SMS Lebanon: Texting Medical Concerns.(Wikipedia).

SMS Lebanon: Texting Medical Concerns.(Wikipedia).: The excessive use of the thumb for pressing keys on mobile devices has led to a high rate of a form of  repetitive strain injury...

Texting Medical Concerns.(Wikipedia).

The excessive use of the thumb for pressing keys on mobile devices has led to a high rate of a form of repetitive strain injury termed "BlackBerry thumb". (Although this refers to strain developed on older Blackberry devices, which had a scroll wheel on the side of the phone.)

An inflammation of the tendons in the thumb caused by constant text-messaging is also called text-messager's thumb, or texting tenosynovitis.^[132]

Texting has also been linked as a secondary source in numerous traffic collisions, in which police investigations of mobile phone records have found that many drivers have lost control of their cars while attempting to send or retrieve a text message. Increasing cases of Internet addiction are now also being linked to text messaging, as mobile phones are now more likely to have e-mail and Web capabilities to complement the ability to text.

Patrick Abboud

Hassoon

SMS Lebanon: Texting In Healthcare.(Wikipedia).

SMS Lebanon: Texting In Healthcare.(Wikipedia).: Text messaging is a rapidly growing trend in Healthcare. [ when? ]  "One survey found that 73% of physicians text other physi...

Texting In Healthcare.(Wikipedia).

Text messaging is a rapidly growing trend in Healthcare.^[when?] "One survey found that 73% of physicians text other physicians about work- similar to the overall percentage of the population that texts."^{[citation needed]} A 2006 study of reminder messages sent to children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes mellitus showed favorable changes in adherence to treatment.^[129]

A risk is that these physicians could be violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Where messages could be saved to a phone indefinitely, patient information could be subject to theft or loss, and could be seen by other unauthorized persons. The HIPAA privacy rule requires that any text message involving a medical decision must be available for the patient to access, meaning that any texts that are not documented in an EMR system could be a HIPAA violation.

Patrick Abboud

Hassoon

SMS Lebanon: Texting In Politics.(Wikipedia).

SMS Lebanon: Texting In Politics.(Wikipedia).: Text messaging has had a major impact on the political world. American campaigns find that text messaging is a much easier, cheape...

Texting In Politics.(Wikipedia).

Text messaging has had a major impact on the political world. American campaigns find that text messaging is a much easier, cheaper way of getting to the voters than the door-to-door approach.^[126] Mexico's president-elect Felipe Calderón launched millions of text messages in the days immediately preceding his narrow win over Andres Manuel Lopez Obradór.^[127] In January 2001, Joseph Estrada was forced to resign from the post of president of the Philippines. The popular campaign against him was widely reported to have been co-ordinated with SMS chain letters.^[127] A massive texting campaign was credited with boosting youth turnout in Spain's 2004 parliamentary elections.^[127] In 2008, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his Chief of Staff at the time became entangled in a sex scandal stemming from the exchange of over 14,000 text messages that eventually led to his forced resignation, conviction of perjury, and other charges.^[22]

Text messaging has been used to turn down other political leaders. During the 2004 U.S. Democratic and Republican National Conventions, protesters used an SMS-based organizing tool called TXTmob to get to opponents.^[128] In the last day before the 2004 presidential elections in Romania, a message against Adrian Năstase was largely circulated, thus breaking the laws that prohibited campaigning that day.

Text messaging has helped politics by promoting campaigns.

Furthermore, on 20 January 2001, President Joseph Estrada of the Philippines became the first head of state in history to lose power to asmart mob.^[50] More than one million Manila residents assembled at the site of the 1986 People Power peaceful demonstrations that has toppled the Marcos regime. These people have organized themselves and coordinated their actions through text messaging. They were able to bring down a government without having to use any weapons or violence. Through text messaging, their plans and ideas were communicated to others and successfully implemented. Also, this move encouraged the military to withdraw their support from the regime, and as a result, the Estrada government fell.^[50] People were able to converge and unite with the use of their cell phones. "The rapid assembly of the anti-Estrada crowd was a hallmark of early smart mob technology, and the millions of text messages exchanged by the demonstrators in 2001 was, by all accounts, a key to the crowds esprit de corps."

Patrick Abboud

Hassoon

SMS Lebanon: Effect Of Texting On Language.(Wikipedia).

SMS Lebanon: Effect Of Texting On Language.(Wikipedia).: The small  phone keypad   has caused a number of adaptations of spelling: as in the phrase "txt msg", "HMU", or us...

Effect Of Texting On Language.(Wikipedia).

The small phone keypad has caused a number of adaptations of spelling: as in the phrase "txt msg", "HMU", or use of CamelCase, such as in "ThisIsVeryLame". To avoid the even more limited message lengths allowed when using Cyrillic or Greek letters, speakers of languages written in those alphabets often use the Latin alphabet for their own language. In certain languages utilizing diacritic marks, such as Polish, SMS technology created an entire new variant of written language: characters normally written with diacritic marks (e.g., ą,ę, ś, ż in Polish) are now being written without them (as a, e, s, z) to enable using cell phones without Polish script or to save space inUnicode messages.

Historically, this language developed out of shorthand used in bulletin board systems and later in Internet chat rooms, where users would abbreviate some words to allow a response to be typed more quickly, though the amount of time saved was often inconsequential. However, this became much more pronounced in SMS, where mobile phone users do not generally have access to a QWERTY keyboard as computer users did, more effort is required to type each character, and there is a limit on the number of characters that may be sent.

In Mandarin Chinese, numbers that sound similar to words are used in place of those words. For example, the numbers 520 in Chinese (wǔ èr líng) sound like the words for "I love you" (wǒ ài nǐ). The sequence 748 (qī sì bā) sounds like the curse "go to hell" (qù sǐ ba).

Predictive text software, which attempts to guess words (Tegic's T9 as well as iTap) or letters (Eatoni's LetterWise), reduces the labour of time-consuming input. This makes abbreviations not only less necessary, but slower to type than regular words that are in the software's dictionary; however, it does make the messages longer, often requiring the text message to be sent in multiple parts and, therefore, costing more to send.

The use of text messaging has changed the way that people talk and write essays, some^[62] believing it to be harmful. Children today are receiving cell phones at an age as young as eight years old; more than 35 percent of children in second and third grade have their own mobile phone. Because of this, the texting language is integrated into the way that students think from an earlier age than ever before.^[63] In November 2006, New Zealand Qualifications Authority approved the move that allowed students of secondary schools to use mobile phone text language in the end-of-the-year-exam papers.^[64] Highly publicized reports, beginning in 2002, of the use of text language in school assignments caused some to become concerned that the quality of written communication is on the decline,^[32] and other reports claim that teachers and professors are beginning to have a hard time controlling the problem.^[32] However, the notion that text language is widespread or harmful is refuted by research from linguistic experts.^[65]

An article in The New Yorker explores how text messaging has anglicized some of the world's languages. The use of diacritic marks is dropped in languages such as French, as well as symbols in Ethiopian languages. In his book, Txtng: the Gr8 Db8, David Crystal says that texters in all eleven languages use "lol", "u", "brb", and "gr8", all English-based shorthands. The use of pictograms and logograms in texts are present in every language. They shorten words by using symbols to represent the word or symbols whose name sounds like a syllable of the word such as in 2day or b4. This is commonly used in other languages as well. Crystal gives some examples in several languages such as Italian sei, "six", is used for sei, "you are". Example: dv 6 = dove sei ("where are you") and French sept "seven" = cassette ("casette"). There is also the use of numeral sequences, substituting for several syllables of a word and creating whole phrases using numerals. For example, in French, a12c4 can be said as à un de ces quatres, "see you around" (literally: "to one of these four [days]"). An example of using symbols in texting and borrowing from English is the use of @. Whenever it is used in texting, its intended use is with the English pronunciation. Crystal gives the example of the Welsh use of @ in @F, pronounced ataf, meaning "to me". In character-based languages such as Chinese and Japanese, numbers are assigned syllables based on the shortened form of the pronunciation of the number, sometimes the English pronunciation of the number. In this way, numbers alone can be used to communicate whole passages, such as in Chinese, "8807701314520" can be literally translated as "Hug hug you, kiss kiss you, whole life, whole life I love you." English influences worldwide texting in variation but still in combination with the individual properties of languages.^[66] American popular culture is also recognized in shorthand. For example, Homer Simpson translates into: ~(_8^(|).^[67] Crystal also suggests that texting has led to more creativity in the English language, giving people opportunities to create their own slang, emoticons, abbreviations, acronyms, etc. The feeling of individualism and freedom excites people, making texting increasingly more popular and a more efficient way to communicate.^[68] Crystal has also been quoted in saying that "In a logical world, text messaging should not have survived." But text messaging didn't just come out of nowhere. It originally began as a messaging system that would send out emergency information. But it gained immediate popularity with the public. What followed is the SMS we see today, which is a very quick and efficient way of sharing information from person to person.

