Comments on: Celebrating Text

By: Daniel Szuc

Daniel Szuc — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 01:04:39 +0000

“Experts have also noted how different types of technology have developed their own etiquette.

For instance, an e-mail can wait two days to be answered but a text message demands an almost immediate reply.” -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/6411495.stm

By: Bart

Bart — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 15:50:58 +0000

Here’s an interesting story run by CNN on IM text appearing within assignments.

This “instant messaging-speak” or “IM-speak” emerged more than a decade ago. Used in e-mail and cell phone text messages, most teens are familiar with this tech talk and use it to flirt, plan dates and gossip.

But junior high and high school teachers nationwide say they see a troubling trend: The words have become so commonplace in children’s social lives that the techno spellings are finding their way into essays and other writing assignments.

This reinforces the idea that niche text [a la IM and SMS] is infiltrating our lexicon most significantly.

By: Leith @ Birth of a Startup

Leith @ Birth of a Startup — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 01:08:07 +0000

I think we used to care more about abbreviated words for text messaging in its early days when we had a firm character limit per message and the cost for sending text messages was worth considering, and it was a new form of data input that often took a long time to carry out. I find now that its possible to send long text messages easily, and I don’t care overly about the cost of text messages, and that I can type long text messages in seconds, means I now am quite verbose in my text messaging, or at least I avoid overuse of acronyms. The only acronyms I still frequently use is ‘ur’, ‘r’ and ‘2moro’, but I find with predictive text input, it is often easier to write the full word than to attempt to shorten it. I for one am happy to be an advocate for proper English grammar and spelling, and am happy that the environment is conducive to see it have a come-back!

By: Bart Solowiej

Bart Solowiej — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 22:05:44 +0000

I apologize for what will manifest itself as a shameless self promotion by its close.

SMS offers a terse, direct, greatest common denominator approach to extrapolating information from sources within the greater aggregate. In English, big apps that do BIG things [index the web, catalog film schedules, products, prices, weather, transit timetables].

I wake in the morning and text ‘W 20005′ to GOOGL and “Dupont” to dc@traincheck.com on my phone. I brush my teeth, wash up, etc etc, while my phone digs up how cold it is outside and when the next three trains arrive at the Dupont Circle Metro station in DC. I speak to apps using this terse uber geek lingo, each with its own niche format.

The *niche text* subclass reflects the frenetic “I don’t-have-time-to-explain” lifestyle more of us are leading in a hyper competitive world. It will be interesting to see how many “standardizations” of SMS niche text arise with the increasing prevalence of text-based mobile communication.

Are we just shortening our lexicon along with the scope of our immediate interests and attention spans? Would that explain the evolution of “I’ll see you later”?

See ya later. -> Later. and See ya. -> C u l8r and l8r ->lates, late, L8s, L8 A myriad of examples exists…

Although I can type the full station name of any station in DC, SF, or Caltrain into traincheck, I as developer and my partner, a designer, made sure we could type in 3 letter codes to get unambiguous result sets in any metro we model (Much like airport codes). We knew when we did it that this would be awkward for people new to TrainCheck, but not to our content. And people ending up adopting the short station codes once familiarized with the system.

Niche text is the future of mobile information gathering, allowing us to ask more and get more with less cruft.