geekosystem

If you're out at a bar or alone in your apartment wallowing in your own loneliness, and want to know some facts about the beer you're either popularly socially drinking or using to drown your sorrows, there's now a service for that. No, not Wikipedia. If you send BeerText.Us a text message with the name of your beer, it'll send one back with information that should satiate your never-ending thirst for beer knowledge.

Australian authorities began receiving notifications Monday morning that a number of citizens had received death threats via text message. Every message received was identical and was what is referred to as a "Hitman Scam." This type of scam has been seen before, but rarely on so large a scale.

Once nearly extinct, the Moleskine notebooks have not only survived but thrived. In fact, the humble black notebook spawned many new species, including this little fellow that uses the iconic black elastic cord as a catapult to launch analog text messages up to 17 feet away. It's fun, functional, and delightfully anachronistic.

Starting August 21, AT&T will be slimming down and removing its limited text messaging package -- ten bucks for one thousand texts -- leaving the twenty dollar Messaging Unlimited plan as the sole survivor. AT&T users will have no other choice regarding text messages when the change takes hold, other than a pay-per-text and pay-per-picture-or-video plan, which will cost twenty and thirty cents per messages, respectively. The Family Unlimited Messaging plan remains unscathed. An AT&T representative confirmed to Engadget that current AT&T customers can keep their texting plans, even if they switch phones. Though the removal of the limited texting plan may seem inconsequential at first, there are likely to be a large amount of annoyed customers, since all AT&T is really doing is forcing customers to pay ten more dollars for text messages than said customers may have wanted. (via Engadget)

Following Friday's devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan, AT&T has announced that through March 31st, its wireless customers in the United States and Puerto Rico will not be charged for international calls or text messages to Japan. As for landline customers, they're entitled to seek credits to cover up to 60 minutes of direct dial calling. All calls and texts since the quake on March 11th are covered by both plans. Update: Verizon has matched AT&T's plan.

All Verizon Wireless post-paid customers will receive free calling to Japan from March 11 through April 10 and will receive free text and multimedia messaging to Japan for the same time period. And Verizon Prepaid Phone Card charges for all long-distance calls placed to Japan from the United States will also be waived from March 11 until April 10. Verizon will also be providing FiOS TV customers who are not subscribed to the channel free access to TV Japan through March 17.

(via BGR)

If there was any doubt that the Egyptian government treated private tech companies alarmingly during the recent protests, mobile company Vodafone says that it was forced to send waves of government-scripted propaganda text messages, the source of which was unclear to mobile customers who received them. Vodafone says that carriers Mobinil and Etisalat were also forced to send similar messages. According to Vodafone's statement, "Vodafone Group has protested to the authorities that the current situation regarding these messages is unacceptable ... We have made clear that all messages should be transparent and clearly attributable to the originator." A few of the messages Vodafone was forced to send: