Paris Hilton and William Windsor in a tree, T E X T I N G.

Each other, so reports The Daily Mirror.

What celebrity’s mobile phone (is Prince William a celebrity or a non-celebrity famous person?) would you really like to find in the back of a cab to have a nose through their text messages?

As for Prince William with a Blackberry? I hope it’s a Bold — and I hope he’s got Google Maps working on it as he’s just started a motorbike tour of Africa with his brother.

The things you learn when you’re sat on the Eurostar reading the paper and fuming about your own Blackberry not working…

Well, that’s based on the system actually working as expected. The ability to be able to send a message to all 5,000 staff immediately (e.g. “Hello, come and empty your desk please, Mr & Mrs Lehman Brothers”) can only be a good thing, surely?

But as we’ve reported before, some systems haven’t entirely worked when they’ve been tested. Witness, if you will, the Louisiana State University text system screwing up during a test.

There are obvious implications here for the companies that have grown up specialising in emergency text services for colleges, universities and organisations.

The research by this Computer Science Professor is pretty direct. And it’s not the service providers to blame per se — it’s the actual operator infrastructure that is, typically, simply not built to send 10,000 messages through one or two cellular masts in one location, immediately.

The research conducted for the paper indicates that there are serious limitations in third party Emergency Alert Systems (EAS). In particular, because of the general architecture of CDMA, TDMA and GSM cellular networks, such systems will not be able to deliver a high volume of emergency messages in a short period of time. Through discussion, modeling and simulation, Traynor demonstrated in the paper that current systems not only cannot widely disseminate such messages quickly, but also that the additional traffic created by third party EAS solutions may disrupt other traffic such as voice communications, including that of emergency responders or the public to 9-1-1 services.

Cellular News has the full story.

Would you like to be email or text friends?
Hello! my name is Tia, im not new to Christianity but im trying now to find my own way in my faith. I am 16 and love to talk lol so id hope you would to! Just looking for someone to text and talk to about God and life. Girl or guy it dosent matter please post or pm me if your instersted

It got me thinking about penfriends.

I once had a penfriend… for about a week, when I was young. A chap in Russia. This was back when letters took weeks to arrive because they were all being read by the various authorities.

People at school I knew used to have tons of penfriends. They used to write to each other every week.

Where are we today? What do young-folk-do when it comes to penfriends? We’ll ask Samantha and Issah.

Meanwhile… Is there such a thing as textfriends? Does that ‘work’? Surely a textfriend is … well… just a person you text, as apposed to a penfriend?

So, all mobile phones have SMS or texting on them.

Is there any way to turn that feature off?

Specifically, a way to turn it off so that anyone who tries to text you knows that it didn’t go through? And that it won’t?

As much as it might wind me up, I can see that some people would really like this feature on their handset/mobile account.

(Thanks for sending me the link Andy)

It’s bad.

So bad in fact that it could get you killed.

In other news, I’d like to point out that if you stick a knife into your heart, you could very well kill yourself.

Also: And, I don’t blame you if you didn’t already know this, but if you cut off your head with your penknife, you are in serious, serious danger of killing yourself.

Cutting your hedge with a hedge trimmer could be very, very dangerous too.

Swimming could be really dangerous as well. Especially if you open your mouth and breathe continually. I’m just saying.

You take care now.

According to the Direct Marketing Association, 24 percent of mobile phone users surveyed online have responded to mobile marketing. The DMA quantitative mobile marketing research found that 70 percent of consumers who have responded to a mobile marketing offer say they’ve responded to a marketing text message, compared with 42 percent who’ve responded to a survey and 30 percent to email offers.

i2SMS are working with Encompass Advertising and Marketing — a full service national marketing agency who, in turn, are working for the car markers Scion. Scion are one of their vehicles on site at the Minnesota State Fair. It’ll be filled full with Scion-branded skulls and if you guess the number of skulls, you can win a new Garmin nuvi GPS device for each day of the 10-day Fair. Nice!

If you haven’t come across Scion, check out their site here. It’s rather smart.

There’s a million or so folk due to attend the fair and around 60% of them are in Scion’s target demographic. I think they’ll be dead impressed at how the medium of text performs. It’s already a fantastic method of engaging folk with a view to arranging test drives here in the UK.

I’m told that Scion personnel are ecstatic about the early response of the campaign. I’m not surprised. Here’s a quote from a chap from Scion:

“Thursday night’s winner was standing at a booth right next to ours when he received his message announcing he was the winner of the Garmin,” said Toyota Chicago Region’s Scion Field Manager Kendall Griffin. “All of a sudden, we could hear him cheer and shout that he was a winner.” Griffin continued, “We loved it.”

Excellent, excellent, excellent!

I haven’t really thought about the communications side of tomorrow much, seeing as I’m more worried about everything else. However, as Ewan pointed out to me tomorrow morning I will spending more time than I have in a long time, using my mobile phone.

From what I’ve seen from previous year groups (we’ve been shown videos into scaring us to work hard), everyone is using their mobile; so how will I be using mine tomorrow?

Firstly, there are my plans to Twitter everything. It’s more of a plan to keep me sane whilst walking into School than anything else. Then again it’s also partially so that anyone who is interested enough to care, can follow what’s happening on my Facebook and Twitter profile.

Then, there are the “after reading the results” communications. Obviously, whether good or bad (that sends shivers down my spine), my family will want to know.

That’ll mean making a phone-call to my Mum, and trying to tell her everything whilst everyone else in my year group is at the same time. My School is also built in such a way that gaining a signal is near impossible, so I’ll have to hunt around for a good spot, preferably away from my teary-eyed and excited peers.

