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Portable Phone Numbers = Market for Cool Numbers
goombah99 writes "The New phone number rules that allow you to keep your phone number when you switch carriers has given rise to phone nascent number property rights. On E-bay you can bid on 867-5309 (made famous by Tommy Tutone's Jenny I got your number). As I write this the bid is over $8000 dollars with seven days to go. What other numbers are famous or valuable? Will we see a land rush like the internet names?"
Here's the Clicky
There is a web-tool for finding out what words you can make with a phone-number using the letters that appear next to each number - http://mmm.mbhs.edu/~bconnell/phoneagrams.html
Thus the fate of all high-profile ebay auctions. Ruined by losers.
Here in RI in area code 401, a plumbing service owns
the number, and advertises it on the radio, and even
sings a bit of the jenny song.
I wonder if they had to dish out the $$ for it or
if they simply requested it from thier phone company.
For those that are not Chinese (or asian), Here's the cantonese side of the story:
:P
8 (eight) is 'baet'' which 'sounds' like how one would pronounce 'faet' which means 'fortune (rich)'
2 (two) is 'yi' which 'sounds' like how one would pronounce 'ye' which means 'easy'
4 (four) is 'sei' which 'sounds' eactly how one would pronounce 'sei' which means 'death/die'
So if your number is 8888888 or 282828 for example, it means good fortune.
If Your number is 4444444 or 242424, it's means bad fortune (easy death) and avoid it at all costs.
You'll find Asian people will choose numbers eg:
Phone numbers
Fax numbers
Street numbers
numbers plates on cars
etc.
Welcome to number superstition Chinese style
555 numbers are already assignable. Check out the 555 master list for the numbers currently in use.
Check out
Phone Spell
http://www.phonespell.org/
--- Mike Kolcun
Don't stress it ... you're going to get blank stares from the AT&T salespeople no mater what you ask them. I'd call 212-867-5309 in a week or two and ask them how it worked ... and if it worked.
RIP Bon Scott. Ride on, ride on...
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
For those of us who are too lazy to figure it out, here's a site that tells you what a phone number spells.
666 is a prefix in Little Rock, Arkansas (USA). Everyone mentions it when they first find out, yes, but even here in the Bible Belt people eventually ignore it.
the "xxx" was 420, then it would be the perfect endo-phone number.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
That is actually a Wilson Pickett song that was covered by The Blues Brothers.
JP
Area code 212 is coveted by New Yorkers because it's the original NPA for NYC, before 646 and 917. It's kind of a status symbol there, and I'm sure that has something to do with the price going so high. The New York Post has more information on the desire for 212.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
If you dialed an AC, the telco switching system knew it, so you didn't have to dial the AC on a LD call within the same AC as your phone.
But about 10 years ago, the phone companies were running out of area codes, and they changed the system. Now both area codes and exchanges are [2-9][0-9][0-9] (with certain special exceptions such as x11, x00, and 8xx). It's no longer possible for the telco to know that it's an AC instead of an exchange most of the time. So, in places where two or more ACs are local calls, the other ACs can't be used as exchanges (here in KC, the MO side is 816 and KS is 913, so there will never be an 816-913 or 913-816 nunber in the local calling area) nor should an AC contain an exchange with its own number (no 816-816 or 913-913).
We've had 888-* numbers here long before there was an 888 AC.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Uh, paying for incoming calls is standard practice on most mobile phone plans, at least in the US.
It also spells cat-fuck, bat-fuck, and bat-duck.
Great number you got yourself there.
(determined all these from http://www.phonespell.org)
I posted to
Give phonespell your number and it will give you all the word combinations in your number.
http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/8675309.htm
clickey
.sig
Claim: The Tommy Tutone song "Jenny (867-5309)" drove the phone companies (and their customers) nuts.
Status: True.
