Saturday 20 June 2009
New Text Message: "Feed me, I am Thirsty"
Technology that lets plants send text alerts when they're running dry may someday reduce overwatering, says a Discovery Channel report. A chip about the size of a clip-on earring can be attached to a plant leaf and linked to regular cell-phone networks, sending a text message when it's time to irrigate. Watering only when necessary could save water and energy, especially in the arid West. A company called AgriHouse is marketing the chip, which is based on technology developed by NASA for long space trips.
Water in the open spaces of the west is valuable, but it's virtually worth its weight in gold in outer space. The original cell phone for plants was developed years ago by scientists working with NASA on future manned missions to the moon and Mars.
"You need plants on future space missions," said Hans-Dieter Seelig, a scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder who worked on the original NASA project.
"They take out waste carbon dioxide, produce breathable oxygen, and the astronauts can use them as food," said Seelig.
During their research, the NASA scientists concluded that astronauts wouldn't be able to take anywhere near enough food and supplies for an estimated two-year mission to Mars. The pilots and Ph.D.'s selected for the trip would have to spend most of their time as celestial subsistence farmers.
To reduce the amount of time and supplies necessary to grow crops, scientists clipped sensors, wired to a central computer, to plants so astronauts would know exactly when and how much water to give them.
During the initial NASA tests the scientists were able to reduce the amount of water necessary to grow plants by 10 percent to 40 percent.
You can see a Video on AgriHouse website here.
A similar approach was also demonstrated earlier this year.
Interactive telecommunications researchers designed a soil-moisture sensor device that can allow a house plant to communicate with its owner. The device can send short messages to a mobile phone or, by using a service called Twitter, it can send short messages to the Internet. The messages can range from reminders to water the plant, a thank you or a warning that you over- or under-watered it. To communicate, probes in the soil emit electric waves. A voltage level based on the moisture content is sent through two wires to a circuit board that compares the optimum moisture level with the current one. A local network receives this data and allows the plant to send a message through the device.
All this is possible through a new system called Botanicalls, which is developed by Interactive Communications researchers. This system allows your plants to send text messages to your cell phone or even on internet. The plants will know when they need water and they will let you know, or, if they have been watered, they will just thank you. More, they will tell you if you put enough water or they need more.
So how Botanicalls works?
Some sensors are placed in the soil with the plant, and they measure the level of moisture. These sensors send a signal to a microcontroller to determine if the moisture is low or high, or if water has been added or not. Based on that, the sensors can send a wireless signal to an internet connected computer than can send a prerecorded message to the plant owner. Messages include “thank you” when the plants are watered, or warnings if the water is too much, or the plants haven’t been watered and they need water.
You can see their video here.
Wednesday 17 June 2009
SMS: Information, MisInformation, Emergency and Spam
The other day someone pointed out that the number of SMS send per day globally is 2 Trillion. I said, surely this cant be true. The population of the world is somewhere around 7 Billion mark. If we assume that everyone uses the phone and sends 1 message per day than that is still 7 Billion messages, 2 Trillion cant possibly be true.
According to a post earlier, 1 Trillion messages were sent in 2008, compared to 363 Billion in 2007. Thats between 3 and 3.5 Billion per day. We may have to wait probably just couple of years before we see 1 Trillion messages per day (assuming the Networks can cope with this amount of SMS's). The reason for sharp rise in the number would be due to various factors.
The first reason being Spam. China is already facing SMS Spam problems. Its becoming such a nuisance that the operators are considering limiting the number of SMS to a max. of 200 messages per hour and 1000 per day. On holidays, 500 and 2000 respectively. I am not sure if Spammers use phones, rather there are many websites allowing bulk messaging facilities. Many companies are also offering power texting facilities that allows big bundles for minimal pricing. The average price being 1 cent per SMS or even cheaper.
Another reason that we should not forget is the introduction of many QWERTY phones that is making life of texters easier. There is some debate as to whether its having good or bad impact on the teens but I think its the health problems we should be worried about more than anything else. Its just matter of time when you get a new phone, there will be a caution note saying: "Caution: Text messaging can seriously harm your health. It can cause sore thumbs, cause sleeping disorders, anxiety and in some cases depression. Please click on I Accept if you would like to use it at your own risk" :)
Deciphering teen text messages is an art in itself. I blogged about it earlier but things change faster than you can anticipate. LG have launched a DTXTR service that can help you decipher your teen text messages. I tried few codes and it failed miserably. I suppose for these kinds of services, one more thing you need is to know the location of the users. Same code word can mean different thing in different countries/states. Webopedia has a very detailed list of these abbreviations.
