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1. Directions

   Driving around with furniture and going to at least 4 cities everyday, in the middle of a move, can prove to cause headaches sometimes. That is why using the cell phone, I saved a lot of time finding out directions or shortcuts to different places. The cell phone allows me to either access Google Maps, or call a 1-800 number to find out directions. For reasons I will explain in the near future, I was forced to put some of the furniture on top of my car at the last minute in order to move it to the new house. While driving, the furniture fell down once. I decided to find some local roads instead of taking the freeway. Google Maps showed me a local route to my destination. It took longer, but the furniture did not fall again from the top of my car.

2. Finding out specific answers to specific questions

   Using the cell phone, I could call someone and find out some information, or I could even text some people. I had a very important presentation a few days ago, and I had forgotten some key information. I was driving, so checking the internet via my cell phone was not possible as I did not have enough time. What was the solution? I decided to either quickly e-mail someone or text someone. Some people I knew in other countries were sleeping like babies, so I decided to ask Valerie if she could help me . She helped me, by texting me back with all the information I needed. In this case, the cell phone is sometimes only good when you know someone reliable who can help you find some very important information. Thanks Valerie!

3. Contacting people

   This can be considered the most basic purpose of a cell phone. While doing a lot of important things, none of which can easily be given priority over something else, contacting people for various things by placing a simple phone call can help tremendously. I called a few people to confirm appointments, and I called a few people to let them know I would be a few minutes late. I also talked to different people about different important things, in other countries also, about topics ranging from business tasks to personal things.

4. Checking e-mail

   E-mail is unfortunately a big part of my life. The reason I say “unfortunately” is because I do not like relying on any piece of technology, unless it helps and cannot backfire. I get many e-mails everyday, and thus checking those e-mails via my cell phone while on the go is very important to me. I was selling some furniture, and I got an e-mail from a buyer willing to pay the price I wanted. I contacted them through my cell phone e-mail, and I sold the furniture.

5. View missed calls

   If your cell phone allows you to view missed calls, this can be one of the most important features available. I get a lot of phone calls regularly, from friends, strangers, business contacts who are either friends or just business contacts, and even new random people who call for life-threatening help for various reasons [one of my supposed-specialties]. While driving around and moving stuff, I missed a lot of calls, and I was able to call back some people. Of course, I was not able to call back any blocked calls or calls from restricted numbers.

The 5 examples above illustrate how my cell phone helped me tremendously during the last few days. By helping me find directions to finding information to interacting with others to checking e-mails to finding out who tried to contact me, my cell phone helped me save a lot of time and helped me do a lot of things faster.

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments about this. Thank you.

Below is the original post I had written, on July 31st, 12:02 am PST.

Title: No post today, tuesday - Moving houses - July 31st, 2007

Hello. It is that time of the year again, where I have to do it again. No, I don’t mean getting stabbed again. I am moving houses and changing cities. I will most probably not be able to access a computer with an internet connection today [Tuesday], so I apologize in advance. I will update this very post on Wednesday, hopefully, with some more useful information, like a good article. Once the new article goes live, this very message will either be buried or will get deleted.

I will reply to all comments and e-mails by this Thursday evening. If you wish to get a hold of me, simply contact me by e-mailing or im’ing me on my cell phone through e-mail or AOL AIM instant messaging.

Thank you for supporting me so far. I really appreciate it.

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So when I was told that i could get a Samsung t509 for $9.99 instead of $199 for direct purchase of the phone or even the $49.99 price for new customers, I was already planning out how to move all the numbers from my current phone to the new one. Well, after a few minutes on the phone, I was told that I should expect my phone 3 days later, on a Thursday. I paid $29.95 for the expedited shipping and looked forward to Thursday. I was told that my own phone number was the tracking number on the USPS.com website, and that I should be able to track the shipment within 12 hours.

Thursday came and went away faster than my appetite for breakfast that day. I called on Friday and asked about the phone. The lady on the phone went through the order and told me that for some reason, the order was placed but the system never completed the order, and didn’t charge me for it either. She apologized and told me that she would place the order again. I wouldn’t be charged anything for the shipping. I would receive the order by Tuesday, I was told.

