Now that I’m a full-fledged Blogger…

Well, OK, so I’m not really what you would call a full-fledged blogger quite yet. (I was just trying to get your attention).

I have to admit, however, that I really enjoyed this assignment. It’s not terribly difficult to do, and it's much easier to express your opinion in a blog because you can write in a conversational tone (unlike papers or other written assignments). I think it’s great that Professor Smith goes through and reads everyone’s postings (although I’m sure most professors would absolutely refuse to do this because it is so time-consuming) and leaves comments most of the time. It makes you feel like what you’re writing is actually interesting to someone, and heck, it sure beats just getting red check marks on your assignments from TAs who do not have the time to write real comments.

As fun as blogging is, there is one thing that I learned in the last few weeks: Blogger is terribly unreliable (I wonder if I’ll get censored?!), and while it’s a super useful piece of technology, I recommend that people write up their blog postings in a Word document then cut and paste into Blogger. In the last couple of weeks, Blogger has had a tendency to crash, which erases all of your unpublished work. This is especially frustrating for people like me (and Amanda!) who, as you can see, write ridiculously long postings.
Just the other day I wrote up the post “What it would be like if your stalker LIVED in your cell phone” and pushed the “save as draft” button and EVERYTHING got erased. *sigh* The second time that I wrote it, I made sure to save it in Word but the next day, I decided to add a quote from Rowland. I figured such a small change would be quick enough that I could edit it in Blogger itself rather than change it in Word, but silly me! I ended up typing in the new quote, adding the references etc., pushing "publish post", and my entire post (the stuff that I had posted prior to editing it) disappeared. So here I am publishing it again!

Nonetheless, this blogging assignment was fun to do and I enjoyed sticking in random comments everywhere. I also took a look at some of the blogs written by my friends in this class and many of them have some really cool things to say. Plus a lot of the time, it’s really more interesting to read 253 blogs than a lot of my friends’ personal, “today-I- went-to-school” type blogs.

I also think publishing via blogs was a good method for this assignment because a lot of my research for the blog came from the Web anyways. Most of the time, I would take a couple of minutes to search for some relevant SMS material on the Web, keep those windows open, and write my blog at the same time. It made the process faster to just link research webpages into the blog.

Having spent 12 weeks blogging about SMS, I feel that I now have a pretty good grasp on the technology. This is especially true because my partner and I chose the cellular phone for Assignment 2, where I learned all the technical stuff about how cellular phones work and how data gets transmitted.


I also feel that I have a greater understanding about new media in general.Spirit of the Web helped a lot in this respect because Rowland really drills it into your head that you have to look at the historical origins/context of a technology to fully understand its evolution, functions etc. You also have to look at the evolution of the technology because users often appropriate and use technologies in ways that are unexpected and context-based. As *fantastic* as it was reading all of this kind of stuff in Rowland's book, it was nice to have a chance to practice this kind of deeper understanding of technology in our blogs.

So there we have it, blogging:
the pros - lots of fun, quick and easy, more interesting than a paper, much more casual and to the point
the cons - problems with the technology

As you can see the pros outweigh the cons so YAY BLOGGING!

What it would be like if your stalker LIVED in your cell phone...

As promised, this last ‘regular’ post will be a continuation of the topic of SMS advertising. I thought it would be fitting to end off my blogging with this entry because it’s about the future of SMS technology.
I was doing a Google search of SMS advertising and I came across a forum called Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000913032025/#comments). In particular, I was looking at the post called “SMS Advertising Hits the Streets” featuring this image:


Since I really haven’t talked to any of my friends about SMS for my blog, I thought it would be good idea to feature some of the comments left by people who had seen this Engadget post (they’re probably a more diverse group anyways). I expected to find a bunch of negative comments from people complaining about the campaign. In general, I find that people don’t like to be targeted by advertisers – especially when it involves an existing technology that wasn’t used as an advertising medium originally.
However, I was really surprised to find that only 3/16 comments are identifiably negative towards the campaign. (Some of them sort of straddle the line between praise and complaint). One person, in fact, wrote “I hope that this cool propaganda gets here too!!” – without any hint of sarcasm (!!!!).
The majority of the comments are simply accepting of the campaign without passing any judgements on it. I was even surprised by the fact that people simply accepted the campaign without thinking of the larger implications of SMS advertising.

