of time when sending text messages...

  • Text messaging (GSM Short Message Service) has taken off significantly in Europe, with reports suggesting that carriers have been surprised at the volume. They cite various reasons for people using SMS : short messages are cheaper than calls, short messages mean that people avoid having to have a 'gossipy' type conversation, short messages allow other people to think about the response, etc.

    I think a killer-app would be to have a community based (i.e. IRC channels, etc) chat system accessible by phones - it could work as a good semi-realtime way of keeping in touch with your community of friends.

    If you make a mint out of the above idea - send me a postcard.

  • It's called SMS - Small Message System

    You didn't spell "Short Message Service" correctly.

    xx Stuii!

  • I always wondered when it will be possible to read Slashdot via my new WAP-mobile. I could post my articles via SMS in about 15 - 30 parts (168 char's for sending SMS is not too much) starting with "WAPdot.org 1/15" to "WAPdot.org 15/15" and your nice servers will put it to gether like a puzzle. Who needs a preview anyway...

    Gery
    ------------------------------

  • From that article as well as others such as this one it looks like the U.S. is lagging behind in technology that is commonplace in almost every other industrialized nation.

    The U.S. has partially lost out with mobile technology: europe and a large proportion of the rest of the world have adopted GSM, and have also succesfully developed global roaming. The U.S. is happy to have regionally disparate and different networks. If I remember correctly, the same occurred with ISDN: the first east to west coast ISDN call was only carried out circa. 1996.

    This seems typical of the U.S. to some extent: so competitive that it sometimes self-defeating, and everyone loses out in the end.

    I can roam across Europe seamlessly, and to Australia as well, all with the one handset: that's pretty good I think.

  • The LAST thing I wanna see when I pick up a cellphone is "Hi 16/f wanna cyber?"
  • Ditto here in NZ. Vodafone had been offering SMS for free for months, I think they've just stopped now, and all of a sudden they are advertising cool prizes for using the service.

    Check out http://technolog y.nzoom.com/communications/2000/07/03/00028537.htm [nzoom.com] -- some interesting figures. It sure looks worth it for the carriers...
  • I'm from the Philippines, and I do own a GSM phone capable of SMS. It's a good thing actually, as it allows us to communicate fairly inexpensively.

    However, it has gotten to a point where people already have their noses buried into their phones while doing practically everything (including driving for heaven's sake!) They do it in church, in class, and it's not uncommon to see a bunch of young people seated around a table none of them talking, but all of them meditating on their SMS.

    Nowadays, when newspapers/magazines run profiles on young people here, when asked about hobbies, one of the first they answer is "text messaging" or "texting". Geez, whatever happened to stamp collecting, reading, music, or computer programming?

    When it comes to that, I don't like the implications because it means that even in the presence of something more worthwhile, or even in the presence of friends, you'd rather text away. Rumors spread via irresponsible use of SMS endangered some banks here by causing depositors to withdraw heavily.

    Such misuse or use at the cost of everything else is not a good thing.

  • Finland (Score:2)

    by VSc ( 30374 )
    Why, all right we use them to talk; but especially teens send SMS-s alot - that's cheaper than talking you know. Especially now with predictive input [nokia.com]...

    __________________________________________

  • Actually SMS (text-message) spam was deemed illegal in Finland as soon as it started to appear a few years ago. It remains to be seen what legislators in other countries think of it.

  • Here in the UK, we're not that far in front. WAP has just been released and it was a failure. One network has just released GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) which currently delivers 64k always-on internet to your phone!
  • Well, I get /. headlines evey few hours to my cellphone through the text (SMS) system, it is great, now I only check /. when something I want to hear about is on it, which in turn reduces the load on the server, which in turn makes the world a better place :o)

    Same here... only I get these messages within fifteen minutes of the story appearing. Perl is cool ;-)
  • I'd dispute the idea the texting is expensive. Say I want to arrange to go to the pub with a friend this evening. I can either ring him - which at peak time and across mobile phone networks is about 0.50 GBP per minute, which with standard chit chat and stuff will result in us talking for a good couple of minutes - i.e. it will cost me around 1 GBP. Or i can text him saying "Pub 8:00 tonight" and get the reply "8:30 ok?" or "no, can't do tonight" or whatever. Net cost 0.20 GBP. Much cheaper ya'see.
  • I'm looking forward to when all the networks in the US support text messaging. I think it would be fun to get little text messages....
  • ...if there were a voice to text interface. I can't imagine how useful this might be when your only choices are typing on a QWERTY the size of your hand, using script recognition, or using symbol recognition.
  • Erm, ok, I have been reading through all the posts, this is pathetic, could the UK have the best cellphone coverage. 1/ We have cell coverage almost everywhere! 2/ My tariff is 15 pounds a month, with 50 mins free calls per day, and just 1 pence per min after that! Come on people, this can't be true, prove me wrong, show how much better the reat of the world is!!!

