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SmartPhoneToday > Features > SMS: Getting the Best of It SMS: Getting the Best of It
By James Alan Miller Wherever you turn, people are thumbing away at their handsets' input devices, firing messages back and forth via the Short Message Service (SMS); the mobile-phone equivalent of instant messaging (IM). As with IM, SMS has quickly become a popular communications medium—especially in meetings, conferences, classrooms, movie theaters, or anywhere else silence is considered a virtue. SMS is so popular, in fact, IM powerhouse America Online (AOL) devotes a whole division not just to delivering its Internet service to phones and handhelds, but providing mobile instant messaging as well. With that in mind, AOL recently published five tips to help consumers join, and get the most out, of the text-messaging trend. Here they are:
It's easy to exchange text messages with anyone who has a text-enabled mobile phone (nearly all phones are these days) or PDA. Even if you and your friends have different wireless providers, you can just enter the ten-digit wireless phone number into the "to" field and text away.
If you and your friends or co-workers use IM on the desktop, it's easy to continue the conversation on the go. Many mobile phones and PDAs have built-in mobile IM features, and most phones can download mobile versions of popular IM services, including AOL, but also Yahoo! and MSN. Be sure to set up IM forwarding when you leave your computer to re-direct instant messages to your phone.
It's a snap to send messages from your computer to friends on mobile phones or PDAs via your instant messaging service. If your Buddies have activated IM forwarding, you can simply carry on your IM chat as usual. If not, you can send a text message to anyone by entering +1 and the ten-digit wireless phone number into the "to" field of the IM window where you normally enter their IM screen name.
Check with your mobile service provider to make sure you have the right service plan. Whether you send a few or a lot of text messages each month, you should have the text message plan that meets your needs.
If you want to speed up your texting experience, activate the predictive text input feature on your mobile phone or PDA. This is a helpful tool, which is most often provided by T9 Text Input software. T9 lets you enter words with just one key press per letter—including slang phrases like GR8 ("great") and LOL ("laughing out loud"). Twice as fast as multi-tap, T9 is also smart. It learns new words and adapts to the way you text. Available on 800 popular mobile phone models, T9 is probably already on your phone or PDA. (Tegic Communications, makers of T9 Text Input, put together the Lingo Dictionary, a text messaging resource.)
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