Email too slow?

Is email too slow? I don’t really think so, but it’s clearly not instant in the timing that’s provided by twitter and text messages. I find myself texting messages to people more lately instead of making a phone call. One of those reasons is because I can send and receive messages quietly.

The irony though is that an actual phone call is the most real-time method of communicating with someone other than face-to-face conversations. It must not be the timing that makes one communication more popular than another method. So what is it?

Are these methods just popular because they’re new and everyone else is doing it? Are we merely communicating with each other as a mass crowd of peer pressured individuals?  What are we looking for in communication through technology? Are we truly interested in exchanging messages and ideas, or are we just doing what allows us to stay connected to the technology we love so much.

I don’t think email is going away, but I’m sure 10 years ago people wouldn’t have looked at the fax machine as becoming as obsolete as it almost is now. What would it take to kill-off email for good? What would take its place?

Telepathy perhaps?

Post from: EveryJoe

Is Email Dying

Microsoft has announced via email that they will be discontinuing this service on August 26, 2009.

Microsoft’s SMS Link service will be discontinued effective August 26th, 2009.  Once this service is discontinued, current users will no longer be able to send SMS messages through Office Outlook 2007 using SMS Link.  There are several service providers worldwide who offer similar services, and if you wish to continue using this feature in Office Outlook 2007, you should consider switching to one of these providers.

The available service providers to switch to if you would prefer not to lose this functionality are the following:

• SMS Officer $9/mnth
• Red Oxygen $23/mnth
• Bulletin $0.10/msg sent

These services allow users to continue to send and receive SMS messages into Outlook as they have enjoyed in the past with SMS Link.

Image: Screen shot of SMS Link account website

Post from: EveryJoe

Microsoft Kills SMS Link Service for Outlook

You’re probably well aware of the twitter 140 character limit that was established to work with the limits set by mobile phone carriers for SMS text messaging. Did you know that you can take advantage of twitter and use it as a free texting distribution service for people to use who may never know what twitter is or use it themselves.

Anyone with a cell phone can "subscribe" a twitterer’s updates. If the person twittering uses those updates to communicate news and instructions to that group of people, twitter can provide just that tool.

All you need to tell people to follow your updates is the following:

From their cell phone have them send a text to 40404 with the message "follow yourusername". They’ll then receive the following message response back:

Welcome to Twitter. Please confirm by replying with your name. Standard message charges apply, ’stop’ to quite or ‘help’ for help.

In actuality that will then create them a twitter account with the name they text back. It appears twitter will add a number to the name to make it unique if it already exists. For example in testing for this post I now exist at jasonbean1 and bnpositive1 on twitter. I’m still testing to see how I might get access to those accounts if I ever wanted to start truly using twitter.

After creating your account you’ll receive the following text message:

Hi, Jason Bean! Have friends send ‘follow JasonBean1′ to this # for your updates. ‘help’ for more. What are you doing?

When you follow someone you’ll receive the following message response:

You’ll receive a message every time Bnpositive updates. To silence, send ‘off bnpositive’. For more commands, send ‘help’.

Did you catch all that? Free text messaging tool using twitter. Obviously it comes with all the other benefits of twitter too.

Post from: EveryJoe

Twitter Provides Free Texting Service