Finally, I have always wondered why emergency services dont allow SMS. If I am in a bank being robbed, its safer to send a text rather than call and speak to an operator. Good news is that, its already being tested in the US. This should complement the eCall feature in future.
Tuesday 16 June 2009
SMS good or bad for the teens?
When SMS was invented it was though that it’s an ideal way of communicating with somebody in short and that too cheaper than the actual call. What really picked up in the field of SMA was an easy way of communicating with somebody whilst busy doing something else. SMS specially has become a big hit the teens of today and they love every bit of it.
Teenagers worldwide, these days are sending thousands of text messages per month. While one might be tempted to imagine that it is not a problem due to the availability of unlimited text messaging plans, the issue here is hardly a financial one.
Teenagers have taken the texting to a different level where they depict a brilliant example of multitasking. Albeit concerns are growing over issues such as how excessive text messaging threatens proper sleep, as many teenagers text message late into the night. Or as I can imagine, probably even waking up in the middle of the night to check and reply to new text messages.
In the last five years itself text messaging has gained significant momentum with the teenagers worldwide and the pertinent question here is whether such use of mobile devices will create a generation of adults addicted to perpetually buzzing or beeping mobile gadgets. This could produce a generation that has trouble sitting still and focusing on the task at hand.
There is no doubt it’s easy to find a way of getting distracted especially when you are teen. Imagine you are busy doing something important and you phone beeps thus indicating of the arrival of a new message. In this scenario 99% of the teens including some adults as well will definitely be paying attention to the new SMS and mostly replying for it as well.
In my opinion SMS is like any other things to play for the teen which basically keep them interested and involved. Any fun which is easily and readily available to the teens will definitely attract them no matter which generation they belong to. So what can be a boon for some can be bane for others. What is your opinion on text messaging?
Thursday 7 May 2009
Why SMS are 160 characters long?
In figuring out the number of characters to be allocated for text messages, alone in a room in his home in Bonn, Germany, Friedhelm Hillebrand sat at his typewriter, tapping out random sentences and questions on a sheet of paper.
That became Hillebrand's magic number and set the standard for one of today's most popular forms of digital communication: text messaging.
Before his typewriter experiment, Hillebrand had an argument with a friend about whether 160 characters provided enough space to communicate most thoughts. "My friend said this was impossible for the mass market," Hillebrand said. "I was more optimistic."
How true he was towards all his optimism when text messaging has become the prevalent form of mobile communication worldwide. The biggest youth market of the world i.e India at the moment are sending more text messages than making calls on their cellphones.
Texting has been a boon for telecomms which lead the generation of healthy revenue for the operators where they can easily charge the customers some 20 to 25 cents a message.
Todays mobile phones offcourse are capable of transparently spreading a lengthier message across multiple text messages albeit at a higher cost to customers on most mobile phone plans.
Wednesday 8 April 2009
More than 1 Trillion messages were sent in 2008
CTIA -The Wireless Association® announced the findings of its semi-annual industry survey, which includes numerous positive metrics on the industry’s continued growth and popularity. In particular, wireless revenues showed impressive year-to year gains, as wireless data service revenues for the year 2008 rose to more than $32 billion. This represents a 39% increase over 2007, when data revenues totaled $23.2 billion. Wireless data revenues for 2008 amounted to nearly 22% of all wireless service revenues, and represent what consumers spend on non-voice services.
According to the survey, text messaging continues to be enormously popular, with more than one trillion text messages carried on carriers’ networks in 2008—breaking down to more than 3.5 billion messages per day. That’s almost triple the number from 2007, when 363 billion text messages were transmitted. Wireless subscribers are also sending more pictures and other multi-media messages with their mobile devices, with 15 billion MMS messages reported for 2008, up from 6 billion the year before.
According to the survey, text messaging continues to be enormously popular, with more than one trillion text messages carried on carriers’ networks in 2008—breaking down to more than 3.5 billion messages per day. That’s almost triple the number from 2007, when 363 billion text messages were transmitted. Wireless subscribers are also sending more pictures and other multi-media messages with their mobile devices, with 15 billion MMS messages reported for 2008, up from 6 billion the year before.
As of December 2008, the industry survey recorded more than 270 million wireless users. This represents a year-over-year increase of nearly 15 million subscribers. The industry’s 12-month record for subscriber growth was reached in 2005, when 25.7 million new users came online.
