I did my first text message last year and emailed a cell phone photo.

The tech adviser at the Dallas Morning News confessed in today's article below that he never learned how to to send a text message. That was my story last year. I even learned [after getting the software tweaked on the cell phone] how to send cell phone photo by email on my own. Where is that 12 year old when you need one for all this new technology? I had to read the instruction manual, darn.

Texting isn't anything to fear - really

08:08 AM CDT on Thursday, March 29, 2007

by Jim Rossman, Dallas Morning News

In this week's column, I'm answering my own question.

I'm almost ashamed to admit that I never learned how to send a text message.

I hear the promos online and on TV all the time – to enter a contest, text WINNER to 12345.

I've never done that before researching this column – not once. But now I'm no longer scared of SMS.

Think of texting or SMS – short message service – as sending a short e-mail between wireless phones.

Also, you can send an SMS message to a phone from an Internet-connected
computer. If you visit the Web site of your wireless provider, you'll
usually find a link to send an SMS to a phone from your computer.

Instead of a traditional e-mail address, you send the message to the
recipient's phone number or whatever special SMS address the recipient
has set up.

Once you enter the destination number, you
can enter a message of up to 160 characters. Once your message is
ready, you just send it.

SMS is a store-and-forward
service. This means the message actually goes to a server called a
short message service center. The SMSC stores the message until the
recipient's phone is available.

If your recipient is
camping in the woods without wireless coverage for a couple of weeks,
your message won't get delivered.

That's because the
message is usually stored for a few days on the server before it gets
flushed out as undeliverable.

Users can also set up a
large group of recipients and broadcast a single message to many phones
at once. This is how subscription messages for weather warnings or news
headlines get sent each day.

SMS was invented in Europe
in the 1980s by engineers using the GSM phone system. They wanted a
method of messaging each other when their colleagues were offline or
out of range.

SMS is not perfect.

Most cellphones can send SMS messages, but not every phone plan includes unlimited texting.

Many parents are introduced to texting when their children start using it.

Young texters don't think about how fast 5 or 10 cents per message can
add up. A relative told me that when his son discovered texting, the
bill was so big that it was mailed in a box instead of an envelope.

If you or your children like to send SMS messages, make sure you have
unlimited messaging added to your phone plan. You'll thank me later.

For more information on SMS, visit the Web site I used to research texting – electronics.howstuffworks.com/sms.htm.

Jim Rossman is technical manager for Macintosh support for Belo Corp.

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