  • What's it like in Finland (Score:4)

    by pasti ( 98345 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2000 @08:45PM (#955074)

    Texting is quite popular even here in Finland, but it's true what Timothy says, talking is even more popular. My personal cell phone bill consists of about 40% SMS, 40% talking and 20% monthly fees. I don't talk long (one reason is that my cell phone is rather old and has quite a poor battery) but I try to call rather than to text someone if I have something to say. That way I get an instant reply (not everybody hears the SMS beep) and can chat with him/her in real time. Plus, I find it nicer to talk than to punch buttons.

    The reason why my SMS fees still comprise 40% of my phone bill is that while I enjoy talking, I don't like to leave a message on an answering machine. I rather say it briefly in a text message. That way the recipient can read it when he/she wants and as many times he/she wants. Plus, many times when they have their answering machine on, they still can recieve SMS messages (in a meeting for instance) and perhaps even reply to them.

    And then there are these services. Sonera Zed for instance. Get stock quotes, weather information, cinema info, find the gas station with the lowest fees in town to name but a few. All these cost about twice or thrice the standard SMS fee (which is ~15-20 cents) and thus can easily comprise a large-ish portion of your bill.

    Many of the phones sold today have predictive text input and that speeds up typing considerably. On the other hand, it's a pain when your buddy has it and you don't: Once a friend of mine sent me a message to which I was replying when he sent another. I had to abort to see what he wrote and then started typing a reply for both. Third message arrived from the same person. This would have gone forever but he got tired and stopped :)

    Then there's this thing about privacy. You can't call your girlfriend from work but who would stop you from texting her. We Finns are quite shy in general and therefore find it easier to text rather than to talk aloud when there are others around. And it's more polite as the Japanese guy earlier pointed out.

  • SPAM on your mobile? It is here already. Have you heard of WAP? Just another way for advertising to be pumped down your throat.

  • actually i was just in the Phillipines last month and i even attended a meeting with Smart Telecom, the people who bring this monstrosity to the masses.

    i've seen it, and trust me, it's scary. you see loads of people plugging away at a stupid 9-key cellphone keyboard for hours at a time! not only that, but it's not all nice and menu-driven on a lot of the phones there. some of them need arcane commands that make 1970s mainfraims look user-friendly. they even have options to randomly find other people to chat with, like ICQ.

    this is in a country where the majority of people are below the poverty line and most people i saw (at least in Manilla) live in shacks on the side of railroad tracks.

    but what's *really* crazy about their cellphones? well there are a variety of companies delivering the service: the two biggies being Globe and Smart. but get this: if you're on a Smart phone, it's damned near impossible to connect a call to a Globe phone (and vice versa). in fact, if you're on a Globe phone it can often be difficult to reach a land-line (as land lines are still mostly owned by Smart).

    i visited a handful of telecommunications companies in various countries in SouthEast Asia. The Phillipines are by far the most backwards and strange country, in terms of telecommunications, that i have ever witnessed.

    - j
  • Here is a Time magazine article [time.com] from a year ago about how most of the world (except the U.S.) use cell phones for buying a soda from vending machines, running a car wash, zapping a digital picture to a friend and video conferencing. From that article as well as others such as this one [ecompany.com] it looks like the U.S. is lagging behind in technology that is commonplace in almost every other industrialized nation.

  • With something over 30.000.000 GSM subscribers, Italy is probably the country with the highest number of cellular phone users. If the proliferation of GSM phones goes on like in the last 2 years, next year Italy will have more cellular phones than inhabitants. The city of Padua already has more cellular phone subscribers than inhabitants.

    Sending short messages (SMS) is also very popular in Italy: during lessons at school, in the bus or train, while sitting on the water closet... there's no limit for its use.

    The US unfortunately has not a single cellular phone standard (like GSM in 90% of the world), and those used are not working outside the US/Canada. So north american users are isolated.

    But GSM is not the only technology, where the USA has years to catch up with other (also less-industrialized) countries: teletext in TVs is very useful and RDS on your car-radio also, but nearly unknown in the US.

    Again: The world is not US-centric! and the US is not the outrider for every technological achievment

    :-)
    ms

  • Somebody has got to figure out a better way to enter text data on small devices. Preferably one-handed.


    Nokia's predictive text entry works very well: basically each numeric key represents three or four letters as normal. You hit a key once for each letter entered, and the phone finds a word from its dictionary which "fits", then you hit the "*" key to cycle through matching words. e.g. type "8436" and "them" shows up. Hit "*" and it changes to "then", "theo", "vien". If the word you want isn't there, you fall back on the old way of entering, wherupon the word is added to your personal dictionary.
    --
  • red-ha red acc0rd14n fr33x0r! [userfriendly.org]

    Yes, that would be me. Accordioning is the new texting. Just ask Emmett [smackfu.com].