Origins: The
1980s produced a number of one-hit wonders, including the infamous Tommy Tutone and its 1982 hit song "Jenny (867-5309)." This San Francisco band led by Tommy Heath and Jim Keller doesn't appear to have made much of a mark on the music world, and it likely wouldn't now be remembered were it not for the furor raised by its use of a phone number in its one memorable song.
In "Jenny," a young man laments not having the courage to dial a number found scribbled on a wall but finds some comfort in the notion that he can someday call this girl and sweep her off her feet. Though not explicitly stated in the lyrics, it's strongly implied the name and number were harvested from a bathroom wall, which also implies "Jenny" is a gal of easy virtue and is to be had for the price of a phone call.
"Jenny (867-5309)" caused nothing but grief for telephone customers unlucky enough to have that combination of numbers as their own. Its relentless chorus, "Jenny don't change your number - eight six seven five three oh nah-eeh-ah-ine," pounded the phone number into the minds of teenagers everywhere, resulting in waves of kids dialing it and asking for Jenny. The joke quickly became old for those who had the number and weren't interested in talking to horny teens.
Even as recently as 1999, phone customers unlucky enough to have been assigned an 867-5309 number were still getting plenty of crank calls. An article from Brown University's newspaper explained what happened when the school added an 867 exchange in the fall of 1999:
The biggest complaints about the new phone exchange come from Nina Clemente '03 and Jahanaz Mirza '03, the two students with the telephone number 867-5309.
"It's so annoying," Nina said. "It's the worst number to have in the world."
The girls receive an average of five "stupid" messages every day on their machine, in addition to a slew of hang-ups.
"It's as if they are really expecting Jenny to pick up the phone," Clemente said.
Unfortunately, the problem is not getting better, and people just keep calling. Some ask for Jenny, some play the Tommy Tutone song on the girls' answering machine, and some males even leave their phone numbers in hopes of finding a date.
Whether there was a real Jenny with that very phone number is debatable. Those who attempt to dial 867-5309 on a touch-tone phone will quickly discover that this seemingly random combination of seven digits forms a consistent pattern as tapped out on the pad. The upward diagonal of "8-6" is followed by "7-5-3," the upward diagonal to the left of it, which in turn is followed by "0-9," yet another upward diagonal, this one to the right of the original starting sequence.
The song gave rise to its own lore, which asserted that the "Jenny" in the song was the lead singer's real-life girlfriend (or ex-girlfriend):
[Collected on the Internet, 2000]
I heard a more elaborate story that the number actually belonged to one of the band member's ex-girlfriends (named Jenny, of course) and that he wrote the song to get back at her for dumping him. She supposedly got a restraining order taken out against him and won a court order to have the song pulled from the airwaves for a while, etc. etc.
Other explanations leave off her suing the songwriter but have her becoming angry with him and changing her number (which, ironically, is the one thing the song begged her not to do). In another flavor of the tale, the band is sued by a sheriff who had both a daughter named Jenny and the notorious 867-5309 as his home number.
"Jenny" has had a breath of new life breathed into it by the Goo Goo Dolls, a popular band who debuted in 1987 but only began to hit their stride in 1998. Though they've yet to record a cover of "Jenny," the Goo Goo Dolls have often included a rendition of it in club ap
Exchange Names, where words such as PENnsylvania and PEnnsylvania-6 stand for the number 736 were common from about 1900 to about the late 1950's. NYC's PEnnsylvania-6 = 736, and BUtterfield-8 = 288 were both made famous by songs, literature and movies.
It is hard to find on the web good information about these custom Exchange Names in each areacode, except for this website's database. In 1955, MaBell created a simplified list.
Mac Refugee, Paper MCSE, Linux Wannabe
http://atlanta.about.com/cs/artsentertainment/a/go dsnumber.htm
Anybody seen the movie Bruce Almighty? In it, Jim Carrey gets repeatedly paged by God (with the number, not a 555 number for once, appearing on the screen). In the weeks following the release of the movie, people all over the nation got calls from Americans wanting to talk to God - including in Georgia, where callers got a church.