Last weekend I discovered another usefullness to texts - catching up on football scores during a Best Man’s speech 
Yep - I was at a wedding during England v Croatia in Euro 2004, and got regular updates 
Texting was also very useful to, er, keep things ticking over with my girlfriend when I was away travelling for a few months. Things can get quite steamy in 160 characters 
Geez, I don’t even know HOW to text a message anywhere. Does a cell phone have a separate telephone number you use when you want to text a message to that phone? Or do you “write” the message first, and then indicate that the next time you “call” a phone you intend to text the message instead making a voice connection?
I wouldn’t have any idea how to text anything to anybody.
Ed
Isn’t that a little excessive? Or are they saying that even having passengers speaking on cellphones is too distracting to the driver? How would that be more distracting then them having conversations among each other?
That still doesn’t explain why they would make it illegal to be talking on a cellphone in a stopped car, even as a passenger… I could see prohibiting drivers only from using cellphones while in the flow of traffic (which would cover the case of being stopped at a signal), but fer Pete’s sake, here in Ontario the approved procedure is to pull over to the side of the road and stop when you want to call. No mention of the engine running.
Re: the OP–text messaging helped two friends and I find each other in a bar on Sunday… and we’re old fogeys of 39, 41 and Something Older.
Six? How do you figure that?
What’s predictive input and how does it work?
[ quote=j_sum1]Spelling has deteriorated significantly. It is not unusual to see “b4”, “w8”, etc in essays.
[/quote]
Oh, boy, do I feel sorry for those teachers. ::is thankful that a Latin teacher rarely has any need to assign substantial writing as homework::
And you have no idea how silly that electronic voice sounds when it reads out a message from your mother saying “I promise not to murder your father before he finishes the bathroom”.
She was actually trying to send that message to my sister - for the second time - having texted my mobile twice when trying to get both my sister - and my father (who was in the next room at the time). I’m ignoring the three other messages from her that just read “Mum”, “Mum”, “Mum”.
My mother is 68, so it’s not just teenagers who love sending text messages. They just happen to be slightly better at it than she is.
That’s pretty much what the law is here - and I think it’s what Celyn meant, just forgot to specify that it applied to the driver…AFAIK the law about the engine being off is similar to eg drink-driving laws, the theory being that having the engine running demonstrates an intention to drive. So the police could theoretically nab you for drink-driving before you actually start to move - but not if you were sleeping in the driver’s seat. (Assuming you weren’t sleeping while in motion…)
Text messaging is my friend. It’s how my husband & I keep in touch every day even though he is in Burnaby, BC and I’m in Greensburg, PA. We usually have at least 2 conversations a day, something we could not afford to do on the phone. Since we are in different countries we can’t get an affordable “free” long distance plan. We use LD cards for the occasional real conversation, but every day we text each other several times. Also, I don’t have a cite for this, but my husband told me that after 9/11 when the phone lines were out text messaging was still working. He made me get a phone capable of text then, even though we still lived together at the time, and didn’t really use it at all. He felt better thinking we could stay in contact. But like I said, I don’t know if this is fact or fiction.
You just select “Compose message” from the menu on your phone, type away, then hit “send” and enter the number of the phone you want to send it to (or choose “Mum” or whoever from the phonebook). They go to the same number as a voice call, but you don’t actually make a call. You just hit send and it gets sent. If the other phone is on it will arrive near instantly, otherwise it will arrive next time they turn their phone on.
“Predictive text” is a feature that is meant to speed up typing. Because each number key has three or four letters on it, to type normally you have to press the keys multiple times to get some letters, e.g. you have to press the “2” key three times to get a C, and so on. With predictive text, you only press the key with the relevant letter once, and the most likely letter combinations are selected. Once you’ve typed the word, you can choose between the combinations. For example, typing 4-6-6-3 could mean either GOOD, HOME, GONE, HOOD, etc…
For most words, the one you usually want is the one that comes up automatically. However it is annoying at times - it always suggests HE when I want IF, and GOOD when I want HOME. Some are ridiculous - it suggests NUN before MUM. Now, which of those two words am I most likely to use in a text message?
Clue: I don’t live in a convent :rolleyes:
It also suggests ‘shot’ over ‘pint’.
“Fancy a shot?”?!
:dubious:
Text messaging is ubiquitous at my high school. It’s used for general communication, cheating on tests, chatting during boring lectures, everything.
ON THX M8, HOT 2 GO STR8 GOOD 2 C NUN & DAD. C U 2MRW HE U LIKE
I have a phone plan that charges for each message sent AND received, so I don’t use mine very much and discourage people from texting me.
Though on Livejournal.com, paid users have an option of letting people send them text messages by typing the message into a box on the screen…I would think that those people wouldn’t be charged to send them, but I’d still get charged if any were sent to me. Life sucks like that.
We also have the ability to send an email to a mobile phone. The address is like +420123456789@sms.eurotel.cz
Our banks are set up to use smsing as well. You can request balances, do transfers, pay bills, etc. Really useful. I was with a friend and he didn’t have cash, so he smsed a transfer to the bank account of a guy we were with, that guy got an sms saying “1,000Kc has been deposited into your account” 30 seconds later and he gave my friend 1,000Kc cash.
In Finland you can sms a Coke machine and it will give you a bottle and charge it to your phone bill. They are going to increase services like this more and more. Movie tickets? SMS “Eternal Sunshine, 2, 20:30, 26/08/04” to the theatre line and you will get an sms back with a code that you show the attendant to get 2 people in for the 8:30 show tonight.