  • Re:I wouldn't mind this... (Score:3)

    by cluke ( 30394 ) on Thursday July 06, 2000 @12:04AM (#955081)
    yeah, yeah - and then at the other end... an interface to change the text back into voice again! Perhaps you could even sample the person's voice with your phone so that it could even sound like them!

    Truly, who could have forseen such innovative uses for the humble phone?
  • This looks pretty nifty...Has this been mentioned on slashdot? I was just looking through freshmeat and saw all the juicy news grabbing/first posting/other paraphanalonia applications...This could make out for a nice story.
    -Swift ::
  • 2 Messages.

    U want 2 go 4 pincic @ marina?

    Yes. CU there.

    Sure people have a tendency to "yak on", but that's more likely to happen in a spoken conversation. You're point about being scared to talk to each other is a valid one though.

    On the other hand, the potential for misinterpretation is greatly increased. I mean, it's bad enough on the Internet, but with the limited length of SMS, what seemed clear to you could be at best incomprehensible and at worst offensive.
  • It's official: there are now more people who own a mobile in the UK than not. I'm still in the 48% of people who don't and people are beginning to look at me funny. Text messaging seems to have taken over the lives of quite a few friends at college, but I guess listening to someone writing a text msg on the train has got to be better than wankers shouting HELLO? YEAH, I'M ON THE TRAIN...
  • I have a phone with predicitive input and it really is a useful innovation. There are few things which have a real effect on your life but this is one of them.

  • Touch screens, the dictionary, people-indepenent recognizers, the whole shebang, is costly to make. Keypads are well-known, easily pumped out, and therefore cheaper. The screen-size with the resolution necessary to give proper feedback to humans writing also makes the unit bigger, and that's a problem. A few phones have the pen-input, but it never seems to take off. I guess the early-adopters don't find them compelling enough to drive down the price enough to compell the standard consumers.

    Motorola's latest entry into the Chinese market is, IIRC, pen-input only. It's very expensive, and sold as a high-end gadget.

  • Hear hear!

    Staying in touch with friends and family is an extremely big thing among Filipinos. Neal Stephenson hit the nail right on the head when he wrote this in Cryptonomicon:

    ``They will want to communicate with their families--the Filipinos are incredibly family-oriented. They make Jews look like a bunch of alienated loners.''
    I think it's fair to say that this is one of those cases where a technology turns out to have a pretty good "fit" with the culture.
  • The SMS (Short Message Service) phenomenon has been quite common in Germany for some time. Everywhere you go you see people punching messages into their cell phones, or "handys", or you hear the ubiquitous beep of someone receiving messages. Come to think of it, it's not just a German thing, it's all over Europe. One of my roommates texts her friends and parents at home in England from our apartment in Germany. I think it's a really great idea since messages cost around $.25 per, and it's a quite a bit cheaper than calling someone up when you just want to ask a question.

    That's my $.25/12.5

    -----

  • This is an interesting contrast to, say, Finland (home of cellular giants like Nokia), where cell phones are everywhere but people actually use them to talk.

    Actually sending SMS-messages [google.com] (Short Message Service) is extremely popular at least here in Finland (where the mobile phone density is highest in the world, well over 50%). Admittedly, people also use the phones to talk.:)

    In addition to text messages the SMS system can be used to send e.g. email, faxes, pictorial greetings and sounds for the mobile phone, either using GSM phone or web interface.

  • We have the same situation in Ireland, and it's been identified as a problem for the Uptake of WAP and mobile internet services... ~J
  • Somebody has got to figure out a better way to enter text data on small devices. Preferably one-handed.

    Scary thought: Morse code would work. You can key one-handed and blind. It's faster than trying to enter text via a numeric pad. It's tough to learn, but it could be the next teen-age craze. Somebody's got to put Morse input in a cell phone.

  • Pretty good 99%-accurate writeup dude on what's happening in Metro Manila.


    The Graph: Substance that makes techies tick

    http://www.gra.ph/ [www.gra.ph]
  • AFAIK, over a GSM network the only encrypted parts of the signal exchange are between the handset and the base station. From there on it uses the same telco system as landline calls.

    Saying that though, I have no idea how SMS (short messaging service, text messaging over GSM) works, although I doubt it would differ as far as encryption goes too much between normal calls.


