The joy of text at your fingertips

12:52pm Friday 29th December 2000

EVERY day brings a new fad on the internet, and one craze currently in vogue is sending text messages to mobile phones via specialised websites.

The first, and most important thing to say about this service is it is absolutely free to people who want to send messages to mobile phones in the UK and Europe.

Secondly, it is an easy, and relatively fun, means of communication, which can best be done by logging onto smsboy.com, or alternatively totalise.net

And thirdly, it cant be overstated how staggeringly popular this service has proved to be. smsboy.com has only been up and running since the middle of November, but response for the site has been huge since day one. Darren White, of the marketing department, enthused that public demand for the service has exceeded all our expectations and gone beyond our wildest dreams. So, it would be fair to say that they are pleased with the way things have gone so far.

As well as enabling someone to send text messages, the site includes several optional extras in the package to make your mobile messaging an enjoyable personal experience. These include pre-written messages to suit every occasion, just in case you cant think of anything to say.

Plans are also afoot for the site to offer a large choice of ring tones and icons to further personalise messages.

All in all this adds up to one internet fad which is likely to run and run.

The only foreseeable problem is the basic ingredients for using this site is having a friend to send messages to.

For those people who enjoy spending their time surfing the net and playing with mobile phones this may prove to be a major problem.