How in the world did we manage to survive before text messaging? I was recently in an all-day meeting and was alerted to the fact that my area was experiencing a rare snow-storm and as such was able to get the meeting wrapped-up and everyone on the road before our out-of-town visitors got to experience the spectacle of Texans driving on ice. Could I have taken a call during that meeting? No. But discreetly receiving a text message provided a safe ending to the day. Think about a time when you�ve been out of the office and needed to get a message to one of your colleagues but didn�t want to get stuck on a rambling phone call. What better solution than using SMS to communicate for you? Added to that, I could now access messenger services like AIM and Yahoo from the road�heaven. There was a definite learning curve for mobile messaging on my end. Believing that QWERTYUIOP held all the answers to life, I now had to know that �2� controlled As, Bs and Cs, and unlearn how to capitalize and punctuate � plus, I had to learn the whole new language of texting � your written as �ur�, because becoming �cuz� and the like, all for the purpose of keeping my messages below the magical 160 character (including spaces!) mark. Preferring to write an article the length of this one than a message barely 4 sentences long, I struggled with the art of being brief. I still do � ask my friends who get 3 text messages from me in a row, so I can get my entire thought out! Makes me wonder, in fact, why I just don�t call� It broke my heart when I left my job managing company cell phones and had to turn in my BlackBerry device � in the 9 months I carried it, I became completely hooked on sending emails while stuck in rush hour traffic. Imagine my delight when I found out that my 7300 could do the same � not quite to the same scale, and only with my web-based accounts, but nonetheless, I now had another means of communication to exploit! No longer did I have to be brief to send a message while mobile � now I could compose full blown emails while on the go! I admit that I don�t use this technology often � I still sometimes forget that I can actually send an email from my little cell phone that�s half the size of the one that could barely remember the numbers of my 20 my nearest and dearest several years before. As much as I depend on email for every day life � both personally and professionally � my next goal is to either get another handheld device or to actually remember to utilize the email feature on the phone I already have. How often have you been out and about in a large metropolitan area and thought of an errand you could run if only you knew exactly where the store was that you needed to visit? With current mobile internet technologies, I can do the same yellow pages search as I�d normally perform on my laptop, and get results that even include little mini color maps with referenced cross streets! More than any other internet sites that are literally at my fingertips with my cell phone, I often utilize this technology to get from point A to point B � and when you drive more than 25,000 miles a year within one metro area you�re not native to, that�s a very key asset!