SMS Weblogs / Textually / 2003 / 11

Rival public payphones in Australia may be given a last breath of life with the addition of text-messaging capabilities and email-capable payphones, reports The Ag

Parents of absent South Australian students could receive SMS text messages informing them of their child's absence under a $1 million package to reduce truancy, according to ninems

Cell phones that dial only 911 will be given free to seniors in unincorporated Palm Beach County from next week, according to the Sun Sentine

Helen Algar believes her teenage son died after being on the receiving end of a silent but potent form of bullying - text messagin

The Italian State Police has created a new text messaging service to allow citizens to now whether a car was stolen, according to AGI onlin

Joi Ito via Gizmodo describes a new report written for Motorola by social theorist Sadie Plant - well known for her study on the "thumb generation", which asserted that children who grow up using mobile phones and gaming consoles are changing the shape and dexterity of their fingers and thumbs

According to TSI Telecommunication Services, 80,000 people applied to switch their telephone numbers to new carriers on the first day a new federal rule allowed them to do s

European mobile operators' profit bonanza from text messaging is at risk from a consumer backlash on price that is bringing increased regulatory scrutiny, repors the WS

According to Peter Olson, a member of Ericsson's strategy and product management team, who was discussing the evolution and growth of mobile telephony at Ericsson's “Telecoms Evolution for Africa” event, held in Illovo this week and reported by ITWeb:

"Africa is in a unique position in that it has a far higher penetration of cellular telephony than it does of fixed-line telephon

Hey, that title is quite a shocke

Filipino soldiers can now be assured that someone would be there to attend to their grievances: a presidential adviser has been appointed to oversee the implementation of the recommendations of the Feliciano Commission, which investigated the July 27 Oakwood mutiny, reports abs-cbnnew

Miranda Devine for sm

A consumer advocates group, l'Union Fédéral des Consommateurs, UFC, is going after French mobile operators - Orange France, SFR and Bouygues Telecom - accusing them of maintaining text messaging prices at an unfairly high leve

Taska Manzaroli of Dow Jones Newswires published on Yahoo, describes how European fixed-line operators are reinventing home phones to compete with the popularity of cell phones, by adding popular features such as SMS and picture messagin

The Gadget Shop is claiming to have increased the average transaction value by 50% after it became the first high street retailer to run a mobile coupon campaign - developped by m-bar-go, according to Revolution Magazin

A distrubing piece in North Dakota online news, GrandFork

Government and private agencies around the world are waking up to text messaging as a useful and effective way of to collect money, by sending out SMS reminders for overdue rent, fines, payments or even tuitio

Political parties have hit a hi-tech campaign in the December 1st assembly election in Delhi seeking votes through SMS and e-mail, reports Sify New

Lycos UK has launched a service to help users compare their existing financial products with others on the market, in conjunction with the personal finance site Moneysupermarke

In Malaysia, travellers unhappy with the services of express bus operators can now lodge complaints with the Commercial Vehicle Licensing Board by text messaging, according to The Sta

Based on 2003 market value estimates, Nokia believes that the combined markets of voice-optimized devices, imaging, games, media, and enterprise mobility and mobile networks represent a US$238 billion addressable market for the company, reports Cellular New

The race to switch wireless carriers is on, but just how quickly people are running to change their providers or get rid of their home phones depends -- of course -- on perspectiv

A record

Tokyo’s teens are often given credit for creating Japan’s multibillion dollar mobile content marke

Mobile Operator MTN Uganda has embarked on a substantial project to improve access to communications services and thus reduce poverty and improve socio-economic conditions in rural Uganda, reports Cellular New

A study released Sunday found that 31 percent of Americans are "highly tech-savvy" people for whom the Internet, cell phones and handheld organizers are more indispensable than televisions and old-fashioned wired phones, according to DailyCamer

China's official news agency, People's Daily has reported that there are now more mobile phone users than there are landline phones in the country, according to Cellular New

All telephone users in Sweden with a regular fixed line can now receive text messages from Vodafone Sweden's mobile customers, reports 160character

Mapminder has launched a mobile location service that enables anyone on the Orange network to be tracked down through his or her mobile phone, a service being aimed at parents to keep tabs on their kids, according to Netimperativ

