People who send text messages while driving are six times more likely to crash, a new study finds.

The research adds to a mountain of evidence showing that texting or talking on mobile phones while driving is dangerous. Texting seems to be the worst.

The new study was done in a driving simulator, however, so it's not known exactly how the results would translate to the road. Still, the results were stark.

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Americans punched out more than 110 billion text messages in December 2008, double the number in the last month of 2007, as the shorthand communication becomes a popular alternative to cell phone calls.

The nations 270 million cell phone subscribers each sent out an average of 407 text messages in December 2008, according to government statistics released Tuesday by the Census Bureau. That is more than double the 188 messages sent by the average cell subscriber during the same period in 2007. The figures did not break down the texting by age, but the overall numbers understate the thousands of texts sent each month by many teens — balanced out by older folks who don't text as much.

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A wireless company that will serve more than 800,000 former Alltel Corp. subscribers announced Tuesday it will locate its corporate headquarters in Little Rock and hire more than 200 workers.

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For the second time in a week, BlackBerry users found themselves without e-mail and Internet service, refreshing their screens in futility on Tuesday night as they languished in an agonizing information vacuum.

Some BlackBerry users continued to experience intermittent service disruptions on Wednesday after a major failure shut down the popular wireless e-mail service throughout North and South America.

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Police officers must obtain a search warrant before scouring the contents of a suspects cell phone unless their safety is in danger, a divided Ohio Supreme Court ruled Tuesday on an issue that appears never to have reached another state high court or the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Maine legislator wants to make the state the first to require cell phones to carry warnings that they can cause brain cancer, although there is no consensus among scientists that they do and industry leaders dispute the claim.

The now-ubiquitous devices carry such warnings in some countries, though no U.S. states require them, according to the National Conference of State Legislators. A similar effort is afoot in San Francisco, where Mayor Gavin Newsom wants his city to be the nations first to require the warnings.

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A small fraction of teens have engaged in sexting, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which spoke to 800 teens around the country. The nonprofit research group found that 15 percent of teens who own cell phones have received these messages, and four percent have actually sent them. Sexting is jargon for the practice of sending nude or sexually suggestive text messages.

The results skew slightly lower than past studies from other groups, but those studies also included e-mail or other means of communication. I will not get into all the previous numbers -- you can read Pews full summary online - but the only group that found significantly higher sexting incidents was the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, whose study said 19 percent of teens used technology to send sexually suggestive photos or videos, and 31 percent had received such materials.

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Google employees are testing a new mobile device that runs on the companys Android operating system, as the search giant continues its push into the wireless market and toward more direct competition with Apple Inc. iPhone.

In a blog post Saturday, Google said the new device combines hardware built by an unnamed partner with its Android software. The free software is crucial in Googles efforts to make its search engine and other services as accessible on cell phones as they already are on personal computers.

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I thought I would share this forum post:

Using Solar Winds Orion with PageGate

1) Install PageGate application on your Orion Server.
2) From the PG Admin screen, Go to the Registration page and enter your Registration Key. Also check the GetAscii check-box on the Registration Page.
3) Open the Program/Settings page and check the GetAscii check-box under run on this server:.
4) Open the Interfaces/GetAscii/Settings page and check the Enabled check-box. Select a path for the Polling Directory. Apply the settings.
5) Right-click on the Interfaces/GetAscii object and select "Start".
6) Open the Interfaces/GetAscii/Status page to verify that the status is running. Click refresh several times until you see it running.
7) Right click the Carriers object and select Add. Create a profile for your paging service using the appropriate protocol, i.e. TAP, SNPP, SMTP etc.
Right click the Recipients object and select Add. Create a profile for a paging recipient. Check the GetAscii check-box. Select the Carrier profile created in step 7. Enter the paging device phone number in the ID/PIN field. change the Max Chars to the appropriate number, i.e 160 chars. Repeat as necessary to create multiple paging recipients.
9) optional Right click the Groups object and select Add. Fill out the Description and Group name fields. Check the GetAscii checkbox under Enabled Services. Click on Apply. Select the Groups//Email page and create a Mailbox Name. Select the Groups//Members page and add recipients to the Members box and click Apply.
10) Right-click a recipient or group object and select Send Message". Fill out the message form and click Send to test your configuration. If your texts make it to your phone, you should be able to create Orion alerts at this point.
11) Open Orion System Manager and create an Alert. Under the Trigger Actions page, Add an Action and select Dial Paging or SMS Service. Click the ellipsis button next to the Page Recipient and you should be able to select from the list of Recipients and or Groups you created in PageGate. Type the SMS message to be delivered in the Message to Send box, using the Insert Variable button to add the Orion Macros to customize the message.

A Boston city councilor is hoping his proposal to ban drivers from sending text messages will spur a statewide ban on a practice most consider dangerous.

John Tobin says he expects his fellow councilors to sign off on the proposal and send it to the mayor by Dec. 16. Mayor Tom Menino, who has already barred city workers from texting while driving, supports the measure.

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