And a T-Mobile customer is <ten digit number>@tmomail.net.
How about this one–a friend of mine had computer access but no phone. So I’d SMS to his email address, he’d read it and text back from my provider web site. We carried on communication for months like that until he got his own cell phone (prepaid, because he’s basically an uncommunicative bastard) and we STILL mostly communicate via text because he gets unlimited incoming SMS and he can send ten texts for the price of ONE minute of talk.
My favorite example for people who don’t comprehend the text message thang is this: your SO is in a meeting at work and can not be disturbed to talk to you. You are getting ready for a big fat dinner party and are busy as hell getting ready, but you have ten crucial items that need to be picked up on the way home. Call SO and you get nothing but voicemail, and if SO doesn’t have a pen handy when the VM gets checked the chance of missing an item gets pretty high. Alternately, send a text message stating you need those items. It gets there during the meeting, SO knows there’s an errand to do on the way home and plans accordingly, you get your items and you KNOW there’s an easily referenced list so any omissions are not your fault.
I work in a call center, and the last thing I want to do after work is talk on the effin’ phone! Text messaging, on the other hand, is fun and non intrusive and forces people to condense information into small chunks, which in itself is a blessing considering how many people are inclined to blather on forever trying to get a single thought expressed. I don’t have to know how long it took my friend to get it all down to 160 characters, I’m just happy to get a nice, compact information burst without the extraneous chitchat and pleasantries.
My daughter texts me when she is stuck in traffic and wants to know a better route to take out of the mess. We use it to let the other one know we’re on the way there–why blow a phone call on that? My SO sends me little mash notes while I’m at work and can’t take a call on my cell phone–it makes my day go a little quicker knowing he’s thinking of me. And don’t get me started on picture messages, which are a whole 'nother kettle of serious amusement…
I regard leaving a voicemail message as also being far more intrusive than sending a text message - I’ll only do it for something particularly important, because once again it’s implying “I need to speak to you NOW”
Another advantage of text messaging, compared to voice communications, the costs involved when out of your home country. On the mainland of Europe it costs just 25p to send a text back to the UK and nothing to receive one. This compares to something like £1 a minute for outgoing speech and 50p a minute for incoming speech. So a quick text message to say you have arrived safely is much more cost effective.
On my plan, it costs more to text message, so I haven’t really tried it.
But if I understand what you have all been saying, it is like a combination of email and post it notes - which still seems to me to be a technological step backwards.
Leaving a voice message seems better, “hey, pick up milk on the way home”.
But hey…I can remember when I thought I would never have any use for a cell phone, and, uh…I was really wrong there too.
My girlfriend and I are in the slow process of improving our skills in each other’s native languages (mine is English, hers Spanish). We’re both going to school for it. She’s a LOT better at mine than I am at hers. We know enough of each other’s languages, and we have good enough chemistry together, that we don’t have any problem at all communicating face-to-face or through text formats. But when cellphone voice iffiness comes into play, it can get tougher for me (not so much for her). We still talk on the phone a lot, but if one of us is thinking about the other during the day while doing our daily business we’re more likely to send “Que haces baby?” to the other by text and have a short SMS exchange.
Also, we have a tendency to switch languages semi-randomly and in midsentence. This is easier to pick up on in text, and you don’t have to worry that your word in one language will be interpreted as a different word in another.
It’s considered rude here to talk on your phone in the trains, so text messaging is a more polite way to send messages while I’m commuting (usually just a note to my wife, like “coming home now”).
Also, the trains add another twist: you can get a signal when your at a station, but not when you’re underground between stations, so TM lets you compose a message between stops and send it when you get to a station, which would be impossible to do by voice.
Also, I can send messages to people’s email addresses, so if I know I’m going to be late for work, I can email someone before the office even opens.
In any case, I only use my cell phone to convey basic essential information. I don’t think I’ve ever used one to chat, even with friends or family.
I work in sales and use a combination of smilin’ & dialin’, email, IM, text messaging and leaving vmail. Text messaging is great for quick questions requiring simple answers or for seeing if someone is free to talk. I have a Windows PDA/Phone combination with GPRS access and it’s pretty easy to tap out or even write out messages.
I hate vmail with a passion. it’s a huge time waster and you’ve got to transcribe the information.
When you’re stuck in internal or client meetings, text messaging is pretty handy (as is checking your email when your attention is not required).
I’ve also heard that in the early days of mobile phones, nobody bothered marketing text messaging, because it never occured to them that anybody would regard it as a ‘feature’ of the phones, for the reason you outline.