ARNnet reports on a demonstration by Caleb Sima, CTO and co-founder of Spi Dynamics, an Atlanta company that makes software for uncovering vulnerabilities in Web applications, on the growing handheld security threa

In Australia, 12th grade students can sign up to receive their Higher School Certificate results via text messaging, reports sm

Television uses text messaging in more ways than one, and not just for viewer votin

Gizmodo has rounded up useful links giving tips and guidelines for moving to another carrier and points out a new site called NumberPortabilit

According to Wireless Week magazine, more than 60 percent of Americans discard their used wireless phones rather than recycle the

Japan and China are planning a joint experiment on a new generation of Internet-capable mobile phones for high-speed data transmissions between the two countries, telecommunications officials said Sunday, reports the Japan Time

In Australia, an alarming number of 18-to-24-year-olds are in debt due to high cell phone bills, according to TheAge, with teenagers as young as 16 reporting debt problem

A Spanish company called Owasys has developed a cell phone designed for blind and partially sighted people, but it should also appeal to anyone who is looking for a cell phone to simply make and receive phone calls and who is put off by screen-based technolog

More complaints about the rudeness of people talking on a walkie-talkie cell phone in publi

Hands free takes on a new meaning with a a new short-range wireless communication scheme called LibertyLink from Aura Communication, allowing chatty users to stay on their mobile phone for hours at a time -- and without removing the handset from their pocket or purs

Standard Bank South Africa has become the last major commercial bank to introduce SMS security for its Internet banking clients, reports IT We

Nearly half of those who failed to turn out at this year's Scottish Parliament elections might have voted if they could have used their mobile phone to text their choice, reports The Heral

A new website launched by the New Zealand Labour Party promotes chats with MPs, including SMS option

This interesting article from The San Francisco Chronicle describes how in the US, cell phone-size messaging gadgets like the BlackBerry and the T-Mobile Sidekick have caught on quickly with the deaf since being introduced a few years ago, giving them freedom to move around and communicate like never befor

Microsoft Cor

Two House members yesterday introduced legislation designed to protect the privacy of consumers who do not want their wireless numbers included in a new nationwide directory-assistance system, reports the Washington Pos

Recognizing the importance of mobile phones in its readers' lives, Cosmopolitan and CosmoGIRL! today announced the debut of Cosmo Mobile and CosmoGIRL! Mobil

As part of project called ‘Headsup’, the Parliamentary Labour Party in New Zealand is trialing an SMS-based service to interact with young people, reports 160character

A project aims to tap into teenagers' enthusiasm for texting by offering them the chance to work with media professionals on an art project using mobile phone technology, according to the BB

'Text in the City' is a recently launced contest aimed at finding the best phone flirts and their most successful chat-up lines of the year, reports SMS: Business Gets the Message-

The 'Text in the City' contest will compile a list of sexy pick up lines to text message and, in turn, America will crown the biggest male and female phone flirts in New York and Los Angele

Sprint PCS said it will launch a new text messaging service in the coming weeks, a move that will allow users to fire off text messages without the need of a WAP browser, according to RCR Wireles

Yet another use for text messaging, locating a stolen horse! Mobile phone technology is being utilised in the fight against horse theft, reportsHorse and Houn

Multicultural broadcaster SBS Television has started a SMS service to remind viewers when their favourite programs are about to go to air, a media release says, reports The Ag

For those of you who spend a good chunk of time messaging on mobile phones, here's a service to add a little color, animation and music to your screen

Really worried about eavesdroppers? German company Cryptophone is selling a special version of HTC's XDA Pocket PC Phone that comes complete with built-in encryption technology that makes it next-to-impossible for anyone to intercept and listen in on your phone call

AT&T Wireless Services, the third-largest

The jury is still out on whether wireless phones can cause brain damage or cancer, but there are an increasing number of studies coming out that suggest it might not be smart to yack all day on your wireless phon

Following reports reports in the national press, mobile operators have denied that they will be closing down parts of their networks in London during President Bush's state visit to Britain this week, according to ZDNe

Mourners at a chapel of rest in Belgium were shocked when a mobile phone started ringing inside the coffin, according to Ananov

Mobiles phones are getting so smart that many people are struggling to use them properly, reports the BB