As I was doing research for my posting “Coming to a phone VERY near you”, I had gained the impression that people generally hated the idea of being targeted on their cell phones. I did, however, think that some of the prospects for SMS advertising (as predicted by experts) were very interesting. The one that interested me most was the idea that the following scenario could soon be happening to people like you and me:
Let’s pretend you’re walking down Robson Street and you’re on the corner where the Roots store is. As Professor Smith (2005) explained in lecture, cell phone providers can estimate your geographic location accurately to within approximately a block (this is because a city is divided up into “cells” from which your cell phone receives service). So all of a sudden, you get a text message that says “Hey! We see that you’re near our Virgin Records store. Did you know that the U2 CD has just arrived? Come on in and instantly receive 15% off your purchase of 2 CDs!”

…creepy, isn’t it? Well, at least I think it’s kind of creepy. I guess it’s sort of like those local ads that Google generates from the keywords that you type into the search box…but on a much higher level of personalization. Can you imagine having coupons and new arrivals notices sent to you from the store that you JUST passed by a few seconds ago? It’s like having a personal electronic stalking device – except you’re the one being stalked.

At the same time, however, I do see that this type of targeted advertising could be potentially welcomed by certain people. In the case of the coupons, lots of people are willing to give up some personal privacy in order to get a good deal on a purchase. After all, receiving the text message doesn’t cost anything and if you’re on a privacy bent, you’d probably assume that companies are tracking your comings-and-goings anyways.
Most of the ongoing debate about future uses of SMS advertising surrounds the ability to opt-in. In other words, people are asking, “Will I be able to choose whether or not I receive these targeted text messages?”
 sidenote: if this opt-in/opt-out disagreement sounds familiar, just think about the U-Pass situation, which does not offer opt-outs.

Personally, unless I’m getting a really good deal (and I mean a REALLY good one) from these targeted SMS ads, I wouldn’t want them on my cell phone. Plus this passing-by-Virgin-Records scenario is only one possible use of SMS in the future. I can hardly imagine what else they could cook up using SMS technology. Perhaps one day you’ll be welcomed into a store before you walk into it and by the time you get there, they’ll have drawn up records of all your previous transactions at their store and have items ready to suggest to you. From your past transactions, they could identify what colours you like, what styles you like, how much money you normally spend etc. and try to find suitable items for you even before you get there. What if one day, a salesperson came up to you and said “Hey {insert name here, which was retrieved from your customer file}. We just received this great new top to match the skirt you bought 17 days ago. I’ve gone ahead and grabbed it in your size; it’s waiting for you in the fitting room.”

Sure, it sounds a little bit like that video we watched in lecture about the guy trying to order delivery pizza and having his entire life brought up in one conversation, but I honestly believe that something like that could happen in the future.

Again, however, there may be people out there who would like this kind of personal service. A lot of people would love to be treated like royalty.

Again, however, all of this makes me wonder, if this is a scenario that I can imagine happening, what about the scenarios that I can’t even imagine? After all, it’s usually the scenarios that people cannot even conceive of that eventually become everyday life. Rowland (1999) echoes this idea when he quotes Langdon Winner as saying, “[Technologies] accomplish results that were neither anticipated nor chosen and accomplish them just as surely as if they had been deliberate goals (p. 371) In fact, Rowland spends most of chapter 31 arguing that the outcomes of information technologies are fundamentally unpredictable. BUT, if you happen to have any crazy predictions about what will happen with SMS advertising, please add a comment!


I think, regardless of your personal opinion on the subject, it is an important time that we are going through with SMS. It’s the same situation as when people were first toying with the idea of putting commercials on radio and television. Rowland (1999) suggests that the introduction of commercials into radio programming was a major turning point in the technology – it was then that the first medium of mass communication was born. Even though SMS advertising represents highly-personalized and targeted advertising, it holds just as large of implications as the radio adopting advertising.
Maybe I’m wrong and people will absolutely adore targeted SMS ads just as radio programmers were wrong about how people would react to advertising (Rowland, 1999). Nonetheless, pay attention to what’s happening around you. We are, after all, living in “‘an age of…unimaginable opportunity’” (qtd. in Rowland, 1999, p. 365). While it’s up to you to decide whom this “opportunity” is for (i.e is it an opportunity for capitalists to make profit or is it an opportunity for people to get great deals?), keep your eyes open because you are a witness to the change. Maybe in 20 years, we’ll make it into one the chapters of Rowland’s book dedicated to the birth of targeted advertising!

References
Rowland, W. (1999). Spirit of the web. Toronto: Key Porter.

Assignment 4 Interview Reflections

Ok, so I read in the assignment 4 brief that we're supposed to post on our interviewing experience. Nobody has commented on this part of the assignment, but I thought I'd do it anyways because it seems like an easy post to me!

I really wanted to choose a diverse mix of people to interview but unfortunately, that's easier said than done. Naturally, most of my friends are in my age group. Of the people that I thought about interviewing that are older than I am, they either do not have good enough English to answer the questions (my mom), do not have or use cell phones (my ex-boss), or are likely too busy to answer my questions (my current boss and her husband). Also, I really tried to look for people who I thought would at least potentially agree to be put on film, so that really shortened my list of prospective interviewees. The only person not within 5 years of my age that I interviewed was my Dad. He, in fact, came up with some really good answers to my questions - he touched upon interactivity of the cell phone as a motivation for using it and I didn't even prompt him! Unfortunately, he refuses to go on camera =(
The rest of the people I interviewed are all close friends of mine. In retrospect, I shouldn't have done that because, being my friends, many of their cell phone use habits are similar to each other. Even with my friends, only 2/4 of them agreed to go on camera.
All of my interviewees are Asian, mostly Chinese. Many of them found the interview questions hard to follow/understand. This was especially the case with question #3. (We didn't alter the answer choices for the questions).
I conducted 3 of the interviews over the phone and 2 in person. With the section about the model of the cell phone and plan details, I found that a lot of people don't know anything about what services they have on their phone. None of my interviewees, for example, know how much they get charged for picture messaging -which means they obviously don't use it. There are also other people who have no idea how much they are paying for their cell phone plan - 2 people don't know because they don't pay for their phone themselves, another doesn't know because he has so many additional features tacked on and he exceeds the minutes/messages in his plan so often that his payments fluctuate. As a result, he has forgotten how much his base plan costs.
I was pretty surprised by this trend amongst my friends. I, myself, am quite aware of how much I pay for my plan and additional features. Of course, this is probably because I pay for my own cell phone bill. I wonder if this is the case with a lot of cell phone users? I guess that's how cell phone service providers are able to raise prices on their services every so often - I'm just bitter that Fido is jacking up prices on their caller ID. I guess most people hardly even noticed though.

Anyways, now that I am digressing, I should end this post. Hopefully other people were able to get diverse interviewees so that we'll get some interesting comments in the videos.

Getting One's Vote On

Originally I had planned on writing another post about the idea of SMS mass advertising but I've decided to pass that up for another week. This week, I'd like to talk a little bit about the guest presentation by Kevin Millsip that we had in lecture about Get Your Vote On.

