It looks like a 32-year-old woman in Oklahoma, Tonia Mullins, tried to hire some hitman for some murder. Unfortunately she used one too many times SMS messages to talk about the whole deal:

Don’t care who as long as they can in no way be traced 2 me or u guys through someone else.

Price is going 2 be the big factor here. What r we lookin at?

She is looking at time in jail and by the time she gets out cell phones will look a whole lot different. Don’t hire hitmen over the phone! In fact, don’t hire them at all!

via Boing Boing

A fresh mobile web portal entitled Mjoy, has recently started to offer a service that many people will surely enjoy: free text SMS messages. The service doesn’t have any limitations, in other words, you can send unlimited text messages to anywhere in the world, and the final cost will be zero.

How does it work? Easy. Visit www.mjoy.com and register.

Unlike other services that provide free SMS, this one doesn’t need any kind of installations in terms of software, because everything is done on the browser. In the near future Mjoy wants to start providing other types of free services and content on the mobile web world, like shopping, social networking, news, and more.

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There have been a few text messaging spikes at AT&T during recent years, but the biggest spike happened during the Election Night in which a 44% jump was reported.

According to AT&T this was the highest spike in their history, and it even passed the New Year’s Eve record of 2007.

Mark Collins from AT&T comments:

The spike on Tuesday night rang true for us. Texting has become so valuable a communication tool that it is how people are sharing thoughts and information and connecting with each other in even the most important moments.

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O2 and Vodafone are the two German operators that launched a new service last week. The fresh payment service has the usefulness of working via SMS and being on the mobile category, which means you don’t need to go to a store or an ATM in order to recharge your cellphone money wise.

Basically, mpass is a mix of direct debit and SMS payment confirmation. Once you hit “Buy” in any product bought online on a website, the only information you need to provide is the mpass PIN, and your cellphone number. Afterwards, customers get the confirmation via SMS and the money is debited on the bank account.

Easy to use, right? Which also makes it easy to spend more money, right?

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What do you know, we were all expecting for Verizon Wireless to slowly turn off SMS notifications for good in all the US states. The used excuse was that every message confirmation would clog Verizon’s data network.

I guess someone wished upon a falling star and the wish came through. For no apparent reason, The Network is turning back on those SMS notifications in all market. Starting with October 1st things will go back to normal. Don’t expect it to happen all that fast though. It will take some time for Verizon to restore notifications in all areas.

In a weird move Verizon Wireless has discontinued its SMS delivery confirmations. Why would they do anything like that?

It looks like the move has started on September 9th on a regional basis and it’s said that the service will be discontinued everywhere by the end of September.
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Remember the free 200 SMS messages which came with the original iPhone? Did they come in handy? I suppose so. Too bad they will not be available for free with the 3G iPhone anymore. AT&T probably decided they needed to charge $5 for those 200 messages. Not that much but still an unpleasant move. Well do you want to know how you can send free SMS messages from your 3G iPhone?
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So did you get that unlimited plan from Virgin Mobile? You know, the one we were talking about last week? I’ll take your silence as a No! Good! You can sign up with Alltel and get one of their My Circle plans. Basically you can chose 5, 10 or 20 numbers to talk all you want. That’s unlimited calling with any number from any other American network.
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T-Mobile is going to increase their SMS prices. They will actually double them, from $0.10 to $0.20 per message. This change will apparently start August 29th and it will be effective for all messages, going or incoming to your phone.
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All this talk about cell phones, smartphones, upgrades and updates, cool programs and firmware bugs, new releases and leaked photo doesn’t always do us that good. Last week an 18 years old boy died in London after an argument related to a stolen cell phone. That boy played a role in the last Harry Potter.

But I am here to tell you that no matter how busy you are and no matter what fast SMS software you would like to use, never ever go firing someone via SMS. They might get depressed, commit suicide and then sue you for all you have.

Tony Cecere was fired via SMS. That is simply rude! And he was asked to bring the work car back. That’s really rude! A day after all this happened he committed suicide. Apparently he was suffering from some mental affection but his wife said it was this SMS that got him to act that way. His family are to receive $300,000 as damages from the Union, as sentenced recently in court.

It makes me said to get these news in! Sometimes the silly use of technology can have unforeseen consequences. Be careful what you you use your cell phone for!

via Scopical.au

I have an almost unbroken rule of not answering to phone calls from numbers I don’t recognize or haven’t added them to my phonebook yet. Same policy applies times two every time someone is trying to get in touch with me but blocks their number sending feature. I did miss a few calls that way, which I shouldn’t. but I managed to adjust. What I wasn’t able to block were the SMS messages. Of course you don’t have to respond to all those messages but then again, it’s human nature to react and text back.

Good thing T-Mobile has decided, after being sued and loosing a case in court over some messages, that their subscribers will have now the opportunity of blocking all unwanted messages and calls from certain people. What people? Your boss? Mother in law? Crazy-b**** ex girlfriend? Regular pranksters? Anyone! The sky is the limit. Way to go T-Mobile!

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Bebo, a social networking web site, forms an affiliation with Kadoink, a mobile web service which offers streaming of audio and text files, to enhance end user experience. Bebo incorporates a couple of Kadoink-powered functionalities — the Music Call and the Group BuzzText. The former allows Bebo members to share audio files via SMS messaging while the latter is used to create mobile chat groups. As always, the first rule in social networking web sites is to be careful who you’re dealing with — especially now your connection extends to your personal mobile phones.

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TomTom has a new device called TomTom LINK 300/TomTom WORK that provides additional functionality on your TomTom navigation device. Stuff like the ability to select and read orders, exchange text messages with the head office, register working time/breaks are now a piece of cake. When your navigation device and the TomTom LINK 300 have been connected, you get a quick-access menu of buttons Active Order and Change logbook/Report work time.

The office can send service, delivery and pick up orders. These are in turn stored on your TomTom navigation device, so you can read and deal with them at any time. You can also report any status information back to the office - like Refuel, Traffic Jam, Customer Not Available or Car Accident.

No word on the pricing yet, but the device has recently been approved by the FCC, so it should be on its way soon.

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