Work by Richard Ling has shown that texting has a gendered dimension and it plays into the development of teen identity.^[69] In addition we text to a very small number of other persons. For most people, half of their texts go to 3 – 5 other people.^[70]

Research by Rosen et al. (2009)^[71] found that those young adults who used more language-based textisms (shortcuts such as LOL, 2nite, etc.) in daily writing produced worse formal writing than those young adults who used fewer linguistic textisms in daily writing. However, the exact opposite was true for informal writing. This suggests that perhaps the act of using textisms to shorten communication words leads young adults to produce more informal writing, which may then help them to be better "informal" writers.

Due to text messaging teens are writing more, and some teachers see that this comfort with language can be harnessed to make better writers. This new form of communication is encouraging students to put their thoughts and feelings into words and this can be used as a bridge to getting them interested in formal writing.^{[according to whom?]}

Joan H. Lee in her thesis What does texting do 2 language: The influences of exposure to messaging and print media on acceptability constraints (2011)^[72] associates exposure to text messaging with more rigid acceptability constraints. The thesis suggests that more exposure to the colloquial, Generation Text language of text messaging contributes to being less accepting of words. In contrast, Lee found that students with more exposure to traditional print media (such as books) were more accepting of both real and fictitious words. The thesis, which garnered international media attention, also presents a literature review of academic literature on the effects of text messaging on language.

Texting has also been shown to have had no effect or some positive effects on literacy. According to Plester, Wood and Joshi and their research done on the study of 88 British 10–12-year-old children and their knowledge of text message. Their research showed that "textisms are essentially forms of phonetic abbreviation" that show that "to produce and read such abbreviations arguably requires a level of phonological awareness (and orthographic awareness) in the child concerned.

Patrick Abboud

Hassoon

SMS Lebanon: Texting Social Impact.(Wikipedia).

SMS Lebanon: Texting Social Impact.(Wikipedia).: http://www.hassoon.com The advent of text messaging made possible new forms of interaction that were not possible before. A person ma...

Texting Social Impact.(Wikipedia).

http://www.hassoon.com

The advent of text messaging made possible new forms of interaction that were not possible before. A person may now carry out a conversation with another user without the constraint of being expected to reply within a short amount of time and without needing to set time aside to engage in conversation. Mobile phone users can maintain communication during situations in which a voice call is impractical, impossible, or unacceptable. Texting has provided a venue for participatory culture, allowing viewers to vote in online and TV polls, as well as receive information on the move. Texting can also bring people together and create a sense of community through "Smart Mobs" or "Net War", which create "people power"

Patrick Abboud
Hassoon

SMS Lebanon: STUDIES OF ALL-DRIVER HAND-HELD CELLPHONE BANS.(NC...

SMS Lebanon: STUDIES OF ALL-DRIVER HAND-HELD CELLPHONE BANS.(NC...: Effects on Rates of Hand-held Cellphone Conversations There is evidence that all-driver bans on hand-held phone conversations ...

STUDIES OF ALL-DRIVER HAND-HELD CELLPHONE BANS.(NCBI).

