Jon Tickle’s Text Message Challenge!

The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.

What on earth is Jon talking about? Find out by clicking the video below!

[Video]http://youtube.com/watch?v=m_B3hY7HQ58[/Video]

Ok, so that’s the Text Messaging World Championship then! 42 seconds to type out a 160 character text message, that’s no mean feat! We did actually officially time Jon’s attempt to beat the world record, but not only did the timekeeper lose interest halfway through, a quick examination of his text at the end showed he’d disobeyed most of the rules of the challenge, and had spelled a fair few of the words wrong.

To recap:

• The text must be completely and accurately typed including all punctuation and capitalisation
• No use of predictive text or spelling aides are allowed

Do you think you’ve got the fastest fingers in the West? Lets see if we’ve got any more world championship contenders out there!

Full transcript of the video:

Hello, this is Jon Tickle for the Dial-a-Phone blog.

The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.

Interesting stuff.

Now before you start calling for a doctor, allow me to explain. That is the official 160 character SMS message as devised by Singaporean mobile organisation SingTel in the 2006 world text messaging championship. The rules of the competition are that the text must be completely accurately typed, and no use of predictive text, and any spelling aids are allowed.

The winner was Chuang Yang, a young man who claims to send over 1000 texts to friends and family every month. Popular guy! He typed out that message accurately in 41.52 seconds.

I would say I send about 100 texts a month, but I have to say I’m quietly confident! Guinness Book of Records here I come!

Dial-a-Phone have agreed to time my world record attempt, so this is my official time, if you’re ready, start the clock in 3,2,1, GO!

(Several minutes later!)

Now obviously, I’m rubbish at the challenge, and the guys and girls at Dial-a-Phone think they can do it much faster than me, so I’ve included them in the competition. If you’re ready, if got my stopwatch on my phone and I’m going to time you all, in 3,2,1, do your best!

(DAP boys and girls whizz through the text message challange)

Well done Azam, I’ve got to check first…yeah, that’s looks right to me, so the winner at Dial-a-Phone is Azam in one minute fifty one seconds, but how fast can you do the text message challenge?