I don’t doubt for a single second that the hundred and eighty strong year group will not be making dozens of calls and texts. With everyone owning a mobile phone, and eager parents, I expect everyone will have fully prepared and topped up mobiles.

The rest of my family, namely my Grandparents have asked me to send them a text or “drop call” them. I can only imagine that even if I text them the results, they’ll be phoning me up, probably with speakerphone on, so that they can all hear.

And finally, another Twitter update.

Isn’t it odd to think that five years of work will be summed up by 180 characters on the internet? Hmm, whatever the outcome, I don’t want think about it now.

What’s even weirder to think about is that there will be around three hundred thousand students receiving their results tomorrow, and probably doing the exact same thing. Maybe not the Twittering though, because I don’t know of anyone in my friend groups, or year group who micro-blog; but I can guarantee that a number of texts and phone calls will be made.

With any luck whatever I will be texting and saying on my phone tomorrow, it’ll be good – although I don’t have high hopes for Music. But even so, at least I can phone up a reassuring voice in the event of anything drastically horrible.

And that is why I love my mobile phone.

Best of wishes to anyone else who are also receiving any results tomorrow!

SOS messaging according to the CPH website is:
“Feeling in danger? Simply press the volume key 4 times on your phone to
discreetly alert your parents that you need help.”

Now maybe not the most interesting piece of news ever, and I certainly wouldn’t expect a lot of older people to understand how amazingly fantastic this idea is; but take it from me, this has to be one of the most enlightening pieces of information I have read in a very long time.

For example, I myself have been in a number of situations where I’ve felt seriously in danger. However, getting your phone out, making a text or call is not the easiest task to complete. Nor is it practical if say for instance you know the people you’re quite scared of may be tempted to “jack” your mobile.

To put it simply, ever been so angry or even frightened where all you do is shake? Well, try and write a text when your arms are doing an uncontrollable fit. It’s not easy, and it isn’t going to get you any help fast at all!

However it’s also the button. It doesn’t require the phone to be taken into sight. This means you may stand a lower chance of having your phone stolen off of you, or even being ridiculed for requiring assistance.

I can say having a mobile for some part does make me feel safer, but not completely. This due to the impracticalities that come with texting or calling your parents, or maybe the police if you’re in danger or someone else is. The Samsung idea completely eliminates this problem, which is not only brilliant, but hopefully a huge help.

I can say that those of days of walking home from school in fear are gone; but as we all know the sad truth is, there will be always more victims of bullying or of aggressive attacks. Yes the mobile phone is useful, but its limitations make it useless in situations such as these.

I hope other big companies follow suit with this idea; especially Sony and Nokia who have a lot of custom with the teenage market. But I also hope that more is done to educate youngsters, especially those starting high school. It’s daunting to say the least, but in our current climate of living in fear, more should be done to reassure my generation, and those younger than myself of these tools available.

A lot of time, effort and money are wasted on “talking” about the issue of bullying, and teenage crime. This though is just a waste, as not a lot is done to prevent, help or deter anyone from these activities. It is only simple measures such as the SOS Messaging which make some of the biggest differences to one’s confidence and ability to handle themselves in dangerous or worrying situations.

The team at txtNation are rightly delighted to be providing the infrastructure for wine maker, Blossom Hill’s summer competition.

Blossom Hill are giving away 20 summer garden parties worth £1k each. Nice.

3.75 million promotional bottles of their Rosé range are already out in the marketplace looking for your attention (and containing full details of the promotion). To enter you simply text your details to the txtNation shortcode. Entrants will receive a reply confirming the receipt of their text message along with a quirky idea to enhance their own garden.

In addition, 1,000 pubs in the UK will be promoting the relateed Blossom Hill MMS picture messaging competition. I particularly like this concept:

Consumers are to take photos of themselves enjoying Blossom Hill wine with friends to be able to enter into the prize draw, in which people will win one of the 10 Garden party kit prizes within their local pub. All they have to do is simply take a photo of themselves and send it in with the word ‘SUMMER’ to 60999. For the other competition they could simply text in their name, address and D.O.B along with the word ‘BLOSSOM’ to 60999 for the chance to win fantastic prizes.

Blossom Hill — via their agency, Pulse Group — purchased mFUSION and mBILL from txtNation enabling them to ensure that their campaigns were set up successfully and delivered perfectly, right on schedule. txtNation also created the website that Blossom Hill is using to host the picture competition.

I can’t get enough of this kind of news. I am really pleased to read about it and I’m delighted txtNation are telling people about it — all too often, we in the industry only find out about successes such as this when you’re in the local superstore. The fact that big, big consumer brands such as Blossom Hill are adopting the medium of mobile to support their big summer marketing push is brilliant news for the mobile industry. Because all of Blossom Hill’s competitors will now be peering at the competition and if they haven’t looked at mobile, they’ll now be a lot more keen on discussing it when it’s raised by their agencies next year.

Bring it on. The more, the better. Nice one txtNation.

The research was conducted by independent research firm Amplitude Research and other features that scored highly were having a camera (67%), having email capabilities (63%) and accessing the Internet (61%); while only 0.5% of respondents said that battery life was important – not like our own James Whately during Glastonbury.

For the geeks amongst us, it is interesting to read that 39% of respondents have added new applications, while 21% have added six or more new applications.

But it wasn’t all geeks they talked to. They also surveyed some people just like my mum – as 4.83% said that the only reason they have a cell phone is in case of emergency!

You can read more on FierceWireless here.