Refreshed the website design for TXT Signal homepage. Just to freshen things up a bit. Many of the same/similar elements.

It’ll work for now. An eternal question still remains: when adding content, do you add to the website or the blog? Hmm…

Drop us a line with any comments about the blog: support@txtsignal.com.

New carrier Cellcom was added

And, I thought that last week’s article about the Bluetooth technology to deliver unsolicited ads wasn’t a good idea.

Here’s this…Company Will Monitor Phone Calls to Tailor Ads.

Basically, these companies monitor your call, pick up on certain keywords, then present an advertisement to the user DURING the call.

And, their “hook” is…tada…”free service”. I guess the saying, “there are no free lunches” needs to be expanded to include phone calls.

Take a peek at this article: Get ready for ads on your cell phone (ZDNet). It’s really quite unbelievable how technology can be applied even to the stupidest of ideas.

Basically, advertisers are working on ways to use send you ads to your phone whenever you are “within range” (using BlueTooth and Code 2D). I think that this falls into the “Galatically Stupid” category of things that carriers and advertisers continue to do.

It puzzle me that carriers, advertisers, and (worst of all) members of the “Mobile Marketing Association of…” continue this charade. They continually think of ways to jam advertising down your throat and always overlook the most important factor: you, the consumer.

Basically, with these 2 technologies, walking by or with a nominal distance of a sign is “opt-in” to them.

It’s just as crazy as (um, I don’t know) browsing to a web page and 14,000 pop up ads appearing. I’m still struggling to think of a real-world equivalent to the visceral hatred that (um, I don’t know) EVERYONE that has ever used the “Inter-webz” feels for pop ups.

TiVO, iPods, Satellite radio are about 1 thing: control.

So, how do carriers gets people to buy into this stuff? Free (or low priced) phones.

Did you ever wonder how you could get a phone that costs $249 for FREE? What the carrier does is: give you the phone for free (or low price) and write into your contract that agree to receive these types of messages.

But, that’s not the same as a free (or low priced) phone and agreeing to stick with the carrier for 2 years. That’s actually pretty fair; that’s an actual trade off. Your loyalty + 2 year agreement = free phone

This new arrangement will be much more lopsided. Your time & attention abused anytime, anyplace, anywhere = free phone.

Doesn’t seem like a fair deal to me.

From time to time, we receive some questions about our service versus our competitors. So, I figured I would address it on our blog. There are two key areas where we outperform our competition.

Pricing
TXT Signal uses flat rate pricing. With our Premium account, you get 240 group messages and up to 1,500 contacts.

Even if you use only 1/2 the available contacts (750) and send only 1/2 the available messages (120), you would pay monthly charges of $2,475 with our competitors. With TXT Signal, you pay $30.

Pricing Basis
The explanation for this difference is really simple: the pricing basis. You’re paying for a group text messaging service, so we charge for the actual number of group messages you send. Our competitor’s “group” your contacts together to receive your message, but they still charge you for each message.

While the other services may offer some different features we don’t, the overall ease-of-use of TXT Signal and the price helps any organization (whether for-profit or not) take advantage of group text messaging.