When Amanda raised the question of how Get Your Vote On is going to target potential voters who hate SMS, I started to think about the people who don't actually have access to SMS. What about them? In this sense, the campaign seems to lean towards being slightly elitist to me. No, I'm not trying to be all humanitarian -let's-love-everybody about this, but really, if you think about it, some people just simply don't have access to SMS - mostly because they don't have cell phones. No, this doesn't mean that they can't cast a vote in the election just because Get Your Vote On isn't addressing them....but somehow, the idea that Get Your Vote On is specifically encouraging youth with SMS access to exercise their voting power seems.....well, wrong. I don't know quite how to explain it. Obviously there' s nothing illegal about it nor is it even an uncommon practice to target a particular group. I think the problem I have with it is that, in contrast to Get Your Vote On's goal of encouraging a younger demograpic to participate in democracy (which I think is a very respectable cause), the fact that they target a specific class segment (here I mean economic class) seems......unfitting, contradictory almost.

Obviously, I'm having a hard time articulating my thoughts. Usually I try to present a strong argument in all of my postings but this is a topic that I'm still developing my opinion on. I don't really intend on making this into a huge argument - I just thought I'd share what half-developed thoughts I had for kicks.

There was another important point that he made that I didn't agree with, however, and my opinion here is much more coherent (*cheers*). He mentioned that on a personal level, he believes that Canada has fallen behind in maximizing the use of communication technologies. He cites European and other countries outside of N. America as making extensive use of SMS instead of voice-based cellular communication. In his eyes, these countries are much more "advanced" in maximizing the utility of these technologies. Here, I do not agree. As he highlighted himself, the different uses of communcation technologies differs greatly across different regions. With different regions come different cultural contexts. Even he mentions the fact that many people choose SMS over conversations because SMS is cheaper where these people live. Thus, the preference of SMS over talking is based more so on cultural conditions than the advantages of the medium. As such, I don't think that countries that rely mainly on SMS are in any way more advanced than we are. If you are talking about regular, day-to-day communication, I think most people would agree that voice-based communication is more convenient and faster than SMS. Sure, SMS can have its advantages in some situations but think about how annoying it would be to have to text message EVERY SINGLE thought you wanted to convey to a person. Suddenly, all of your thoughts would have to be contracted to fit into a text message! Carpal-Tunnel syndrome anyone?
So really, the fact that N.Americans do not communicate on the cell phone solely through SMS does not reflect a failure to adapt new technologies. We should not lament the fact that we still use voice-based cellular communication! In fact, we should count our blessings that we are lucky enough to have cheap land lines and cheap rates for cell phone minutes. You think Europeans WANT to convey every thought they have in textspeak? More than anything, the trend has grown out of necessity. I believe that no matter how much of a hermit you are, it's nice to hear the sound of a human voice every once in awhile, is it not?

As a closing note, while there are certain points on which I don't agree with Kevin, I do admire the effort to increase youth voter turnout rates. We're lucky to be living in a "true" democracy (none of that nominal democracy garbage) and we should take advantage of it - and I guess, if SMS is what it takes to convince you personally to become involved in provincial elections, then the campaign has the right ends if not the perfect means. =)

Coming to a phone VERY near you...

A couple days into the new year, an article called "The latest annoyance: Spam on your cellphone" appeared in several major Canadian newspapers. This article was published in light of the fact that "Labatt's Blue has already launched the first nationwide campaign in Canada that can reach cellphone users regardless of their carrier" (Goff, 2005).

Now let's take a moment to digest this information. What does this mean? First, it means that, regardless of whether or not you were aware of it, one of the reasons that stopped marketers from infiltrating the SMS advertising market was due to the issue of not being able to reach all cellphone carriers. From what I understand, this barrier was not the result of a technical issue, but it was the result of the industry refusing to allow this to happen. (Correct me if I am wrong please!) Secondly, it means that this has all changed now - i.e you are no longer protected from SMS spam. (*please groan now*)

Let me just also point out to everyone that this is RECENT. The article was printed on January 3rd 2005! The article suggests that widespread SMS spamming will be a reality by the summer according to an Internet guru (whatever that means. We'll just assume he knows his stuff).
Notice also that this is a Canadian article. Nope, not just something that's happening in far-off Europe or down in the States. It's all local.

