Goodbye numbers, hello QWERTY

The entire world is invited to a retraining course

Last week, after much deliberation on the matter, I applied for and received an Online Cash Advance. This was no frivolous action. All my life I have managed to stay just over the red line of solvency and I cannot remember ever having resorted to a loan. But my cell phone died one evening; rolled over onto its back and gave out a weak off-key rendering of the Nokia tune and closed down forever. I poked around inside it with a paper clip but to no avail.

I took the loan money and went into my cell phone provider for something new to replace my old phone. I came out with a shiny black third generation model with a camera. So far, I've taken a lot of pictures and made zero calls.

This morning I open the paper over breakfast and find a most distressing article.

What’s QWERTY?

“Goodbye, numeric cell phone keypads. You’re going the way of the rotary dial. Touch screens and QWERTY keyboards will take over from here, thank you.” At North America’s largest cell phone trade show, running this week in Las Vegas, there were few new phones for the U.S. market that had a numerical keypad instead of an alphabetic keyboard. Touch screens also were out in force.

These changes are recognition of the popularity of text messaging and wireless Internet use. The industry organization CTIA Wireless, which hosts the show, said U.S. subscribers sent 1 trillion text messages last year, three times the 2007 volume. Meanwhile, the same people used 2.2 trillion minutes of voice calls, an increase of less than 5 percent. ... click here to read the rest of the article titled "Goodbye numbers, hello QWERTY"