Text messaging is nowadays an
essential part of communication, particularly between youngsters. While
many people assume that the system of text messages has been ported
from the internet to the mobile phone network as a form of emailing or
instant messaging, the truth is completely different. The original idea
was transported from the much earlier beeper network, where people used
to employ numbers to simulate words for short messages. At current
time, the term texting refers most generally to the SMS service, the
short message service, but it may also include multimedia, which is
then called MMS, as in multimedia messaging service. While the regular
SMS messages go over the GSM and 3G networks, other variations exist,
including the BlackBerry standard, which uses SMTP over TCP/IP,
basically the email protocol of the internet. Many of the messages sent
are simple person to person messages, sometimes there are bulk messages
sent to selected addresses, but basically they are the same. Many other
uses of SMS and other test messaging services exist, from the private
to the commercial ones, including SPAM messages and chain letters.
Interestingly enough, the internet lingo, including smilies and
shortened words has translated to the SMS world. The limitations of the
message length is very often compensated by leaving out the spaces
between words, capitalizing the begin of
every word, a form also known
as "CamelCase". Naturally, the public relations companies have learned
to exploit the new medium and send very often unsolicited SMS messages
to people who did not carefully read what news bulletins they
subscribed to. This is also another service offered per SMS, news,
information, from weather to breaking news, from information about the
favorite star to the general gossip, you can receive anything and
everything. But also more serious applications are provided, for
instance, your bank can send you SMS information when you have received
payment, you can be reminded of important bills to pay, receive credit
card statements and many more. Less serious application would be the
use of SMS to cheat at exams. It has become such a serious problem,
that commercial network disturbing appliances and even mobile phone
locators are being employed, in order to prevent such occurrences. The
tragicomic side effect is that people who are perfectly able to
communicate in person, choose to avoid personal communication and
instead SMS each other. This social behavior has been most prominently
noted in Japan, but it is also seen elsewhere. In any case, text
messaging is here to stay, just like mobile communication is apparently
on the verge of obliterating the traditional phones.
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