The website of Alex Kinch, live from London
Posts tagged SMS
More Vodafone overcharging rumours
May 9th
Remember that company that I blogged about a few days ago? The one that the first part of the word rhymes with ‘yoda’, and the second part is a misspelling of ‘phone’? With me? Good. Well, I’ve just heard something interesting on the anonymous tips grapevine. And sod it, in the interest of free speech I’m going to name them.
A while back, in November 2006 to be precise, Vodafone had a little problem with overcharging their customers for premium SMS. It wasn’t a huge amount of overcharging – an additional 12p per premium SMS to be precise – but all those 12p’s added up. Quite a bit of press coverage later, and a rather embarrasing Vodafone press office initially denying all reports, and they admitted their was a problem. A few weeks later of refunding and wiping egg off their face, it all went quiet.
Roll forward to April 2007. My source indicates that Vodafone have been at it again for at least two weeks, but this time we’re talking a huge amount of overcharging. Apparently, due to a ‘malfunction’ in one of their billing engines, thousands of Vodafone customers were being charged £5 for *every* premium SMS they received – whatever the tariff. So 25p plus normal network charges would end up costing you over a fiver. Text your favourite radio station a handful of times in one day and you could easily be £20-£30 out of pocket.
Of course everythings fine and dandy in the land of Vodafone as they claim to have fixed the problem and refunded everybody at the end of April. With interest, compensation for inconvenience, and a nice goodwill gesture for being so utterly crap? I doubt it somehow.
It’s yet another nail in coffin for the world of premium SMS – and what with consumer awareness of premium sms and voice ‘rip-offs’ at an all time high of late, no wonder they want to keep it quiet.
Now then now then..
May 9th
(note: if you’re younger than about 21, were deprived of UK telly from 1975 til 1994, or have a phobia of elderly men in gold shell suits laden with more bling than Mr T, ignore the next paragraph!)
Jingle jangle, jewellery jewellery.. Welcome boys and girls to SMSTextNews will fix it. Here we go with a letter from Erin at nowthen:
I’d like to invite you to try nowthen (www.nowthen.com ) – a simple, free and addictive social networking service that lets users communicate and express themselves via camera phone snapshots.
nowthen originated as an internal SMS/MMS communication tool used by my coworkers because our team is spread throughout the US and UK. Eventually, we all had such a good time with the photo messaging feature that we decided to make the service available to the public – and here we are!
Fantastic.. it sounds good so far – the words ‘MMS’, ‘free’ and ‘social networking’ always make me curious. So how does it work? Over to Erin..
As a nowthen member, simply add friends, MMS your pictures to 07983 111 222 and we’ll instantly forward them to the phones of your nowthen network of friends. Likewise, you can receive your friends’ updates to your phone too. We also provide our users with free web space where they can easily store, share and access their photos. There are no applications to download – just a simple registration process via phone or the Web and users can immediately begin nowthening!
Brilliant! Sounds like it’s got potential to turn into a real killer app for the world of MMS. I haven’t had a chance to give it a proper go yet, but as soon as I find some time I’ll post an update.
Motorist text reminder service is smashing
May 9th
WWW.SMASHINGTXT.COM | SMS reminder service
I’ve just been having a play with a new text reminder service, called Smashingtxt. It’s quite a cool service, and I believe it’ll fill a real gap in the market. Of course there’s umpteen million different reminder text services out there already, and you can set reminders for birthdays, anniversaries, feeding the cat, putting out the recycling, and pretty much whatever else you have to remember. So why is this offering from Smashingtxt different?
The service focuses on one particular audience: the motorist. The company behind it, Smashing Plates, is one of these companies that’ll get you a really cool numberplate for your car, van, bike, caravan, whatever. You know the sort.. like EW4N for example. They’re not a tech company, and aren’t churning out mobile applications ‘because they’re cool’ and then trying to find an audience – quite the opposite. With over 30 million cars on the road in the UK nowadays, they’ve figured out that we all need a little help to remember things like renewing our MOT, putting the car in for a service, etc.
As someone who managed to not realise for a couple of months that his first MOT was due, I’d go for this straight away. In fact, I’m going to setup a reminder now to give me a nudge when it’s next due. At least with road tax renewals I get a nice pretty reminder.. but with MOT and servicing? Nothing. Not a sausage. It’s up to me to remember these things – and spending a couple of quid could save me quite a large fine and some points on my licence.
More London smokers quit with help from a text
May 4th
Link: Mobile Business Magazine – iPLATO SMS
Doctors in Islington say using text messaging is six times more effective than traditional ways of contacting patients to get them to stop smoking. Surgeries using the iPLATO SMS system have reported patient response rates of 30% (against 5% using letters) for messages asking patients to text back their current smoking status – those who indicate that they are still smokers and trying to quit are then invited to stop-smoking clinics.
See, this is a good use of text. Why doesn’t the NHS do this? Let me tell you a story about a friend of mine.
