xseries

Beep beep – step away from the cigarette!

Still puffing away two months after the big ban in England? If you’ve run out of areas to apply the patches onto and you’re fed up with chewing the gum – how about packing the cigarettes in by text message? According to cnet.com.au a new service, QuiText, has been launched in Australia to help antipodean nicotine addicts, as well as those in the UK, fight the evil weed.

For a sign up fee of AU$20 an SMS message of support will be sent to your phone every day for six weeks to help you conquer the cravings – the texts will contain advice on dealing with the problems a smoker may face on the path to a tobacco-free life. All you need to do when you register is tell the service what date you want to quit and which time of day you want to receive a text message.

A Quit Meter is available to add to your own blog or web page to watch the smoke-free days and the pennies saved go up and there’s even some downloadable desktop wallpaper, one of which bears the legend “I need to stop smoking because it’s stupid”…

It’s time to look that cigarette in the eye…

Everywhere...

:-)

Or try:

Bad luck kids - Truancy Call has arrived…

Mobile phones may be a student’s best friend and a teacher’s nightmare, but the tables have been turned in Sydney, Australia, says smstextnews.com. Burwood Girls’ High School have introduced an automatic system to tackle truants which makes an automated phone-call, followed by sending a text to parents' mobiles at the start of the day if the child hasn’t shown up for school. The said parent must then contact the school for more information. If they don't respond, further phone calls are made to home phones after regular office hours.

Obviously it’s also a great safety tool that makes the previous system (a letter was sent to the parents within three days of a student being absent) look positively archaic  and is sure to delight nagging parents and frustrated teachers alike.  The Australian Board of Education has made informing parents promptly compulsory and there has already been a marked improvement in the number of girls showing up for their lessons.

However, it does spell the beginning of the end of an easy life for school skivers everywhere…

//ml

X-Series reviewed

Very detailed review of X-Series by someone who has used it for over six months both in the UK and overseas (well, abroad if you must) on SMS Text News site has just appeared.

To read it go here.

//de

“Excuse me, it’s my plant calling…”

Your plants could soon be able to call you if they’re feeling a bit parched or over-drenched. Yes, you read that right. According to mobhappy.com, some New York post-grad students are creating a way for plants in peril to make an SOS call to their perhaps not so green-fingered owners.

How? By placing moisture sensors in the plant soil that are able to send a wireless signal to a gateway that calls, using an assigned recorded voice, if the greenery is suffering. Rebecca Bray, an interactive communications student who is one of the group developing the project, called Botanicalls, says, “They will call and tell you they are thirsty and need a lot of water,” adding that, "They are also really polite."

So polite in fact that they also call to say thank you after watering them. As Rebecca explained, "We wanted to make sure that you weren’t just getting phone calls that were really needy."

And if the plant calls you during a dull conversation, it’s a great way to excuse yourself and look mad at the same time.

Original story from Reuters.

//ml

A little bit of green

In a report published last year, we found that most of you believe downloading music will help save the planet. But beyond Gen-E (Earbud) getting their low-carbon guilt-free fix of D'n'B, or R'n'B, or whatever, are there any other upsides to this wonderful wireless stuff?

A 2004 UCLA Berkeley study found that if you cancel your daily paper and read it on your mobile instead, you will save about 500kg of CO2, and about 10-20,000 litres of water. Of course, don't try swatting a fly with your mobile. Unless it's one of these ones. The same study calculated that making a two hour mobile phone call instead of flying three hours to meet face-to-face will save 600kg of CO2 - or about enough to download 120 years worth of newspapers.

Which got us thinking: surely there must be lots of other ways 3G is saving the planet?

Maybe using your 3G-connected SatNav to avoid that traffic jam or to take the most direct route saves a few litres of petrol? Or getting that SMS travel alert means you take the train instead? Or, you use your 3G modem / mobile to work from home (and save soap as well).

We're keen to hear about how having 3G lets you live more eco-nicely, so email us on your Olive oil laptop from your carbon-neutral wind-powered lifepod. We'll do an eco-compendium post of the best ones, with some sort of PRIZE for the best one. In the best spirit of recycling, we'll dig out something cool from the bottom of the X-Series office toy drawer.

//ms

Talking to the X-Series blogger

Morgo posted the following: This blog seems to be all one way...how can we pose questions of you and your team to get answers and info without the need to reply to posts? That would be a much more effective way of working with your customers.

de replied: Hi. Although we've been a bit slow posting new items recently due to work load (I was told things slowed down in summer in Europe when I moved here 3 years ago!!), we try our best to reply to all emails we receive via the blog. We answer all the questions we can, usually within a few days and mostly to people's general satisfaction -- although as someone famous once said, you can't please all the people all the time, etc!

Areas we have trouble is helping on unannounced stuff, like handsets or software. This information is usually kept quiet until an official announcement or release for competitive and, sometimes, other reasons.

As always, however, we remain an open channel of communication so ask away and we'll always try to answer you asap. Email us at: blog.xseries@three.com

//de

ps: I've answered your two other questions in reply to your post ;-)

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