CNET News.com looks at the desire people have to purchase things with their thumbs.
Ads for the new CD by singer Tim McGraw carry a texting code, as do magazine writeups for the new Harry Potter novel coming this summer. Some concert halls are selling tickets by text message, and some charities are taking donations that way. CosmoGirl magazine will feature text-message codes throughout its June/July issue, both in the advertising and editorial pages. And Stuff magazine is introducing text-to-buy on products like CDs, DVDs and video games featured in its pages.
At the center of the technology is ShopText, a small company in New York that takes the orders, charges the consumer’s credit card and ships out the merchandise. ShopText was started in 2005 within Anomaly, an ad agency in New York, and worked at first with the PayPal unit of eBay to build text-message shopping tools. In November, ShopText was spun off as its own company, and since then it has been busy trying to persuade media outlets and marketers that mobile phone shopping, or m-commerce, stands to become as lucrative as e-commerce.
About 35 percent of cell phone users send or receive text messages, according to Forrester Research, but texting is even more popular among young people, with 76 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds taking part.
A comment coming in from left field. Have you read the articles about the sudden disappearance of honey bees? Estimates say some 60% of all commercial bee hives have disappeared in the past year to 18 months, both here and in Europe.
New research has suggested – not proven, mind you – that one culprit may be the vast increase in cell phone radiation that is coursing through the air. Evidently, this may cause bees to lose their sense of direction back to the hives, leaving the queen and a few drones alone to die off.
If this die-off continues, production of plant food sources will see radical reductions. One estimate says the loss of all bee populations would eliminate plant food sources within four years.
Is so much instant connectivity really worth the cost?