April 19, 2011

That is not the word you are looking for

I've been doing a lot of text messaging the past few months. In fact, it seems my phone is hardly ever used as an actual phone these days.

I am still using a very basic phone, so texting means tapping the numbered keys. There are three letters associated with each number, so you can tap each key 1 to 3 times to chose the appropriate letter. The other, slightly faster method is to let the phone predict what word I am looking for.

Each series of numbers can match more than one word, so you often have to cycle through some choices. For example, a 4-6-6-3 can spell either 'good' or 'home', words which have a nice little connection.

I recently typed in the last name of a friend. I of course didn't expect the phone to know the name, but the series of key strokes came up as 'enemy'. A terrible misunderstanding.

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