In 2008, it is expected that over 2.3 trillion text messages will be sent worldwide. And of these expected text messages, one message in particular is hotly anticipated in the next few days. On Sunday, August 10, Barack Obama notified supporters that he would announce his VP pick via text message.
It is truly a sign of the times when a political campaign embraces a new technology with such a significant announcement. Campaigns traditionally rely on tried and true methods for reaching voters - television ads, volunteers going door to door, direct mail campaigns, and local rallies. However, with Obama's decision to make this historic announcement by way of new media - it signifies that wireless is truly one of the most powerful tools for communication and mobilization, and people in politics are starting to recognize the power of that direct communication.
Not only do text messages enable candidates to connect with users on a more personal level, they are also successfully mobilizing new audiences. The New Voters Project found that SMS reminders near Election Day increased turnout by 4.2 percentage points among young voters.
So while it remains to be seen, who Obama will choose as his running mate, it's clear that wireless is the platform for participation, notification and mobilization for the 2008 election.
One of my favorite commercials is the AT&T wireless one with a mother and daughter arguing over the number of texts the daughter is sending. What makes the commercial so funny to me is how the daughter speaks completely in txt abbreviations - "textese." The commercial shows an exaggeration of txt speak, but the exaggeration is so humorous because of how close it hits to home. While I've never been known to speak completely in text abbreviations, I do throw in an OMG every so often.
However, the proliferation of textese is proving to be less humorous to others. Apparently, the escalation of teenagers relying on txt abbreviations has led teachers and the public to worry about the fate of the English language. Thankfully, the written word is not yet in danger. According to a recent Newsweek article, ‘The Death of English (LOL),' research has actually found that "children who texted - and who wielded plenty of abbreviations - scored higher on reading and vocabulary tests. In fact, the more adept they were at abbreviating, the better they did in spelling and writing."
So despite the estimation that 2.3 trillion text messages will be sent this year alone, the world has a ways to go before we are all speaking like the little girl in the commercial, which is G2NO (i.e. good to know).
500 miles, 11 calls, 8 texts, 6 hours of Jonas Brothers tunes, 3 shopping malls, 2 teenagers, 1 photo of me in "lame" jeans.
These are the statistics of our recent school shopping trip to Spokane, WA. We have made an annual trek to Spokane for school shopping since our move to Montana from the "city". We stay at the Davenport Hotel (fabulous place) and eat at chain restaurants that we miss from our urban days. It's become a fun, family tradition that we all look forward to.
This year our daughter brought along a friend and requested that we let them shop alone, rather than trail her in and out of the stores as we have previously done. The girls are 14, better shoppers than we will ever be, so monitoring their purchases is not important. Monitoring their safety, however, in a distant city, is an absolute requirement. Wanting to support their desire for autonomy, we compromised.
And that's where the 11 calls and 8 texts come in. We agreed to hourly calls via cell phone and face to face meetings every two hours. The girls both had cell phones, and both agreed to answer our calls or texts - every time. Our schedules wound up frequently modified courtesy of texts and quick calls. In fact we mostly met early for shopping bag drop-off, lack of loot, or hunger. Not once, during two days of shopping, did we feel like the girls were out of touch or out of our reach. Even though a typical exchange was simply "R u ok?", "Yup", it was enough. Being able to communicate constantly, we were able to give the kids some space. At 14, space is a precious commodity (for kids and their parents) so we were grateful for the compromise we were able to strike. And, fortunately for me, I was still able to rely on the advice of my young fashion experts when I sent a photo of me in a pair of jeans that my daughter considmoered "lame" - didn't need them anyway.
So, we all had a great time. Thanks to our cell phones, the Jonas Brothers, two great teenage girls, and the lovely city of Spokane.
Have you ever wanted to call someone back but you really just want to leave that person a voicemail?
With the help of slydial, your mobile (or landline) phone now enables you to avoid all human interaction. The crafty company assists its customers by allowing them to directly dial another user's mobile voicemail. A falsely missed call and new voicemail create the "illusion of communication" where the user gets credit for a call that was never made to be answered.
There are many uses for slydial (not all devious in nature) such as:
Escaping awkward or pro-longed conversation
Saving the time of the receiving party when information is not time sensitive
Leaving a message at impolite hours
While the service itself is free, the user ultimately gets their just (or unjust) reward by sitting through a short ad by one of their sponsors. You can avoid the in-call advertisement by paying $0.15 per slydial message or by subscribing to an unlimited plan.