Effects on Rates of Hand-held Cellphone Conversations

There is evidence that all-driver bans on hand-held phone conversations can have large and lasting effects on drivers’ behaviors. The percentage of drivers talking on hand-held phones was measured before and after bans took effect in Connecticut, the District of Columbia, and New York and in control jurisdictions without bans [McCartt, Hellinga, and Strouse, et al., 2010]. Driver hand-held phone use was estimated to be 24–76% lower up to 7 years after the bans were implemented than would have been expected without the bans. The authors reported that in all three jurisdictions, the chance that violators would receive citations was low, and there were no publicized sustained enforcement campaigns.

In a 2009 national telephone survey, 56% of drivers in states with all-driver hand-held phone bans reported using any type of phone when driving compared with 69% in states without such laws [Braitman, McCartt, 2010]. The proportion of drivers who talked on phones and always talk hands-free was 22% in states with bans and 13% in states without bans.

High-visibility enforcement has been shown to increase compliance with traffic laws [Dinh-Zarr et al., 2001;Wells et al., 1992]. After programs of publicized high-intensity enforcement of all-driver hand-held phone and texting bans were implemented, the rate of observed hand-held phone conversations declined by 57% in Hartford, Conn., a significant change, while rates did not change significantly in a control community [Cosgrove, Chaudhary, Reagan, 2011]. Rates declined by 32% in Syracuse, N.Y., and by 40% in a control community; both changes were significant. A recent survey of state highway safety offices found that states increasingly are conducting heightened enforcement of cellphone and texting bans [Governor’s Highway Safety Association, 2013]. States also reported that police officers are challenged by bans applying only to teenage drivers; secondary enforcement laws that require police to have some other reason to stop a vehicle before citing the driver for violating the cellphone law; and the difficulty of discerning whether a motorist is engaged in an illegal behavior such as texting as compared with a behavior that is permitted such as dialing a phone.

Patrick Abboud

Hassoon

SMS Lebanon: Driver Cellphone and Texting Bans in the United St...

SMS Lebanon: Driver Cellphone and Texting Bans in the United St...: Abstract Almost all U.S. states have laws limiting drivers’ cellphone use. The evidence suggests that all-driver bans on hand-held pho...

Driver Cellphone and Texting Bans in the United States: Evidence of Effectiveness.(NCBI).

Abstract

Almost all U.S. states have laws limiting drivers’ cellphone use. The evidence suggests that all-driver bans on hand-held phone conversations have resulted in long-term reductions in hand-held phone use, and drivers in ban states reported higher rates of hands-free phone use and lower overall phone use compared with drivers in non-ban states. Bans on all phone use by teenage drivers have not been shown to reduce their phone use. The effects of texting bans on the rates of drivers’ texting are unknown. With regard to the effects of bans on crashes, 11 peer-reviewed papers or technical reports of all-driver hand-held phone bans and texting bans were reviewed. Some were single-state studies examining crash measures before and after a state ban; other national or multi-state studies compared crashes in states with and without bans over time. The results varied widely. The lack of appropriate controls and other challenges in conducting strong evaluations limited the findings of some studies. Thus, despite the proliferation of laws limiting drivers’ cellphone use, it is unclear whether they are having the desired effects on safety. Priorities for future research are suggested.

Go to:

INTRODUCTION

Strong laws with publicized strong enforcement are a proven countermeasure for changing driver behavior. This approach, for example, has led to increases in seat belt use [Dinh-Zarr, Sleet, Shults, et al., 2001; Tison, Williams, 2010], decreases in alcohol-impaired driving [Shults, Elder, Sleet, et al., 2001; Wells, Preusser, Williams, 1992], and ultimately reductions in crash deaths [Farmer, Williams, 2006; Dinh-Zarr et al., 2001;Shults et al., 2001]. As cell-phones began to proliferate in the late 1990s, a number of experimental studies found decrements in simulated or instrumented driving performance associated with phone use [McCartt, Hellinga, Braitman, 2006], and a well-publicized epidemiological study found a fourfold increase in the risk of a property damage-only crash associated with a driver’s phone conversation [Redelmeier, Tibshirani, 1997]. Bolstered by this research, concerns about the risks of drivers’ cellphone use led to the passage of laws limiting use. These laws are widespread in other countries and are increasingly common in the United States. This paper summarizes the research on the effectiveness of these laws in the United States.

