SMS as election tool

Cell phone political marketing campaign:

"R U curious to know Obama’s VP? The names of vice-presidential candidates are typically announced at news conferences or political conventions. But sometime before the opening gavel of the Democratic National Convention next Monday, Senator Barack Obama plans to break the mold by doing it with a text message.

"Last week, the Obama campaign said that anyone who sent a text message of “VP” to a dedicated phone number would be among the first to learn the identity of his running mate. The campaign has also run a television commercial that offers a campaign sticker to any person who sends the word “Barack” to the same number.

"The efforts spotlight Mr. Obama’s push to harvest millions of cellphone numbers of potential voters through text messaging, a technology that is increasingly moving into the mainstream. And it could have a significant effect in November, when the campaign plans to use the technology to get out the vote."

Enticing Text Messagers in a Get-Out-the-Vote Push - NYTimes.com

Phones’ Texting Feature Often Unused

Interesting, in S. Korea, texting and mobile emails are seldom used.

DRILLING DOWN; Phones’ Texting Feature Often Unused - NYTimes.com

A bad romance gets worse over mobile phone

The non-Latin letters that are in some languages have much significance. In this case, a substitution of a closed Turkish i with Latin i in an SMS was deadly. Who would have thought that a misspelled text message could cause such harm?

"The surreal mistake happened because Ramazan's sent a message and Emine's cellphone didn't have an specific character from the Turkish alphabet: the letter "ı" or closed i. While "i" is available in all phones in Turkey—where this happened—the closed i apparently doesn't exist in most of the terminals in that country.

"The use of "i" resulted in an SMS with a completely twisted meaning: instead of writing the word "sıkısınca" it looked like he wrote "sikisince." Ramazan wanted to write "You change the topic every time you run out of arguments" (sounds familiar enough) but what Emine read was, "You change the topic every time they are fucking you" (sounds familiar too.)"

From an email list at work: Localization Problems: A Cellphone's Missing Dot Kills Two People, Puts Three More in Jail

Text Generation Gap: U R 2 Old (JK)

Text Generation Gap: U R 2 Old (JK) - New York Times: "Savannah said she sends a text message to her father at least two or three times a day. “I can’t ask him questions because he is too slow,” she said. “He uses simple words.”"

Interesting article about the social world that teens and young people craft for themselves through personal technology, especially mobile texting.

Pleasures of the Text

An article in the New York Times Magazine a couple weeks ago about the curious phenomenon that is text messaging. The Pleasures of the Text (link via Jan)

One pithy observation in the article:

This may be the universal attraction of text-messaging, in fact: it's a kind of avoidance mechanism that preserves the feeling of communication - the immediacy - without, for the most part, the burden of actual intimacy or substance. The great majority of text messages are of the "Hey, how are you, whassup?" variety, and they're sent sometimes when messenger and recipient are within speaking distance of each other - across classrooms, say, or from one row of a stadium to another. They're little electronic waves and nods that, just like real waves and nods, aren't meant to do much more than establish a connection - or disconnection, as the case may be - without getting into specifics.

Happy New Year via mobile phone in South Africa

Mobile calls, SMS, and MMS were used to ring in the New Year in South Africa and other parts of the world. Did you make or receive some kind of holiday greeting through your mobile phone? And did you exchange greetings with someone you would consider very close, somewhat close, or an acquaintance?

SOUTH Africans have become a nation of electronic greeters, with more than 1,5-billion cellphone text messages sent over the recent holiday season.

MTN alone handled 1,17-billion SMS messages over Christmas and New Year, almost double the number it carried last year. But fast fingers and thumbs have not completely replaced the more personal touch of a phone call, with MTN reporting a 46% rise in voice calls from last year to an astonishing 1,87-billion calls during Christmas and New Year.

....

Other countries also reported amazing growth in seasonal greetings by SMS. Danes and Norwegians broke their previous records with the Danes sending 16-million over the new year period, up 31% from a year ago. Norwegian networks carried 37,5-million text messages on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, says Sapa.

Things were less successful in Bulgaria, where mobile networks temporarily collapsed because of high traffic shortly after midnight on January 1.

While global figures have not yet been calculated, the number of SMS greetings sent over the new year is tipped to top 200-billion. Airwide Solutions, a mobile messaging player, predicted a massive increase in the emerging markets of eastern Europe, north Africa and Asia.

Airwide expected the UK to top 200-million New Year messages, and predicted that Poland and China would match that. The US, where SMS is less successful because local phone calls are free, is expected to report 125-million New Year messages. However, Filipinos, who send 400-million SMS messages on a normal day, should be the leaders.

South Africa: Billions of Beeps Usher in New Year via UNDP ICT for Development Observatory