• plan Over in Gainesville, Georgia, someone–unidentified in the report–accidentally sent a text message to the wrong number. The texter intended to write “gunna be at West Hall today.” Perfectly innocuous, right?
• failThe phone’s overzealous autocorrect feature changed the text to “gunman be at West Hall today.” The recipient reported the text to police, and two West Hall schools were subsequently put on lockdown. source

• » One question: Who uses “gunna” as shorthand for “going to?” We thought “gonna” was the standard abbreviation. But all jokes aside, we’re glad this was all just a technological snafu, and not an actual threat.

• The Virginia Tech campus shootings in 2007 are a tragic, real-life reminder of the technological limitations that 911 is now saddled with. Some students and witnesses tried to text 911 during that emergency and as we know, those messages never went through and were never received by local 911 dispatchers.
• Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski • Evoking the 2007 Virginia Tech school shooting to explain why 911 needs a texting function. 911, a system around in its current form since 1968. And it’s one that hasn’t kept up with the fast pace of technology, either with mobile phones (which are now the primary source of 911 calls) or broadband technology: “Many 911 call centers don’t even have broadband, and some are in communities where broadband isn’t even available,” Genachowski said. “That is unacceptable.” All this stuff is on the list for things to improve thanks to the stimulus plan, by the way. source

• cause Teenagers like to text each other a lot, and some of them send over 120 a day (five an hour). Us old people won’t understand the reasoning behind this.
• effect Those teens are more likely to take drugs, drink alcohol and have sex. Translation: They get invited to all the good parties because they text so much. source

• 47% of adults have sent or read texts while driving
• 34% of teens have done the same controversial thing source

• » One thing that’s not clear: Teenagers have been only driving a year or two. Most adults have been driving much longer. Did Pew, who did the study, put a time frame on the study or just leave it vague? That’s a question that hit us when reading it.

• Does it say: ‘Your call is important to us, and we will get back to you?’
• Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy • Trying to wrap his head around the idea of sending a text message, as part of a case on sexting involving the . He’s not the only justice who doesn’t understand this newfangled technology. Fellow Justice Antonin Scalia showed off the fact that he’s old by saying this gem: “Could [the plaintiff, Sergeant Jeff] Quon print these spicy little conversations and send them to his buddies?” Because cell phones have printers. These people, by the way, are setting the law of the land, yet they don’t know what the heck they’re talking about. Should we be nervous? source

• 75% of all teens between 12-17 own cell phones
• 50% of them send as least 50
  texts each day
• 49% of teen girls text “just to say hello” source

• Well, that #(&(@&@ sucks. Screw them. China, currently kings of the sassy-kid-talkin’ “I do what I want” bandwagon, are forcing phone companies in the country to censor text messages with “illegal or unhealthy content,” mostly by suspending service to unwitting dirty-joke-makers. Just to make sure China blocks this post after we put it up:

china tiananmen square human rights porn sex sex censorship communism google xxx sexual content pornography tibet dalai lama playboy china tiananmen square human rights porn sex sex censorship communism google xxx sexual content pornography tibet dalai lamachina tiananmen square human rights porn sex sex censorship communism google xxx sexual content pornography tibet dalai lama

• There, that should do it. source

• $1+ million in donations from texts alone (whoa!) source

• She came across as a lovely young girl, and I’m sure it wasn’t a nice feeling for the judge to send someone like this to prison — but someone is dead because of a text message.
• Oxford, England police officer Bill Sykes • Describing Phillipa Curtis, who was sentenced to 21 months in prison for a car crash that led to the death of up-and-coming fashion designer Victoria McBryde. What caused the crash? Curtis was texting on her phone. While McBryde’s parents feel the sentence was too lenient, many others feel it wasn’t. The U.K. has some of the strictest texting-while-driving laws in the world. While Curtis was not sending a text message at the time of the crash, she was sending a number of them around the time the crash happened – enough to convict her on. Scary. And sad. • source

• accident A guy tried to get a hold of someone via text. He had the wrong number. Honest mistake, right? Whoops. My bad.
• argument The two men started fighting via text, and it got so bad that they met near a CVS, and one shot the other. Idiots. source