SMS2.0: Texting in technicolor

Pretty soon, users will be sending SMS messages that go beyond grayscale. With easy controls from an attractive UI, users with a penchant for visual enhancements will be able to change the foreground and background color of text messages to suit their whim. They'll also be texting emoticons and animations, reading RSS feeds, and searching the Web from a variety of search engines. A Facebook app is on the horizon to add friends' status updates to the RSS ticker.

One can only presume that Affle, the UK company behind the muscled-up texting app, has grown tired of custom-making them for manufacturers, because it plans to release a consumer version, called SMS2.0, in the near future.

Like so many other social offerings here at CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas, SMS2.0 will be free, but supported by tiny ads that run fairly unobtrusively through the ticker.

It's interesting to see the type of treatment you would expect from an instant messenger tailored to texting. Though it wouldn't replace an IM client, SMS2.0 has all appearances of being a useful, better-looking method for blasting short messages to offline contacts and getting a bit more out of the interface while you're at it.