People who chat on their mobile phone while walking could be hurting their back, according to a study conducted by Scientists at Australia's University of Queensland and reported by the BB

Textuall

This sounds so coo

The Washington Post has an interesting article on MLotto and how companies plan on using them for advertising as well as the legitimate fear voiced by consumer advocates, that once a customer uses a code "to snag a coupon, that cell-phone number could go on a list and be sold to telemarketers, making the cell phone just another target for junk solicitations

Mobile phone users will this week be able to play lottery and gambling games anywhere they can receive a signal as T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom's mobile phone arm, launches the UK's first lottery games on mobile phone

I have to admit, I'm somewhat embarrased to be posting this, but here goe

The number of mobile-phone users in China is expected to double by 2007 to 500 million from a current 250 millio

According to the Straits Times, Islamic preachers with poster boy looks and pop star styles are winning legions of fans in Indonesi

Aloysius Choong for C/Net Asia, has a must read article on a new SMS terminolgy and trend: IMP

Aloysius Choong writes about the way he grew up, in a mediated, multimedia, and interactive environmen

In yet another crime prevention scheme, The Bromley Police Station in south-east London has just launched a new text alert system for cab drivers, giving them descriptions of suspects or getaway vehicles, soon after the crim

Just a reminder really, to be careful on the roa

A Sydney-based IT company, Itaba3, offers a service that makes it possible for any merchant, including the self-employed, to accept and process credit card payments using any mobile phon

The push-to-talk arena just became a bit more crowded and a lot more competitive thanks to the debut of Kodiak Networks , a technology vendor with some high-profile backers and an innovative take on the instant-chat phenomenon that Nextel Communications In

Not something handset manufacturers will want to hea

have to apologize for posting yet another explosive Nokia battery story, but this time, a Belgian consumer organisation, Test-Aankoop, is claiming that three of Nokia's batteries (BML-3, BMC-3 and BLC-2) are not protected against short-circuitin

Scientists and engineers at NIST have teamed up with a variety of computing and telecommunications companies to develop both the test methods and the standard protocols needed to make cellular telephones and other wireless communication devices more versatile, reports Science Daily

As reported in September , during the course of the UN's World Summit on the Information Society to be held in Geneva from December 10 to 13 of this year, a project called The Helloworld Project - organized by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture - will be offering a unique opportunity to engage people from all over the world in a global dialogue by text messag

he European Union boasts more than 300 million mobile phone users, after a surprising surge in the 15-member states' market last year pushed the share of mobile phone subscribers beyond 80% of the populatio

North Tyneside Primary Care Trust in the UK is running a one-year pilot project under which girls will be able to call or text a number 24-hours a day and will then be given advice and counselling by health experts, reports the BB

Hackers claimed Tuesday to have cracked the security code on Nokia's new N-Gage, saying they could play its games on other multimedia-capable cell phone

Don't know your room number? Wonder what the latest hotel or restaurant deal is? Does your room need cleaning? SMS information on mobile phones is answering these questions and making inroads into Asia's hotel services from Singapore to Japan, reports CN

Mark Frauenfelder for TheFeatur

emergency

The USA's Cingular Wireless has announced the launch of Mobile Instant Messaging for Cingular customers using AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ service

Nokia today unveiled the world's first GSM push-to-talk handset, the sports-inspired Nokia 5140 phone, reports Infosyncworl

Following a campaign running in Jordan to raise money for cancer patients, another fund raising effort, coinciding with the Hold Month of Ramadan, when it's a traditional time of giving and helping those less fortunate, is being held in Dubai, according to AME inf

Indians hunting for a sweetheart can now dispatch their profiles by mobile telephone to a Web site that promises to generate compatible matches, according to ZDNe

Kids normally get told off for talking to their mates in class, but schools are now being told to encourage you to chat, according to the BB

Mark Grenville for 160character

A good article in Silicon Valle

Ski Magazine reports on a service offering skiers and snowboarders up-to-the-minute snow conditions on mountains within the New England region, delivered directly to cell phones by text messag

The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) announced today that Canadians sent more than 32 million person-to-person text messages during the month of September 200

A new software is about to be introduced on cellphones to facilitate communication in Indian languages, thanks to a specific keypad layout for Indian scripts based on ancient Sanskrit grammar, according to The Indian Expres

Fiery politician Patricia de Lille, leader of the Independent Democrats in South Africa, has launched an SMS based service to keep in contact with her voters, according to Business Da

The new science of how to get to grips with a mobile phone is on the curriculum at a South Yorkshire college!