In fact, as Canadians, we're already lucky in this respect: Americans and Europeans have had SMS advertisements for many years now. It has gotten so out of hand in the US that there is a current attempt to implement anti-spam legislation for cellular phones. This bill (H.R 113) was introduced in 2001, which only shows how people were anticipating future abuses of the system. See www.badads.org/march01.shtml for a blog posting on this bill. Or if you're really hardcore, you can read the H.R 113 summary at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:hr113:.

Let us just take a look at this issue from a business perspective for a moment. Why would you use SMS as an advertising medium? The question should really be, "Why not?"
1.) SMS advertising represents direct marketing at its very best. Think about it: people carry their cell phones with them, and they usually have them on hand all the time.
2.) SMS advertising campaigns in Europe have shown a 10-12 % response rate which is much higher than either Internet banners (1%) and mail advertisements (3%).
3.) It's cheap. I'll try to dig up some official numbers for this later on....
4.) As cell phone technology advances, it is becoming more and more feasible to have advertisements with images on colour-screen cameras.

...all of this makes you wonder whether the widespread adoption of free incoming text messages (Rogers always had it but Fido has recently adopted it) is really just the next step to slowly integrating text messaging advertisements. Conspiracy theory? I think so!

So where does the law stand on this issue? Currently in Canada, there is no legislation to protect cell phone users from receiving SMS spam (Chezzi, 2004). Although Fido blocks mass text messages from reaching its users and agrees to not release its customers phone numbers to marketers, there have been instances when marketers have successfully slipped through the system - as in the case of Cynthia Temones who was constantly spammed and charged for ads from Lavalife. After much trouble and complaints to Fido, Fido finally agreed to block the number that was sending her these messages. The source was never identified and Lavalife denied sending the spam -see Carmichael (2005) for the full story.

There's actually so much interesting literature on this topic that I'm going to have to extend this topic over to the next blog posting. Until then!

Bad Ads Weblog. http://www.badads.org/march01.shtmlChezzi, D. (2004). Buy and cell. MacLeans. Retrieved March 8th, 2005, from MacLeans.ca.
<http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/article.jsp?content=20041025_90950_90950>
Carmichael, A. (2005). Report spam text messages on your cell. Cnews. Retrieved March 8th,
2005, from Cnews (Canoe).
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/TechNews/TechAtHome/2005/01/27/912068.html
Goff, K. (2005). The latest annoyance: spam on your cellphone. N5R. Retrieved March 8th,
2005, from N5R. http://www.n5r.com/articles/2003/edmonton.asp

OMG! Wat hath God Wrought?!

