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IM On Mobile Phones
Dr Occult writes "Some of the biggest mobile phone networks have joined forces to push instant messaging (IM) over mobiles.Fifteen operators, including Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and China Mobile have agreed to work together to make it easy to IM across networks.
Third-generation mobile networks can carry more data and move it around far faster so messages really can be instant.This is important because IM conversations typically involve more back and forth than text message chats and it ensures that the experience is similar to that enjoyed online.
Under the initiative, the 15 operators covering 700 million mobile phone users have agreed to use a single standard for IM, which would work across networks.The operators are looking to launch instant messaging mobile services later this year."
Do we REALLY need more stuff on our cell phones?
I mean, isn't an mp3 player, camera, games, calendar book, internet access, email access enough?
Is it just me, or is there not really that much point to this (unless you're deaf)? After all, the point of a text is that you can send it when you're not in a position to get involved in a lengthy conversation, just need a quick snippet of information, or just to send "pub, 8pm". But with IM, you're effectively just having a conversation.... why not just talk? Surely it's easier and more effective than typing like mad at keys that are hardly designed for the purpose?
As long as they don't charge PER message, this is a VERY promissing service. And even more so when the desktop IM clients start being compatible with this standard.
If I clone myself, can I call it a thread?
If a girl winks to us, can I call it a race condition?
How is this any different than that?
Just different because we call it IM now?
Now, voice over ip is slowly starting to replace textual conversations on computers. IM began as a way to mimick the way people talk to each other on the phone. Text was used because, well, not everyone had a sound card (especially not in office PCs) and the amount of data transfered in voice chat was a lot more than text (and that's not too convenient when you're on a 56k modem or when you're charged for every Megabyte transfered).
Now there's a medium that's perfectly capable of handling voice conversations. Why I know? Because that is (or at least was) it's main application!
Why the heck should I want to "downgrade" to typed conversation? Especially on a "keyboard" that breaks my fingers already when I'm forced to compile a short message? Granted, there are others unlike me who can actually use that tool to type fairly fast, but still, nothing beats the speed and easy of verbal communication.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hasn't anyone else noticed that it is hard to type on a 12-key keypad? I hate sending txt's simply because of that...
As a person also already said, txting is when you don't want a length convo and jsut want to say stuff like: "din pete 5" to make dinner plans at pete's at 5....
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
XMPP is pretty wasteful, bandwidth wise. If I were paying per kb, I'd prefer a condensed, proprietary protocol.
As much as the trendoids out there may feel that they are the "digerati" since they use all the latest buzzy technologies, it all comes down to one thing: two tin cans and a string. When it comes to communication, people only fall into one of two camps especially when they are young:
/home/mystuff
1. You and your best friend rigged up some kind of comm system between your houses because you were actual real live techno geeks.
or...
2. You were a catty, snippy teen who passed around "he said/she said" notes in school all day and that's about the extent of what communication means to you.
Now obviously there's a right way and a wrong way to look at communication. The right way is to ogle the technology itself and try to learn how it works so you can do more interesting things with it. The wrong way is to use it to pass around "he said/she said" information (ie. what most morons consider communication to be). Personally, I think IM is overrated because there are very few IM systems that you can actually force into serving you properly. My preference is Jabber because I can actually run my own IM server for private use among friends and family. I can also do very interesting things with it, like trigger events remotely by sending commands to a "bot" account. I've got one at home on my Jabber server that I call "Bash Boy". All I have to do is send IM messages to it like:
cd /
ls
mv file1
and it obeys. I challenge you to do that with the proprietary IM that other companies offer. If your IM can't do that, then you're not really using IM to it's fullest capabilities. And that's a VERY basic example. Now adding this IM feature to cell phones is ridiculous. Think about all the fat, lazy white trash you see walking around with a cell phone grafted to their ears in the grocery store. You know why they won't use IM? Because they can barely read let alone spell. Can you imagine what sort of horrors they will be "typing" via their IM???
SnuffyBear25: "i heart u babay"
MotorMan: "yeh"
SnuffyBear25: "whatchu doin"?
MotorMan: "yeh"
SnuffyBear25: "do u no how much i heart u"?
MotorMan: "how much"?
SnuffyBear25: "i heart you bigger than peter north's pole"
MotorMan: "damn baby. git on over here. i got a 40 and we can party"
SnuffyBear25: "i b there in a flash 4 u babay. hugs".
Do we really want to promote this kind of sick behavior? If anything we should be building re-education centers to clean this kind of thing up. Who's with me!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Think of the 14-year-old schoolgirl (steady, slashdotters).
From their perspective, communication with their friends is their LIFE.
When they get home, they instantly go online and chat to their friends.
When they go to school, they start using their mobile phone to SMS them.
herein lies the disparity: that when they are on the way to school,
and when they are in class, they aren't in front of a computer, they're
on the mobile phone.
If the phone operators can make it possible for people who are used to
massive amounts of computer-enabled world-wide communications to use
ONE device to "seamlessly" stay connected, irrespective of where those
people are, then that's GOT to be an all-round winner.
My take on this initiative is that it will be an absolute massive hit,
IF the pricing is kept reasonable, bearing in mind that it's going to
have to be GSM-based.
What they need to do is to proxy UDP traffic over SMS, and to write
an IM protocol that is UDP-based, not TCP-based, that has its own
_very slow_ self-sequencing acknowledgment (to save people SMS charges!)