messager

Tatango, the Seattle-based start-up specializing in connecting groups of people through text messaging, announced the launch of Tatango Voice, a service that will let users make free calls to other members within the group they create on Tatango's service.

Using Tatango Voice, group leaders can record and send a free voice message to all the mobile phones in their group, which Tatango claims will eliminate the need for complex phone trees. Once the group leader records the call, other group members receive a text message alerting them to the waiting call. To listen to the recording, group members need … Read more

Web-based chat and IM company Meebo has announced a few updates to its "Community IM" chat project, which it announced this summer as a means to power live chat features on partner sites. More specifically, there are more partners on board to add to the original eight.

According to CEO and co-founder Seth Sternberg, putting Meebo on partner sites will mean that it has a reach of more than 70 million people worldwide. Eventually, there will be ads placed on the chat app, and revenue will be split between Meebo and the partner in question.

As was the … Read more

The blogosphere has been up in arms over the past 24 hours as news spread that Verizon Wireless is planning to increase the per-message fee it charges companies that send text alerts.

On Thursday RCR WirelessN News published a story citing a letter that OpenMarket, a direct to consumer messaging service that sends alerts for companies like Google or Orbitz, was sending to its clients explaining that it would have to tack on an additional three cents for every text message that is terminated on Verizon Wireless network.

"Effective Nov. 1, 2008, Verizon will assess a transaction fee of $… Read more

Spam decreased 8 percent during September, according to a report (PDF) released Monday by MessageLabs.

Among other reasons behind the decrease, the security company cited the apparent demise of California-based Intercage, an Internet service provider alleged to have possibly been used to host command and control servers for various botnets. Intercage's upstream provider, Pacific Internet Exchange, terminated service on September 20; a second upstream provider, UnitedLayer, then terminated service on September 25. During this period, MessageLabs reported a marked decrease in spam traffic.

Looking deeper into the spam traffic itself, MessageLabs found that 85 percent of sexually explicit e-mail … Read more

The first iteration of multiprotocol chat-client Digsby that circulated earlier this year made a splash, but fell short of its potential. Although it incorporated e-mail and social-networking notifications with its instant-messaging services, it was a massive resource pig. Even users with top-of-the-line computers found the drag it caused not to be worth the convenience of having all communications wrapped up in a pretty bow.

The latest version, released last week, is a huge step forward in the resources department. In the changelog for this release, Build 32 r17926, the publisher directly addresses the RAM hogging. ''We optimized from the ground … Read more

American cell phone users are sending more text messages than they are making phone calls, according to a Nielsen Mobile survey released Monday.

For the second quarter of 2008, U.S. mobile subscribers sent and received on average 357 text messages per month, compared with making and receiving 204 phone calls a month, according to Nielsen. The new statistic is a clear indication that Americans have jumped onto the SMS text bandwagon.

In the first quarter of 2006, Americans sent and received 65 text messages per month. The number of messages sent and received today has increased 450 percent. But … Read more

Our No. 404 fanboy Dee Wren takes time out of his busy filming schedule to bring some positivity to our Monday morning. After revealing some news about the upcoming Google Android release tomorrow, we talk about the weekend box office, touch on Facebook porn, and make an overall attempt to shade ourselves from Jeff's rays of hate (unsuccessfully). Happy Monday!

To make up for all the lives we've ruined with The 404, we invite our buddy Dee Wren into the studio to pimp his philanthropic project, From Us With Love. It's a nonprofit organization that supplies aid to children in South Africa and Dee is helping to shoot a documentary on their efforts to send a group of them to Australia for the Homeless World Cup. We'd love for you to contribute as much time, money, and resources as you can to their foundation. The best part of this endeavor is that For Us With Love is already corporate-sponsored, so the full 100 percent of your contribution will go directly into the project, no filters. It's a very noble cause, please check out the Web site and do what you can to help!

On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog. That, of course, was the caption to the classic cartoon from The New Yorker magazine. This anonymity comes into play even when instant messaging with someone you know. All the responses from your friends' computer may not actually be coming from your friend. Some may be inserted by malicious software running on your friend's computer.

As Randy Abrams, director of technical education for ESET, the company that produces the NOD32 antivirus program, put it last month:

"Instant messaging is a very successful means for the bad guys to … Read more

On September 10, CTIA reported that American cell-phone subscribers are sending more text messages than ever despite the rising cost. About 75 billion SMS text messages were sent in June alone, according to the report. Of course, texting is only a relatively recent boom here in the U.S.--people from Europe and Asia have been sending and receiving text messages for years, most likely due to the low cost of texting over there.

With that in mind, many manufacturers are racing each other to develop messaging-centric phones with full QWERTY keyboards, but that aren't smart phones. The recently … Read more