I think you can gamble on sports, horse races, etc. using sms somehow, here.
Dinner reservations can be made using SMS, with a confirmation sent back.
Oh, and now with MMS (Multi-media messaging system) you can take pictures with your phone, type a message and send it to other MMS phones.
Lastly, my office security system used an sms system. When the alarm went off it sent an sms to my security service letting them know to send someone and then they would call me. I could have had it set up to sms me with the info, i.e. “Alarm, 2145 Broadway, zone 2, alarm 3, smoke detector.” This is great because the transmitter is small and can run off of the battery if the electricity is out.
OK, last last one- you can sms numbers in your phone book easily “Hi, can you give JOHN a call about today’s meeting?” and John’s name will be highlighted and all the receiver has to do is press dial and it is stored in their phone book now.
The transfer of information is cool.
-Tcat
Just to add to what to what colophon said, before sending an sms, you would have to input the “message center number” of your operator. Naturally, you can get this from your operator directly. It seems to get put in automatically in India (I haven’t had to type the number manually for my last two phones), but I suspect this may differ from operator to operator.
You can find the message centre number field in the “options” menu in your phonebook.
Sms-enabled banks are very handy. I use the service to order new cheque books, to request a statement, to transfer money, or even to simply check my balance!
Because a conversation, even a short one, consists of two-way adaptive dialogue, so whereas a voice call might be:
**Me:**Hi Buddy, are you doing anything tomorrow tonight? fancy seeing a film or going out for a pizza?
**Buddy: **Pizza sounds good, but not tomorrow, unless we make it late; do you want to do that, or maybe Saturday we could get a pizza, AND see a film. Is it just us, or shall I invite the missus?
**M:**yeah, bring her along; the kids too; we’ll go and see Shrek 2
**B:**OK, see you Saturday
(total call time, thirty seconds or a minute, free of charge because of inclusive free airtime, which I never use up)
OK, now I’m sure that in theory, the conversation could have been done exactly like that by text, but in reality, what seems to happen is:
Me: R U DOING ANYTHING 2MORO?
**Buddy: **WHAT TIME?
Me: EVE - MAYB 8PM?
**Buddy: **BUSY UNTIL 9, WHAT U WANT 2 DO?
Me: FILM? PIZZA?
**Buddy: **BOTH?
**Me:**MAYB
**Buddy: **NOT ENUF TIME - SAT?
Me: OK - PIZZA THEN FILM? WHAT U WANT 2 SEE?
**Buddy: **DUNNO CAN MRS COME?
**Me:**OK, BRING SPROGS AND SEE SHREK 2?
**Buddy: **OK SEE U SAT
**Me:**OK
etc ad nauseam - and each one of these text messages costs me - typically after the third one, I’ll phone the person out of frustration and just talk to them. There’s just something about the text medium that seems to make people express themselves in terse, fragmentary phrases.
Certainly in the UK, this number is already stored in the phone when you buy it. My old phone had a two stage process, where you’d hit Send and it would then pop up the pre-stored message centre number, then you hit OK, then you enter the name or number of the person you’re texting, then hit OK again.
My new phone omits this first step, and just uses the message centre* number it has in its memory.
- The “message centre” is the server (or whatever the correct term is) that takes all the outgoing messages and directs them on to the recipients. It has a phone number too.
I use Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go (which, if you’re thinking of a pre-paid phone, is the best thing out there IMNPFHO). I receive SMS for free and send for 10 cents each. I text people from Teh Intarweb sometimes; I don’t like talking on the phone and I don’t want to interrupt them, but maybe I want to make them grin, so I send a joke or a bit of silliness. They don’t have to reply, and their day is only interrupted when they’re ready for it to be. I’ve texted back and forth with my husband when he’s been working at the little league baseball field - he can’t take the time to answer the phone and have a talk on it, but he can check and answer SMS at his leisure.
I don’t use T9, but I still use correct spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. Once you get the hang of it, doing all of this with the regular phone keypad is a snap - especially now that I know a question mark is “111,” an exclamation point is “1111,” a comma is “111111,” and an apostrophe is “111111111.”
I think my favorite part of texting is the “receive it when YOU’RE ready” part - I hate being interrupted when I’m in the middle of trying to get something done, and I figure other people do too. If my phone bee-beeps at me, I can finish washing the dishes/loading the dryer/varnishing the cat before I see what in the name of God someone wants with me this time.
I use text messaging on a fairly regular basis with some of my friends. I’m the only one who always writes out acutal sentences and words, though. I imagine it’s due to my having a BlackBerry with a QWERTY keypad as opposed to their awful 3:1 and 4:1 letter-to-key ratio devices.
Okay, I’m a language snob. I Text using my Motorola phone keypad, and I almost NEVER use that awful abbreviated sms-speak. I have something to say, I say it. I’ve found that the OUTGOING amount of vtext is much longer than the incoming accepted length. I can write more than I can get. ( which I dig… )
The Blackberry is tempting but too pricey by about $ 350.00 for my needs. That may change at some point. In regards to the post just up there, I silence all of the “reminders” on my cel phone. I cannot afford to have anything beep, I work a lot in live t.v. Hate to turn off the phone all day, so I silence all of the indicators and reminders. I have vtext remind set as a vibrate, as is arrived voicemail. -shrug- works for me.
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