fun text fact

[SteveP]

i just learned this...if you send a text message to a land line...
the phone company calls the number and somebody says..
" you have a text message from.... and then reads the message..."

who knew?
$.25 fee for anyone who entertains themselves with this fun fact.
stevep enterprises

[Shoogs]

There are people that still have land lines?

[SteveP]

There are people that still have land lines?

businesses mostly now i thk.

[Jonathan]

Can you buy a yellow page ad with a cell phone #?

Oh, are there yellow pages anymore?

[SteveP]

haha
yellow pages used to be a huge source of net revenue for the phone company..
anyone in small business knows.
when i started my shop i was paying 1/2 of my rent for a yellow page ad.
those days are loong gone.

[Jonathan]

haha
yellow pages used to be a huge source of net revenue for the phone company..
anyone in small business knows.
when i started my shop i was paying 1/2 of my rent for a yellow page ad.
those days are loong gone.

Yeah, I sold some in college. It was easy, you had to have it. The last one I got went right to the recycle bin.

[davids]

businesses mostly now i thk.

My business has a ton of land lines, almost every last one for an elevator or alarm system emergency line. Almost all my voice traffic goes through 4 T1s, which account for less than 15% of the monthly (five figure) bill...

[sonnybiker]

i just learned this...if you send a text message to a land line...
the phone company calls the number and somebody says..
" you have a text message from.... and then reads the message..."

this actually isn't true

[RickM]

this actually isn't true

Carriers offer it as an add-on service for additional $. text is electronically transcribed, landline called, text read to landline holder.

[Mabouya]

Random but related aside:

I would imagine that to "read" it they use the same type of software the NWS uses for weather radio. It sounds pretty good.

The NWS guys create and type the forecast into a computer then feed it into a program that in turn feeds it to the transmitter in the same way that a live person's voice is sent out over the airwaves. Often the exact same text is displayed on the NOAA web site for the forecast shown there.

I used to think that they had all the words programmed in individually, but it must be done by letters / syllables, because a few weeks ago the radio computer-voice forecast had a strange glitch in the middle of one word. Later that day I happened to be looking at that same forecast on the web and the word that caused the glitch was there, but with a typo. The computer just "read" the typo as it had been programmed to do. Also, it's interesting to catch the little mis-pronunciations and syllable emphasis errors the computer voice sometimes messes up.

(Does it sound as if my life is so boring that I sit around listening to computer voices on the radio repeat the same thing over and over again? Well, that's what sometimes happens during tornado and severe-thunderstorm season.)