SMS

In my day job we’ve got one of those infernal text-messaging systems where people can send in their suggestions and queries for us to ponder over.  The average day sees a number of obscenities, sexual suggestions that would be illegal in a number of US states and the odd message so riddled with “txt spk” that I’ve had to plug a USB-13-year-old into the computer to decipher it.  Since I’m the one who usually ends up checking the mailbox, I’m indecently tempted by this 360-degree textable message globe so that everyone else in the office could share in the joy of being told “U blO goatz”.

(more…)

Have you got dynamic digits?  Are your fingers faster than the proverbial speeding bullet?  Then get your sweet ass down to Los Angeles, baby, because they’re about to pit the quickest texters against each other in a fight for a $10,000 prize and place in the speed-messaging final in NYC on April 21st. 

Before you get too cocky, you’ll have to turn that T9 off and refrain from using any ridiculous abbreviations or shorthand.  So far 150 have signed up and organisers LG are expecting more to turn up on the day.

To all those competing: gd lck!

R u rdy 4 wrlds fastest txt msg? [Reuters]

Looking like a cross between a Geiger counter and something unpleasantly endoscopic, the SMS Guerrilla Projector is in fact the mash-up of an old Nokia cellphone with a variety of camera lenses; it lets you project your text messages onto anything or anyone.  Designed and constructed by Troikart, a UK-based experimental art and design collaborative, it’s intended to provoke thought and discussion based on the interplay of message and backdrop.  Whatever the theory, I want one!

(more…)