Zach Posner : The world of Digital Media » Gadgets http://www.zachposner.com Exploring trends in Internet, Mobile, Advertising and more..... Sun, 20 Nov 2011 07:07:15 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Why are text messages 160 characters? http://www.zachposner.com/why-are-text-messages-160-characters/ http://www.zachposner.com/why-are-text-messages-160-characters/#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 02:42:04 +0000 Zach http://www.zachposner.com/?p=128 Because that is what Friedhelm Hillebrand, a German researcher found to be ”Perfectly sufficient.”

Interesting article from the LA Times.

Text messaging pioneer was a good judge of characters

Twitter’s 140-character limit on tweets can be traced to German researcher Friedhelm Hillebrand’s work in 1985. Text messaging now surpasses cellphone calling.
By Mark Milian 
May 11, 2009
To understand how the wizards of Twitter settled on 140 as the magic number of characters in a single tweet, you have to go back two decades to Bonn, Germany.

One day in 1985, Friedhelm Hillebrand sat at the typewriter in his home there, tapping out random sentences and questions on a sheet of paper.   For the rest of the article click here.

]]> http://www.zachposner.com/why-are-text-messages-160-characters/feed/ 0 24 hours into the Storm http://www.zachposner.com/24-hours-into-the-storm/ http://www.zachposner.com/24-hours-into-the-storm/#comments Sun, 23 Nov 2008 02:17:01 +0000 Zach http://www.zachposner.com/?p=35

I picked up a Storm last night and while waiting for the associate at Best Buy to activate (it was sold out everywhere else) a few concepts where going through my head:

  • Verizon’s phones stink – which was probably 90% of what caused people to line up around the block for them.  To think that Verizon passed on the iPhone.
  • What an amazing job the carriers have done inching up the phone bill.  All in, it appears that an unlimited plan on Verizon with data for a blackberry will be >$150.
  • On that same note, think about what has happened to your cable bill in the past few years: First it was premium services (HBO, etc.), then PPV, then digital boxes, then VOD and now HD boxes and fees

Initial thoughts on the Storm – awesome from a screen, multi media and UI perspective, keypad sucks, I want to know who prefers a touchscreen keypad. I look forward to getting more use out of a phone than my old BB at shouldbesimple.com.

and since the title of this post uses 24 in it, a friendly reminder – Jack is back tomorrow night on Fox!

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