The Belgian and Flemish radio station, Donna, held the first SMS dictation exercise ever last week. In the end, only four phrases were needed to put one winner in the elimination race that took place. Dictation exercises are popular in language-conscious Flanders. They are no exception in television shows and apparently are apt to be used with new media applications. Against the customs of most SMS-users, the exercise required correct display of capitals, punctuation, spacing and accent marks.
Text messaging unleashes creative forces.
A church in Hanover, Germany, has found a new way of spreading the message. One of the problems it has had to overcome is reducing the 325 characters in the Our Father prayer to the 160 maximum in a text message. The GSM Association says a record 9 billion SMS text messages were sent over the world's wireless GSM networks in August. There are 365 million GSM users worldwide, expected to reach 500 million by early next year. SMS has grown rapidly in the Asia Pacific region, with an average of 3 billion messages sent each month.