On the Flip Side...

There was an average of 207.9 million cell phone users in America in 2005, according to Infoworld.com. I am one of this number, and among my wide friend pool I have only one friend who doesn’t have a cell phone, or at least use one on a regular basis.

I was talking to someone the other day while programming some important days into my calendar, and they crossly said:

“I remember the days when a phone was just a phone”.

And a phone may just be a phone, but a cell phone, by definition of its very mobility and access makes it much more than that. Try driving somewhere unfamiliar and late at night without it and see how safe you feel! The generation of touch-tone phones and huge belled brass alarm clocks are behind us, my generation uses our phones to remind us of important days, communicate with friends, colleagues and businesses, for entertainment, as a calculator, a notepad, a music player, a camera, as a blogging tool and an email device.

We send text messages to each other, having abbreviated “conversations” exchanging information such as movie times, test scores, weather conditions, dinner plans, weak knock-knock jokes, or just to let the recipient know they are cared for.

We send text messages to GOOGLE (466453) with restaurant names or movies and GOOGLE texts us back addresses, numbers and show times.

We can activate our phone number on Facebook and directly upload pictures from our phones to the site, send messages, and update our statuses from one small keypad.

We can download games onto our phones (I have Bejeweled and Ms. Pac Man) and music, either to play when our phone rings (as a ringtone) or to play over the line when someone tries to reach you (a ringback tone). If you have more than one ringback tone you can make a jukebox and have random tones play on shuffle from call to call, or you can personalize individual tones to individuals own musical preferences.

You can also set different ringtones straight from your phone to ring for different people. For instance, one of my friends is a Tenacious D lyric, another, the chorus from a Pink Floyd song, and another a cheesy single from Boys Love Girls. This way, you can tell who is calling you without even picking up your phone!

We can program in phone numbers for friends, family and work, and create groups of people to send a mass text message to at once. This year for spring break I travelled down to St. Augustine with one of my friends, since they don’t all Twitter I kept them updated by sending a mass text to my “close friends” group. I have also utilized this feature to send out party invites, movie plans/times, and for a “school” group, test times, reading assignments, and class cancellations (woot!).

In case of emergencies something to be aware of, your phone can send a 911 call even if there is no available signal, and the dispatchers should be able to track the call and send help. In the light of several tragedies at schools, such as the Columbine shootings, and the Virginia Tech tragedy some schools have prepared an emergency text alert system to warn students of danger via their cell phones. Not all schools offer this program, but not all students are aware of it even if they do, so be sure to check into the likely possibility that yours or your student’s school has this program.

I have already hit on the benefits of the online “mini blogging” program Twitter, but it is worth mentioning again. I daily reap benefits from this amazing phone accessible program, from getting a great quote for this very blog, or hearing weather reports from a neighbor before I attempted to leave campus during a storm.

Just as it is with any evolving interface, the cell phone adapts to its user. However much you want to use it, and for whatever purpose is up to the individual, just be aware, and try to get excited about the wide spectrum of uses it presents.