Bowblog » mobile http://bowblog.com Sat, 07 Jan 2012 13:21:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 The next SMS? http://bowblog.com/2006/04/11/the-next-sms/ http://bowblog.com/2006/04/11/the-next-sms/#comments Tue, 11 Apr 2006 13:34:02 +0000 Steve Bowbrick http://bowblog.com/?p=945 A friend of mine just told me about USSD. Of course, you already knew about USSD – it’s been in the GSM spec since the beginning (like SMS). It’s a sort of session-based SMS. It has a few current uses – like querying your pre-paid balance – but no economic model (there’s no way of billing or metering USSD traffic at the moment and no handset-to-handset functionality). You could use it, though, to trigger data delivery back to an app running on the handset, for instance. Or to request location data for a navigation app. Very interesting. Expect a rash of USSD apps over the next year or so as mobile entrepreneurs push the boundaries of voice, data and SMS. Imagine: an unexplored platform for mobile business!

]]> http://bowblog.com/2006/04/11/the-next-sms/feed/ 0 The end of language? http://bowblog.com/2003/03/05/the-end-of-language/ http://bowblog.com/2003/03/05/the-end-of-language/#comments Wed, 05 Mar 2003 16:59:34 +0000 Steve Bowbrick http://bowblog.com/?p=272 Azeem wonders if children submitting essays in txt msg language is a bad thing or just language evolving. I’m usually one of those ‘language is a living thing’ guys in these matters, laughing at the grammar pedants and vocabulary fascists (I like David Crystal on language change). There has to be some kind of limit, though, and I guess this might be it. No language is infinitely flexible, otherwise is ceases to be a language. Language evolves but, necessarily, within the bounds of shared comprehension.

As new vocabulary and new structures arrive they test the limits, keeping understanding in a constant state of tension – parents never quite understand their teenage kids but they manage to communicate and the language advances. Introductions and innovations are absorbed quickly (usually within a generation) but txt language requires too great an effort from non-speakers. It’s too jarring, too remote from the norm. But presumably it’ll fade away as interfaces become more transparent anyway…

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