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Yahoo! SMS |
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Yahoo! adds SMS search
SMS mania(July 7 2005) According to several local advertising campaigns sore thumbs have become a serious health problem in Norway. There are teenagers send several hundred SMS messages a day, and they have become awfully good at writing long (but cheap) messages very fast. Which is ironic, really. SMS was invented by Scandinavian engineers developing the GSM mobile phone system. They wanted a simple text messaging system to use when constructing the GSM network. It was never meant to become a tool for the rest of us. Yahoo! SMSAnyway, Yahoo! has definitely discovered the benefits of SMS cell phone text messaging, and is adding SMS search to its service portfolio. Users are to send text message to Yahoo! asking for weather forecasts, stock quotes and local business information. Yahoo! will return an SMS containing the relevant information. To use the SMS feature, US cell phone users can type a query and send it it to "92466" (which spells "Yahoo"). As the Yahoo! Blog explains it: 'Right now you can search for any local information by sending a query with your location or zip code like: "pizza 94025", you can get a stock quote with: "s yhoo", weather information: "w 94025", dictionary definitions: "d garrulous", horoscopes: "h aquarius", WiFi hotspots: "wifi 94123", and more are coming. Hence typing "w" and the ZIP code get you a short weather forecast.' Obviously the SMS search cannot replace the regular Yahoo! search engine in any way. If you want to search the web, you will need a PC or a cell phone with some kind of HTML or WAP based web browser. The service is limited to Cingular, Sprint and Verizon subscribers. So what about Europe?No, the Yahoo! service is not available in Europe. Europeans have no reason to feel left out, though. There are already a large number of providers in all European countries offering similar services. Moreover, given that practically all European mobile phone operators are using the same GSM system, you can get the same information from anywhere when travelling in Europe. That being said, Yahoo! has taken one step further compared to most SMS information providers. They will provide URL links in each text message pointing to Yahoo Mobile's WAP based web pages, which have more information, maps and more. If your phone is WAP compatible, you should be able to access these pages or "cards" as they are called in WAP lingo. Google has a related system. More: Yahoo expands its mobile phone search functions (CNET)
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Send an SMS from your cellular phone to Yahoo! and get information about the weather, stocks, local restaurants and more.
