Happy Valentines Day from TextMovers!!!

Are you smarter than a fourth grader?

Can you remember what you were doing when you were nine years old? I recall playing baseball in the church parking lot and reenacting WWF wrestling matches in our front yard. Today's youth are most likely spending their time playing baseball or wrestling on the Xbox, Playstation, or Wii. These types of activities are certainly normal in comparison to the average nine year old, but wait until you hear how Lim Ding Wen from Singapore spends his spare time. Lim writes applications for Apple's iPhone, having recently finished a drawing program that has been downloaded over 4,000 times from the iTune's store.

Lim, now in the fourth grade, has been computing since he was two years old. He is affluent in six different programming languages and has completed over twenty different programming projects. Its not hard to tell where he gets his programming impetus. His father is a chief technology office at a local technology firm and the two often review their statistics in the evening to see who's iPhone application was downloaded more times.

Lim Ding Wen is truly a little genius. Are you smarter than this fourth grader?

Want to Know A Little Mobile Marketing?

Check out this article about mobile marketing. Its a quick overview.

Say More With Less Characters!

Everyone runs into problems saying everything you need to say within a 160 character SMS/text messaging character limitation, so maybe this is the product for you. Check out Textapedia.

Text Messages Surpass Phone Calls in US

Do you still blush when you are stumbling through a crowded store texting your friends or family? Well, don't worry so much anymore because its likely the people around you are doing the same. According to a new report published by Nielsen, the average mobile user now sends more text messages per month than 'sends' or 'receives' voice calls. Here is an excerpt from the article:

As of Q2 2008, a typical U.S. mobile subscriber sends or receives 357 text messages per month, compared to placing or receiving 204 phone calls. Though the number of calls has remained relatively steady, the number of text messages is up 450% from just two years prior. Q2 2008 was the second consecutive quarter in which the average number of text messages sent was significantly higher than the average number of phone calls placed.

We're not exactly sure what this says about the culture here in the US... either text messaging continues to boom because of an inherenet convenience factor or simply we do not want to chat any more. What are your thoughts?

You can read the full article here.

Fastest Download You've Ever Seen

We came across an article on the mobile marketing watch website today that says the "theoretical" nature of the 4G is going to be fast, very fast. Download speeds are said to hit 100Mbps with 50Mbps uploads. The fastest rates current phones transfer are only at 7.6Mbps. To put this speed into perspective, the speeds will be faster than the current generation of typical home wireless networking technology and comparable to the emerging 802.11n standard.

The keyword here is "theoretical". I believe we can and will achieve these high speeds. But the question is whether or not the US operator platforms will be properly equipped for the new 4G technology. Also, whether or not the appropriate electromagnetic spectrum is going to be available for such use. One of the reasons all television broadcasts are switching from analog to digital is to free up a large chunk of the spectrum. Digital occupies approximately 25% less space on the spectrum than analog. The freed up space will belong to the government who will in turn auction it off to the highest bidders.

Some studies have been conducted whereas they suggest the majority of future Internet connectivity will be done through a mobile device.

See the full article here.

Phoneflix - Netflix Phone Management

Recently we wrote a story about the latest OnDemand movie rental product, Blockbuster's 2Wire set-top box service. 2wire appeared to be another punch in the fierce battle between the two movie rental powerhouses, Blockbuster and Netflix. The two companies originally had very different business models, but since Blockbuster released its mail rental program they are both competing head to head.

The latest tech launch from Netflix is their mobile phone management application called Phoneflix. The application allows a user to easily make updates to their account or queue while on the go from their mobile phone. We see the major advantage of the application being the ability to quickly search and add a movie title to your queue. How many times have you been somewhere away from your computer discussing various movies with friends when you told yourself you'd add it to the queue when you got home. Several online reviewers stated the biggest drawback was the inability to tell if a movie is already in your queue while searching for movies via the mobile search.

All in all we recommend the application based on our review. The ability to successfully add movies to your queue definitely outweighs any disadvantages we have come across. Plus the application is free for blackberry and android users.