Other highlights of the survey include: wireless customers using more than 2.2 trillion minutes in 2008, an increase of 100 billion minutes from 2007, and record-breaking six-month wireless service revenues of more than $75 billion with annual service revenues reaching $148 billion by year-end 2008.
The CTIA Semi-Annual Wireless Industry Survey results were released on 1st April 2009 at International CTIA WIRELESS 2009®. Billed as the most important global technology event of the year, with more than 1,200 exhibiting companies and around 40,000 attendees from 125 countries, it took place April 1st -3rd at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.
According to another survey in Canada, relationships often blossom thanks to technology. Two in five (42%) of Canadians aged 18-34 would send a flirtatious text to hint they have a crush. Youth are also significantly more inclined to flirt with their crush using Facebook wall posts or gifts (35%) and instant messaging (32%). On the other hand, just over one in ten Canadians aged 55+ would use Facebook (15%) and instant messaging (12%).
Results also show Canadians are doing everything from flirting to breaking up, all using technology. Surprisingly, a full 10 per cent of Canadians would give someone the hint that their relationship is over by changing their Facebook status. When it comes to breaking up the old fashioned way, 35 per cent of Canadians would choose to break up with someone over the phone or in person and only 10 per cent would opt not to use technology to get this message across.
Tuesday 10 March 2009
Giving up Texting for Lent
The bishops are encouraging their parishioners to take up new forms of abstinence after the Pope emphasised in his Ash Wednesday address the importance of Lent as a spiritual build-up to Easter and praised the age-old Christian practice of fasting.
Chocolate, cigarettes and alcohol may be the predictable vices to give up for the 40 days of Lent but Italians are being urged to abstain from more contemporary pleasures, like texting, Facebook and iPods.
The Bishop of Modena, in northern Italy, has called on young Italians to give up on Fridays their addiction to sending text messages, in the run-up to Easter Sunday. Archbishop Benito Cocchi said that this would help them to "cleanse themselves from the virtual world and get back into touch with themselves".
The average Italian sends 50 texts a month, the second highest rate in Europe, behind the UK.
The bishops of Pesaro, on the Adriatic, and of Bari, in the south, have also picked up on the idea of a "text message fast" and more bishops could follow suit.
In the Diocese of Trento, in the foothills of the Alps, Archbishop Luigi Bressan has set out a type of calender of abstinence for his parishioners, with each Sunday of Lent dedicated to a different sacrifice.
He has called on Catholics to abstain from using a car, from logging into Facebook, from listening to music on MP3 players, and from playing computer games. He has also suggested that people use Lent to embrace recycling and he called for "abstinence from egocentricity".
In Venice, the bishop has suggested giving up mineral water and drinking only tap water during Lent.
Network operator '3' released a Facebook phone called INQ last year. Though I am not a fan of Facebook or for that reason the INQ, I know quite a few people are. Maybe this abstaining from the phone for a day maybe a good idea.
Friday 6 March 2009
SMS hailed as enablers of next-generation offerings
The study, conducted by Direct2Mobile found that mobile operators believe SMS will become the enabler that underpins next generation offerings, with all those surveyed claiming they are developing their messaging infrastructure in order to introduce new value-added services.
Of all the services cited, mobile social networking and mobile applications lead the way with 75 per cent of operators expecting to invest in them over the next 12 months. Mobile broadband is not far behind with 65 per cent expecting to make investments over the next 12 months, closely followed by location-based services, IM/presence and the mobile internet (which 50 per cent of operators stated would be a priority for the 12 months ahead).
Jay Seaton, CMO at Airwide Solutions, said: “Revenues from SMS have become a substantial and strategic income stream for mobile operators worldwide. However, recent market changes are placing an ever greater pressure on operators to deliver new and richer services that will not only complement voice and text services but also boost ARPU and help improve market share.”
Friday 16 January 2009
Lucky dad escapes bankruptcy due to 14,528 SMS messages
Greg Hardesty didn't LOL when he got his teen daughter's cellphone statement.
All he could think was "OMG!"
The California man's 13-year-old daughter, Reina, racked up an astonishing 14,528 text messages in one month. The online AT&T statement ran 440 pages.
It works out to 484 text messages a day, or one every two minutes of every waking hour.
The reporter for the Orange County Register grilled his daughter on her texting habit - by text message, of course.
"Who are you texting, anyway? Your entire school?" he asked.
"Well, a lot of my friends have unlimited texting. I just text them pretty much all the time," she explained.
