SMS 411

Can’t make sense of SMS text shortcuts? Check out Transl8It, a handy web form for turning ordinary English text into “txt spk” and vice versa.

411 Directory Assistance can cost a bundle!

You might not realize it unless you’re in the habit of closely examining your cell phone bill, but cellular service providers charge a lot for “411″ calls (calls you make to local — or national — directory assistance by dialing 411).

Here are the fees that some of the top carriers charge for each call to 411:

• Boost Mobile’s Boost 411: $1.29 plus airtime (compare Boost Mobile SMS costs)

• Cingular 411: $1.50 plus airtime (compare Cingular SMS costs)
• Nextel Directory Assistance: $1.25 plus airtime (compare Nextel SMS costs)
• Sprint 411: $1.40 plus airtime (compare Sprint SMS costs)
• T-Mobile 411: $1.49 plus airtime (Compare T-Mobile SMS costs)
• Verizon Wireless 411 Connect: $1.49 plus airtime (compare Verizon SMS costs)
• Virgin Mobile 411: $1.75 plus airtime (compare Virgin Mobile SMS costs)

Note that you are using your minutes (“airtime”) each time you call 411 — so if you call from a roaming area, you could be charged 40 cents or 60 cents or more for each minute you’re on the phone with 411 — in addition to the above charges. Ouch!

At these rates, it makes a lot of sense to use an SMS-based search service like Google SMS instead of dialing 411. SMS-based 411 inquiries are free, except for the SMS charges, so you can save a dollar or more for each lookup you do via text instead of calling directory assistance.

For example, suppose you want to find a local flower shop. A call to Cingular 411 costs $1.50 plus airtime — and the operator might not give you the number and address of a shop unless you know its name first.

But if you send an SMS to Google saying “florist 90210″ you might get 3 messages back from Google, each of which has the name, address, and phone number of a different florist. For a total of 4 SMS messages (the one you sent plus the 3 you receive) Cingular will charge you 40 cents.

That’s a savings of $1.10 — plus you’re not using any airtime — and you get three times as much information. Now that’s a strong argument for using SMS!

If you send a lot of SMS text messages you’ve probably come up against the serious limitations of a cell phone’s keypad. The difficulty of entering whole words, combined with the strict 160-character limit for most text messages, means that there’s a very strong impulse to abbreviate things in text messages. For instance, “text” becomes “txt,” “for” becomes “4,” “your” becomes “yr,” and so on.

It’s more common for young people to use text shorthand (but then, it’s more common for young people to be communicating via SMS in the first place). But while grownups — especially teachers — often bemoan the terrible effects this practice must be having on the kids’ language skills, it turns out that the abbreviations used by teenagers for SMS texting might not be so bad for their spelling and grammar. According to one study, anyhow, teenagers are actually quite skilled at switching contexts (using “txt spk” on their phones and more formal writing for class essays) and at spotting errors.

Whether you’re a teenager or an adult, however, text shortcuts can be handy for simplifying SMS messaging — and they can be fun, too. Here’s a short list of some common abbreviations used in SMS (and sometimes in computer-based instant messaging too).

2: to, too, or two
2day: today
2moro: tomorrow
4: for, four
411: information
bcnu: be seeing you
f2t: free to talk
jic: just in case
jk: just kidding
l8: late
l8r: later
lol: laughing out loud
ruok: Are you OK?
thx: thanks
tx: thanks
u: you
xlnt: excellent
yr: your

This isn’t an exhaustive list, and it’s not like it’s as official as Webster’s, either. People pretty much just make this stuff up as they go along. In fact, you can make up your own abbreviations easily by following a few simple tips:

• drop vowels when they’re not necessary (nt 2 hrd 2 gt ths trck)
• utilize numbers or easily-accessible punctuation (c u l8r)
• shorten up sentences and drop anything unnecessary, like “I think” or “please” or “hey, Patrick, listen to this” (will b @ home 30 min)

Have fun with it — and let me know if you’ve got any other great SMS abbreviations or tips for speedier texting!

Mobile search services like Google SMS are fine if you’re just looking for a bit of information and you don’t have a computer handy. But what if you want to stay right on top of the latest news, stock prices, sports scores, or other critical info — and you don’t want to go to the trouble of sending an SMS request just to check for updates?

That’s where a notification service like Yahoo! Alerts comes in. With Yahoo! Alerts, you enter your mobile number, sign up for the information you want, and then Yahoo sends you an SMS text message whenever there’s news.

You’ll need a Yahoo ID to sign up for this service. (You can create one for free if you don’t already have one.) Just go to alerts.yahoo.com and sign in. Then you can choose from a menu of alerts: sports scores, breaking news, weather, traffic, and even notices that a stock you’re tracking has moved up or down a certain amount. Once you’ve clicked on a menu item, you select additional detail (such as the city whose weather you want to know about) and tell Yahoo how you want the news delivered: via email, Yahoo! Messenger, or via mobile.

If you choose the “mobile” delivery option, you’ll need to register your mobile phone with Yahoo, a process that ensures you don’t sign up someone else’s number. The process has four steps but it’s not that hard: You need to tell Yahoo what your cell phone’s number is, what your carrier is, and what type of phone you have. Then Yahoo sends your phone a 5-digit confirmation code via SMS. Once you’ve entered that code in the Yahoo Alerts site, then your phone is ready to receive alerts from Yahoo.

