sms

iMessage was announced during Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this year, bringing a platform that rivals RIM's BlackBerry Messenger to all iOS devices.

We are going to take a look at iMessage and give you some tips on getting started with the new iOS messaging service once iOS 5 is released to the public. … Read more

Video editing on the iPhone was first introduced with the iPhone 3GS, yet some iPhone owners still don't realize how easy this feature is to use. It is incredibly simple to quickly edit a video you just shot so that you can send a specific moment to friends and family members. This can also come in handy when a video is a bit to long to send; quickly trim unnecessary portions of the video out, thus reducing the file size and enabling you to send it. Read on to learn how to edit video on your iPhone. … Read more

Short messaging services (SMS) are very popular, but can end up costing you a lot if you don't have an unlimited plan for your smartphone. All the apps in this collection offer more features than standard SMS clients, and can often be more fun to use. For instance, some send pictures, show you when a message is read by the recipient, or send videos and voice clips. There's even an app that lets people without smartphones reply to you from a user-selected phone number.

Kik is a simple yet functional messenger app. No other service can match … Read more

From the Are You Kidding Me files today comes VizLingo, a New York-based company that takes the words you type and creates quick-cut videos out of them. You type in, "I want to buy some cheese," and you get a five-second video of the concepts, "I," "want," and so on. Go see what I mean.

Let me be clear about this. I don't get it. These vids don't help comprehension. If they did, they wouldn't need subtitles. And the emotional content whipsaws all over the place due to the quick cuts.

But, says CEO Azeo Fables, that's the point. "We're responding directly to the A.D.D. generation, who wants things quick and fast. The clip length is tuned to the mindset of users who watch music videos."

Fables says his target demographic, 14- to 24-year-olds, has not been well-served by text messaging, in which it's hard to embed emotional content save for emoticons. He also believes that the clip library now on the service (30,000 tagged clips taken from Fables' post-college around-the-world video tour) will eventually be supplanted by user-generated tagged videos.

VizLingo has raised $1.8 million in venture funding and there are 11 people working on the project. Fables believes revenues may come from third-party content providers. If you use the word "car" in a clip, maybe you'll get a Ford-provided image. Also, he hopes to integrate the VizLingo function into existing messaging platforms, hopefully at a profit. Mobile apps are on the way.

I don't dispute that this is a fun experiment. And props to the VizLingo team for at least trying to come up with two-second video clips to illustrate words like "is," and "fund." Anything that pushes the boundaries of language and expression is likely to get some initial interest. But I believe this experiment is a novelty, not the dawn of a new post-text form of communication. I'm shocked it's raised so much money. Maybe the millennials that Fables is targeting will prove me wrong, but I doubt it. … Read more

Do you ever wish you had a way to hide certain contacts in your address book? Maybe you want the ability to completely hide entire SMS or e-mail conversations from prying eyes? BlackBook, a popular BlackBerry application, allows you to do just that. This simple-to-use app keeps your most valued information hidden and secure.

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A lot of Android smartphones don't have an LED that can display color-coded alerts like the G1 or Nexus One. It's pretty handy to simply glance at your phone and already know if the alert you were out of earshot for is actually something important to check. NoLED is a useful little app that allows you to see a small colored dot or icon on your screen which will identify your different alerts received.

Note: It's recommended that you only use NoLED on AMOLED screens because it is not as battery-friendly on SLCD screens; however, it can … Read more

The first world is fixated on smartphones that can handle videoconferencing and first-person shooters, but Google and Orange announced a service today that's geared for a population whose phones only have that most basic of data-transfer abilities, text messaging.

Google and Orange, the mobile arm of France Telecom, announced a partnership today to bring a service called Gmail SMS Chat to four additional countries in Africa--Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea Conakry, and Niger--and to launch it as a trial program in Egypt. The service already is available in Senegal, Uganda, and Kenya, but will reach the new countries in … Read more

The official Skype app for Android lets you place voice calls to landlines, mobile numbers, or other Skype users. It also offers built-in SMS capabilities, instant messaging for chatting with your Skype connections, and for a select few supported devices, video calls.

Skype's user interface is incredibly clean and simple to use. The Home screen displays four icons to cover all your basic needs: Contacts, Recent, Call phones, Profile. Above the icons, there's a small bar where you can change your mood message (Skype's version of a status update). And at the very top, there's a … Read more

Knowing who sent you a text message before even looking at your phone is extremely convenient, especially if you are the type who receives many SMS messages daily. One way to know who is on the other end of that SMS you just received, is to customize the text alert, based on a contact, on your iPhone. It is a simple process to set up, but one that is easy to miss if you aren't paying attention.

While this capability has been around for those in the jailbreak community from early on, it's a fairly new feature having been introduced in iOS 4.2. 

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