He’s too busy to do the whole stop smoking support group shenigans, and his local GP doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, so he figured he’d try with a little help from the NHS. So.. he went to the website, signed up, put in his email, mobile and address details, told them when he wanted to quit, and sat back and waited.
Two days later the welcome pack arrived. Just a bunch of paper. No patches, no gum, nowt. Then he got an email saying ‘you’re giving up in a few days, good luck!’, and on the day he planned to quit, a text arrived. Just one text. And not a sausage since. What did it say? ‘Congratulations, welcome to your first day as a non smoker’.
He was back on the fags by that evening. No more texts, emails, or any kind of support since.
What a missed opportunity..
UPDATE: My friend got a text this morning (Saturday) from the NHS ‘Together Team’. It reads as follows:
From the Together Team – FYI – NHS Smoking Helpline on 0800 169 0 169. To unsubscribe text TOGETHER to 63818
So there’s a smoking helpline now? Fantastic.. ‘Hello, can you help me? I appear to have run out of cigarettes. Where can I buy a packet?’ 
I was half expecting him to tell me he’d received a motivational message, but alas no.
Skype cut SMS charges in half
May 3rd
Link: Skype
I use Skype. I know lots of people who use Skype. I quite like it personally, but I’ve never really used it for SMS. So I was actually quite interested when this offer popped into my inbox.
Here’s the deal. Until May 8th, you can get 50% of texts sent to Austria, Australia, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Russia, Taiwan, Thailand and the USA. So if you’re in the UK, instead of paying 6.2p to text your mates in Ireland, it’s now 3.1p. Belgium has gone from 6.5p down to 3.25p, and so on and so forth.
It’s a great idea, but where’s the UK in that list of countries? The current rate is 5.6p, which ain’t bad – but 2.8p would be even better. Yes ok I know that’s 0.2p below the ‘official’ interworking charges that the UK operators levy on each other for termination of text, but I know for a fact that if you have a large enough amount of traffic there’s some very good deals that can be done direct with the networks – therefore avoiding any interworking/termination costs.
Russell Shaw over at ZDNet has written a brief blog entry about his thoughts on why Skype are making this offer. Only time will tell what their master plan is..
Pensioner wins 2nd prize in text love poem comp
May 3rd
Granny in love wins prize for phone text poetry | Reuters
Eileen Bridge, 68, a grandmother, from Accrington, Lancashire, won 350 pounds ($697) in the “txt laureate” competition, after she took second place with an ode to her husband of six months.
The entry read: “O hart tht sorz, My luv adorz, He mAks me liv, He mAks me giv, Myslf 2 him, As my luv porz.”
Bless. So do you want to know what wonderful prose won the first prize? It’s this, courtesy of 23 year old London-based law student Ben Ziman-Bright.
Not even the wet rustle of rain can dampen today. Your text buoys me above oil-rainbow puddles like a paper boat, so that even soaked to the skin, I am grinning.
I prefer Eileen’s to be honest. Pure class
Keeping tabs on Windows Mobile users
May 2nd
Link: Mobile Spy ups mobile snooping powers | The Register
Retina-X Studios have released an interesting application for Windows Mobile devices, allowing you to eavesdrop on texts and calls made by the handset user.
Mobile Spy, a new application from Retina-X Studios, monitors calls and text messages and reports them back to a central server. When installed on a Windows Mobile device, Mobile Spy allows parents to keep watch on their child’s phone, or enables employers to enforce an acceptable use policy on their staff – though the legality of doing so will depend where in the world you are.
Not quite sure I’d like an employer snooping on my texts and calls – then again with so many companies now actively monitoring Internet usage it’s only a matter of time before Big Brother starts sniffing through your mobile usage.
I haven’t got a Windows Mobile handy to test it on, so if anyone fancies giving it a go let me know! Their site is here.
Channel 4 could axe Big Brother SMS voting
May 1st
According to Digital Spy, UK broadcaster Channel 4 is reviewing the SMS voting process in popular reality show Big Brother, following a number of recent scandals and problems involving TV shows and premium SMS.The eighth series of the show begins later this month, and although no announcement has been made as yet, rumours are also abound that premium rate phone line voting may also be axed in an attempt to win back viewer trust after recent problems with other shows on the channel, such as Richard & Judy.
New Yorkers get their own ‘text a drink’ service
Apr 20th
Happy hour by SMS, with BuyYourFriendADrink | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone
If you owe a friend a drink, or just want to be nice, head on over to the BYFAD Web site and fill out the form–you’ll need to have that friend’s cell phone number on hand. You can opt to give them a dollar amount between $5 and $250, and there’s a 99-cent processing fee. Then, your friend receives an e-mail and a text message alerting them of the yummy drinkable gift, along with a promotional code.
Nice! Looks similar to the Corney & Barrow BuyMeADrink service that was talked about way back in September 2006. Anyone in New York gonna give this one a go over the weekend?
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