The economist has an excellent primer on how mobile users enter non-Latin text using a standard numeric keypad on a typical mobile phone. And you thought T9 was hard!

Pinyin is an easy shortcut for Chinese users, who have over twenty-thousand available characters to choose from depending on the dialect. And Tamil-speaking texters group their two hundred characters into similar sounds, whittling the numberpad options down to a manageable 50.

Will touch-screens change everything? Read on and see what the Economist has to say about that…

Monitor: A question of character | The Economist.

As you already know from previous posts I’m quite enamored with text messaging. But given that SMS costs effectively nothing for carriers to provide I find myself infuriated by two things:

1. The surcharge for sending and receiving international texts — up to 60¢ per message using my carrier.
2. That I can’t send texts at all to friends on some international networks.

There’s no shortage of dubious web-based “free” SMS-sending sites out there, but leave it to BBC’s Click to find something better — it’s not free, but it’s worth every penny of the few cents per message that it costs.

It’s called FishText.

Here’s FishText installed on my E71. It’s a Java app, and thus works with almost any mobile phone and OS.

And here’s where it leaves those free SMS sites in the dust. FishText brilliantly connects to your mobile’s built-in address book, so using it is almost as easy as your on-board texting app. Replies are sent back to your number, or to a “virtual” UK number that you set up with the service for an additional cost — which can be useful for screening potential SMS spammers, for example.

Texts exchanged between FishText users anywhere in the world are free, provided that the recipient has the FistText app running on their handset to receive it.

While FishText is not a free service the highest price you’ll pay per sent message is €0.03 — you can top up your account in €5.00 increments through the app itself with a credit card, or use PayPal on their desktop website.

I’ve tested FishText with international friends and can tell you that the service works as advertised, with no ads, spam or other ills. If you’ve friends in faraway places with whom you’d like to trade texts at a reduced rate, FishText is the app for you!

With a little help from the Telus LG 6190 Fastap handset he got from yours truly for his birthday, Al Howell today brought his mobile technology into the late 20th-Century with his first text to me:

Andrew im using my new phone

Indeed you are, Mr. Howell… Indeed you are!

(Photo courtesy of Erling Sivertsen, via Flickr…)

Here’s some interesting figures that I came across today, courtesy of Open Gardens:

• 2005 box office revenues for Hollywood films came in just shy of $30 billion U.S. dollars.
• 2005 worldwide music revenues were about $35 billion.
• 2005 combined totals for video game consoles and software were about $40 billion U.S. dollars.

… And the total worldwide revenues from text messaging in 2005 were roughly $75 Billion USD, at a cost to the consumer of only pennies each!

These days having a mobile without SMS is akin to a landline without voicemail. So if you’re wondering why I’m not calling you, now you know!