On November 1, 2001, New York became the first state to implement a law prohibiting all drivers from talking on a hand-held cellphone while driving. Currently a total of 12 states and the District of Columbia have such laws. All of the laws allow emergency calls, most allow hand-held dialing, and some allow talking when stopped in traffic, at controlled intersections, or on the side of the road. The language in early hand-held cellphone laws in Connecticut (effective October 1, 2005) and the District of Columbia (effective July 1, 2004) covered text messaging, but Washington enacted the first law specifically banning all drivers from texting, effective January 1, 2008. Many states rapidly followed suit, and currently 41 states and the District of Columbia prohibit texting by all drivers. Beginning with New Jersey on January 8, 2002, 37 states and the District of Columbia have implemented laws targeting teenage drivers. These laws generally prohibit any use of an electronic device/telecommunications device/ cellphone, whether hands-free or hand-held; the laws may be based on age (e.g., younger than 18) or license stage (e.g., learner’s permit or intermediate license). Only three states — Arizona, Montana, and South Carolina — have no laws limiting drivers’ cellphone use. Thus, currently there is a patchwork of laws limiting drivers’ cellphone use across the United States.Appendix A summarizes the history of the all-driver hand-held cellphone laws, all-driver texting laws, and teenage driver cellphone laws, including effective dates and key provisions.

Conducting rigorous evaluations of highway safety laws can be challenging. Ideally, information can be obtained to measure meaningful changes in the targeted behavior following implementation of the law and corresponding changes in crashes, injuries, or fatalities. For the link between a law and crash outcomes to be convincing, there should be strong evidence of an elevated crash or injury risk associated with the targeted behavior, and the crash measure should be consistent with this evidence.

However, the crash risk associated with using a cell-phone while driving is not well understood. Part of the challenge is that the contribution of phone use or other distractions to crashes is not fully or consistently recorded in databases of police-reported crashes [e.g., National Safety Council, 2013]. The chief problem is that drivers are unlikely to volunteer that they were using phones, especially if it is illegal, and there usually is no other evidence of phone use at the crash scene. In addition, reporting practices likely have changed as the issue of distraction has grown in prominence and as states have enacted laws limiting cellphone use and added codes for cellphone use to crash report forms.

Figure 1 plots the annual percentage of crash deaths coded as involving driver distraction during 1999–2012 in each of several states and nationally. These data come from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), a national census of crashes that occur on public roads and result in at least one death within 30 days. There are large, unexplained differences among the states and year-to-year anomalies within some states. For example, during 1997–2007, the proportion of crash deaths coded as involving distraction was 45–63% in New Mexico and 6–26% in California. Even after coding changes were implemented in 2010 to address some of the reporting problems, anomalies and inconsistencies have persisted. Thus, data on cellphone-related crashes in crash databases do not provide a solid basis for establishing the prevalence of cellphone-related crashes, supporting epidemiological research on the risks of cellphone use, or evaluating the effectiveness of cellphone bans.

Figure 1.

Percentage of Deaths in Crashes Coded as Involving Driver Distraction in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, 1999–2012

Another challenge is that the findings from the few studies that have estimated crash risk associated with cellphone use are mixed. Two studies obtained cell-phone billing records to verify phone use of drivers involved in property damage-only crashes [Redelmeier, Tibshirani, 1997] and in crashes serious enough to injure the drivers [McEvoy, Stevenson, McCartt, et al., 2005]. Using a case-crossover design, both studies found a fourfold increase in crash risk associated with phone conversations; the increased risk was similar for hands-free and hand-held phone use. Although the case-crossover designs accounted for possible driver differences, they assume the reasons for phone use are independent of crash risk, which may not be the case. Drivers with higher crash risk, who were more likely to get into the studies, may be affected by cellphone use differently than less risky drivers. Plus, the subjects may have had imperfect recall of whether or not they drove during control periods.

Patrick Abboud

Hassoon

SMS Lebanon: Texting While Driving.(aaafoundation).

