Zipwhip endows existing landlines with the ability to send and receive texts
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You might remember Zipwhip from its SMS-enabled espresso machine, but the outfit’s hoping a new feature added to its cloud-based text-messaging platform will catch your attention this time around. In case you’re not familiar with Zipwhip’s non-caffeinated affairs, it allows texts to be sent through a desktop app, the web and Android tablets with a user’s existing mobile number. Now, it’s giving landlines the ability to send and receive texts without the need for a new number, which the firm says is a first. Instead of converting written missives to voice messages like other text-to-landline services, the setup sends the actual text to the application. By wielding the feature, companies can communicate with customers regarding orders, reservations and the like. Though the service is aimed squarely at businesses — and even offers them a 14-day free trial — its $20 per month price tag might even make it reasonable for folks who just have an obsession with texting. To give your wired phone a taste of the late 20th century, hit the source link below.
Source: Zipwhip
Those of us who live in countries where access to basic and decent healthcare are taken for granted, do spare a moment for folks living in Third World Countries. For instance, UNICEF reports that around two thirds of births that occur in sub-Saharan Africa go unregistered, but one of the countries, Ivory Coast, intends to buck this particular trend with the help of mobile technology to modernize the entire process. In fact, they intend to make every single birth count, with the 
In the court of public opinion, controversy is never far away, depending on which side of the political divide you stand on. It seems that a few law enforcement groups have begun to lobby for Congress to agree to a law which will see wireless carriers having to comply to stash away every single text message that you have ever sent out via your mobile number, and this huge database of text messages can be accessed by the police as and when required in the course of their investigations.
At first glance, the title might sound to be an oxymoron of sorts. After all, if your cellphone is already low on power, why bother to use up more energy by sending a text message? Perhaps an explanation is in order. In a nutshell, folks who live off-grid are now able to pay for electricity to charge up their handsets through the simple act of sending a text message, and this was discovered to be the most affordable method to date. This is made possible via a solar-powered cellphone charging station which can only be activated not by a fingerprint or a retina scan, but rather, through a text message.
I don’t know about you, but where I grew up, we were taught the Queen’s English, and abbreviations were very much shunned upon in our writing. The advent of text messaging on mobile phones and via IRC (yeah, there was no such thing as Skype back then, and to have an ICQ account was the “in thing”) helped evolve the English language, as short forms and the removal of vowels became the norm in an effort to be more concise in communications (as well as to save money by not passing the 160 character mark in a SMS). Most folks would lament that this makes modern day kids and adults less proficient at communication, but linguist John McWhorter begs to differ, touting that texting is actually a “linguistic miracle happening right under our noses.”