She messages a core of "four obsessive texters" - all girls between the ages of 12 and 13 - on her LG phone.
Luckily, Hardesty has a phone plan that allows unlimited texting for $30 a month. Otherwise, he estimates, he would have owed AT&T $2,905.60 at a rate of 20 cents per message.
The average number of monthly texts for a 13- to 17-year-old teen is 1,742, according to a Nielsen study of cellphone usage.
Hardesty admits he himself punches in 900 messages a month - 700 more than average for his age group, according to Nielsen.
Hardesty and his ex-wife have since placed restrictions on Reina's cellphone use, ruling she cannot text after dinner.
Wednesday 24 December 2008
Texting and Internet being trialled on flights
BMI is piloting mobile internet and texting services on planes, but frequent flyers need not get up in arms about getting stuck next to chatty people, as the airline has wisely chosen to leave out voice calls.
The service, from OnAir, will be trialled for six months on just one plane – an Airbus A320, which flies between Heathrow and Moscow. Passengers will be able to use SMS, email and internet on mobiles, PDAs and laptops with GSM SIM cards or dongles.
Peter Spencer, managing director of BMI, said: “It opens up an exciting new era of travellers being able to stay in touch by text message and email whilst in the air.
The pilot project isn’t just about testing the tech or the take-up, however. “The trial will help us address some of the social and etiquette issues regarding the use of mobile communications devices inflight and provide valuable customer feedback which will be at the heart of deciding how the service is developed and rolled out across the remainder of our mid haul fleet,” Spencer said.
“We have chosen not to implement the voice call option as part of the trial,” he added.
Sunday 14 December 2008
Forward texts to your email account
It’s not a rocket science that texting is cheaper and sometimes keep people going on their mobiles and also it’s a way of passing time for today’s youths.
I came across some interesting thing called txtForward earlier today, which I thought was worth a mention here. As its name suggests, txtForward automatically forwards incoming or outgoing text messages to a specified email address.
But at the same time this could be a boon for the heavy text user who might just want a simple and reliable way to archive their messages. And in case you didn't realize, text messaging is apparently being used by teens to avoid taking phone calls by their parents. How amazing, today’s youth like me are definitely one step ahead than the older ones.
Anyway, the unfortunate state of affair is that most smartphones simply do not treat text messages as important, and hence are generally limited in terms of message-level searching, as well as in their backup and archival.
Available for the BlackBerry and Windows Mobile, the BlackBerry version of the software worked flawlessly for me. Of course, the trial is limited to only 10 forwarded messages, so my experience with it is limited. One downside for privacy advocates is that the emails are sent out via Electric Pocket's servers, though the company gave assurance on its website that no logging, recording, or monitoring of messages takes place.
Saturday 13 December 2008
Help to decipher the text messages
The world of text messaging is evolving so fast that honestly its becoming difficult for me to keep track of the 'text slangs'. If you are in a situation like me then dont worry help is at hand.
ITPro published an article recently reporting that the 'Post Office' (yup you read it correctly) has released a guide that lists lot of common slangs being used for texting. A word of caution would be that some of the terms are specific to Brits so they may not be applicable in other english speaking countries.
Some of the interesting terms listed are:
- ATM - At the moment
- 4EVA - Forever
- Code 18 - Someone who is bad at using technology
- 404 - Clueless
- BAB - Boring
- P999 - Parent Alert (Note 999 is emergency number in UK. So this would become P911 in US, P112 in Europe and P100 in India)
- GOOD job - Get Out Of Debt job
- Code 11 - Old Fashioned (London specific)
- 143 - I Love You (more commonly used one is ILU)
The guide is available from the Post office site here. (Ftp link for PDF)
There is also a very interesting book called "Txtng: the gr8 db8" that was published not too long ago.
The book is not expensive and I found it very interesting as it contains loads of useful information and statistics. The best thing is that in the end it contains very detailed list of text abbreviations, not only in english but also in 11 other languages (using english charachters though) including Chinese, French, Italian, Spanish and Welsh.
Thursday 4 December 2008
SMS Rocks! Long distance shoulder amputation by text
David Nott, 52, a general and vascular surgeon at Chelsea and Westminster hospital, was working with the charity Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) in the town of Rutshuru when he came across the badly injured 16-year-old in October.
The teenager's left arm had been so badly damaged - either in an accident or as a result of the fighting between Congolese and rebel troops - that it had already had to be amputated. But the flesh and bone that remained had become badly infected and gangrenous.
