Text messaging works well as an alert system during emergencies:

Oxfordshire County Council is to send flood warnings to residents via text message.

The project forms part of the council's Emergency Planning procedures and is scheduled to go live this month.

Local authorities have been told by the Environment Agency to make better preparations for natural disasters following the damage done by last year's floods across the UK.

How's this for a techno-savvy local government:

"We reviewed the use of our existing system and decided to improve resilience by introducing the text platform," said John Kelly, county emergency planning officer at Oxfordshire County Council.

"We believe it is vital that we can give warning to the public and alert our staff though text messaging."

Read the entire article @ VNUnet.

D:Scribe is a digital fountain pen that allows users to send SMS and email messages from paper. Just write out the message and circle the person’s name to send. This does away with a keypad and allows you to focus on communicating in a more personal way from anywhere as long as you have a bluetooth enabled phone and a surface to write on. The pen also records everything you write which can be accessed on a computer. Of course for the creative peeps, if writing doesn’t suit your fancy, the D:Scribe also works with genius and not so genius drawings of brilliance.

Read more at Yanko Design.

The French will be French:

Following the publication of an SMS, allegedly sent by France's President, Nicolas Sarkozy by the Nouvel Observateur newspaper - the President has launched legal action against the publication. The suit was filed yesterday on Sarkozy's behalf by lawyer Thierry Herzog over a report on the newspaper's website entitled "The obsession with Cecilia." It claimed that, eight days before marrying former model Carla Bruni, President Sarkozy sent his former wife an SMS message saying "If you come back, I'll call it all off."

Read more at Cellular News.

We hear, via Reuters, that Nokia "has reached an agreement with Google Inc to integrate the Web company's search engine into its phones."

The agreement initially covers models in Nokia's high-end N-series phones for select markets but the companies said it will be extended to additional Nokia handset models in the future.

Read the entire story at Yahoo News.

Obama's texting efforts:

Many young consumers have grown accustomed to ordering cellphone ringtones via text message. Text a certain keyword to a specific number, and the transaction begins. Barack Obama is reaching out to potential voters in the same demographic with a different message: "Text HOPE."

Obama advertisements broadcast on youth-oriented radio stations in most of the states holding caucus-style elections on Super Tuesday highlight the campaign's unorthodox approach to voter outreach and mobilization. And the ads underscore one of the campaign's overarching strategies: the belief that increased voter turnout redounds to the Illinois senator's benefit.

More at The Wall Street Journal.

Who needs Pig Latin:

LONDON (Reuters) - R U cycle? Book! Fancy an adds down the sub? There's a gr8 new carnage.

It may look like gobbledegook, but the most streetwise of teenagers would have no trouble translating and responding to it in kind.

A new language is being developed by mobile phone-addicted kids based on the predictive text of their treasured handsets.

Key words are replaced by the first alternative that comes up on a mobile phone using predictive text -- changing "cool" into "book", "awake" into "cycle", "beer" into adds", "pub" into "sub" and "barmaid" into "carnage".

Those expressing excitement with the old-fashioned text phrase "woohoo!", now use the far more hip "zonino!" instead.

The replacement words -- technically paragrams, but commonly known as textonyms, adaptonyms or cellodromes -- are becoming part of regular teen banter.

@ Reuters