```, which involved sending short messages to a phone number, and the messages would be shown on TV a while later. Chats are always moderated, which prevents sending harmful material to the channel. The craze soon became popular and evolved into games, first slow-paced quiz and strategy games. After a while, faster paced games were designed for television and SMS control. Games tend to involve registering one's nickname, and after that sending short messages for controlling a character on screen. Messages usually cost 0.05 to 0.86 Euro apiece, and games can require the player to send dozens of messages. In December 2003, a Finnish TV-channel, MTV3, put a Santa character on air reading aloud messages sent in by viewers. More recent late-night attractions on the same channel include ``Beach Volley``, in which the bikini-clad female hostess blocks balls ``shot`` by short message. On March 12 2004, the first entirely ``interactive`` TV-channel ``VIISI`` began operation in Finland. That did not last long though, as SBS Finland Oy took over the channel and turned it into a music channel named ``The Voice`` in November 2004.  In 2006, the Prime Minister of Finland, Matti Vanhanen, made front page news when he allegedly broke up with his girlfriend with a text message.  In 2007, the first text message only book, which is about a business executive who travels throughout Europe and India, was published by a Finnish author.  [edit] Japan  Japan was among the first countries to widely adopt short messages, with pioneering non-GSM services including J-Phone's SkyMail and NTT Docomo's Short Mail. However, short messaging has been largely rendered obsolete by the prevalence of mobile Internet e-mail, which can be sent to and received from any e-mail address, mobile or otherwise. That said, while usually presented to the user simply as a uniform ``mail`` service (and most users are unaware of the distinction), the operators may still internally transmit the content as short messages, especially if the destination is on the same network.  [edit] Morse code  A few widely publicised speed contests have been held between expert Morse code operators and expert SMS users[5]. Several mobile phones have Morse code ring tones and alert messages. For example, many Nokia mobile phones have an option to beep ``S M S`` in Morse code when it receives a short message. Some of these phones could also play the Nokia slogan ``Connecting people`` in morse code as a message tone[citation needed]. There are third-party applications available for some mobile phones that allow Morse input for short messages[6][7][8].  [edit] Spam  In 2002, an increasing trend towards spamming mobile phone users through SMS prompted cellular service carriers to take steps against the practice, before it became a widespread problem. No major spamming incidents involving SMS had been reported as of March 2007, but the existence of mobile-phone spam has been noted by industry watchdogs, including Consumer Reports magazine and the Utility Consumers' Action Network (UCAN). In 2005, UCAN brought a case against Sprint for spamming its customers and charging $0.10 per text message[9]. The case was settled in 2006 with Sprint agreeing not to send customers Sprint advertisements via SMS[10].  SMS expert LogicaCMG reported a new type of SMS-malice at the end of 2006, noting the first instances of SMiShing (a cousin to email phishing scams). In SMiShing, users receive SMS messages posing to be from a company, enticing users to phone premium rate numbers, or reply with personal information.  [edit] Text speak Main article: SMS language    The small phone keypad caused a number of adaptations of spelling, as in the phrase ``txt msg``, or use of CamelCase, such as in ``ThisIsVeryCool``. To avoid the even more limited message lengths allowed when using Cyrillic or Greek letters, speakers of languages written in those alphabets often use the Latin alphabet for their own language.  Historically, this language developed out of shorthand used in Bulletin Board Systems and later in internet chatrooms, where users would abbreviate some words to allow a response to be typed more quickly. However, this became much more pronounced in SMS, where mobile phone users don't generally have access to a QWERTY keyboard as computer users did, more effort is required to type each character, and there is a limit on the number of characters that may be sent.  In Mandarin Chinese, numbers that sound similar to words are used in place of those words. For example, the numbers 520 in Chinese (``wu er ling``) sound like the words for ``I love you`` (``wo ai ni``). The sequence 748 (``qi si ba``) sounds like the curse for ``drop dead``.  