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Funny Stuff

You have to admit there are thousands of funny commercials out there in TV land, right? Have you seen the one where a young teenage girl is talking to her mom in “text messaging” mode? Her mother was completely lost when her daughter was talking; she had no idea what she was saying and the daughter was, of course, giving one of those famous teenage expressions that translates into something like “I can’t believe you are so lame”. Funny commercial, but it may not be that far from the truth these days.

Text messaging has had a huge hand in revolutionizing the world of communications, seems that everything goes at warp speed. Just in case you are not real familiar with the term text messages, although most people are, it is sending a message by using 160 characters or less. This is most often done between cell phones, but it really got its start by chatting on the computer where it is better known as instant messaging.

Both of these forms of electronic communications can use different characters or symbols to get the message across. Where chat texting is usually done by use abbreviations and acronyms; there are MSN emoticons or smileys that can help get the point across in emails, etc. It is actually pretty amazing when you think about all the things that can be done with this type of technology. For example, Busch Stadium in Saint Louis has a scoreboard that will allow text messages to be sent to it and displayed on the board for about 5 seconds. Obviously not a good idea if you want to say something private since everyone in the stands can see it, but it is a quick way to get a message to someone at the game.

Text messaging is normally looked at as being person to person but, they are also used to interact in other ways with other automated systems such as ordering products where you need to touch characters or numbers. Some companies offer this as a free service but others may charge a small fee. Originally the text messaging idea was slow to catch on, but, it wasn’t until the end of 2000 that text messaging started to grow and at an amazingly fast rate. Evidently some figured out the billing and more people started to use text messaging instead of actual calls, claiming it was less expensive.