Microsoft confirms Windows Phone Mango SMS exploit, fix on the way

Microsoft has confirmed the existence of an SMS denial-of-service exploit for Windows Phone that can reboot devices and kill access to messaging functionality.

The company says it’s exploring the issue and working on a fix, reports The Verge.

The exploit, first discovered by WinRumors yesterday, simply involves sending a text message to any Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) device, which causes the phone to reboot and disable the messaging hub. It can also be triggered with … Continue Reading

Meet SwiftKey, the virtual keyboard Google would be crazy not to acquire

Google has been placing a lot of emphasis on its virtual keyboard for Android, and a lot of the recent changes have been inspired by startup SwiftKey.

“We’re doing very interesting things that have caught the attention of people all the way up to the top of Android… and Google,” said SwiftKey chief marketing officer Joe Braidwood in a call with VentureBeat this morning.

The company focuses on the artificial intelligence of text correction and … Continue Reading

WTF: AT&T kills $10 texting plan, leaves only pricey unlimited texting

As if you need another reason to hate AT&T, the carrier is apparently planning to end its reasonable $10 texting plan for 1000 messages, forcing new customers to pay more for an unlimited plan or suffer through expensive per-message fees, Engadget reports.

AT&T has confirmed with Engadget that it will offer only a $20 unlimited texting plan, and a $30 unlimited plan for families with up to five lines, starting August 21. Existing subscribers of … Continue Reading

Huddles and Hangouts: Google+ conferencing tools aren’t just gimmicks

Google’s newest social network, Google+, features group chats for its mobile app (on Android and iOS) and in-browser video conferencing. They aren’t new ideas, but the execution for both is top-notch and they are useful for both businesses and typical consumers.

Here’s a breakdown of the new features and some cool things you can do with each:

Google+ Huddles

Huddles are group chats that you can create to communicate with other Google+ users. It’s like … Continue Reading

With Twilio, SMS short codes aren’t just for big companies any more

SMS service enabler, Twilio, brought its new short code SMS product out of testing today and showed it off onstage at the MobileBeat 2011 conference in San Francisco.

Short codes, in essence, are 6-digit numbers that can be marketed to customers as a quick way to contact a company. But Twilio says they’re incredibly underused. Twilio chief executive, Jeff Lawson likened them to the Ghost Busters twinkie. The small twinkie is the amount of short … Continue Reading

Pinger lowers European texting fees by making SMS a game

This article is part of a series of posts about DEMO alumni and news of their progress. Pinger launched at DEMO in Fall 2006. Check out more at DEMO.

Europe telecommunications is, in one word, super-pricey-holy-crap-don’t-text-me. Today, however, free text and talk service Pinger crosses the Atlantic from the U.S. to change that, starting in Germany.

The market for a free text and talk product is wide open in Europe. In order to dominate in … Continue Reading

How I survived my first E3 with technology failing left and right

This year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) was loud, crowded, and reporters trying to cover the show ran into technology problems left and right.

This was my first time covering E3 with VentureBeat’s gaming guru Dean Takahashi, so I had almost no idea what to expect. Dean said that it would be pretty crazy — after all, there are more than 45,000 media professionals, analysts, retailers and game developers who regularly attend the conference in Los … Continue Reading

SMS is doomed: Google working on Android iMessage, BBM competitor

Just after Apple announced iMessage app in iOS 5, it appears that Google has its own Android messaging client in the works, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The paper didn’t have any additional details on Google’s messaging app, but just like iMesssage, it’s reportedly being positioned as an answer to Research in Motion’s popular BlackBerry Messenger app.

Google’s new messaging app could fall under the Google Talk name, but it will need to do much … Continue Reading

Textingly launches live chat tool for text campaigns

Textingly, a company that let’s businesses manage text messages to customers, today announced it has launched a live chat tool for businesses to engage with customers via text in real-time from the web.