That’s fine, I thought. I asked the lady if I could track the shipment via USPS using my phone number. She became silent for a few seconds and told me that they ship via UPS only, not the USPS, and that she had a different tracking number. I became quiet for a few seconds thinking about this, and then asked her why the other lady had told me to use my phone number as a tracking number on the USPS website. She apologized and told me that she didn’t know why the other lady said that, and told me that she would let the supervisor know about this. She told me to call back by Tuesday evening if I don’t receive the phone by then.

Well, Saturday comes and I receive a text message on my phone. It’s from T-mobile, and it says “Thank you for your recent order. Your order for a phone upgrade has been placed. You’ll be billed $113 in the next billing cycle.” Hmmm, $113. Huh? I call 611 and am told that since the first order was never placed, the pricing had changed since then and I couldn’t qualify anymore for the $9.99 pricing. I asked the guy on the phone if the first price quote of $9.99 was a mistake and instead of calling me the first time to tell me that I was quoted too low of a price, the first order was simply cancelled. The guy apologized and explained that such was not the case. The price had simply changed since then. He could do nothing to bring the price any lower than $99.

So I’m waiting for the phone: it’s supposed to come tomorrow. Should I keep it, or should I return it and find something better? That’s the new question, because of the $90 price different. I’m going to try out a few pictures and see if it’s worth keeping. If anyone knows a better phone for t-mobile, please let me know.

I have 20 days to return the phone if I don’t like it. I’ll have to abuse it a lot from tomorrow to see if it can survive the days that I go through everyday. “Get More“, yes, like Catherine Zeta Jones says: I’m going to be getting more on my bill than what I was told. Thank you, Mrs. Douglas.

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In California, there are cops everywhere who talk on their cell phones while driving. Whether they’re talking to their headquarters or male prostitutes is beyond the understanding of any driver who’s driving near them. The same annoyed drivers who stalk cell-phone drivers will act like depressed puppies when they see cops talking on cell phones. Where does the sense of moral duty, of criticising the act of driving and using a cell phone at the same time, disappear at that time? No, instead of criticising, these puppy-wannabe drivers will stop driving fast and start putting on a big grin. They’ll start looking straight only in the direction that the road is going to take them. They’ll act so nice, it will make you wonder if they expect a doughnut from the cop in return.

These drivers probably do eat a doughnut when they get home, relieved that the cop didn’t kick their butts for daring to glance at the cop car.

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Then, while I was still typing a response to Jerine, the young girls’ phone beeped. She took it out of her pocket, looked at it for a few seconds and then typed something on it again. I was able to finish typing one text message by the time that young girl finished sending two messages and reading a response. I guess in this new age, if you have the right gadget, the companies making those gadgets will try to teach the customers how to use the gadget efficiently.

I’ve tried the T9 mode a few times, and it’s impressive. Usually I use nonstandard words from time to time to express different thoughts and emotions, like “hoohoho” or something retarded enough, and so I don’t use T9 most of the time. I guess I’ll have to customize the T9 database myself and add special words from a special language to it if I want to use it all the time.

In the end, I couldn’t find the titles recommended by Jerine, so I got One Missed Call 2 instead. I hope it’s not boring or stupid.

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My first text message of the day read “Sup! its frekin hot 2day! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” with 18 occurrences of the letter A in the last word. Such long expressions are funny when used from time to time, though they become annoying if used all the time. Many people realize that sending one line of text message doesn’t express their thoughts clearly, so they send whole paragraphs of confusing text, as if that would make complete sense. What these people don’t realize is that sending long messages sometimes results in having the message divided into two or more parts, making it very inconvenient for the receiver of those multiple messages. Most people nowadays don’t send a text message that says “john fell down and was crying. heh i was laughing so hard“; instead, people write “john fel dwn & wz :’-( LOL FNY wht a retard ^^ ttyl“, to shorten the original text message by almost 50%, yet adding useless text that makes the shortened form even longer than the original text. Similarly, some abbreviations have resulted in the abbreviation itself becoming longer than the actual word. Saying someone “rocks” transformed into “rks” and then into “roxors“, though people love saying “roxors” all the time since it sounds cooler.

