Google's attempt to assimilate the communications of the world will soon take a huge step forward, with a company staff member unofficially suggesting that text messages will soon slot themselves into its Hangouts cross-platform chat suite. Read More >>
Featured comment by EtherealKid:
"[Storbeck said: “SMS integration is coming soon — it is one of our most requested features!”]
Sounds like they're talking about integrating S..." More »
Real-time chat has been everywhere for, you know, forever now and has swallowed everything in its path. Integrating chat platforms and finding a way to coherently deal with texting vs. chatting has become a major issue. Other than venting here in hallowed Gizmodo chatroom posts, how do you manage all the Google chat options, Facebook chat, Skype and everything else? Chit chat below. Read More >>
For a long time now, our smartphones have been getting more and more, well, smart. They do more things. You probably haven’t beaten your phone at chess in years. And the race to cram increasingly granular, eventually useless, features into them has defined the past few years of phone making. Except the next big waypoint won’t be some technological marvel like week-long battery life. It’s something much simpler: Plain old chat. Read More >>
Featured comment by craigj:
"RE: Apple iMessage
quote: "There’s now no way to sync your chat logs across computers, let alone to your phone"
I've got an iMac, MacBook Air, i..." More »
Apparently messaging apps like WhatsApp have finally overtaken SMS as the medium of choice for burst-fire messages. According to new stats, 1.4 billion more chat-app messages were sent than texts last year, marking the first time the humble SMS has been beaten. Read More >>
We all increasingly rely on non-verbal forms of communication — email, IM, texting — to let people know what's going on in our lives. That's great for us, but it's causing headaches in Hollywood when it comes to creating drama. Read More >>
One thing your iPhone could be better at: sending secret encrypted messages (aka for sexting and/or illicit relationships). The regular messages app leaves everything hanging out in the open! Text Fortress is an app that encrypts the messages you send and locks them down so only the person you sent it to, can see it. Read More >>
Forget the masses of differing complicated NFC virtual wallets that no one seems to want to use, there's about to be an exciting new modern payment method in town -- the humble SMS message. Read More >>
If you've ever thought "man, texting is really ruining verbal communication" stop right now, before you start feeling like you've had an original thought. People were thinking the same thing about the telegraph in 1906. Then again, depending on who you are, maybe it's an improvement. [Kip W via Buzzfeed] Read More >>
Featured comment by Dubstav:
"Well if they knew back in 1906 that we were restricted to 140 characters in 2012 they'd be sniggering into their copter-hats..." More »
People never cease to surprise me with how brainless they can be. This American Apparel ad, which explicitly says to Text apparel to the number 23000, has actually gotten countless Facebook comments with 'APPAREL 23000' on the post. Um, that's not texting people. Do people really not know what texting is? Read More >>
Featured comment by Steven.T.Spoon:
"I'm actually old enough to remember no consumer text messaging at all (The first phone I bought was a Motorola MR1 on the Orange network)" More »
Twitter users who have taken the time to set up Tweeting-by-SMS are putting themselves at risk of attacks where anybody can post to their account, according to a team of security researchers. Read More >>
Today is texting's 20th birthday, and as part of the celebration, we've rounded up a little museum of texting slang. You may know some of it very well, you may not recognise some of it at all. You may even find the existence of some of it to be quite dubious. Read More >>
Featured comment by tommypepper:
"Oh you missed TMOPWUTIRLDEHTRASFOADBM The majority of people who use this in real life don't even have text restrictions and should F**k of and die, b..." More »
In terms of cost per kilobyte of data, the Earth-based telecoms companies are charging us more per byte of data than the cost of communicating with Mars. Try wheeling that statistic out the next time you're trying to blag an upgrade. Read More >>
Featured comment by Sabashe_to_the_MAX:
"I think that's a bit unfair, he did acknowledge it was a simple comparison. Plus I think it's fairly obvious that they're getting their cost/text from..." More »
I don't really like Android's SMS at all. (I'm on HTC's Sense-flavored Jellybean, btw.) In particular, the lock-screen notifications really bug me—there's no way to see if you've gotten more than one message. And group messages don't really work right. Got one you like? Read More >>
A T-Mobile advert claiming to offer users "unlimited free texts forever" has been investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority, after two people queried the existential issue of whether something can really be proven to last "forever." Read More >>
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