Texting is on the rise. We’ve embraced that fact. We know texting is here to stay. It’s shaping the way we communicate, pay bills, reach target audiences, and, well, simply live. The speed at which it entered our lives is pretty fascinating.

Just this week, we read headlines about the 13 year old who racked up 14,528 text messages in one month (that’s 484 messages a day!), and now it seems that LG’s US National Texting Championships may be the next national spelling bee!

The championship finals were held this week in New York and the winning prize was $50,000. 15 year Kate Moore walked away with the trophy and the prize money this year, after competing against 20 other finalists in New York these last few days. The competition required them to text a modified chorus from Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah while doing crazy tasks like jumping obstacles on a treadmill and while blindfolded. The championship started out as a PR campaign for LG in 2007, and this is its third year in action.

It would’ve been spectacular to have the contestants text Wiffiti and have a screen that displayed the results in the studio. That way everybody would get to see how fast and accurate the contestants really were. Maybe next year. :)

(via WSJ)

In an election climate that drew much of its early vigor from the infamous 3am text message heard ’round the nation, it’s only fitting that as the day grows closer we gear up in suitable fashion…
Yep… It’s time to get your cell phone outfitted for election day data overload.

As a first step, check out two of the best mobile sites I’ve found: Google Election News Tracker and CNN’s America Votes mobile site. I have the Goog app bookmarked on my iPhone (see my strangely red hand holding up said app below), and it’s a great quick resource pulling in the latest election-related rss feeds. It’s really nothing fancier than a simple pre-loaded search query, but helpful on the go.

Slate.com also released a sweet little iPhone app called Vote Tracker 08 (99 cents at the app store) that’s been getting positive reviews.

Moving beyond the mobile web, I urge you to follow Paul Notzold’s Txtual Healing 10 Nights, 10 Cities, 4 States, 1 Obama Road Trip ’08!

And, of course, don’t forget to send your Wiffiti support to the Obama Minute Billboard in Times Square!

I came across this amazing excerpt this morning on Smart Mobs, which quite elegantly sums up the integrated, convergent vision of LocaModa and The New Media Triad.

The passage, taken from a longer work by Teemu Arina, explores How Mobile is Changing Our Society:

I have a feeling that the question we pose today is wrong. It’s not about mobile anymore. For some people, mobile means the devices that we carry around as we move, usually hooked up to a cellular network. The truth is, the activities we go through online with computers and what we do with our “mobiles” cannot be seen as separate anymore. This convergence means our language needs to change or our culture will never understand its future. . .

The mobile is like the horse wagon. If Henry Ford had asked people what they wanted, they would have said “faster horses.” It’s the language and our experience of the past that limits our understanding of the future of “mobile.”

Arina’s Mobile Monday Amsterdam event sold out its 400-seat capacity in 2 hours.

I’m not surprised.

[flickr cred]

It seems so.

According to the LA Times, the LAPD has launched a new system that allows citizens to send anonymous crime tips via SMS. Upon sending in a tip, the user will receive a textback message assigning him an alias, which he can then use for subsequent communication with the police.

[Sidenote: I'm VERY curious to know more about these aliases... Are they awesome, like BatTracker or FrenchBulldog or JamesBondIsMyDad? Or are they totally lame, like Anon345 or User62? I must know.]
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This year marked my first Boston Marathon.

It also marked my first experience with AT&T’s Athlete Alert System, which gave each runner the option of entering the mobile numbers up to three friends or family members who would receive text alerts at the 10K, half-marathon, 30K, and finish.

Sounds excellent, si?

Except that it didn’t work. At least not well.

My mom received one text alerting her that I had passed the 10K mark… over an hour after I had passed it. She also received a text saying that I had finished, which was symbolically pretty nice, but it was little help in actually getting to the finish line in time to see me cross. My other two alertees never received anything.

AT&T promoted the fact that the alerts worked on any network, but I suppose it’s unsurprising that my mom is on AT&T, and the other two are on Verizon.

With over 25,000 runners with three peeps a piece, that’s no small text messaging campaign; regardless, 2 out of 10 messages delivered are some disappointing numbers.

[tags]The Web Outside, LocaModa, Boston Marathon, AT&T Athlete Alert, Text Messaging, SMS, Mobile Marketing, runner alerts[/tags]