    --
  • I'm from the mentioned country, Finland, and even though we do use the cellulars to talk too, the sending of SMS, or "texting", has reached somewhat hideous levels here too. I'm sure the examples of the article are not unheard of here either (though I haven't seen any in funerals yet).
  • The Nokia 3210 has word recognition (not voice recognition). You start typing and it guesses the word you want based upon a dictionary. The major constraint is the limited dictionary size.
  • The cost of communicatig over SMS-messages is not that simple - at current rates here (I live in Finland, BTW) sending an SMS-messages costs about as much as talking for a minute. (0,99 FIM, about $0,17) and even a "simple conversation" requires 2 messages - that's two minutes of talking compared to 320 character of text (one message is 160 characters). On the other hand, SMS-message costs always the same, and voice rates depend very much on who you call and when. (Mobile network vs. fixed network, mobile operator, time of day etc...)

    But as previous poster mentioned, this is very common among teens. My brother, who is 17 years uses more money for SMS-messages than he uses for voice-calls and he is quite conservative mobile-phone user.

    The other very significant use of SMS-messages are different services - you can get new ringing tones, pictures to your phone (operator and other logos), different news-services, stock-quotes, the showing times of movies in your city, horoscopes, jokes - just about anything you can think of. (The newest "boom" are different dating-services where you can search for a date using your phone) I use the weather-service constantly - I skydive and wind it is important to know what the weather is at the airport (mainly how fast the wind blows) - I don't want to drive 40 minutes just to find out that it is impossible to jump. My mobile phone gives an answer in 10 seconds. These services are still awfully expensive - from FIM 1,99 to FIM 9,90 ($ 0,30 to about $2) - I hope that the upcoming GRPS-networks (promised to arrive early next year) will fix this when the phone is always connected to network and you pay only for transfered data - it makes "push" -services much more usable and hopefully will increase the use of services and bring prices down.
  • If this is BT Cellnet you mean, they don't seem to be able to make up their minds how fast it is.

    Seriously though, this [bbc.co.uk] article on the BBC site shows how you can SMS a barcode of a book or CD to a certain number belonging to a company, and it will SMS you back informing you how much it will cost online (from Amazon; there maybe others as well), and give you the option of buying the item online. Havent used it yet, but very very cool :)


    --
  • Here in Serbia situation is preety similar. Many people have a mobile phone, they bought a pre-paid card and most of time they are sending SMS messages, since it is cheaper. It is free, actually. I do not find it wrong, since we are in very bad economical situation. Still one minute of talking over mobile is expensive for most of young people.
  • By using,

    Username: woof23b
    Password: abc123
  • About a year ago, there was an article in Wired about Nokia and cell phones in Finland. I'm no expert on Finland, but the article made it seem like everyone was "texting" a ton (although I assume they still actually talk.) It told about students who would get together after school in huge groups and play cops and robbers type games throughout the streets using their cell phones to send short email type messages to eachother. So, from what I know, I would have to disagree with Timothy's statement, at least the "in contrast part." I don't have a clue to the actual extent of "texting" in either of these two countries though. Just a bit of info.
  • The most interesting part of the article was the part about government troops and rebel guerillas trading insults via text.

    Does SRS support attachments or scripting?

    k.
    --
    "In spite of everything, I still believe that people
    are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
  • If someone recalls the articles in Wired and Time (and prolly a huge load of other magazines) he'll probably remember that this boom started in Finland a couple of years ago.

    As SMS-messages are usually cheaper than a phone call, it's a way more convenient method of communication than the pay-per-second call.

    Additionally it gives one the possibility to talk (err... type) about stuff one's not comfortable about talking face-to-face (err... voice-to-voice). At least in Finland typical SMS-messaging users can be described as teenagers, whom (as we all remember) have needs for this type of communication.

    <SARCASM>My point? Just trying to tell everyone that they're following Finland's example - again.</SARCASM>

  • In Switzerland, where I live, people are getting mad with messages:
    my girlfriend sends about 100 a month (3 per days)
    I've heard some friends speaking about 200 a month
    Swisscom, the leading provider of mobile phone communications in Switzerland are sending 1 million messages each day! ( they have about 500'000 subscribers I think)
    Switzerland is known to be one of the countries where text messages are the most used... (the cost of a message equals about 30 seconds of conversation, and swiss people like getting to the point without talking much, and messages are good for this task)
  • If it keeps catching on, then don't you think that this will be heaven for spammers? Imagine, people using this during church and getting a message about buying holy books

    Hey - don't joke. It's already happening here in Australia. I've received a number of pieces of spam from my mobile provider about competitions to win Olympic tickets; there has been serious discussion about using SMS sell "Team X just won the grand final" shirts minutes after the final siren. Take all the people using the mobile cell for the stadium as a mailing list, and boom - instant spam.

    It doesn't help that Aussie mobile providers are doing the serious hard sell - one provider is offering all SMS messages for free for a few months, just to get people signed up and hooked...

  • I beg to differ, this is only new for the US, the rest of the world has had GSM and text messaging for quite a while.

