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January 2008

January 30, 2008

Seven Days

"Seven Days" was all she wrote, a kind of ultimatum note, she gave to me.

Sting wrote Seven Days in a jazzy 5/4 meter, coyly skipping two weekend beats. But what about us, what's our texting time signature? When do we text?

Whenwetext

Four weeks of recent data revealed that weekdays hum to a similar beat: A slow crescendo to primetime, between 7 and 11 pm, when most content are downloaded.

Saturdays and Sundays are more offbeat, when weekday worriers morph into wireless wanderers. No wonder weekend downloads are 20% higher than on weekdays.

Saturdays are more balanced, with mounds of activity around 2 pm and 5 pm, followed by a chorus of downloads between 7 and 11 pm.

Sundays are laid back, with a lazy morning rise, short surge after lunch, long siesta, then surprises with a spike after 9pm--users downloading with a vengeance, after church and family hours of textual repression.

But what do people download and when? Do we wake up cheery and look for shiny, happy polytones? Do we get all juiced late at night and scour for saucy adult MMS? And if the ultimatum note even gets a reply, when?

The patterns are in the data drizzle.

It's a big enough umbrella, but it's always me that ends up getting wet.

January 28, 2008

My blog, finally.

Much as I periodically fancied a blog, I wasn't quite ready to jump the blogwagon. I didn't just want to say something new, I also wanted to do something new. Being a propellerhead, that meant embellishing a blog with feature(s) that no one else had. Alas, I only got around to developing some of these recently, which I hope to release on this blog soon.

Hello, my name is Roland, and this is my blog. Welcome!

Textra Extra is about my personal and professional take on the mobile industry, particularly mobile messaging, and the culture that shapes it and is shaped by it. To take a page from TypePad, I hope to inform, influence, inspire. And then some.