Having read over the book 3 times in preparation for the midterm, I started to wonder about what Fessenden and the other men that contributed to voice-based telegraphy would think about the rampant success of SMS technology today. The fact is that SMS, which emerged in 1992, is the transmission of text over wireless networks. According to Rowland (1999), they figured out how to do that a hell of a long time ago - as early as 1830, in fact, with Baron Schilling's electric telegraph (see p.61). If you really want to picky about it, Chappe's 1790 visual telegraph (Rowland, 1999) also used the same alphabet that we do today to transmit messages (albeit in a much slower fashion), which is even closer to what we have than Schilling's which used a Morse-like code (see p. 43). Sure, it wasn't wireless quite yet but that would change in the not-so-distant future with Fessenden.
Fessenden, poor guy, would probably be rolling over in his grave right now if he found out that after all of his hard work to ELIMINATE the need for text-based telegraphy, the old text message has come back to haunt us - full swing. As Rowland (1999) would say, since "modern communication is demand-pull rather than supply push" (p.60), text messaging hasn't really even come back to haunt us, we've begged it to come back! I guess this situation is parallel to the early inventors who were so frustrated with the idea of simplifying radio receivers because they saw it was a step backward (Rowland, 1999). It seems to me that we're taking a GIANT step backwards, doesnt' it? Not that I deplore SMS technology nor do I think it primitive. I actually rather like it, but on a really basic theoretic level, isn't that what has happened?
Even if we're talking about the emergence of texting language (i.e all the OMG, BRB stuff), they were doing the same kind of thing back then too: Britain's "improved" version of Chappe's telegraph used shutters to indicate letters of the alphabet and because it was a very slow process, they started to shorten words, usually by omitting vowels (Rowland,1999). Now does that ring a bell for any TXTRS out there?
Even though I think this may be a somewhat trivial observation, it does sort of get you thinking about whether or not technology is really progressive, no?
And for those of you who are currently in Roman's CMNS 221 class or are familiar with McLuhan theory of the effects of technology, I thought McLuhan's tetrad would be a fitting way to supplement what I'm talking about:
1.) SMS technology ENHANCES the ability to leave text-based messages for people no matter where they are. In most cases, it is also cheaper than leaving a voice message (because the receiver has to use up airtime to check the message) and bypasses the mediation required with a pager. As an added bonus, it's sort of fun!
2.) SMS technology OBSOLESCES (ok, maybe not completely, but in varying degrees) pagers, voice mail, email, and cell phone conversations.
3.) SMS technology RECOVERS text-based communication (à la letter writing, telegraph...)
4.) SMS technology REVERSES its advantages because prior to flat rate messaging options, kids were racking up the bills (see bottom of "Lost in (lack of) Translation" post). It also reverses the advantages in a prof's perspective when your students are not-so-discretely text messaging during your classes instead of paying attention - a wonderful loophole to using your cell in class. In poor Fessenden's eyes, it would also reverse all of his hard work! Lastly, if companies decide to change SMS into a point to multi-point technology by bombarding us with text advertisements , then its conviviality will be reversed. Incidentally, this will be the topic of the next blog posting!(*see "Coming to a Phone Very Near You...")

All in all, SMS is an interesting technology that both represents a jump forward and backward. As a random side note, there are two distressing things that I have noticed in the course of this post:
1. There is no real way to express "wrought" nor "hath" in text message short form which has resulted in a failed attempt to capture what Fessenden would say about SMS had he been alive today and for some reason, adopted teenage text-speak. Shame.
2. There doesn't seem to be a way to incorporate letters with accents into this text without resorting to cutting and pasting. That's a real shame.

Anyways, hopefully this observation of mine gets you wondering a little bit about whether or not history is really just a big repetition of itself. Progression, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder(s).

References
Rowland, W. (1999). Spirit of the web. Toronto: Key Porter.

Babies Rush In

During our Week 5 tutorial discussion of how the history of social software has affected its design, the overarching theme that came up was this: most forms of social software started off for business/military reasons, but once put into the hands of the people (some like to call it democratic; I, however, am a bit of a pessimist), the technologies "took off." In other words, SoSo (the abbreviation sounds ridiculous, but I'm lazy) creators began to adapt to the "civilian demand" (as I like to call it) by adding new features and changing old ones. In particular, it seems that with a lot of technologies, it is always the younger generation that fuels this civilian demand. It happened with the Morse code-based radio (Rowland, 1999), it happened with the cellular phone (as discussed in tutorial) and by extension, of course =) , it's happening with SMS. Now the BIG question that this entire post revolves around is, "Are these changes and adaptations necessarily a good thing?"

--Vincci says NO---

Before we get to why I say no, let's look at some proof of the role of youth in SMS technology.

