Web texting is two-way text messaging from the Web to a mobile handheld device, usually a cellular phone.

Traditionally, SMS messages are texted from handheld to handheld. As mobile providers have improved their Web sites, it has become possible for subscribers to log on and send text messages to cell phones from the online account. Now, companies are taking it one step further and allowing text messages to be sent to and from an online application and a cell phone.

To learn more, WhatIs.com's Alex Howard called up Gavin Macomber, co-founder & executive vice president of MobileSphere, which has developed a Web texting platform.

When you listen to the podcast, you'll learn the answers to the following questions:

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• How is Web texting different from "normal" texting
  
• How does Web texting work?
  
• What security concerns are there with Web texting?
  
• What is happening with mobile spam and SMSing? What about SMiShing?
  
• What international issues are there with Web texting? Where does it work -– and where doesn't it?
  
• How many users in North America are sending text messages vs. eastern Asia or Western Europe?
  
• Are Treos and BlackBerrys and other QWERTY keyboard-equipped handsets changing the equation?
  
• How is the market for Web texting changing with millions of users beginning to save, edit, upload and share multimedia content from camera and video phones?
  
• What is fixed-mobile convergence and what's important about the trend?
  
• What is a softswitch and how does it work?
  
• What is an MVNO?
  

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Use the Flash player above or click on the MP3 link below to listen on your PC or download to your favorite portable media player. After you listen, visit Joopz to try out Web texting yourself.



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