Lessons on texting, how to use internet facilities, phone calculators, settings and games are replacing the 'text' books on a course in Rotherham, reports Sheffield Toda

ssued by BlackHatMedia , a South African technology company that specialises in the development of interactive SMS applications, the Hotlink  busiiness directory is a quick and easy way of finding business names and phone numbers in South Africa by using SMS, reports Wireless Developer Network

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), along with the Philippine National Police and the Department of Interior and Local Governments, have launched a website for missing children and other persons below 18, according to In

Aston Martin and Motorola have collaborated to create a limited edition handset co-branded handset, the Motorola V600, exclusively for Aston Marti

A good article in USA Today on how countries around the world are dealing with mobile spam, what their legislators are doing about it and the mechanisms put into place for fining abuser

Starting December 8, Malaysians born in 1986 can find out if they have been selected for national service via a short messaging service (SMS) sent to the National Service Department, according to The Sta

Short Messaging Servic is all set to make its debut as a propaganda vehicle in the coming Assembly elections in Indi

Only 24 states told congressional investigations that they plan to meet the 2005 deadline for wireless enhanced 911 Phase II deployment, according to RCR Wireless News-

"The Federal Communications Commission has mandated that wireless carriers be ready to deliver Phase II—precise—location information to public-safety answering points by De

This is disturbin

To Josh Rubin on Cool Hunting, the http://ww

In spite of attempts by his handlers, George Bush's visit to the UK this week will generate protests and they will be carried by the media, reports BlueHereNo

Following articles on Oct 26 and Oct 2 that Sprint was considering launching a walky talky cell phone, the company plans to announce today that it will become the third wireless provider to offer "push to talk," a walkie-talkie feature that lets users communicate with one another without dialing phone numbers, reports the New York Time

The Bakersfield Californian is trying to reach teenagers via a communication method the kids already prefer: cell phone text messagin

Cell phones are becoming yet another weapon in record companies' promotional arsenal

Wireless carriers continued their push for more research on whether tower facilities kill large numbers of birds, while environmental groups shook their collective finger at the government, alleging the Federal Communications Commission is breaking the law in comments filed with the agency on the effects of communications towers on migratory birds,according to RCR Wireless New

Lingerie company Gossard is offering customers the chance to win a £25,000 diamond-encrusted G-string, by entering a test message contest, according to Ananov

A British electronics supplier has started selling a local range cell phone jammer that is designed to look like another cell phon

A must read, Clive Thompson's article for the The New York Times Magazine, entitled Remote Possibilites, which looks into some of the many (weird) ways today's mobile phones are used:

-- As teleportation devices : Wiring your house so that it can be remotely manipulated by mobile phone -- turning kitchen appliances on and off from the supermarket, for exampl

Residents of Kuala Lumpur can now notify the police via the short messaging service (SMS) when they are away for the Hari Raya so that the police can patrol their houses, according to Utusan Malaysian Onlin

The venerable Britannica Concise Encyclopedia is now available as a mobile software program for a variety of mobile devices, reports InfosyncWorl

"The emergence of cyber-bullies has coincided with what Glenn Stutzky, a school safety violence specialist, calls the rise of the "always-connected" generation -- teens who have grown up with computers and the Interne

Two telemarketing-industry trade groups have asked federal regulators to shield companies who accidentally call cellphones due to the onset of number portability, a potential back door to wireless telemarketing, according to the WS

An inmate who used a jail telephone to impersonate Hollywood executives and dupe Nextel Communications out of more than 1,000 cell phones was sentenced Monday to more than 11 years in prison, according to 1010Win

With President George

This picture was posted by Justin Hal in TheFeatur

Nokia has confirmed that one of its 3310 handsets, which exploded and caused minor injuries to a woman in Finland yesterday, was equipped with a rogue battery, according to The Registe

Bolt In

In a blow to local phone companies, the Federal Communications Commission plans to let consumers transfer their home phone numbers to alternative service providers -- including cellphone companies, according to the WS

