texting

The iPad, along with competing tablets and even the growing list of highly portable ultrabooks, is quickly becoming a staple in the classroom for teachers and students alike. It seems more and more likely that taking notes with a pen and paper will one day be an antiquated practice we'll all reminisce about to our grandkids.

The iPad can be a great tool for taking notes, but the native iOS Notes app doesn't cut it for everyone. To take truly useful notes that can replace that spiral notebook, you're going to need the help of an app … Read more

Sitting in front of a computer all day for work makes your leisure reading time seem like more of a chore. Or even worse, you may not have time for reading about your interests because you need to keep your eyes on the road to make your way home or to another appointment. For times like these, wouldn't it be useful to be able to listen to the articles instead?

SoundGecko offers a transcription service that converts articles you find online to MP3 format. It's definitely not going to sound smooth like a podcast or newscast, but you … Read more

It may be "good to talk," as telecom giant BT's ads put it in the early '90s. But two decades on, the U.K. has evolved into a nation of texters.

According to research published Monday by U.K. communications regulator Ofcom, text messaging is outstripping actually making a call. Last year 58 percent of people communicated via text messaging on a daily basis, while only 47 percent made a mobile call at least once a day, the watchdog found.

Voice calling is seeing something of a drop in popularity: mobile call volumes were down by 1 … Read more

Police did not violate the privacy rights of a Washington state man who responded to a text message from the iPhone of his suspected drug dealer only to get arrested on drug charges after arranging to meet up, a Washington appeals court says.

Police had arrested Daniel Lee on drug charges and one officer searched through the text messages on Lee's iPhone, found some suspicious messages from a "Z-Jon" and texted from Lee's phone to ask if Z-Jon "needed more." Then, according to court papers, Z-Jon followed up with a message using drug slang … Read more

Apple and Google removed an app from their app stores after it was revealed to be harvesting users' phone contacts as spam targets.

The Find and Call app was originally thought to be an SMS worm but later discovered to be a Trojan, according to Kaspersky Lab. The Russian software security firm said it alerted by Apple and Google to the presence of the malware in their stores, leading to the app's removal.

Apple confirmed it removed the app for violating App Store rules.

"The Find & Call app has been removed from the App Store due to … Read more

To fend off attacks and faulty programming, Apple has implemented sandboxing routines to manage what system resources applications have access to. While the sandboxing process should allow the applications to run as intended by the developer, sometimes an odd bug or configuration error may result in random breaks in functionality.

For example, TextEdit is one of the sandboxed programs that Apple includes in OS X. Sandbox entitlements allow it to save to the filesystem and accept keyboard inputs, among other features, so you can use the program to create documents and edit them. However, if a sandboxing error involving one … Read more

Watermarks are a great way to ensure that your images aren't appropriated by some jerk on the Internet who wants to claim your brilliant work as his or her own. Mytoolsoft Watermark Software is an easy-to-use program that can not only apply custom watermarks but also perform other basic editing tasks, such as resizing and converting images to other formats. We think it's a great choice if you're looking for a simple way to affix your mark permanently to your images.

The program has a sleek and intuitive wizard-style interface. Users first select the images they want … Read more

Live in an area prone to flash floods, hurricanes, blizzards? Smartphone users will soon get a severe-weather alert from the National Weather Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The new nationwide emergency alert system, called the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), sends 90-character text messages to smartphones of people facing extreme weather conditions. Severe weather defined by the NOAA includes tornadoes, flash floods, hurricanes, extreme wind, blizzards and ice storms, tsunamis, and dust storms. Note that thunderstorms aren't on the list because they occur so frequently. … Read more

In the hundreds of millions of Asian, Latin American, and African households where water is only available once every week or two weeks, families lose both time and potential income waiting to fill their buckets. SmartPlanet's Sumi Das talks to a founder at NextDrop, an organization that's using SMS technology to help families make sure they never miss a precious drop.

This post first appeared on SmartPlanet under the headline "How texting can solve unreliable water issues."