Everywhere you look, it's a bloody proliferation of youth-targeted SMS appeals. To keep it short and sweet, let's make a list of some major categories (not an exhaustive list):
1. voting by SMS on reality shows such as American/Canadian Idol, MuchMusic's Combat Zone
2. unofficial political election polls on SMS asking youth if they would vote via text - I couldn't find the article that I read about this but here's something along the same lines http://www.jsonline.com/bym/tech/news/aug04/249840.asp
*April 1st edit* - Kevin Millsip's guest presentation is probably the best example of what I am talking about here. If you missed that lecture, I wrote some comments on it in "Getting Your Vote On".*
3. Tune Tracker by MuchMusic plus the phone itself -http://www.muchmusic.com/connect/mobile/ (more on this later)
4. At a Rogers sponsored Simple Plan concert at the Commodore, they gave out Rogers pens that say:
a) ImprUv ur TXT life, do it N TXT!
b)WiL b a rock'n concert! mEt me l8r kuL?
c)Don't :) @ me, u'll giv me ideaz...
d) Wan2 C a moV 2moro? Pick U up @ 7?
e)0/-<: = mEt me @ d 1/2pipe.
5. General advertising campaigns targeted at teens as SMS users, including the stupid use of TXT language (as above) in a feeble attempt to "connect" with teens (i'm guessing?)
See http://www.shoprogers.com/store/wireless/services/email/sms.asp?shopperID=XCLVG7JE461F9HW4J3XQ572JAS55BHUC for an example of what I am talking about.

To expand on #4, personally, I think it's all really stupid. Now maybe it's just because I've grown out of the teenie-bopper stage of my life that I find this "appeal-to-teens-thru-txt-language" idea to be...non-appealing, but I really hope that teens are *not* (thanks Prof. Smith for noticing my typo) falling for this sort of stuff. The messages on the Rogers pen that especially bug me are (b) - who ends a sentence with cool spelled kuL? and (e) - the whole 1/2 pipe thing seems like a poor attempt to understand what kids like.

...which brings me to #3 and the whole Tune Tracker ordeal. Even though Prof. Smith commented in class that he thinks it's a pretty cool idea, I think it's soooooooooooo stupid...SoSo stupid if you will =) - Prof. Smith would be proud of my geekiness! Ok, I realize that saying something is "soooooooo stupid" is not quite academic nor professional, so let's just say I think that Tune Tracker is not only an inane idea but a ridiculous waste of the creator's brainpower and general use of technology. Why is it that you would need to know exactly what song is playing at random time? Why would you pay (nothing is for free) to find out exactly what song is playing at a random time? Why would you think that your friends would think you are cooler (excuse me, kuLer) for knowing exactly what song is playing at a random time? You get the point, TuneTracker bothers me.

One of the problems, too, is that it seems that all of this garbage marketing being thrown at the young'uns is...*gasp* working! Yes, I hate to admit it, but something got to be working if corporations are shelling out millions of dollars and creating brand new phones (!!) to target the teens.
*April 1st edit* Fido (www.fido.ca) has also released a similar service now. This suggests the fact that the Muchmusic phone is reasonably popular amongst young-un's.*

The even sadder part is that it is so successful that non-corporate, "serious" organizations are starting to follow lead as in the example of political institutions polling kids via SMS. Apparently kids these days are so dense that you can only "reach" them through text messaging in exaggerated TXT speak. I guess Orwell's idea of Newspeak wasn't so crazy after all!

And lastly, to bring it all into perspective of how text-mad the world has gone, some European companies have been launching "baby cell phones." Yup, that's right cell phones for babies! Not that they have texting capabilities but still, there's something extremely creepy about how far companies will go. Check out this site: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/006900.htm - this phone is now off the market because of worries over harmful radiation levels for kids.
Here's another note-worthy article: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/006843.htm - this one is still on the market and it actually does use SMS in a different way. Read to find out! It's actually more of a baby-tracking device than a cell.
http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/007054.htm - this one is not for babies but it's for 8-12 year olds! *shiver* "has flashing lights and custom shells to make calling mom or dad fun" YIPEEE!