Predictive text software that attempts to guess words (AOL/Tegic's T9 as well as iTAP) or letters (Eatoni's LetterWise) reduces the labour of time-consuming input. This makes abbreviations not only less necessary, but slower to type than regular words which are in the software's dictionary. However it does make the messages longer, often requiring the text message to be sent in multiple parts and therefore costing more to send.  Website portals such as transl8it have supported a community of users to help standardize this text speak by allowing users to submit translations, staking claim with their user handle, or to submit top messages and guess the lingo phrases. The international popularity of this portal resulted in late 2005 the publishing of the transl8it! dxNRE & glosRE (dictionary & glossary) as the worlds first, and most complete, SMS and text lingo book.  [edit] Social impact of SMS  SMS has caused subtle but interesting changes in society and language since it became popular. News-worthy events include (in chronological order):  [edit] Academic impact In December 2002, a cheating scheme was uncovered during final-exam week at the University of Maryland, College Park. A dozen students were caught cheating on an accounting exam through the use of text messages on their mobile phones. In December 2002, Hitotsubashi University in Japan failed 26 students for receiving e-mailed exam answers on their mobile phones. Using text language is becoming an increasing practice in classes and exams[11].  [edit] Criminal impact In June 2003, a British company developed a program called Fortress SMS for Symbian phones which used 128 bit AES encryption to protect SMS messages.[12]. In January 2004, cult member Sara Svensson confessed to having murdered the wife of pastor Helge Fossmo and having shot his lover's husband Daniel Linde in Knutby, Sweden. She said that she had acted on anonymous text messages that the pastor had forwarded to her[13]. In July 2004, the police in Tilburg, the Netherlands, started an experiment in which people could register for a short message service. The police would send a message to ask citizens to be vigilant when a burglar was on the loose or a child was missing in their neighbourhood. Several thieves have been caught and children found using the ``SMS Alerts``. The service has been expanding rapidly to other cities. On August 14, 2005, there was a hoax involved in the Helios Airways Flight 522 plane crash. News media widely reported that shortly before the crash a passenger sent a short message indicating that the pilot had become blue in the face, or roughly translated as ``The pilot is dead. Farewell, my cousin, here we're frozen.`` Police later arrested Nektarios-Sotirios Voutas, a 32 year-old private employee from Thessaloniki who admitted that he had made up the story and given several interviews in order to get attention. In December 2005, ChinaTechNews.com reported that China's Beijing police detained nine suspects who were members of an illegal wireless short message-sending organization called ``Xiao Hai``. Local media reported that the suspects included a person surnamed Zou who had been involved in organizing homosexual prostitution, and Wang Wenbin who police say is guilty of bank fraud[14]. In February 2005, an Australian company by the name of theSMSzone.com launched a controversial SMS spoofing service allowing messages to be masked, anonymous, and thus totally unidentifiable. This facilitates spam, mobile fraud and defamation, among other things. In December 2005 in Australia, text messaging was cited for helping to incite the 2005 Cronulla riots. The SMS messages assisted in mobilising about 5,000 white Australians to engage in violence against those of Middle Eastern origin. In response, some Australians have called for the use of text messaging (or any other electronic means) to incite a riot to be treated as an aggravating circumstance and thus punished more harshly than other forms of incitement.  [edit] Political impact In January 2001, Joseph Estrada was forced to resign from the post of president of the Philippines. The popular campaign against him was widely reported to have been co-ordinated with SMS chain letters. In the wake of the 2004 Madrid train bombings, SMS was used to garner support for large protest rallies. During the 2004 US Democratic and Republican National Conventions, protestors used an SMS based organizing tool called TXTmob. During the 2004 Philippine presidential elections, short message was a popular form of electoral campaigning for and against candidates such as incumbent president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and main contender Fernando Poe, Jr. In March of 2005, SMS was one of the communications forms used to garner support for the Lebanese political rallies. French national police spokesman, Patrick Hamon, was qu