The company officially launched last year around this time and is now claiming to help more than 6,000 local  businesses manage their text message, or SMS, campaigns. Textingly, which described itself as the “MailChimp for SMS”, provides a series of features that … Continue Reading

Voxeo to launch SMSified, will charge 1 cent per text

Voice communications company Voxeo announced this evening that it will launch a developer platform for SMS, IM, and voice called SMSified at the end of the week. Developers can create apps for free and will be charged 1 cent per text message sent, making the service cheaper than Clickatell and more versatile than Twilio.

Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor said that a major mobile carrier is currently implementing the platform across its own network, although further … Continue Reading

Week in review: PlayStation Network's big outage

Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

Sony’s PlayStation Network suffers big outage — The good news is that Sony has more than 70 million registered users for its PlayStation Network online service for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable. The bad news is that they’re all angry because Sony suffered an outage this week.

AT&T craps on T-Mobile, self, in … Continue Reading

Voice blogging gets a boost as Bubble Motion nabs $10M

Voice and text messaging provider Bubble Motion today announced it has pulled in $10 million in a second round of funding, as the company attempts to work on new tools for 800 million available mobile users.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company technology allows users to click, record and send voice-recorded messages to one or several recipients, all without placing an actual call.

Dubbed Bubbly, the system enables any mobile phone user (on one of our … Continue Reading

TextPlus brings social features to group texting app

TextPlus, an application that lets groups easily text each other for free, today announced it has submitted its 4.4 version to Apple. The new version will allow users not only to text for free but also to search for people (see image),  bringing a new social aspect to group texting. We’ll be sure to let you know when the new version gets approved.

When I last spoke with TextPlus about its new photo feature back … Continue Reading

ReplyBuy shows text messaging can make some serious bank with daily deals

Apparently, there’s still money to be made in text messaging. ReplyBuy, a startup launching today that uses text messaging to deliver Groupon-like daily deals, is a perfect example of just how much life the technology has left.

Backed by a number of former YouTube employees, ReplyBuy lets users sign up to receive text messages for daily deals with partner merchants. ReplyBuy users can also text back to purchase the deal, after signing up and saving … Continue Reading

Twitter adds instant notifications via SMS, push messages on iPhone/iPad

A much craved-for feature by mobile users, microblogging platform Twitter has finally taken notice and added push notifications for mentions to your username (dubbed @mentions) in its iPhone and iPad apps, as well as through SMS.

Here’s how it works: whenever someone you follow mentions you with your username, Twitter’s iPhone and iPad apps will open up with a push notification. Alternatively, if you’re not an iPhone user, you can turn on text message notifications … Continue Reading

Battle for your texts: Facebook Messages vs. Kik mobile chat

Facebook can’t remind us enough that its new messaging service, announced today, isn’t an email killer. Instead, it’s an all-encompassing messaging system that works across Facebook chat, email, and text messages.

Now that we’ve seen the product, it’s clearly not the threat to email we previously thought. But the new messaging service could pose a problem for the hot mobile chat startup Kik, which we’ve covered extensively.

I’ve fallen head over heels for Kik over … Continue Reading

Kik, the Skype of text messages, continues crazy growth (chart)

Kik, the new chat application for smartphones that is faster and more social than standard text messages, continues to report astounding growth in traffic after exclusively revealing the launch of its service to VentureBeat.

The company tells me it registered 250,000 new users in 24 hours yesterday, pushing it over 900,000 total registrations. It’s on track to blow past a million users today, just two weeks after launch. That growth would be unprecedented for any … Continue Reading

Twitter announces Fast Follow for users without accounts

Twitter just announced a new feature for people using the service via SMS text messaging. Called Fast Follow, it has one big advantage — you don’t need a Twitter account to use it.

With Fast Follow, if people want to receive updates from a certain account, they can just text “Follow @username” to the number 40404, and Twitter will start sending the tweets to their phone. In a blog post outlining the new feature, Twitter … Continue Reading

Yahoo developing "Search via SMS" with ads?

Twitter just announced a new feature for people using the service via SMS text messaging. Called Fast Follow, it has one big advantage — you don’t need a Twitter account to use it.

With Fast Follow, if people want to receive updates from a certain account, they can just text “Follow @username” to the number 40404, and Twitter will start sending the tweets to their phone. In a blog post outlining the new feature, Twitter … Continue Reading