SMS Lebanon: Texting While Driving.(aaafoundation).: Distracted driving consistently ranks as one of the traffic safety issues at forefront of many drivers’ thinking.  Each year, more...

Texting While Driving.(aaafoundation).

Distracted driving consistently ranks as one of the traffic safety issues at forefront of many drivers’ thinking.  Each year, more than 80% of drivers in the annual AAA Foundation Traffic Safety Culture Index cite distraction as a serious problem and a behavior that makes them feel less safe on the road.  Nearly half of all people who say they feel less safe than they did five years ago say distracted driving by other drivers fuels their concerns.

Distracted driving is a deadly behavior.  Federal estimates suggest that distraction contributes to 16% of all fatal crashes, leading to around 5,000 deaths every year.   Our latest research has discovered that distraction "latency" lasts an average of 27 seconds, meaning that, even after drivers put down the phone or stop fiddling with the navigation system, drivers aren't fully engaged with the driving task.

The AAA Foundation believes that by improving our understanding of how mental and physical distractions impair drivers and by educating the public about avoiding distractions, we can eliminate these needless deaths. 

Our work in this area also focuses on how distraction affects specific groups.  Teens are among the drivers most impaired by distraction.  A recent AAA Foundation in-car study showed that teen drivers were distracted almost a quarter of the time they were behind the wheel.  Electronic devices, such as texting, emails, and downloading music, were among the biggest distractions, accounting for 7% of the distractions identified on the study video. Another study on distracted driving from naturalistic in-car data collection and analysis showed that distraction related crashes for teens were more prevalent than initially thought.

It's one thing to read about the statistics; it's quite another to see in-car footage of real distraction events caught on camera:

Please visit our completed projects section for all of our in-depth research on distracted driving,

Patrick Abboud

Hassoon

SMS Lebanon: How texting made history but ruined our language -...

SMS Lebanon: How texting made history but ruined our language -...: Exactly 20 years ago on December 3, 1992, Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old technician was sitting at a computer terminal in ...

How texting made history but ruined our language - and plenty of marriages!.(David Thomas The Daily Mail).

Exactly 20 years ago on December 3, 1992, Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old technician was sitting at a computer terminal in Vodafone’s Newbury HQ, where the company were having their Christmas party.

Imbued with festive spirit, Papworth sent the telenote message ‘Merry Christmas’ from his computer to technical director Richard Jarvis’s Orbitel 901 phone. Little did he know that two decades later, telenotes would be called texts; the trillions sent around the world would generate an annual £73.5 billion; 3 billion texts a week would be sent in the UK alone ... and absolutely nobody would text ‘Christmas’ when ‘Xmas’ would do.

Texts have changed the way we write, obliterating conventional punctuations and replacing properly spelled words with abbreviations, initials and ‘emoticon’ smiley symbols. Last year the word ‘sexting’ (sending explicit images of yourself with a text) entered the Oxford dictionary, while it was revealed that one-in-ten twentysomethings have texted while having sex.

These days no celebrity sex scandal or political revelation is complete without embarrassing and incriminating text evidence, nor do any major events go by without instant text commentary.

The average Briton now sends around 50 texts a week and is more likely to text friends and family than talk to them.

But some observers claim that the joy of texts may be waning as instant messaging and social media like Facebook, Twitter and Skype provide free, more public communication. In the meantime, here are some of the most outrageous, newsworthy, moving and shocking texts from the past two decades:

Burp

Sent in June 1993 by Brennan Hayden, an engineer for an Irish telecoms company, working in Los Angeles. This was the first paid-for, commercial text. Hayden jokily chose the word ‘burp’ because he saw the medium as a new baby.

I’m gonna be here always xx But are you OK? xx

Sent by Amy Winehouse to her friend Kristian Marr at 3.10am on July 23, 2011. Marr was asleep when it came through. By the time he woke up, she was dead.

Smoke from World Trade Centre in New York after it was hit by a plane: Texts were used to inform the emergency services about the disaster

WTC has been hit by an airplane and a bomb. currently b6 is being evacuated. updates will follow

Texts sent by the police and emergency services in New York after American Airlines Flight 111 crashes into the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001.