"He was dying" said Nott. "He had about two or three days to live."
The doctor realised the boy's best chance of survival was a forequarter amputation which requires the surgeon to remove the collar bone and shoulder blade. The only problem was that it was an operation Nott had never performed. But he remembered that one of his colleagues at home had carried out the procedure.
"I texted him and he texted back step-by-step instructions," he said.
"Even then I had to think long and hard about whether it was right to leave a young boy with only one arm in the middle of this fighting.
"But in the end he would have died without it, so I took a deep breath and followed the instructions to the letter."
Such an operation, if performed in the UK, would require careful planning with every sort of modern medical product on hand if things went wrong.
But in Congo Nott had just one pint of blood and an elementary operating theatre.
Despite the basic conditions, the operation was a success and the teenager made a full recovery.
Tuesday 16 September 2008
Mobile Data 2008: $200 Billion and rising
Informa Telecoms & Media estimates that non-SMS data contributed US$17.48 billion of revenue in Q108, accounting for 35.6% of total data revenues.
Sunday 22 June 2008
New Fad: "SMS with Attachments"
First you get the text message. And then the phone rings, playing back a multimedia joke message sent by one of your friends. It's funny enough that you want to share it with others. It's called SMS (text) messaging with attachments, and it is the latest revenue-generating service built using Open Access(TM) media processing boards from telecommunications services platform provider NMS Communications. The SMS with attachments service, developed by value-added service provider ChannelSoft, is available to nearly 96 million China Unicom and China Mobile subscribers, and has already been adopted by more than 18 million subscribers to date.
SMS with attachments allows users to send external multimedia content to friends and family. Callers can subscribe to the service and select attachments such as music, ringback tones, jokes, other audio files and other forms of entertainment that they want to share with friends. The operator will then send the SMS message with the attachment to the recipient, who could then forward the message to other friends. ChannelSoft expects the service to continue to grow, increasing average revenue per user (ARPU), with estimates topping $44 million for 2008.
"While text messaging still enjoys the lion's share of mobile messaging revenues, operators are expanding their menus to give subscribers more options that will, in turn, drive revenues," said Jamie Warter, vice president of marketing at NMS Communications. "SMS with attachments is another great example of a creative service developed by an innovative company like ChannelSoft using NMS Open Access media processing boards."
Now you may soon hear about Phone Call with Picture (a.k.a. Video calling ;)
Wednesday 2 April 2008
Just keep texting
Last year I blogged about SMS being the killer App and it seems to be still going strong. Sprint recently launched $99 plan known as Simply Everything allows unlimited voice and texts. These plans will make people more addicted to texting.
A recent study by Portio Research confirms continued healthy SMS growth. ABI predicts the overall mobile messaging market will grow to become a US$212 billion market opportunity by 2013, while Portio Research argues SMS will be least a US$67 billion revenue opportunity during the same period.
Yet while it’s clear SMS growth is showing no signs of slowing down, wireless operator margins have not grown with the wireless consumer’s appetite for low-priced service sets. Industry research points out SMS revenues will only see a 28 percent increase from 2007 to 2012. This means all-you-can-eat plans by Sprint and other wireless operators, coupled with increasing competition, will minimize the rise of new SMS revenue.
A quick search about SMS news gave some very interesting results:
- Anam Mobile and TR2 Communications Launch Global SMS Money Transfer Service
- Man divorces two wives in three minutes using SMS
- Finnish foreign minister sacked over SMS scandal
- Buy Stuff On Amazon With An SMS
- Nuance announce Voicemail to Text message transcription system
- Psychiatrist voices SMS addiction concerns
- Surge in SMS traffic on election day
- SMS to remind you of payment dates
Interesting list, isnt it?
Wednesday 18 July 2007
SMS! Still the killer application
What’s contributing to the success of SMS services, says Portio, is that it’s a very fast means of peer-to-peer mobile communication and an ever- growing base of new subscribers.
Case in point is Asia Pacific.
Portio estimates that every five minutes now and over the next six years 2,267 people will purchase their first mobile phone that will likely only include standard voice and SMS service. Asia Pacific could potentially produce an additional 1.4 billion new subscribers with a new SMS traffic. In 2011, the emergence of smartphones and wireless Internet services in North America, which was initially slower to adopt SMS services, could be the driving factor of why MIM (mobile instant messaging) could potentially replace SMS as a messaging service by 2011. Still, wireless operators, says Portio, will have to be careful to not cannabilize their SMS revenues by striking a balance between SMS and MIM pricing.