    True, but that's only because our stupid phone companies can't do anything right. While many other locales had to deal with poor terain for landlines, the US stuck with 'em. Portable phones (and HDTV) are probably the technologies which the US is farthest behind everyone else in.

    It's kind of sad in some respects. US trying to play catch up, and ending up going for substandard result, yet having the US public willingly pay for it because they *think* its the best they can get?

    Obligatory comparison to Microsoft. Sorry.

  • you can send SMS messages via the web which is a good thing - no cost involved. the sites i use are http://www.quios.com and http://www.mtnsms.com Happy SMSing people
  • I use e-mail for a huge amount of commuication, mostly because it's unobtrusive (quiet) and can be stopped at a moment's notice. I've got systems in place to send and retreive e-mail from anywhere, and I can use a decent sized keyboard (TRGpro + Nokia 8810 + Thinkoutside folding keyboard).

    For me SMS is just a small part of the notification system, but putting together the equipment to pull it off wasn't cheap. The herd are simply latching onto a cheap near-equivalent. And yes, the US is hugely lagging behind on this sort of innovative low-rent use of mobiles - for the rest of the world this is a non-story.

  • 2nd (Score:2)

    by xant ( 99438 )
    I met my wife on good old IRC. Yesterday was our second anniversary. And she was the THIRD real girlfriend I met in a chatroom (which goes to show that IRC creates relationships that are neither more nor less stable than the much-vaunted Real World - the outside thing, not the TV show).
  • A kanji character normally needs 16x16 pixels to be represented on a screen.
    • Kanji fonts are big (256 bits per character * 4,000 or more characters = 128 KB, or the size of the NES Contra ROM).
    • Each kanji (256 pixels) can be represented by two or three 8x8 pixel kana (128 or 192 pixels). And there are fewer kana (two types and about 52 of each), so switching would let the displays run in character cell mode instead of pixel mode, making the display driver chips simpler and cheaper.
  • Don't be a slave to your phone. Tell her once that you won't be able to reply if you are busy.
    And don't [reply].
  • I live in Manila, and am at the older end of the so-called 'generation text'. In addition to the reasons mentioned in the article, texting has taken off because it's unobtrusive. When you call someone on his cell phone, you worry about interrupting him - with text he can reply at his leisure. Given the number of dead spots around the city, it also makes it much more likely you'll get through. Text is really more instant messaging than chat, because you have to know the number of the person you're exchanging messages with. Filipinos don't care much for anonymous conversation, which brings me to my next point... Another reason for it's popularity is it always makes one feel connected. Pinoys (as we like to call ourselves), more than other cultures I have known, value their friends, and are proud of them. Sending and receiving messages in public is subtle bragging about how many friends you have, although the irony of conversing by SMS when your other friends are in front of you is unfortunately lost on many - hopefully this is just a novelty effect. Another related phenomenon and of interest to /. users is the popularity of prepaid cards, which allow anonymity - all you need to do is buy a new sim card (a chip-based card that slides into your phone), and you've got a new number/identity. Not even the telco, let alone the government, can listen in/track you. Despite costing twice as much as a postpaid line per minute, prepaid makes up at least 75% of all cellphone users, and growing (granted, the difficulty of getting credit for a postpaid line is also a factor). We are very privacy-conscious, perhaps due to abuses dating back to the Spanish, Japanese, and American colonizers, and as recent as the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. We resisted a national ID system, rightly fearing that the government would abuse it, and laugh at Singapore, where a passport is needed to buy a sim card. Many people don't have bank accounts because they don't trust the banks. Watching the privacy issue unfold over the Net, I wonder whether our experience might have something to contribute. What we have is essentially a system where your identity is tied to your number, but only those you choose to reveal it to can make the connection. When you tire of your number and all that is associated with it, you simply get a new one, realizing of course you lose the benefits along with the liabilities. It will be an interesting experiment, because it is likely that B2C will happen over the cellular phone here, prepaid cards will be e-cash, and sim cards will be identities.
  • Here in Japan, everybody has a cell phone.


    Everybody.


    Many people use them to send email. It's cheaper (connect time is very expensive here), it's asynchronous, and it's more polite, if you happen to be on a crowded train or similar. This despite the fact that typing in Japanese on a cell phone keyboard is a huge pain. Characters are typed using a phonetic alphabet that has over 50 glyphs organized by initial consonant -- all the "k" syllables are on one key, which you press up to 5 times to get the one you want -- and since most Japanese kanji characters need two or three phonetics, plus a menu-based selection in case of homophones (of which there are huge numbers) it can take more than ten keystrokes to enter a single kanji (and many Japanese "words" are combinations of two kanji). All of this done with the thumb of the hand holding the phone.

