Just after a month Vidamo has improved considerably the marketing side of the property industry. Their marketing strategy allows estate agents to promote SMS instructions across all marketing material.
If a client sees a property he likes then he could send a text message and can instantly see pictures and details of the property on their mobile phones through dynamic mobile websites.
The marketing difference is that instead of a customer having to look in the traditional website, the customer can receive the information on the property straight from the state agent to their mobile phones.
This new system has created thousands of leads when in use the first month. This system interfaces the estate agent existing web and creates mobile sites. This method keeps all the information sent to the mobile synchronized with that on the web without giving extra work tot he estate agent.
Source: Biz Community.
Members of the public can by just sending a SMS verify the authenticity of the fundraising by charities.
The COC (the Commissioner of Charities) is providing the service of short messaging SMS verification service, this will allow the public to make sure that a charity or organisation has the permit to solicit donations.
With this SMS service, fundraising charities will be at a lower risk of scams using their charity´s name.
The SMS service has been launched by the COC due to the number of complaints received by the public as they felt that they have been approach by scam charities.
The COC´s future goals is to help charities to strengthen the way they work and the way they operate. The COC office is planning to held a some small-group networking sessions to discuss management and regulatory issues.
Source: news.asiaone
Vodacom SA will be soon launching the latest range of speaking phones aimed to the visually impaired so they can enjoy the benefits of mobile communications.
So far the Nokia E52 & N86, apart from been Smartphones are also pre-loaded with text-to-speech software. What this means is that text - based information displayed in a cellphone is then converted into speech, allowing visually impaired customers to hear their text messages as well as their contacts, signal and battery strength. These facilities will help the visually impaired to keep in touch with family and friends through mobile communications.
Managing director of Vodacom SA said: “Mobile communications has become essential in our modern life and we are happy to provide to our visually impaired customers a new range of speaking phones. The Nokia E52 & N86 have the features to help the visually impaired use cellphones independently”.
Source: itnewsafrica.com
GLOBE Telecom Inc it´s bracing itself for another though financial semester as no significant change of earnings is expected until the end of December.
It has reported a big fall in net income at the end of June. GLOBE´s president Ernest Cu said that the company´s immediate challenge is to increase or at least stabilize it´s revenues.
This Cellular firm has been hit by the low price offered in order to lure customers into usage of the prepaid segment of the wireless market that unfortunately has gone sour.
-GLOBE tried really hard to reinvent the prepaid market, they tried in the second quarter but will no good results. Now they are planning to be a bit more aggressive with their marketing in the third quarter by trying to “tweak” some of their promos.
GLOBE as many of its other rivals like Smart Communications had been offering unlimited voice and test messaging services. Their next challenge is to shift to internet work from one network to another, but unfortunately not even the booming Broadband business would be able to help increase the revenues from text messaging and mobile voice services.
Mr Cu said “It won´t be enough as things will never be as profitable as it was with the SMS (Short Message Service). GLOBE´s future approach is to improve and offer superior end to end Customer Service and to implement a Promo for a longer period of time and try to differentiate themselves from the competition.
Source: Business Mirror
Car and Driver tested the dangers of writing and sending sms text messages while driving in comparison to just driving, driving drunk or while reading email. The tests show that texting is by far the most dangerous activity while driving – it adds an extra 70 ft travel distance at 70 miles per hour. In comparison reading only adds half of that.
USA Today reports a new survey on kids in cyberspace. According to the survey one in five teens have “sexted” — sent or received sexually suggestive, nude or nearly nude photos through cellphone sms text messages or e-mail.
Most teens who sexted sent the photos to girlfriends or boyfriends, but 11% sent them to strangers, according to the study made public today by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and Cox Communications. Of teens who sext, 80% are under 18, the survey found.
We’re currently evaluating to give out a free trial period to new users for our flat-rate sms offer and let them test our service for some time before they get billed.
As you probably know we’re charging £3 / week using sms premium billing – we’re sending each user a text message each week which costs 3 pounds to receive. Instead, we could for example give each new user a trial period of for example a week or a month in which he’s not billed – and has the possiblity to stop the service at any time following the usual steps.
That would give each new user the possiblity to send texts for free for a limited time – and to see if all the features work as promised – like our automatic sms reminders. We’re uncertain if it’s worth the hassle and at this time, we’re definitely not sure how such a trial would look like.
What do you think – would a week be enough? Or would you need 14 days, a month? Let us know by sending an email to info@veage.com
UK phone-paid services regulator PhonepayPlus today revealed it has started to work on the 12th edition of it’s code of practice taking into consideration recommendations made by Ofcom in its recent PRS Scope Review. PhonepayPlus is aiming to reduce step-by-step guidance and instead defines desirable outcomes to allow businesses more freedom. On the other hand it aims to increase customer confidence.
We can’t help to wonder why they don’t target obvious problematic areas – such as network operators never issuing refunds while putting the burden on service providers who only get half the money but have to pay full. That’s something most service providers would consider unfair treatment.
Or think of mobile network operators effectively forestalling micro payment. As a service provider, you’ll roughly get 50% of what the end user has been charged – the rest stays with the network operator. Imagine what price we could offer you for your sms flat rate if network operators would change to a pay out scheme like credit card companies offer.
Don’t get us wrong – consumer protection is a good thing – we’re consumers ourselves at the end. We still think that most of the problems in the industry are largely due to ignorance on the network side of things (we’re getting unrequested sms from mobile networks on all new phones, and we never agreed to get them in the first place) – and it would certainly benefit consumers to take a closer look at that.
A recently conducted poll finds that students in average send 3 sms text message per class and a total of 440 texts per week. At average cost of 12p per message that’s text sms worth £150 per month – assuming each of them has a 500 free sms messages plan! Now that makes us look good 
The study also found that parents mostly don’t think their children would use the phone within school at all, while almost 65% of all students admitted to use the phone regularly within school hours. Some also use the phone for cheating – and only half of all the students polled believe this phone cheating to be a “serious offense.”
We’ve spoken about breaking up using SMS the other day. Today we’d like to point you to two further articles. The boston channel reports that text messages helped locate the victim of a kidnapping. And timesunion has a letter from a reader in
which she speaks about being uninvited from a wedding by her sister using SMS. This illustrates two entirely separate faces of SMS text messages: they can be incredible helpful and they can carry the worst news one could possibly expect!
