Wireless text messaging
 

Reasons the wireless industry has given us (in advertisements) to try to get us to embrace wireless text messaging with our phones:

- We can communicate with a group of officemates while in a boring meeting.

- We can "talk" to someone in a bar if we can't hear them because the music is too loud.

- We can silently conspire against a buddy to trick him into stepping out of a ski gondala too soon, into a snowbank.

- We can use it to send help messages if a ferret has bitten the end of our tongue.

@ 22c a message here
grrrr
I love SMS, the profit margin they make on it on the other hand....

talking to a couple of friends that have linved in Europe of the past couple of years, and the only reason that they used it (besides sending rude messages when they were drunk :beer: ) is that it's cheaper than using their minutes. Whereas in the US, its the other way around.
I'm not sure how I feel about those things, its a real pain in the ass to type out a message on my phone, I'd rather call and tell someone.

Hey, you forgot:

- If your friend is going on a blind date, he can send you in first to scope out whether she's good-looking, and when you discover she's a complete hottie, you can text msg him that he needs to leave fast and then try to hit on the girl yourself.

I once went to my brother-in-law's house and knocked on the door -- no answer. He knew I was coming, but apparently he was in the basement and didn't hear me. The door was locked, and I didn't wanna bang the door down 'cause I knew it was the kids' naptime. So I called him on my cell phone.. busy.

So I figured he was piddling on the internet, and didn't realize what time it was. So I logged on to my phone's web browser, fired up AOL Instant Messenger, and sure enough he was online. Of course it took about 2 minutes to type "answer your door!" on a the 9-digit keypad, but it still worked. Of course, I never "needed" it before or since, but that one time it was nice to have. :)

That's not wireless text messaging though :) That's cell phone with built in web browser & stuff. Two different things. Both are mostly useless to me, though I would find the web browser more useful than text messaging.

The text messaging we're talking about here (I think) is the phone-to-phone shit you can do.

Yeah, I realize they're two different things, but I was talking about seemingly-useless-99.9%-of-the-time-but-really-cool-to-have-on-those-rare-occasions-when-you-need-it technologies in general. :)

Actually, I do get a fair amount of use from the web browser (checking showtimes for an impromptu Tuesday nite movie, ebay auctions on the road, to name a couple) although there are still pitifully few sites that support it, and the ones that do are broken half the time.

Yeah, I have a Palm 7x with the wireless data service (kinda internet lite). Seemed like a cool idea a year ago, but I never use it. Need to cancel the service, as it's not worth the $10/month.

Its around US$15c a KILOBYTE here. Thats my definition of expesive. Not to mention since i didn't lock myself into some silly contract and instead just bought a phone outright (t39m...yummm....) i can't even get GPRS. I hate living in backward hole tech-wise.

AIM on your phone? which phone? Pretty cool.

In general SMS has been ahuge hit here though. There are phone plans that revolve around it, i know people that rack up huge bills 20c at a time. Mostly people my age because - its cheaper than calling, can do it in class and just so convenient. Not to mention websites that let you do it for free and the overseas possabilities for the same price.

Sprint PCS over here has the best internet deal I've found. Five bucks a month (on top of your cell phone plan) for <I>unlimited</I> internet access. So not only can I use my phone's built-in web browser (for stuff like AIM and eBay), I can plug it into my laptop with a serial cable adapter for internet access <I>anywhere</I>. I don't even need a separate ISP for the dial-in computer access; it just uses my plan minutes, which I never use all of anyway.

Sure, it's only 14.4K, but that's just fine when you're in a pinch and need to check that email when there's not a phone jack in site, or you don't have a national dial-in ISP.

Oh yeah.. it's a Sprint Touchpoint 120. The phone is discontinued; it's about three years old but it's an awesome little phone. It has a pretty big screen for a cell phone -- enough for something like 8 lines of text -- but it's not bulky like some of those PDA/cell phone combos. And battery life is awesome; I can leave it on for four days, using it intermittently, without a recharge.

Mind you, you have to go to sites that are specifically designed for cell-phone minibrowsers; most of the major portals have one. So you can do AIM, but it's text-only, and so it isn't the greatest for carrying on a conversation, but it's still pretty neat when you need it in a pinch.

Ah k, wap stuff. I thought it was like a built in app. I'd like to play with wap on mine, but its too expensive.

Yeah sorry, guess I shoulda mentioned it was WAP at first; I was wondering why you were so impressed by it. :)