Patrick Abboud

Hassoon

SMS Lebanon: Types of Texting.(Christine Erickson).

SMS Lebanon: Types of Texting.(Christine Erickson).: The first, most common method of commercial texting is referred to as "multi-tap." Each number on the phone is connected...

Types of Texting.(Christine Erickson).

The first, most common method of commercial texting is referred to as "multi-tap." Each number on the phone is connected to three or four letters. For example, the "3" key displays "D," "E" and "F." Multi-tap is easy to understand, but not very efficient.

In the 1990s, Tegic co-founder Cliff Kushler invented T9, short for "Text on 9 keys." Instead of multi-tapping, predictive text technology displays words from a single keypress. As T9 becomes familiar with the words and phrases commonly used by the texter, they become correspondent in order of frequency. In 2011, Kushler invented Swype, a texting feature for touchscreens that enables users to drag their fingers to connect the dots between letters in a word.

Full keyboards on mobile phones was first introduced in 1997 with the Nokia 9000i Communicator. It became a popular feature in the late '90s to early '00s. Most models adopted the QWERTY keyboard, a layout we've grown accustomed to in computers.

The IBM Simon had the first touchscreen in 1992 — it's also referred as the first "smartphone," though the term was not yet coined. The phone was 15 years ahead of its time. Smartphones advanced, and in 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone, notable for its multi-touch interface and virtual keyboard.

Virtual keyboards had automatic spell check and correction, predictive text technology, and the ability to learn new words. The keys were larger and keyboard adapts to the phone's width based on landscape or vertical orientation. Today, virtual keyboards have become a standard feature for smartphones.

Patrick Abboud

Hassoon

SMS Lebanon: A Brief History of Text Messaging.(Christine Erick...

SMS Lebanon: A Brief History of Text Messaging.(Christine Erick...: Where would we be without text messaging? The feature has grown from being favored by the tech-savvy to a universal staple. It&#39...

A Brief History of Text Messaging.(Christine Erickson).

Where would we be without text messaging? The feature has grown from being favored by the tech-savvy to a universal staple. It's allowed us to be more efficient, independent and direct. When you're running late, you text someone to let them know. When you're in class or a meeting and there's an emergency, you know immediately. When you need a quick "yes" or "no," you ask via text.

How did such a seemingly simple method of communication lead us to the trillions of texts sent today?

Texting, or SMS (short message service) is a method of communication that sends text between cellphones — or from a PC or handheld to a cell phone.

The "short" part comes from the maximum size of the text messages: 160 characters (letters, numbers or symbols in the Latin alphabet).

The SMS concept was developed in the Franco-German GSM cooperation in 1984 by Friedhelm Hillebrand and Bernard Ghillebaert.

The first text message was sent in 1992 from Neil Papworth, a former developer at Sema Group Telecoms. Mobile phones didn't have keyboards at the time, so Papworth had to type the message on a PC. Papworth's text — "Merry Christmas" — was successfully sent to Richard Jarvis at Vodafone.

Most early GSM mobile phone handsets did not support the ability to send text messages. The first SMS gateways for cellphones were network notifications, usually to inform of voice mail messages.

Nokia was the first handset manufacturer whose total GSM phone line in 1993 supported user-sending of SMS text messages. In 1997, it became the first manufacturer to produce a mobile phone with a full keyboard: the Nokia 9000i Communicator.

Like any new technology, initial growth for SMS was slow. The average American user sent 0.4 texts per month in 1995. Gradually, phones and networks adapted to better accommodate SMS. In 1999, texts could finally be exchanged between different networks, which increased its usefulness. By 2000, the average number of text messages sent in the U.S. increased to 35 a month per person.

Patrick Abboud

Hassoon

SMS Lebanon: How to Have a Meaningful Text Message Conversation...

SMS Lebanon: How to Have a Meaningful Text Message Conversation...: For many people, text messaging has become a primary (and in some cases, the only) means of communication between friends, loved ones a...

How to Have a Meaningful Text Message Conversation.(WikiHow).

