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Study: Texting boosts young voter turnout

Text-message spam may go up this November for voter-age youth.

Turns out that young people are more likely to vote when they receive a text-message reminder, according to a new study published this month by researchers at Princeton University and the University of Michigan.

The researchers ran their test in the November 2006 election, with text reminders sent to roughly 4,000 young voters. Researchers pulled data and cell phone numbers from voter registration records at the Student PIRG's New Voters Project and Working Assets Wireless; and following the election, they matched the files to find out which registrants … Read more

Yap does voice to text for your phone

Here's a useful concept: say you're really sick of dealing with your phone's tiny keypad to type in text messages. What if you could simply say what you wanted to write down, and have the tool fill it in for you? Yap is a new service that's trying to fill that need with their new mobile phone client. It's aimed at teens, who the company claims 66% of text while driving. Yap will read off your friend's responses, meaning you don't have to pay attention to what they're writing. The service works … Read more

Can I see your iPhone? Prying eyes want to know...

One of the inherent risks of having an iPhone will necessarily mean that you will become a de facto sales rep for Apple.

It's not uncommon for co-workers, non-iPhone-laden friends or strangers asking to 'see' your iPhone. "See?" Is that the right word? No, perhaps play and fool around with your iPhone is a better description as you can plainly see an iPhone, but these people clearly want to touch it to believe it as the Apple ads direct them to do. It happens to me enough to make me feel like a roving iPhone sales rep. … Read more

Give me my credit! Apple's $100 iPhone credit arrives

And, after the week Steve Jobs promised, the $100 credit comes to fruition. And, via text. Just click this link and the rest, after entering your phone number and serial number is handled via SMS text. It's pretty fast - I got my access code within 30 seconds! Paperless (unless you want to use it at physical retail store, in which case it'll print). Slick. Now, iPod classic or Apple care? Hrmmmm.

This scene is all-inclusive

Exclusive online content is nothing new, but PalTalkScene gives you a forum to conduct real-time voice and chat interaction with whatever all-singing, all-dancing content has attracted your attention. How it works is so simple that users can create their own chat rooms, a great way to talk to friends or collaborate over long distances. Let's take a look:

Get docs from pics with Qipit

Qipit is a free service for turning digital photos into sharable, online documents. It works with any photo taken with a digital camera, or from your mobile phone. Like ScanR (review), Qipit will store and host your photos, and let you rotate them to your heart's content. This works the best with shots of documents taken at an angle, and with whiteboards, business cards, etc. Once uploaded, Qipit will tweak the contrast of your shot, drawing out the text, and doing its best to correct perspective warp. Unlike ScanR however, you're not getting the archival goodness of optical … Read more

BookSwim: book subscription service via Web

Last week I took a look at TextBookFlix, an invite-only service that ships loaner text books at a sizable discount to cash-strapped college students. This week I've been browsing BookSwim, a similar service that's been around a little longer, and is open to everyone.

BookSwim makes strong self-comparisons to Netflix, with its own books-by-mail turnaround service that lets you keep anywhere from 3 to 11 titles out at a time with five different subscription plans ranging from $20, all the way up to $36 per month. Like Netflix, BookSwim gives each user a queue of books, and will … Read more

Vlingo, a new voice-to-text service launches

Vlingo is a new mobile voice service launching today. It centers around a small Java app that lets you talk into your handset to create a text message instead of using your phone's keypad. The service is its own SMS client, piggybacking off your phone to send the message, although it forgoes using your phone's native SMS app, or word dictionary. In addition to texting, Vlingo is launching with voice to text services for mobile music stores and mapping services. The maps come courtesy of Yahoo, and can be zoomed and navigated just like accessing the mobile version … Read more

Callwave Vtxt full review

We've told you about Callwave already, but now we've had the opportunity to put the company's Vtxt application through its paces. Vtxt takes spoken voice mail messages and converts them into text. When someone calls and leaves you a voice mail, Vtxt will send you a text message and an e-mail with a transcript. You don't get the message word-for-word; rather, Vtxt gives you the gist of the message so you can understand what the person said.

The result is a useful and user-friendly service. Both the text message and e-mail arrive within seconds, so you … Read more

TextBookFlix: Cheapish, mail-order text books

Here's a concept for textbooks that's almost as cool as library checkouts. It's called TextBookFlix, and as the name would suggest, it's pretty much like Netflix for textbooks--with a twist. There's no monthly subscription fee, just a one-time fee to "check out" a book for an entire semester. It's kind of a hybrid between the "no late fees" mentality of Netflix, and the loaner system you get with libraries. The service already has more than two million titles available and a search tool that lets you find your books via … Read more