Just like other forms of communication that get overused, text messaging is assumed by many to be a platform to practise essay writing. Messages like “Call me @ 7pm dear“, “I love you honey” and “Die you moron” used to mean something before, keeping the purpose of the message very clear, and often times sincere. Nowadays, text messages are usually sent simply because they can be sent. People have even started using abbreviations and lingo in regular chats and emails, as if standard english was becoming too hard for people to handle. I usually send short, clear text messages, as I realize not everyone has their cell phone bills paid by their parents. Somehow, the focus has shifted from how to convey a message through a text message, to how to make a text message really fancy. No wonder most of the text messages look stunningly ugly, and at the same time, make no sense at all.

As most would ask and say in a text message: wat do u tink of dis? Do u hav ne opinion on dis? Do u snd txt msgz uzn normL abbr of wrds, or do u snd txt msgz uzn d nu lingo datz stil brewing? or do U not uz txt msgz @ aL? L8r

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After the trend of leaving long messages came the practise of calling people repeatedly, leaving multiple messages in a day. It was as if one was making sure that the messages left were not disappearing by themselves. Then came cell phones: people started leaving short messages in the beginning, treating cell phones with respect. Then suddenly, at a much faster rate than home phones, people started leaving long messages on cell phones, even though people knew that checking voice messages on cell phones cost money most of the time. As the idea of leaving cell phone messages started becoming the norm, text messages came along to let people send text messages to each other. Text messages became the new norm, with some people sending more text messages every day than the number of people they had in their address book.

Now, it seems that many people are turning to the likes of Skype and Yahoo Messenger Voice Mail, among other online messengers, to leave messages. Many people are treating such protocols as being the accepted norm. Someone recently emailed me saying “I left a voice message on your Yahoo messenger last week and you never called back“, which is interesting. I’ve not used Yahoo Messenger for voice messages for a long time, and I have not yet considered it an official platform to relay important messages. Similarly, people tell me “Oh, didn’t you get my message with the new meeting time? I left it on your AIM this morning.” I leave my computer on most of the time, even when I leave the house. Thus, many messages I read for the first time are already around 24 hours old. For some reason many people cannot leave their homes without a cell phone, yet they also do not use it to make important phone calls.

Long time ago, people used to be wary of embracing anything new. Nowadays, many people embrace any new piece of technology as if their life depends on it. While I love the idea of trying something new in nontraditional ways, I’m wary of people who try new things without knowing how to use those things. Many people never try to learn how to use something efficiently either. Instant messaging is great, though if alternate channels like cell phones are available, instant messaging is still not the platform to use if one wishes to convey something extremely important, like changing a meeting time at the last minute, letting an employee go in your company, or even like breaking up with someone, though one day such things will be commonly practised online. Any new technology should be used to gain efficiency for everyone involved in the beginning, not just the user. If one uses a piece of technology to their own benefit, and that results in inconvenience for others around them, the only end result will be short term convenience for the user and long term alienation from other people. Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. That is what defines common sense among many people, and that is what many people forget: common sense applies to everything, including the use of technology.

What is your opinion on this? What do you think about the different methods and channels described above? Do you use any channel of communication extensively and consider it the norm? Do you have any opinion on which channel could be improved or used more, or which ones are being misused? If so, please let me know.

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This is the new age of confusion. Before, you used to get charged for talking to psychics over the phone, or even supposedly beautiful people. Now, you get charged for talking to anyone over the phone, even if you’re calling your ownself to check your voicemail. No longer does the quality of a phone call count when it comes to charging a cell phone user; the bill starts rolling once the cell phone starts doing anything. Whether it’s playing online games or sending text messages or calling to check your messages, you pay for everything. Do you keep hearing “Free nights and weekends?” from every cell phone network out there? How can something be free when that’s the exact thing you pay for in your monthly bill?

What is the highest bill you have paid so far? If you have any opinion on this, please let me know below.

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More on this later. Here is my Samsung SGH-X495 T-mobile cell phone. This close-up shot was taken on March 27th, 2006 using the macro-lens. The shot isn’t entirely clear because of the dust and *other* particles on the display screen, which were clearly visible with the zoom in but to the naked and weak eye, they’re completely invisible.

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