For many people, text messaging has become a primary (and in some cases, the only) means of communication between friends, loved ones and business associates. As such, people have developed different ways to communicate via texting. If you are tired of having meaningless conversations with acquaintances, need to rid yourself of over-texters, or need to break out of the text slang and emoticon mold, it’s important to understand how to use this important form of communication in the most effective way.

Text someone worth your time. Breaking the endless cycle of meaningless text message conversations starts with only talking to someone who offers interesting topics opinions. Don't text someone just because you know that they'll be at home bored with nothing better to do than text you. If that means not text messaging who you usually do and having to wait longer for a response from someone worth your time, so be it. And if there is nothing in mind that you need to tell the person, just don't text them at all. It's a waste. It's best to have no conversation then to have a "dead" one.

• Text messaging shouldn't be any different from having a conversation in-person: If it isn't going anywhere, don't let it continue.

Hold yourself to your own standards with other people. If someone constantly text messages you for the only purpose of having someone to text message, shake them off. Take longer to reply, give shorter answers, and stay ambiguous and passive in your answers. Eventually people will start to take the hint that you aren't going to put any effort into the conversation, so they will cease text messaging you as much as they can.

Ask open-ended questions in your conversations. If you're having a conversation with a person you enjoy talking to, do as much as you can to keep the conversation going. Ask questions that require more than a yes or no answer, leaving room for your opinion and the opportunity to discuss related topics. 

• Instead of asking "Do you like pop music?” Ask "What are your favorite genres of music?" Questions like that not only spark interest conversations but show that you also have a genuine interest in the person and want them to elaborate on the topic.

Keep the conversation well-balanced. Don't ask questions or bring up topics just so you can give your opinion on them. It makes you look self-centered, and unless you show just as much enthusiasm in what the other person has to say, it will come off as annoying and rude. Avoid this by not only giving your opinion but by also discussing or questioning the other person's opinion. If you're more shy or were raised to be ultra-polite, you might have the opposite imbalance where you try to keep the other person talking without offering anything of your own. Do about 1/3 to 1/2 of the talking, as long as you finish your texts with a sentence or question that invites an open-ended response. 

Avoid the one sentence/one word reply. Unless you are a person of very few words or can properly describe everything you need to say in one sentence, make a point of replying to a person's text message in at least two sentences. Worst of all is the "K" reply, which is now (sometimes) associated the sender being angry at the receiver, but not necessarily. It is often used in response to simple questions. Once you get to know a person's text message flow better, you'll be able to tell if you've said something to bore or anger them, but it is usually a one or two word answer.^[5]

• If you are angry with a person, it’s a good idea to not text them until you have had time to cool off and think about the situation. One word and one sentence replies will only make you more angry with the person you are text messaging as you continue your infuriating conversation.

Develop your own text messaging style. In the same sense that writers have different writing styles, consider creating your own standard of text messaging. A general sense of the English language should be upheld, because text message shorthand has become outdated and almost childish. Unlimited text messaging plans are now more affordable, so there's hardly any excuse to have sentences with a garble of letters, numbers and symbols that take the place of a five-letter word. As such, you do not always need a smiley face or heart after every sentence unless typing it makes you genuinely happy. Nobody will take you seriously if you have :) :] :D :P :/ :( >:( after everything you say.

Call the person to go deeper. If your conversation has taken an unexpected turn and either gotten deeper or more heated, ask to call the person and talk to them directly. Sometimes a person can better communicate their ideas out loud rather than picking the correct words to type and hesitating to see if they express their ideas clearly.^[7]

• Meet in person for a real connection. Don't let your thoughts and ideas be held back by text messaging, and stand firm on your opinions in whatever way you must. Not everything can be conveyed through a text, and it's hard to beat actually being face-to-face with a person.

End on a good note. Do not randomly drop a conversation if it has been a good one. Doing so is the equivalent of hanging up on a person in the middle of a sentence. If the conversation has run its course, tell the person you have to go for the moment, or say good night if you need to get to sleep. Stay courteous and polite, so that the person can come to expect it and not be dismayed by randomly dropped conversations.

Patrick Abboud

Hassoon