NotePage SMS, Texting and Messaging Blogs

Half of the 863 donors included in the analysis by the Pew Internet Project, together with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, said they used their phones to make a contribution for Haiti immediately after hearing about the Text to Give campaign, and another 23 percent said they made it the same day they heard about it.

That impulse translated into an estimated $43 million that arrived via about 4.3 million texted donations to support the Haiti relief effort, and it set off a race among nonprofit groups to tap what was perceived as a potential new gold mine.

But the survey, which had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, also showed how hard the phenomenon has been to replicate.

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Modern day romance is always on the fast lane. There is not even time to properly end a relationship. A survey says one in 10 people are dumped through a mobile phone text message.

Around 25 percent of people interviewed confessed to having flirted with someone they should not have in a text message, said the survey of 2,000 people by mobile phone site Recombu.com.

R u being lazy when u text? Or are your texting shortcuts and abbreviations a display of creativity and imagination?

Simon Fraser University researcher Christian Guilbault and researchers at the University of Ottawa and the Universite de Montreal are asking people to donate their text messages to science to help them answer those questions.

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Educators say 60 students at a Houston-area school have been disciplined for apparent text message-related cheating on a December test.

Officials on Thursday announced those Clear Lake High School students will get an English exam score of zero calculated into their final grade. The test counts for about 20 percent.

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Rick Farnsler has roamed the halls of Elizabethtown Area High School as its resource officer since 2007, and he has never received a tip from a student via a telephone hotline or a tip box located in the school.

But in the four months since Elizabethtown implemented a system enabling students to submit tips via cellphone text messages, Farnsler has gotten more than 60 anonymous messages about drugs, vandalism, bullying and other concerns.

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The Pew Internet and American Life Project on Wednesday released an in-depth study based on interviews with 863 people who sent donations to Haiti via text message.

Pew found that most of these donations were made on impulse -- an immediate response to media coverage of the disaster, especially on television. For three-quarters of them, it was the first time they had ever donated via text message. Only a third of them made additional text donations to Haitian earthquake relief.

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Texting is being increasingly used by researchers:

Albatrosses will soon be sending text messages about how they feed their young.

A zoology student this week expects to fit the first tracking devices to use cell phone technology to Royal Albatross on Otago peninsula.

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If you use PRTG network monitoring software and wish to use it, in conjunction with PageGate to send alerts to mobile phones and wirelss devices, we have put together a video tutorial to walk you through the setup process.

Checkout the PRTG Integration Video Tutorial

A London borough is set to launch a free text messaging service for tenants which will remind them to pay their rent and get information on housing issues more easily.

The Smokefree T-X-T program offers 24 hour encouragement, advice, tips, all through texts and social media.  Once they sign up, they pick an expected quit date, and supportive text messages are also sent for up to 6 weeks, providing further support and motivation.

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Perhaps to the chagrin of cellphone carriers, all signs point to text messaging’s continuing its decline in several parts of the world.

In Finland, there was a significant drop on Christmas Eve, one of the busiest days of the year for texting, Tero Kuittinen, a senior analyst at M.G.I. Research, wrote in a blog post for Forbes.

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In nearly every country, the young and the well-educated are especially likely to embrace all of these technologies.

Cell phones are owned by overwhelmingly large majorities of people in most major countries around the world, and they are used for much more than just phone calls, particularly for SMS messaging and accessing social networks. In fact, text messaging is a global phenomenon: Across 21 countries surveyed by Pew Research, 75 percent of cell phone owners say they text.

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Text4baby is a free service available to pregnant women and new moms through pregnancy and a baby's first year of life. The women receive three SMS text messages each week, focusing on a variety of topics, including birth defects prevention, nutrition, the flu, mental health, immunizations and safe sleep guidelines. The service also connects women to resources for prenatal and infant care.

To sign up, text BABY to 511411. To receive messages in Spanish, text BEBE to that number. Sign-up is also available on the website, text4baby.org.

A new project to monitor the whereabouts of lions in Kenya — especially important to nearby game herders who do not want their animals to be eaten — is getting around the limited Internet infrastructure with the aid of simple cell modems.

Lions are collared with small device that sends SMS messages to a central computer system to log each animals location.

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1. I understand that every text message I receive or send may be read by my parents, teachers, employers and law enforcement officers. If asked, I agree to truthfully decode texts.

2. I will not send a text that contains profanity or sexually suggestive or explicit messages. If suggestive pictures are sent to me, I will delete them.

3. I agree that text messages received or sent by me are not my private business.

4. I will not read or send a text message during the hours I am supposed to be at school or work – this includes baby-sitting.

5. I will not read or send texts during a meal – whether I am eating alone or not.

6. I will not read or send a text in the presence of a person over the age of twenty-one 21 years. I will turn my cellphone off and conceal it in their presence.

7. I will not read or send a text after 9 p.m. on weeknights. On weekends, holidays and summer breaks, I will not read or send a text after an agreed-on time.

8. I will not read or send a text message while I am walking, running, riding a bicycle or driving any vehicle. I will not place or answer a cellphone call while I am driving any vehicle.

9. I will not use my phone to gossip, spread rumors, flirt with another persons boyfriend, or defame or tear down another person.

10. I will pay for a new phone with my own money if my phone is lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed.

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