ah, technology

[cellio]

This afternoon my (relatively-new) cell phone made a noise I hadn't heard before. (Kind of disturbing, actually; must try to fix.) When I investigated, I found a text message from a coworker reporting that his wife had just seen for sale (location given) something I had recently said I'd been having trouble finding. This prompted several immediate thoughts:

1. My plan does text messages?

2. How do people learn to type on those things? It took me at least a minute to compose my two-word reply. (Skipping punctuation would have been faster but out of character.) He sent a grammatically-correct paragraph without any cutesy IMisms. Granted, I don't know what device he used to send it.

3. Where did he get my phone number? (I can ask him that one tomorrow.) My land-line number is readily available, but I haven't given my cell number out to coworkers. I tried Googling for my own number and found sites willing to sell it to me but none willing to give it to me.

Heh. I learned some things today, and will learn one more tomorrow when I ask my coworker about #3. Meanwhile, purchase mission accomplished thanks to this message.

Comments

[tangerinpenguin.livejournal.com]

I have seen some people who text regularly get frighteningly high rates of input speed with cellphones that only have the normal phone keypad. That being said, there are an increasing number of cellphones that incorporate small keyboards (of the sort you'd see on a higher-end blackberry, although they're finding ways to make them slightly larger on the latest models by having them fold out) and the folks in my office who text or email regularly from the road all seem to be moving that direction.

[cellio]

Good point; I saw several phones with keyboards when I went shopping. I didn't look closely at them because the phones were all too large for a pocket, the keys looked tiny for my big fingers, and I just sent my first-ever text message from a phone. (Do those phones come with a stylus, or do people really manage to type on those itty bitty keys?)

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

I have this phone (http://www.samsung.com/us/consumer/detail/detail.do?group=mobilephones&type=mobilephones&subtype=verizonwireless&model_cd=SCH-U740CDAVZW), which opens vertically to use a phone and horizontally for text messaging.

Also, just because you don't have your plan set up to *send* texts doesn't mean you're incapable of receiving them. I used to get them all the time in Kuwait from the phone company... and in Arabic, which was special.

[cellio]

Phone: that's clever.

I was apparently able to reply to that text message. I guess I'll find out what this all cost when I get the bill. :-)

I used to get them all the time in Kuwait from the phone company... and in Arabic, which was special.

Phone spam is bad enough. Phone spam you have to pay for is even worse. Phone spam you have to pay for that you can't even read must be really annoying!

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

It'll probably only be a quarter apiece.

I didn't have to pay for the ones in Kuwait, because they were from the company. I think they were about specials or something. If I'd opted in to receive messages, I'd have to pay, but I didn't pay for these.

[zachkessin.livejournal.com]

A few times when we have been driving along the Jordan river we have gotten messages from the Jordainian phone company (mind you we were still inside of Israel)

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Its possible to hook a phone up the computer and compose messages like an email and then send them via the phone and a cable.. though some folk are just practiced at texting, and yay for another grammatically correct texter, can't bring myself to use abbreviations either (sry, pls 4give.. :> )

[cellio]

Good point. I'm pretty sure he sent this particular message from the store he was directing me to, but that doesn't change your general point.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

Some phones come with software that will 'guess' your word based on the combination of numbers you push. So, rather than pressing '1' 3 times to get the letter 'c', you'd only press it once.

Over time, the software will learn what words you learn frequently and 'suggest' those to you earlier in the 'word', so you can accept it's suggestion without typing the whole word, which also speeds things up. N can type a message in no time because he averages around 3000 messages a month. I average about 3, so I tend to take 5 minutes to type a message. :-)

For more info, check out this page (http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/itprnn/itap/)

[alienor.livejournal.com]

Oh, and most plans nowadays will allow you to receive text messages (unless you block them) for a fee. I think mine was 10 cents a message before N and I joined plans... which was fine for my level of usage.

The problem is that they don't ask if you want the message (like a collect phone call), you just get charged the fee whether it's a 'spam' text message or something potentially useful.

[cellio]

Thanks for the pointer. Now that you mention it, the documentation for my phone mentioned that feature too. It didn't occur to me to try.

(3000 messages a month? Yikes. I thought only teenagers did that much. :-) )

[loosecanon.livejournal.com]

As much as it might be handy, I blocked texts for our accounts. We were getting advertising calls which were costing us money.
If your plan includes X texts free, that's not an issue.
Congrats on the purchase as well as on having a co-worker cool enough to think of you.

[giddysinger.livejournal.com]

If memory serves me correctly, Verizon charges 15 cents per text, sent or received. This is the 'ala carte' option, and comes standard on all plans. As things stand now, there is no limit to the number of texts you can send; because of this, I constantly hear stories of people who rack up $400 to even $1000 cell phone bills in a single month because of texting. (From your account, I don't think you're in any danger of anything like that, though.)

As for your friend who can text in complete sentences, it's not that unusual. (I'm another one who just can't stand writing in l33t-speak.) With practice, you can type with reasonable speed on a 12-key pad. It's slower than typing on a QWERTY, but do you remember the first time you tried typing on a standard keyboard?

SMS and Morse code

[brokengoose.livejournal.com]

By default, my phone beeps out the Morse code for SMS ( ... -- ... ). That's clever, but I'd be much more impressed if I could also INPUT messages via Morse code.

Re: SMS and Morse code

[cellio]

I'd be even more impressed if it would beep out the message in Morse code... :-)

[grouchyoldcoot.livejournal.com]

The answer to #2 is probably T9 mode, probably selectable from your 'options' menu when typing a message. It's very clever and wildly faster than the old-fashioned way.

[multislackerkim.livejournal.com]

I work in a high school, and I can tell you that kids can text complete replies with their thumb while not looking at the phone and with the other hand resting calmly on the desk so as not to rise suspicion.

I think I have some texts included in the plan I have, because I've never been charged for them (and had roughly the same response you did, coupled with a mild panic as I tried to figure out how to text them back...