Some of the alerts Yahoo offers (such as Movie Recommendations) are only available via email, not SMS — but most of them can be sent to your phone. If you want a convenient way to check the traffic, the market, or the news on your phone, it’s hard to beat the convenience of these alerts.

One caution: You can quickly run up steep text messaging charges if you’re receiving a lot of alerts. For that reason Yahoo lets you limit the number of SMS messages it sends you per day. Set this limit with care — a 10 message per day limit could still get pricey if you’re paying 10 or 25 cents per SMS.

Got a Sprint PCS cell phone? Here’s what you need to know about using SMS text messaging with your mobile.

• Maximum message length: 160 characters, including the sender’s email address, subject line, and callback number
• What happens to longer messages: Everything after 160 characters will be cut off and discarded.
• Cost per message: $0.15 per message sent and received. Sprint also offers bulk text messaging plans: $5 monthly for 300 messages/month and $15 monthly for unlimited text messaging.
• For more information: Sprint PCS Text Messaging
• Sending email to a Sprint phone: Use the address format [10-digit phone number]@messaging.sprintpcs.com.
  Example: 2125551234@messaging.sprintpcs.com

Sprint doesn’t publish its text-messaging (SMS) costs anywhere on its website. However, we’ve verified the prices here by checking with Sprint customer service.

Last updated 7/2/2008

It’s a common misconception among Americans that they can only send SMS text messages to people who have the same cellular service provider. In other words, many of us think that if we’ve got a Sprint phone, we can only text our friends who are also on Sprint.

Not true! While this was the case for a long time, the American carriers (a.k.a. the cell phone companies) got together and sorted their differences out a few years ago. Imagine how much less valuable the Internet would be if people could only send email to folks who had the same ISP, and you’ll get a glimpse of why this is such a big deal for SMS.

In early 2002, the top five U.S. carriers all allowed their customers to exchange SMS messages with one another. Since then, nearly every carrier has worked out a way to send and receive SMS messages with every other carrier. This is what the cell phone companies call “SMS interoperability.” For ordinary users, it means that SMS text messaging just works. To send a message from your mobile phone to someone else’s, all you need to know is the recipient’s cell phone number.

Unfortunately, these companies never made a big deal about the change, so lots of Americans remained in the dark. It might just have been the first (and only) time when the cellular industry didn’t advertise enough. Go figure!

By the way, if you find that you can’t send an SMS message to someone because of their carrier, let me know — I’d love to hear of any examples where this is not working right!

If your cellular service provider is Alltel, here’s what you need to know about using SMS text messaging with your cell phone. Alltel calls it “Axcess Text Messaging.”

• Maximum message length: 200 characters [according to commenter Edward, below].
• What happens to longer messages: Split into a maximum of two 100-character messages.
• Cost per message: 15 cents per message sent or received; 25 cents per picture message. (Messaging packs reduce the cost if you send hundreds of SMS messages per month.)
• For more information: Axcess Text Messaging
• Sending email to your phone: Use the address format: [10-digit phone number]@message.alltel.com
  Example: 2125551212@message.alltel.com

Note: The correct spelling is “Alltel,” not “Alltell.”

Updated 7/2/2008

If you’ve got a cell phone from Boost Mobile, here’s what you need to know about using SMS text messaging with your mobile.

• Maximum message length: 500 characters.
• What happens to longer messages: Unknown.
• Cost per message: For pay-as-you-go plans, it’s 10 cents per message to send or receive. For unlimited plan users, it’s 10 cents per message to send; free to receive. (Same pricing when you send messages to overseas recipients.) Multimedia messages (MMS) cost 25 cents each to send or receive.
• For more information: Boost Pay-as-You-Go FAQ, Boost Mobile Unlimited FAQ
• Sending email to your phone: Use the address format [10-digit phone number]@myboostmobile.com
  Example: 2125551212@myboostmobile.com

Here’s a handy tip for Boost customers: When you’re sending a text message to a friend who’s also on Boost, you can include reply options right within their message. That way, when they get your SMS, all they have to do is select a reply — they don’t have to key in a whole message back to you. When you’re sending a text message from an email program on your computer, put 2 tildes (~) before the response section and hit return after each response.

For example:
Are you going to the Shania Twain concert?
~~
~ Definitely. (Hit Enter/Return)
~ Nope, wouldn’t be caught dead there.(Hit Enter/Return)
~ Maybe, gotta check with my parents. (Hit Enter/Return)

Updated 7/2/2008

If you’ve got a cell phone from Virgin Mobile, here’s what you need to know about using SMS text messaging with your mobile.

• Maximum message length: 160 characters.
• What happens to longer messages: Anything beyond 160 characters will be cut off.
• Cost per message: 10 cents for each message you send or receive to U.S. numbers. For international recipients, you pay 20 cents/message to send and 10 cents to receive. Monthly Messaging Packs will lower your per-message cost if you use SMS a lot.
• For more information: Virgin Mobile Text Messaging
• Sending email to your phone: Use the address format [10-digit phone number]@vmobl.com
  Example: 5551234567@vmobl.com

Last updated 7/2/2008