Slashdot Mirror
E-mail Is For Old People
Strolls writes "Although the article itself doesn't seem quite as exciting or newsworthy, this headline from Reuters amused me mightily. Reuters' summary is here and here's the original survey by Pew Internet and American Life Project." From the article: "Internet users from 12 to 17 years old say e-mail is best for talking to parents or institutions, but they are more likely to fire up IM when talking with each other, the nonprofit Pew Internet and American Life Project found. E-mail is still used by 90 percent of online teens. But the survey found greater enthusiasm for instant messaging."
*raises his hand* .. talk and ytalk were very useful too ..
Well, it is a Sanyo 8100....picture phone that is only a couple of years old. With only a numbered keypad, and multiple letters assoc. with each key...how else do you text message if not pressing each key a number of times (3 x 3 for the letter 'f')? Does your cell phone have some kind of magic keyboard that attaches to it?
My Samsung S55 has a keypad with 3 (or 4) letters per number, but it has T9 text entry, which I've seen on basically every phone I've encountered in the last 2 years or so..
It basically works by statistically guessing what you are trying to type. Instead of entering each letter, you press the number that has that particular letter on it (only once) and then go on to the next letter. For example, to type "hotel", I would press 46835. It works best if you don't look at the screen while typing. As I press each key, the screen will display the most likely combination of letters I was attempting to enter (there is only a very finite number of possibilities that make sense). As I get to the last letter the entire word will be spelled. If there is more than one possibility for that word, it will input the "most likely" word, but then I can press a button that will scroll through each potential word, one at a time. I say it guesses the right word between 90-95% of the time. The longer the word, the more likely it will be right..
It drastically increases my text entry speed. I went from HATING text messaging to loving it, because now I can type at lightning speed on a numeric keypad (though not as fast as some people can transmit morse code)..
I thought someone said there was going to be free beer!