Is slydial a product showing practical ingenuity at its finest? Will it be used for good or evil?
I've been reading lately an old copy of "Arabian Sands", Sir Wilfred
Thesiger's remarkable account of his
pathbreaking explorations in the 1930s in the vast Rub al Khali "empty
quarter" of the southern Arabian Peninsula. There, slightly more than
70 years ago, he described this vast, heroic and untouched land; a
million square miles of sand and wind, virtually absent of human
footprints, save for the rare caravanaserai of bedouins and their camels
en route to trade posts of Muscat, Doha or Salala.
Though as with everywhere else, time and progess has transformed these
lands, the empty quarter remains still one of the most unpopulated parts
of the planets, and very occassionally camel-loaded bedouin tribes still
can be seen occassionally transporting goods across its desolate
regions.
So it was with some fascination to read today on my RSS feed of mobile
and wireless innovations that BBC's
Arabic Service has recently launched real-time SMS news feeds for its
listeners to access up-to-the-minute news and information and
information services across the Arab-speaking world.
The Arabic service, BBC's largest foreign news service, was launched in
1938, shortly after Britons like Thessiger, T.E. Lawrence, and Freya
Stark began to open the minds of their fellow citizens to the
facinations of Arab culture and history. Broadcasting on shortwave
wirless bands to receivers through Arabian and Middle Eastern capitals,
BBC Arabic Service was one of the earliest efforts to bring wireless
innovation to Arab lands, and link the peoples and cultures of the near
east and the west.
Now, some 70 years on, with its new Arabic language mobile-based
service, BBC's engineers, coders, and journalists, in a sense, have
come full circle in deepening the reach of wireless innovation in the
region where their wireless services were first pioneered. Mobile phone
penetration in Arab countries like Oman and Jordan where the BBC
services are being launched are among the quickest growing globally.
And now the citizens of those nations -- and others in the region soon
to come -- have ubiquitous access to the BBC's insights and information
about the world and its news and events directly on their mobile phones.
I wonder if Thesiger ever could haved imagined that this mobile future
would emerge in the Arabian sands about which he wrote?
Verizon Wireless spokesman Ken Muche said their network had "1.4 million calls per minute" during the hour of the earthquake, which is 400% more calls than usual.
Historically, after disasters like this earthquake strike, cell phone calls were often unable to get through the clogged networks. But, with today's savvy cell phone users texting and emailing, they have found many other ways to get around this challenge.
Because text messaging and emailing travel differently over wireless networks than voice calls, these options proved to be great ways of communicating. AT&T spokesman Geoff Mordock pointed out, "the good part is you can send the same message to a lot of people at the same time."
Text messaging and emailing, instead of calling, takes some strain off of the overloaded networks to keep them open for emergency situations. While someone is calling their grandmother to tell her how they felt the ground shaking, an injured person trying to call 911 might be unable to get through for help.
In Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's office, officials used Blackberry's PIN messaging to communicate with their colleagues at emergency centers - avoiding the caller traffic jam.
For the first time, UCLA put its new emergency text messaging system into action, asking its students to stay calm and to beware of possible aftershocks.
However, as more Americans rely on their cell phones as their primary tool of communication, it is expected networks will be slower during times of crisis. Fortunately, the telecommunications companies are continuing to build up their infrastructure, increase capacity, and develop new methods of communication.
So while there will inevitably be more disasters, thankfully, there will also be more ways to get in touch with loved ones in times of crisis.
You fasten a seatbelt while driving a car and you wear a helmet while riding a biking, but what are you doing to protect yourself while texting on the go?
Citing a rise in texting related accidents, the American College of Emergency Physicians has warned the public to pay more attention to what is going on around them while on the move.
Although texting while driving is definitely a bad idea, not to mention, illegal in some states, texting while walking has proven to be a safety hazard as well.
Dr. James Adams, the department chair of emergency medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, says, "People are texting and they trip and fall on their faces - usually people in their 20s. We see a lot of face, chin, mouth [and] eye injuries from falls."
Recently, the media picked up on a small "misstep" for Barack Obama's advisor, Valerie Jarrett, who twisted her ankle when she encountered an unsuspecting curb with her head buried into her Blackberry.