As an additional thought, if you are interested in reading articles about SMS news and whatnot, www.textually.org is actually a really great resource that isn't necessarily all about frivolous stuff (even though all of the baby cell phone links were from there). There are some really cool things that get posted there and you can choose which category to read anyways, so you can avoid ridiculous content.

References:
Rowland, W. (1999). Spirit of the web. Toronto: Key Porter.

Lost in (lack of) Translation

In light of one of the sections in Assignment 2 that asks, "Who is the typical user of your social software?", I started thinking about who really uses SMS. To give this a personal touch, I present to you the story of my mom: a couple of semesters ago, I would pick her up from work everyday at 4 pm, but sometimes she would have to work overtime until 6 pm. Because she uses a Fido pre-paid card (which charges 15 cents per minute for calls but only 10 cents for SMS messages), and she tends to be stingy on that type of thing, I tried to teach her how to use text messaging - with tried being the operative word here. Now don't get me wrong, my mom is a smart lady, but there were so many menus that she had to go through (English is her second language) to write me a message, that she ultimately gave up. Meanwhile my dad has figured out how to use SMS but still rarely uses it.

*Feb 15th: edit* I just discovered that the Text.it website (UK's official text messaging website) has a section dedicated to "Text for Grown-Ups." It's actually kind of neat because it consists of 7 sub-sections that offer stats about other grown-up text users, tips for how to text, and suggestions of how text messaging can make life easier for adults. Now I know that there are a some more mature students in our class that might not be regular text messagers so check it out at http://www.text.it/grownups/default.asp?intPageID=275 !

With the difficulty that my mom had in mind, though, you've got to wonder how "democratic" all this SMS business is though. In Rowland's (1999) very optimistic prologue, he argues that "the technologies we will be dealing with have undeniably brought....sweeping benefits, which are daily felt by virtually every inhabitant of the planet" (p.15). 'Virtually every inhabitant', huh? Personally, I think Rowland has jumped the gun a bit and fails to recognize that at the end of the day, there are many barriers to the access of bilateral media. Here, I'm not only talking about SMS but even the technologies that he analyzes in the book: the radio, the telephone, the telegraph. Second to economic means, language/literacy is a very real barrier to the use of bilateral technologies. In the case of SMS:
a) You have to be able to read (on a more trivial note, you have to recognize the language used within the culture of the sender: slang words and expressions, as well as be able to "read" SMS short-forms for common words)
b) You have to know the language that the sender is writing to you in. While some accented letters are allowed for in SMS messages (to facilitate French users, for example), not every language is accounted for.

Indeed, most of us are readers/writers of English so it may not be so bad for us but, nonetheless, I think it's important to at least mention the issues - some of which may be unresolvable. On a positive note, the fact that SMS is language/culturally based does not cause as much harm as other technologies because SMS is usually sent from user A specifically to user B (whom is presumably known by user A). Thus, user A is unlikely to send a message to user B if they did not share a common language. The Internet, on the other hand, is broadcast to anyone who has a connection to the Web so the creator of a webpage cannot know the language of the potential viewer.

So if a lot of people from the older generations aren't using SMS (I have yet to see a senior using SMS but, honestly, I would be thrilled to see that!), and the poor aren't using SMS, and people facing language barriers* aren't using SMS, then who is? I guess that leaves us with English speaking, literate, young individuals who can afford cell phones and plans - which would explain MTV's, Muchmusic's, and pop media's obsessive targeting of teens and their cell phones.

As a bit of a sidetrack to end my post, there seems to be a lot of problems of teens overspending on text messaging, racking up enormous bills for their parents to pay. Check them out here (courtesy of the Google News search using the keywords "text messaging teens"):
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,12079883%5E2862,00.html
http://slashdot.org/articles/05/01/09/143252.shtml?tid=215
http://www.gsusignal.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/01/19/41eb376a5ef60

*I am aware that phones that operate in other languages such as Chinese are capable of Chinese text, but from my limited knowledge, not all languages are accommodated for - Russian or Ukranian, for example.