    But people still do it. Abbreviations are very popular in Japan, and you can forego the kanji and just leave it as phonetics if it's clear enough from context.

    One nice thing about this is that you don't have to hold the little microwave transmitter next to your head. Similarly for the new cell phones that have video cameras in them -- you hold them in front of you (but you don't type text in that case, obviously).

    Meanwhile the cell phone manufacturers are packing more functionality into the phones. My wife's cell phone has a tamagotchi living in it. Plus all the functions of an address book and memo organizer. All on a 3cm screen. But small is beautiful in Japan, and you can pack a lot of info into a small space (16x16 pixels per kanji) even if it takes a long time to type it.

  • We have SMS in New Zealand and it's okay to a point. There are some people though who I just wish I hadn't given my phone number to.

    There's one person in particular who normally is a heck of a nice person, but stuck in a boring receptionist job. A minimum of three times a day I get that annoying beep beep -- beep beep, only to get the same boring "what are u up to?" message. It wouldn't be so bad if she just called and asked, but replying means stopping everything I'm doing to punch in an answer through a stupid 9 key keypad.

    This is worse than instant messaging where you can at least pretend to be invisible and if not, there's a decent keyboard. Switching your phone off is possible but then it defies the point of having the phone in the first place.


    ===

  • "Texting in Finland" (Score:4)

    by jfanning ( 35979 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2000 @07:40PM (#955150) Homepage

    Since I am living in Finland I think I can safely comment on this.

    Sending SMS messages is incredibly popular in Finland and there are an amazing amount of services available via SMS.

    Some numbers:

    Over 65% of Finns own a cell phone (population is about 5.5 million)

    Last year there were 650 million SMS messages sent

    And the speed some of them can type on those phones is pretty amazing too :-)

    Also, if I recall correctly, the number of cellphones exceeded the number of fixed lines in Finland last year

    Jody

  • I think, as a teen who uses a wearable computer and uses AIM to talk with everyone all the time, that your understanding of why teens use AIM is incomplete. Sure, we can talk to many people, and do other things while talking to them. But, I use AIM because sometimes phone conversations have certain disadvantages, such as the monitoring of my phone usage by parents (vs the inability of my parents to monitor my computer usage), and, as you alluded to - the ease of introduction on AOL. There is a certain lady who I am really into, and I used to be good friends with her but that died. Now I am interested in her again, but just talking to her in person to start off with would be to, um, big. So AIM started us off. Then I alluded to my wanting of a phone conversation, which happened, and then she finally comes over to my house. This is because AIM is less personal and more universal. People are more accepting. But, there are huge disadvantages - I am a sarcastic character, but also despides the acronymns "jk" and "lol", so my sarcasm and inuendos are often lost. This however, makes a good transition to the use of the phone.

    More on topic, however, I feel that "texting" has its uses. For instance, when speaking would not be appropriate, or would not be so private. Say, on a train, or in a movie. In the states there was a Motorola Ad campaign a while back showing a man at the opera who received a phone call in the middle of the performance who was later chastised heavily and embarassed, then it shows a man who was able to receive a text message through a motorola device and communicate inconspicously. Or if you are speaking of private matters and don't want to run the risk of someone overhearing you, or what you are saying would offend someone. This addition to cell phones is enormously beneficial. However, I think that this should be used sparingly, and where it is appropriate, not just where it is a nother option. If I had my choice of talking to someone over the phone vs. the AIM network, I would choose the former, same goes for cellphone voice vs. texting, but there are cases where the later in both scenarios are the more desireable, and thus, should not be dismissed.

  • Someone else has probably posted this already but here is the link [nytimes.com].

    Wonder why they haven't closed off this access point like they did the partners thing... I don't feel like giving my personal information for something which I believe should be free.
  • Morse code is posibly the least inuitive interface ever devised in the history of communication. People whine constantly about how hard Graffiti is to learn on the Palm and it's worlds easier to learn/use than Morse code. I think that putting morse on a cell wouldn't work for this very reason, although it would be cool to have a cell phone that had a big red button like those cheap walktie-talkies I used to play with when I was a kid (particularly if it made teh loud beeping noise on the phone like the walki-talkies did...).
  • "home of mobile phone giants.."?

    Oh please tell me where the other companies beside NOKIA are:). But seriously, texting has become extremely popular here in Finland lately. Especially young people (ie teenagers) use them in incredible amounts.

    The possible reasons for this is, besides the veritable plethora of mobile phones around here, the fact that we have lots and lots of services available via texting. Services ranging from weather forecasts to reserving your movie tickets, searching the whitepages or checking stockprices, even chat-rooms and uploadable modifications to your phone (like ringing tunes and operator logos). Shortly put, we have it all.

