The postcard was the forerunner of text messaging

Posted by John Lampard on Wednesday, 6 May, 2009 to the technology subset

Interesting back story explaining the origin of the 160 character limit for text, or SMS, messaging. While calculating what might make for a sensible number of characters, researchers discovered many postcards conveyed messages in 150, or less, characters.
Initially, Hillebrand’s team could fit only 128 characters into that space, but that didn’t seem like nearly enough. [...]

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LOLBAT: an abbreviated SMS hero for our times

Posted by John Lampard on Tuesday, 8 July, 2008 to the design and art subset

On the subject of initialising and abbreviating, the use of such language in no way hinders new comic superhero on the block, LOLBAT.

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Text messaging speak: it’s deja vu, not new

Posted by John Lampard on Tuesday, 8 July, 2008 to the comment subset

Many of the abbreviated words and expressions used in text messaging are far from new, with a number of commonly used terms appearing in an abbreviations dictionary that was published in 1942.
Similarly, the use of initial letters for whole words (n for “no”, gf for “girlfriend”, cmb “call me back”) is not at all new. [...]

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Graduates ‘sms’ in job l3tt3rs

Posted by John Lampard on Wednesday, 20 February, 2008 to the comment subset

Graduates ‘sms’ in job l3tt3rs
It could be I was wrong to defend Generation Y against allegations of being a bunch of slackers, if a recent SMH report, stating university graduates are using text-messaging-like language and grammar in cover letters for job applications, is anything to go by.
Annabelle Puddy, the national head of recruiting for Accenture, [...]

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