Text messaging continues to grow

The UK public's fascination for text messaging has not gone away. According to the MDA (Mobile Data Association), the average number of text messages sent daily in December was 100 million. If you consider that the UK population is @ 59m, very small children and people with big thumbs aren't texting, and some people just don't like to text much, that's a lot of text messages per person every day. Note that this figure does not include any commercial messaging - just peer to peer. [If you go to the MDA press room page, you'll see the link for the full press release.]

In the same week that the MDA released its figures, Brand Republic also reports that Virgin Radio is claiming Christian O'Connell's new breakfast show as a huge success after receiving more than 20,000 text messages during the first two hours of yesterday's debut show -- more than the station normally receives in a day.

And with all this text messaging going on, please take heed of the Philippino sign and avoid texting while driving!

Tom Baker is Britain's Voice of Text

Little Britain and former Doctor Who star, Tom Baker, is to become the voice of BT's text to voice service. From the end of January 2006, Tom will be the voice you hear when you send a text message to a landline. It seems he took 11 days to record all possible sounds in the English language and he'll even be able to translate "gr8" to "great" and "xx" to "kiss kiss" and "xxxx" to 'lots of kisses'.

Via BrandRepublic.
The image is of Tom Baker in his Dr Who days from The Official Tom Baker website.

Expertsonline.tv interview

I'm being interviewed on Thursday 19th January 2006 by the guys over at Expertsonline.tv which I'm very excited about.

As preparation, they've asked me to come up with some frequently asked questions. Well that's easy enough for me to do. But I thought if any of you readers out there had any questions about mobile marketing then I'd be pleased to include them where possible. Or if there are topics that you think I should cover in the interview, that you think other people might be interested in, then let me know that too.

Please post your questions in the comments section or email me - helen [at] beepmarketing [dot] com

BBC World Service: Human behaviour and mobile phones

Here's the link to the second part of the BBC World Service's 2 parter on mobile phones. In the second part, Nick Rankin looks at human behaviour in relation to the software and hardware of mobile phones, and how the devices have managed to blur the boundaries of private and public, real and virtual. There are interviews from all around the world. Well worth a listen.

BBC World Service programme about mobile phones

I happened to be awake the other night at some unearthly hour and caught this interesting radio programme on the BBC World Service all about mobile phones. In the first of two programmes, Nick Rankin explores the history of this technology, how the mobile is changing the lives of the poor, and questions just how safe and secure our mobile phone conversations are.

It's well worth a listen. I particularly liked the security guy telling us how we shouldn't use any kind of telephone - mobile or otherwise - if we didn't want to be overheard. Unfortunately the programme is only available on BBC radio player rather than a podcast so I'm not sure how long it will be live so catch it now while you can.

Ever wondered where Pete Doherty's Live 8 hat got to?

Well here it is... Mike, you kept that one quiet. Well caught!