    Personally I don't use any of those services (well ok, I did load a neat logo for my phone), but these services are definetly attracting a lot of revenue for the teleoperators, since the average user of those services doesn't pay his or her own phonebill but lets daddy or mommy take care of it.

  • I can see it already... (Score:3)

    by Antipop ( 180137 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2000 @06:35PM (#955168) Homepage
    The Phillipines version of the "Wassup!?" Budweiser commercials:

    Man stands still for 45 seconds hitting buttons on his cell phone...
    ...across town another guys cell phone rings. He picks it up to the (text) message "WASSUP!?".

    -Antipop
  • And hard. There are times when it is NOT appropriate to be connected to your friends and whatnot. Not only are they doing it while driving, which is IMAO moronic, but they're doing it at funerals, which is disrespectful to everyone. Someone needs to tell these people to throw their phones into the sea and talk to people face to face, because they crossed the line.
  • Here is what it is like for me in Australia (I am 16). Everyone in school has ICQ (that's ICQ not AIM, we all get ICQ because a friend cons us into it). The advantage of ICQ is that u can talk to serveral ppl at once (although in conversation it is hard to do more than 3-4). OK - Mobile phone messages: Approx. 1/3 Australians have mobiles It is popular among Teenagers to send SMS.. often I get stupid jokes like "r u lonesome 2nite" etc.. Most people have Nokia ph's (or the same screen size), because there seems to be a few rude ascii art pictures going around. I think the ettiquette behind SMS is kinda weird. Since PHs don't have QWERTY keyboards (most atleast - I have a ChatBoard), most messages r short & meaningful. I mean If someone never recieves SMS, then u send something like a Love You message, then it means a lot to someone... Unlike so much with phonecalls, everyone loves recieving SMS (it's the noveltly i guess). That's my story.
  • Actually, you are mostly right, but not quite.

    Relationships with a strong online component CAN work. My girlfriend of 5 years and I got to know eachother online. It's not impossible, and can actually help if either of you is shy or you just want to know the actual person first.

    However - this is the catch: we met through the local BBSing scene, not over the 'net in general. We were only about 15 minutes apart once we decided to meet, and could spend 'quality time' together.

    Really, online relationships don't have anything against them other than that being online generally means being far far apart. Long-distance relationships of ANY kind just don't work very well (despite a few exceptions), no matter how they were started. I can always see impending doom whenever someone instantly 'falls in love' with someone living 2000 miles away, and flies down there to see them. That kind of thing is a recipe for disaster, and usually happens to emotionally unstable people to begin with. :/



    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])

  • It Makes Perfect Sense (Score:5)

    by dmccarty ( 152630 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2000 @07:25PM (#955179)
    ...for a country with 7,000 islands [odci.gov], 80 million people and a tiny fraction of that number of telephones. I grew up in the Philippines for 5 years (my parents are missionaries there) and the spotty telephone service, coupled with the outgoing demeanor of Filipinos among friends but extreme shyness in public makes it no wonder that something like this took off.

    It took us 3 years and a big bribe--affectionately referred to as "grease money"--to just get a second phone line installed in our house. And that's not bad from PilTel [piltel.com.ph], whose customer service antics include severing our telephone wires while performing "routine maintenance checks."

    There are still many areas where the only way to get messages in and out is via Ham radio operators to a telegraph office. I'm not kidding! So in an area that's beset by typhoons, earthquakes, seasonal floodings and volcanoes, building and maintaining land lines is extremely difficult compared to simply putting up a few wireless towers.

    (BTW, the 1 peso fee for texting is about $0.02 at today's exchange rate.)
    --

  • I'm sorry, Karma Pimp. You're right. I'm going to start changing my life today!

    The first thing I'm going to do is go outside for a walk. Then I'm going to have a conversation with a real live human being. After that I hope to discover that a whole world awaits me outside of my computer screen!

    I'm giddy with excitement at the possibilities! Thank you, Karma Pimp! Your wisdom didn't get lodged in my earwax! I have heard your message loud and clear! Today is the first day of the rest of my life, and I will make the most of it!

    All of you slashlings, come! Follow me! Karma Pimp has opened my eyes to something called the "Real World", and it's full of wonder and joy!

    Think of all the time we have been wasting, typing words on a screen and trying to convince ourselves that they have meaning! What fools we have been!

  • If it keeps catching on, then don't you think that this will be heaven for spammers? Imagine, people using this during church and getting a message about buying holy books. And imagine how many spams they will get. Love technology, though the spammers just love to ruin it. FYI - it's good to see in the phillipines there is no need to socialize with humans anymore.. ::phew:: I thought tv was going to be the reason why no one will socialize anymore


    Ben Cathers - president/partner
  • (A balikbayan is a Filipino living abroad who's returning home for a visit).