But isn’t email, in some ways, a technological step backwards from the telephone?
Try using the T9 feature of your cell phone (it’s under the text messaging section, probably listed in the corner of your screen as an option). It will “catch” commonly used words (and even some proper names, like John or Jessica) so you won’t have to type each seperate letter (like hitting the #2 Key three times to get a “c”).
It takes me a lot longer to get to my voicemail and listen to a message than to read a text message! Calling my voicemail (if I have signal), entering my PIN, listening to the computer tell me, "You have — ONE — new message. — First — message — " would be an irritating waste of time when I could have read, digested and deleted a text message with the same content in about five seconds.
I used to be a SMS foe, now I love 'em. It really is far simpler to text someone simple messages and skip all the other communicative BS that happens on the phone. Also, I am in meetings a lot, and an sms in or out is far less intrusive. I’ve been able to get info I needed from my assistant via sms while in a meeting - “That will be on July 9th at 10:30, I just confirmed.”
I wonder is video messaging will catch on or not…It seems like it could since it will be a one-sided conversation that can be stored on the phone…Oh yeah! That is a main benefit of texting too! The messages are stored, so you can have that shopping list of stuff to buy and look at it while in the store (I do this weekly). Directions to a party in a week or two? I still got them in my phone when I need them.
Well voice mail service, but it still usually requires immediate attention. When a cell phone rings it requires action at that time to shut it up (even if it’s just fwd’ing to VM) - Again you are placing the burden of the receiver to deal with you on your time schedule.
Txt messages just quickly alert you to a msg, no further action is required on your part at that time, you can get to it at your leisure.
A voice message is more inconvienent for the receiver also, as it requires a call in, dealing with (in a slow, minute consuming tone) ‘you have one new message and no old messages, your 1st new message…’, and getting a good signal at the time.
For a please p/u some milk on yoru way home I would much rather get a txt or email then a voice message.
I lke sending and getting simple messages as text because going through voicemail (either mine or someone else’s) takes much longer. Typical call from me to someone to leave a voicemail:
Select user from phone book list, hit send.
Wait anywhere from two rings if the phone is off or they are on another call to ten rings if they aren’t answering for whatever reason.
Listen to their mail message, which can be short and sweet, or sometimes along the lines of:
“Hi, you’ve reached <name> and <number>. I can’t answer the phone because it’s off, or I’m on another call, or I’m not near my phone, or I just don’t like you. Ha! So leave a mesage with your name, number, and I’ll call you as soon as I can. Or I won’t, cause I hate you. Ha!”
THEN I have to hear the phone companies message, which is along the lines of
"Leave a message after the tone. To review your message when done, press <x>. To leave a call back number, press <y>. To listen to more options, press <z>.(wait ten secodns for beep). Beep.
All in all, the process can take a couple minutes…or, it takes me less than thirty seconds to shoot off a text message, and I’m not even remotely fast, and almost alwways use the full words and real grammar. The T9 system is actually pretty damned good about recognizing most words.
A few of us geezers still know and use morse code. If there were a way to just pound morse on one key on the phone, I could easilly text at 30 WPM and do it blind.
One huge advantage of texting is when you are in and out of coverage (subway example above) The text will get through when you hit a hot spot, where you’d never have time for a conversation, or to check voice mail.
Finally texting seems to force the sender to say something useful. About 90% of my voicemails are “Hi, it was just me.” Which tells me nothing about why you called, etc. and I knew it was you from the caller ID, so THANK YOU for making me waste my time and airtime to retrieve and erase your worthless message.
Thanks for the heads up re texting on the computer. We have Singular phones, so I have no clue how to go about it.
My husband is the techie-phile, and strangely enough, he does not know how to text message–I had to teach him. Ha!
I do wish it were quicker, sometimes. My phone has this setting that is supposed to “guess” at commonly used words and type them for you. For example, if you started texting, “he”–it would fill in “hello”.
My texts are always in come kind of cryptic rigby-speak, so this setting is useless for me. I never waste the text on “hello”–I might text “hi”, but I usually just cut to the chase.
The world’s experts on text messaging are thirteen-year-old British girls. They can achieve a speed of 100 words per minute ,with their fingers and thumbs just a blur when up to speed . Their task is made much easier by the use of Txt Spk , explanation here. The trouble with using this strange and exotic language is that they don’t seem to be able to write proper English when it’s needed.