Even more serious, in two unrelated incidents, California pedestrians were killed by motorists when they inadvertently stepped into the way of traffic while busy texting away on their cell phones.
According to the wireless association, CTIA, an impressive 363 billion text messages were sent in the United States last year. As more people take up texting, hopefully they will head the physicians' warning.
But, if you aren't willing to give up texting on-the-go, and you're not living in London, where they have started to campaign for padded lampposts, you may want to pick up a helmet and maybe even some knee pads and elbow pads.
As I approach the end of my second week as the new executive director for Mobile Future, I just want to take a minute to introduce myself. I've followed the communications industry for many years working for the House Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill and the telecom and cable associations.
With so much of how we communicate changing, this is a pretty amazing time to work in this sector. From my previous gigs though, it always looked like the wireless folks were having way too much fun. Their devices could take pictures, play music, show movies -- and they could do it anywhere.
When I told people I was coming to Mobile Future, I was amazed at how quickly my friends would whip out their wireless devices to not just tell me, but show me how much they loved them. I recently spent one afternoon with a friend who waited nine hours in line to get his new iPhone and he couldn't stop talking about how great it was.
Another friend loves his wireless phone so much he insisted I use it as a GPS for a drive we had made plenty of times.
Surprisingly, my past jobs never got quite the same reaction...
Malcolm Gladwell investigated what made things like Hush Puppies shoes or a virus "tip" in his best-selling book The Tipping Point. The tipping point being that inflextion point (in the case of Hush Puppies shoes) of being a product of hipsters to becoming pop. With that in mind, many folks in the wireless industry hope that games like Guitar Hero can lead a revolution and "tip" what has been a nascent gaming market.
As many futurists know, I was at the CTIA show (this past Spring) and I got to see Guitar Hero for blackberry in real-time. With a few taps of the QWERTY keyboard, you can jam away to some rock and roll classics.
Games offer huge potential for carriers looking to drive revenues in data. However, up to this point in time, the market hasn't quite taken off. The mobile game developers are hoping that Guitar Hero could be the catalyst to set this market on fire. According to M:Metrics, in a New York Times article, Guitar Hero for mobile is currently nineth among the top-selling games and there are some newer versions in the pipeline. On a related note, Glu Mobile is looking to leverage the excitement for Batman and has a mobile version of the Dark Knight that is available to download.
Brickbreaker never seemed to do it for me and I often wondered if this was the best we could get on our phones. I'm glad to see that as our devices have evolved, so have our games - ROCK ON!
According to a report issued by the Nielsen company last week, American consumer interest in mobile Internet use remains as insatiable as ever. Of all the citizens around the globe polled in the Nielson report, U.S. cell phone users are the most active in wireless cyberspace. However, they still want more battery life, unlimited data packages, and even more new and innovative services.
The report found that 15.6% of Americans access the Internet on their cell phones, followed by the U.K. at 12.9%. Among wireless devices, a massive 82% of iPhone users were found to access the Internet with it, five times the average amount for mobile subscribers. Reviews of the new iPhone models express concern over whether the iPhone's difficult-to-change batteries can supply enough power to support extended web usage of AT&T's new and highly advanced 3G network. This unanticipated battery life demand is symptomatic of the general findings in the Nielsen report, which said that 38% of mobile Internet users cited battery life as their most preferred improvement, followed by larger screen size (22%), more memory (21%) and improved data input (20%).
Even following the arrival of enhanced service access, more efficient multimedia storage, and technological revamping, mobile Internet consumers are draining their batteries without satisfaction. The Nielsen report said the yearly Web access growth was up 28% with average subscribers, up almost 20% from the previous year-over-year statistic.
Mobile Internet users' yearning - despite such growth - for further technological improvement to meet their demands suggests that the mobile Internet market is capable of supporting waves of new innovation and capital investment. The report reads: "Mobile Internet is today at a point of sufficient mass to sustain a chain reaction of rapid growth in consumer adoption and, in turn, mobile Internet marketing...it has reached critical mass through a confluence of device availability, network speeds, content availability and, most importantly, consumer interest."
Mobile Internet usage has come a long way, and yet still offers possibilities for the future.
I've been reading lately an old copy of "Arabian Sands",
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