Txt Msg in Urdu

Thanks to technology now we can see Urdu in places where it was least expected, cell phones. Now the question remains will the text messaging culture have the same impact on Urdu as we are seeing in English and other languages?

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Tegic Gets Smarter With Text Messaging
By Tim Gray


Tegic Communications, a subsidiary of America Online (Quote, Chart),
has released the latest version of its T9 smart text message system, which
allows users of wireless devices to type entire words or sentences with a single
keystroke.

The Seattle-based company said the 7.2 version of T9 Text
Input provides a broad linguistic database with thousands of words, emoticons
and punctuation that users activate through standard telephone keypads.

"Everything about the phone customer is reflected in their personality
features," Lisa Nathan, director of product management, told internetnews.com.
"It adapts to the end user."

For example, Nathan said that European
teens developed their own "funky, hip" language, or "slanguage," for expediency
purposes while text messaging. The input technology absorbs that language and
recognizes it when the the user next messages with the device.

The
company has included a dictionary in the software for users to keep pace with
those terms. Business is also driving change in text messaging, and the language
in the boardroom is also recognized as adding to the medium's lexicon.

"Whether or not you are using the Queens English or the Queens Danish,
it can adapt," she said.

And if the program doesn't recognize a word, it
will learn it and recognize it the next time you enter it. The text experience
gets faster every time it is used, according to Nathan.

The software
also simplifies the use of wireless communications services, such as SMS (short
messaging service), wireless Internet access and wireless e-mail by making text
input on a mobile phone easier, she said.

The latest T9 version has
added three South East Asian languages -- Bengali, Tamil and Urdu -- and allows
users to switch among any of the program's 45 languages. The growth of the text
messaging market across the globe, especially in hotbed tech sectors like
Southeast Asia, play a pivotal role in choosing languages for development, said
Nathan.

Although the North American markets have been slow to embrace
mobile text messaging, primarily because of the lack of infrastructure to
support it, its use is on the rise, according to industry experts.

Text
messaging and mobile instant messaging have seen sharp increases, according to a
study released earlier this year by the Yankee Group. In fact, 2.6 billion text
messages were sent and received in the first quarter of 2004, up from 1.2
billion one year earlier.

Tegic has focused on the Asian markets, but
languages with character-based lettering, such as Chinese, Korean and Japanese,
have proved more challenging to Tegic's engineers. The company hopes to roll out
updated versions of those language options within the next year.

According to Tegic, there are nearly 300 mobile phone models available
throughout the world today that include T9 Text Input. The technology has been
licensed to major consumer electronics and communications equipment
manufacturers representing more than 90 percent of annual mobile phone
production worldwide.

http://www.internetnews.com/wireless/article.php/3439161

Learn about the Tegic Language Databases :
http://www.tegic.com/languages.html