USA Today reports on a wonderful new service called FastForward, offered by Cingular Wireless, enabling mobile users to simply drop their cell phone in a cradle when they get home, and have their calls automatically transfered onto their home phone lin

A recent text messaging campaign by Smirnoff helped to increase awareness of their new drink «Twist» in a fun and interactive manner and it also helped to break through the marketing clutter, reports We

Wireless Week reports on NTT DoCoMo trying to do its part by arming its i-mode users with an e-mail blocking featur

According to a recent IDC release, worldwide mobile phone shipments were up 2

A survey (CEA's annual holiday shopping consumer research in the US) has found that cell phones are the third most desired present this Christmas for teenagers, according to Cellular New

You may have figured this out by now, but the place to go to know all about mobile content deals is Moco News, edited by Rafat Al

A Japanese company has invented the world's first wristwatch phone, dubbed Finger Whsiper, which works by transforming the user's finger into an earpiece, reports both AB

A text message to your cell phone reading, "Please move your car if you are parked in a restricted zone" is a friendly cellular admonition coming from a Los Angeles-based service working to reduce the number of parking tickets issued across North America, according to SMS:Business Gets the Messag

WebShots, a popular photo sharing site, today announced that it is expanding the distribution of its mobile wallpaper images through a partnership with Zing

NEC Corp announced that it will soon release a 10mm-thick, credit card-sized mobile phone called the N90

San Jose, Cali

Verizon Wireless said last week in its third-quarter results that it has signed up more than 100,000 subscribers to its PTT offering, according to RCR Wireles

Nokia has added Sophos' virus detection engine to its messaging protection system for enterprise customers, reports Computer Weekl

Handsets that run on China's own home-grown high-speed cellular data network will become available in 2005, according to Silico

Virgin Mobile USA, which sells pay-in-advance wireless service primarily to teens and young adults, on Monday introduced the first MTV-branded cell phone, according to Yahoo New

In what sounds like good business sense, refunds will be given to Australian Idol fans who cast their votes by text message after a decision was made to close the votin

treasuremytext, the first "‘Text to Web"’ service, launched just a month ago, allows UK mobile users to save, organize and share their text message

Virgin Mobile USA has surpassed the 1 million customer mark according to a release by the compan

The growing band of renegades who are ditching their home phones to use only cell phones will likely get an early Christmas gift: the ability to transfer their home numbers to their wireless phones, according to USA Toda

According to a survey from the Association of British Drivers (ABD) and reported by The Register, almost half of UK drivers are still clueless that from next month using a hand-held mobile phone while driving will be illega

Microsoft has begun selling new voice recognition and control software to allow mobile phone and handheld computer users, to control most functions of their phones without fiddling with tiny controls, reports CN

Sabra Chartrand for the NY Times reports on a series of new patended inventions for cell phone

The Guardian is offering its UK political alerts by SM

For the last two weeks of October, the BBC has sent thousands of parents with teenagers across the UK a series of challenges by SMS to help them communicate better with their teenagers, according to favorite SMS spot 160character

City Poems is a community project, made up of a network of Poem Points around Leeds, each offering up to ten free text message poems written by people who live and work in the cit

Yet another article on bad cell manners by an irrate journalist, this time in The Chicago Tribune's Sunday editio

The Straits Times reports on parents' horror stories about receiving huge cell phone bills, such as a woman's 17-year-old son who ran up a $2,300 bill in just over 15 days in SMS chatroom

The National Telecommunications Commission Republic of The Philippines, (NTC), has launched an anti-theft phone service dubbed «Text 682», according to The Manila Time

Australian mobile payment solution provider b33hiv

Alberto on Smart Mobs has an interesting post about a fad called bluejackin

The BBC reports that as the wildcat postal strikes continue, affecting London and other parts of Britain, many small and medium concerns are facing real financial difficultie

A man in Singapore, who allegedly sent 21 SMS messages to a former colleague, was charged in court this week with insulting her modesty, according to The Straits Time

In South Africa, a campaign will soon launch on a test basis, to ensure that HIV-positive patients are reminded to take their medication at regular interval

In Jordan, the countries two mobile operators have launched a Ramadan campaign in cooperation with Jordan's only cancer treatment center, Al-Hussein, to raise funds for cancer patients, reports Islam Onlin