Criminals on probation in Gateshead are to receive regular text messages reminding them to attend probation appointments and counseling sessions.
The service is targeted at persistent offenders and those who have found it difficult to attend appointments in the past.
Barry Taylor, assistant chief officer at Northumbria Probation, said “Attending appointments is the offender’s personal responsibility and this system in no way replaces that.
“But for selected offenders who might be experiencing some difficulties, it can help them stay on track so they continue to engage with the probation service, receive the supervision and rehabilitation work they need, and don’t re-offend.”
I wonder if they could extend the scheme to text periodic reminders to repeat offenders - things like ‘Remember not to rob cars’ ‘ToDo: lay off the smack, don’t mug the elderly’, etc.?
I’m sure many of you have received a mobile bill and thought “Blimey, my SMS charges are astronomical!”
Little did you realise just how right you were..
A scientist at the University of Leicester has calculated that the cost of sending a text message is four times more expensive that that of transmitting the same data from the Hubble Space telescope.
As part of research conducted for Channel 4’s Dispatches programme “The Mobile Phone Rip-Off”, Dr Nigel Bannister contacted NASA who told him that it costs approximately £8.85 per megabyte (MB) to transmit data from Hubble to a receiving ground station on Earth. From there, there are further transmissions required to get the data to the right people in observatories and universities, etc. which can push the cost up to nearly £85 per MB.
A single SMS text message has a maximum size of 140 bytes (160 characters encoded at 7 bits per character) . There are 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte so it will take 7490 text messages to transmit one megabyte.
Assuming an average cost of 5p per text, that works out at a whopping £374.49 per MB - about 4.4 times more expensive than sending the same data from space.
Which rather begs the question - how much would it cost to text your mate on the International Space Station?
Ok this is a bit spooky. A widowed husband from Lancashire claims to be receiving text messages from his dead wife. Frank Jones who lives in a house which has a history of poltergeist-like disturbances began receiving calls from his home phone on his mobile when he knew nobody was home. Shortly after, he started getting strange text messages containing words that he claims sound like those of his late wife.
There is no number attributed to the texts which makes it all the stranger. According to Jones, his wife, Sadie, always had her mobile on her and was even buried with it when she died of a heart attack.
We can’t help but wonder what network she is on? We can see the advertising slogan now - ‘We even have reception on heaven’.
(Via The Register)
Well if it’s good enough for sex, chocolate and World of Warcraft, then it is good enough for texting and emailing (just ask Blackberry owners) so reports Ottawa Citizen.
According to an editorial in this month’s issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, Internet addiction or compulsive e-mail/text messaging (among other things) is a common enough compulsive-impulsive disorder to warrant a place in psychiatry’s official guidebook of mental disorders.
Apparently text and email addiction have all the classic hallmarks; cravings, urges, withdrawal an increased desire for better equipment and software, or more and more hours online. Dr. Jerald Block, a psychiatrist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, claims that sufferers can lose track of time and neglect “basic drives,” such as eating or sleeping. Worse still, relapses are common among sufferers and in some cases psychoactive medications or hospitalization are necessary.
He argues that the phenomenon warrants being included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, psychiatry’s official dictionary of mental illnesses. The next edition is due out in 2012 so it will be a while before we know if text and email addiction make the cut. It seems likely though, we can think of several people we could have sectioned if this comes to pass.
(Via textually)
For some, text messages are a handy means of communicating quick snippets of info to people without having to make a call; stuff like, ‘wrking l8 2night, be back around 9′ or ‘fan c a pint?’. For others they completely supplement the spoken word and text chats that can last upwards of several days dominate their social interactions and their phone bill.
If you exist in the latter category then you ought to at least think about taking a look at the Efficasoft SMS Counter, an application for Windows Mobile smartphones that keeps track of all of your SMS spending. The application counts all of the text messages you send in real-time and automatically recognizes long messages (i.e. those twenty line text opuses you get double billed for) helping you to monitor your spending and keep it within your budget.
Not a bad idea really and for £5.92 you could save yourself the asking price easily in one month.
(Via Clickapps)
Now this is an interesting one and we don’t think it’s been done before. If you’re a budding artist stuck on the train and you’ve got an interesting idea for a picture but have nothing to draw it on, you could try Sketch.
Sketch, from Dakine Wave, is a downloadable application letting users create pictures by drawing lines and shapes and then adding colours, and enhancing images with some in-built ’stampers’. On the right is one example of a Sketch, er, sketch.
Once your masterpiece is complete, you can then send it by text message to friends or save it on your phone’s memory to show off later.
Sketch works with almost all Java mobiles and can be downloaded from your phone by visiting the mobile website (dakinewave.mobi).
