Follow Your Thumb to the Text Big Thing
By Rob Copeland, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.
Aug. 5–If you don’t work for a company that foots the tab for a BlackBerry or Treo, it can be hard to squeeze fun functions out of those freebie phones. Enter the great equalizer: text messaging, available on virtually every phone released in the past few years. Text messages cost 10 cents to send and 2 cents to receive on most carriers, but with data packages you can usually get unlimited messages for about $10 per month.
The Observer test-drove some services that you can access via text message. As with everything on the Internet, be careful when giving out your personal information. Look for the lockbox icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the Internet Explorer browser, which designates a secure site, or preface the Web site address with “https://” to connect to a secure server.
–Forget those expensive directory assistance calls by texting “googl” (46645) with your search query and receive results on virtually any topic. Include a name and ZIP code or city for traditional white and yellow page results. Be careful, as many phones only accept 160 characters per message, and longer queries can result in multiple responses and multiple charges. For a full list of available topics, try http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/mobile/sms/. Yahoo offers a similar service by texting 92466.
–Get individual text “lockdown alerts” from www.quickpons.com whenever a K-12 school has an emergency. Almost all Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools are available on the site.
–Coupon clipping is a lost art and it’s becoming more archaic with Web sites like www.cellfire.com. Sign up and receive text message discounts from national chains like Domino’s Pizza and Hardee’s. It may not work on some older phones.
–A high-tech way to tie a string around your finger, www.tothecell.com lets you type in a message to yourself, select a time, and then the service will text you a reminder. Not available on Alltel phones. A similar service, http://shoplist.dedasys.com/, will send along your shopping list, because you’re presumably less likely to lose your phone than a piece of scrap paper.
–For trendsetters looking for information on the hottest clubs, products and restaurants, www.dailycandy.com supplies text updates. Although there is no individual newsletter yet for Charlotte, you can live vicariously by receiving messages for cities like Miami or New York, or just sign up for the “everywhere edition.”
–www.wirelessamberalerts.org. Pretty self explanatory, but it does work, as anyone who had registered prior to Wednesday’s alert can testify.
–The next time you’re in a store without any idea of what something should cost, fire a text to Smarter SMS at 610-SMARTER (610-762-7837) with a product’s name, SKU or model number and the service will send back the lowest online price available. It’s not foolproof — when the Observer tried to get a price on a popular Sony camera, we got Weber grill prices instead — but it’s better than shopping blind. Tip: include the brand name in your message.
–The mobile traffic alerts from www.traffic.com aren’t perfect but they’re useful for Charlotte’s major clogged arteries. Tell the Web site the roads you take to/from work and it will text you every day at a designated time with an update on your route’s “jam factor.”
–Splitting a dinner check is always awkward, especially if you’ve ordered a side salad and tap water but someone wants the tab divided equally. Instead, have one person pick up the tab and have everyone else text their portion to the payer. Three services — Obopay, PayPal Mobile and TextPayMe.com — let you transfer money instantly via text. You and the recipient must be registered in advance at one of the following Web sites: www.obopay.com; mobile.paypal.com; www.textpayme.com.
–As if the world needed more coverage of the presidential primaries, the major Democratic candidates are all sending text message updates of their campaigns. For Hillary Clinton send JOIN to 77007; for Barack Obama send GO to 62262 and for John Edwards send TODAY to 30644. No major Republican campaign has anything available yet.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.
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