    I go back to the Philippines to visit relatives about once a year; my last visit there spanned a week in late March/early April. I was there for the "Pope is dead" rumour, which thanks to a combination of "texting", word-of-mouth and the strong Catholicism (it was a Spanish colony for 300 years), spread like wildfire. I got to see and experience texting first-hand.

    One reason for the high adoption of cell phones is that the wait for a land line is incredibly long. My cousins, who live in a suburb of Manila, were on the installation waiting list for over a year. For many people, the only way to get a phone within a reasonable period of time is to go mobile.

    A mobile phone is a very handy thing in the Philippines, especially in extremely crowded cities like Manila, with a population of about 10 million (and a possible 2 or 3 million transients who get missed in the surveys). Traffic is so bad that they had to establish a system in which certain roads are off-limits to cars with odd- or even-numbered license plates at peak times, depending on the day. Running late is a common occurrence, and having a cell phone means that you can reach anyone who's waiting for you or find out how late the person you're waiting for will be.

    Texting is much cheaper than using up your air time. There are many popular cell phone plans that offer 100 or 250 free text messages per month. Among the teen- and 20-something crowd, texting is most often used to let your friends know where you are or where to meet up. It proved to be extremely handy in "The Fort" -- a very popular and crowded mall of bars, clubs and restaurants located in an area similar to San Francisco's Presidio (along with the new club, Orange, it's a fun place to hang out...tell 'em I sent you).

    There are services already available in the Philippines that we here in North America have yet to see. Some banks in the Philippines offer ATM-like functions over your cell phone -- you can check your bank account or be notified of things like payments due or maturing funds.

    (In case you were wondering, the two official languages of the country are Filipino and English. Most of the people in Manila speak workable or better English, and most of the signage in Manila is in English.)

    Every shopping center and more than a few street market stalls carry cell phones or cell phone accessories. I'm still kicking myself for not getting the Neon Genesis Evangelion face plate for my Nokia. My cousin has one of the phones with a flash RAM updateable ringer. His current phone ring is Aqua's "Barbie Girl", which somehow appals and amuses me at the same time.

    As for the cultural aspects -- there's "hiya" (pronounced "hee-YA"), which can be translated as "shyness", "shame" or perhaps "reserve". It's a traditional Filipino trait not to be too outspoken, but you have to remember that a fair bit of North American culture has seeped in, thanks to a large expatriate community, radio and television. Traditionally, you were introduced to members of the opposite sex at well-chaperoned parties held at someones' parents house (many people still don't leave home until they're married there), but these days meeting people while out is increasingly becoming the norm. The teens and twenty-somethings are caught in the pull between the traditional and newer ways to socialize -- it seems that texting seems to be the best compromise. Perhaps texting might be the future of geek pick-ups at Linux conventions!

    Just another "The Thrilla from Manila",
    Master of Kode Fu

  • The killer app (Score:3)

    by l-ascorbic ( 200822 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2000 @10:35PM (#955198)
    Not if you've got a newer phone. [nokia.com]
    Lots of new phones come with predictive text input [tegic.com] which lets you press each key just once, and it predicts what word you're typing based on a built in dictionary. Much quicker.

    Text-messaging is great: the US is really missing out. I find it indispensible for several reasons. Firstly its great if you're in a noisy bar or club, where its impossible to hear a phone. Secondly its cheap: i pay £.06p ($.09) per message, as opposed to £.30p/min to call another network mobile.
    Lastly, and most importantly, texting is great for flirting. Little mesages that you'd never dream of saying by voice, are somehow easier to say by text!
  • And that is why it is better.

    I can leave a message for someone across the office and when they're not busy they check their email and can answer my non time critical question.

    It often gets very hectic if there are always several people trying to vie for face time. Email allows for more efficient scheduling.

    Also, I don't have a cell phone. I hardly ever give people my phone number if they want to contact me, I give them my email address.
  • Think about it, just because the QWERTY standard is familiar (well, it is a standard after all), doesn't mean that it is the best for every circumstance.

    I would not mind learning a new typing convention if it's learning curve isn't too steep and if it fits the use.

    I keep thinking about the one-handed keyboard [infogrip.com]. Wouldn't something similar to this be of great use as opposed to a 40 key (absolute minimal punctuation, numbers and letters) pad? Key combination pads are the way that I would like to see miniature communication in the immediate future.

    Speech recognition is a long way off in this size that would make a 65,000 word vocab small enough to carry around.

    Rami James
    Guy with a cellphone.
    --
  • Oh, yeah, that's definately true. I guess I wasn't really including friendships.

    Online love type relationships basically need intimacy, and often lack it. You don't really need intimacy with 'normal' friends, although it's sometimes pretty nice to be able to hang out in person from time to time.

    Actually, friendships probably benefit a lot from starting online.


    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])

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