NotePage SMS and Messaging Blogs

When a gunman was prowling the halls of Virginia Tech University on April 16, 2007, on a shooting rampage that left 33 people dead, dozens of students and staff sent texts to 911 trying to get help.

But those texts were never received, because the local 911 center -- like most across the country, including ones in major cities -- could only handle basic phone calls.

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Two European countries are now offering an alternative to the ubiquitous postage stamp: sending the post office a text message.

Sweden and Denmark are set to roll out a new postal service whereby customers can pay for postage using text-messaging services on their cellphones.

Customers can simply send a text message to the post office and in a few seconds an automated reply will arrive with a special code. Write the code on the envelope where a stamp would normally go and you are done.

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The so-called SMS of death attacks were unveiled late last year at a hacker conference in Berlin. They use special binary characters and overflowed headers to temporarily crash most older models made by manufacturers including Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, Motorola, and Micromax. Carrier networks often aggravate the attacks by bombarding the target with the same malicious message, making them an inexpensive way to take a phone completely offline.

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OMG! The exclamatory online abbreviation has won the approval of the Oxford English Dictionary.

The term - short for Oh my God - is one of dozens of new entries in the authoritative reference books  latest online update and emoticons.

Following Verizon Wireless announcement of waived text messaging fees for donations to Japan, Sprint has announced that it will also waive text messaging fees for such purposes. Customers can send messages to particular numbers to donate $10 to the relief efforts.

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One of the Talibans most effective tools to persuade Afghans not to work with the U.S. or its allies is the night letter — a note warning people they’ll be targeted for death unless they change their infidel-loving ways. But thats too analog. These days, the Taliban is mass texting gruesome videos to Afghans cellphones to spread the same message.

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Mobile phone subscription is estimated to be at 5.3 billion, more than 90 per cent of the worlds population, and 6.1 trillion text messages have been sent in three years.

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American Red Cross: Text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10

International Medical Corps: Text MED to 80888 to donate $10

Save the Children: Text JAPAN or TSUNAMI to 20222 to donate $10

Mercy Corps: Text MERCY to 25283 to donate $10

Salvation Army: Text JAPAN or QUAKE to 80888 to donate $10

ADRA Relief: Text SUPPORT to 85944 to donate $10

World Vision: Text 4JAPAN or 4TSUNAMI to 20222 to donate $10

In the last couple of years, the practice of charity in the face of disaster has changed. Instead of giving online or making a phone call, people - especially the more wired digital generation - are giving via text. It is simple: Send a text to a specific number and you automatically give a set donation amount, usually $10, to an organization. Since last Friday, the American Red Cross has received nearly $1.6 million in text donations for Japan. But there are downsides to text donations that you should think about carefully before you hit SEND.

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Text messages are expensive. Most carriers charge customers 20 cents for every text they send. But the tiny messages use up only a fraction of a penny's worth of bandwidth. Why do networks charge so much for something that costs so little?

Editorial on Text Messages Through Carriers

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today charged 24 defendants - including Jason Hope, the chief executive officer of Arizona-based Eye Level Holdings - with perpetuating a text messaging scheme that led to millions of dollars in unauthorized mobile phone charges.

According to state investigators, the defendants used illicit websites to bait mobile phone customers into submitting their wireless numbers online.

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After receiving an overwhelming response to its Facebook page, the Pune Traffic Police will now have a website and SMS service dedicated to monitoring traffic bottlenecks and helping commuters plan routes to avoid jams. The service will be available from next week and free SMSes can be received after one joins the SMS group.

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Verizon Wireless is cracking down on SMS text message fraud and has filed a lawsuit in a bid to halt the lucrative scam.

Verizon this week filed a suit in federal district court in Phoenix in its crusade against an ongoing scheme that uses premium SMS, or text message, campaigns to defraud the carrier and its customers.

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A pair of related studies on smoking cessation have isolated the brain regions most active in controlling urges to smoke and demonstrated the effectiveness of text-messaging to measure and intervene in those urges.

Both projects by scientists at the University of Oregon and other institutions used the same group of test subjects – 27 heavy smokers recruited from the American Lung Associations Freedom From Smoking program in Los Angeles.

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The EMA also has a new system that allows it to send text messages to firefighters and other responders who are out of radio range but have cell phones, Parker said. The system, called PageGate, costs less than giving pagers to every volunteer firefighter.

Mass Notification System in Oxford County

Once your phone is infected, a slave bot program will be installed in the base operating system, beneath the application layer that most users are familiar with. From there these bots can monitor and modify all data sent to and from the phone before you do, allowing the botmaster to command and control your phone without your knowledge.

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Text messaging can be dangerous, many have said, but they probably will not thinking along these lines, but perhaps texting while driving. In this case, a U.K. man stabbed his friend to death after the word mutter was auto-corrected by his cell phone to read nutter in a text message, and that led to him being found guilty of manslaughter on Monday, Feb. 14.

Nutter is, of course, slang for a mentally ill person.

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The UKs telecoms regulator Ofcom has proposed a voluntary trial, enabling people to send a text message to the UKs emergency services which should be made mandatory in the country.

The proposal forms a part of a wider consultation on changes to Ofcom’s regulations that need to reflect new European law that comes into effect on 25 May, 2011.

As per the new European regulations, access to the Emergency services for disabled people must be as close to that delivered to other consumers as the technology will allow. While the emergency text scheme does have limitations, such as taking longer to converse by text than by phone, it offers greater equivalence than current alternatives.

Emergency SMS Messages

On Monday, AT&T will announce the company’s first location-based marketing service through which companies can send text messages to users who choose to receive special offers.

The service, called ShopAlerts by AT&T, will send users messages from brand partners including Hewlett-Packard, Kmart, JetBlue and S. C. Johnson. The company is working with Placecast, which supplies a technology known as geo-fencing that allows retailers to send messages to users in a defined geographic area.

AT&T is the first mobile carrier to use such a service in the United States. The service will be available for users in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco.

Location Based SMS

In a move to keep electricity consumers posted about their monthly bills and due date of payment, the power discom will start sending SMS alerts soon.

Parents of new born babies in Kerala will henceforth get SMSes on their cell phones about vaccination details for babies.

Here are some helpful tips regarding how to get your podcasts listed in the iTunes Music Store...

iTunes Compatibility
In order to have your podcast included in the iTunes Music Store, you must first add the iTunes extension to your RSS feed. This means that you will need to modify the RSS feed for your podcast or videocast so that it includes tags that are specific to iTunes.

How to Submit Podcast to iTunes Music Store