Metrolink officials Saturday put the blame squarely on the engineer of the train for the deadly crash that has claimed at least 25 lives. They say he ran a red light. But a group of local teenage train enthusiasts who knew the engineer well, doubt that he was to blame.

They called their friend professional and caring and said he helped them learn about trains and being an engineer. They said he would “never” have been reckless or unprofessional or run a red light.

But one minute before the deadliest crash in Metrolink history, one teen said he received a text message on his cell phone from the engineer, whom the teens identified as Robert Sanchez. The text was brief, “Just two lines”, reported KCAL 9 and CBS 2 reporter Kristine Lazar, exclusively.

The text apparently told the teen and his friends where Sanchez would be meeting another passenger train. Shortly after, and possibly while still using his phone to send text messages, the train crashed. More.

In what air accident investigator John Hughes described in his report yesterday as a “serious incident”, the twin-engined Piper plane lost all on-board electrical power, communications and weather radar soon after take-off from Kerry airport on November 7th last.

He paid tribute to the initiative of the air traffic controller, saying the loss of all aircraft electrics during a flight “is considered very serious”.

When he realized his problem the 39-year-old pilot, with four passengers on board, gained height and flew south. With a radio communications blackout on board, the pilot used his mobile phone to repeatedly try to establish contact with Kerry airport and then air traffic control at Cork.

Eventually he managed to contact Cork on his phone, telling them about his problem and his intention to approach the airport from the sea. He then lost audio telephone contact but the air traffic controller switched to texting and told the pilot that he had a primary radar signal on the aircraft and that Cork would allow them to land there. He then used texts to guide the 30-year-old plane in.

With no power the landing gear had to be lowered manually and the plane did a fly-past of the Cork control tower to check that it was successfully locked down before the plane landed safely.

Can’t help checking your partner’s text messages on the sly? You’re not alone, with an Australian survey showing one in three mobile phone users are text message snoops, and the consequences can often be heart-breaking.

The online survey, conducted for telecoms service provider Virgin Mobile Australia, shows that women are more likely than men to check their partner’s phone in secret.

It also revealed that 73 percent of these sneaky text checkers have found out things they later wished they hadn’t, and 10 percent ended their relationship because of SMS snooping.

“In a society when we very rarely let our mobile phones out of our sight, it’s quite amazing to think that for a lot of us the minute we jump in the shower, someone might be checking up on us,” Virgin Mobile’s Amber Morris said in a statement. More.

The command line’s making a comeback, but the terminal window, keyword launcher and search box aren’t the only textual command interfaces’your cell phone has joined the party. More and more modern webapps let you interact with your data via SMS, updating and retrieving your information in the cloud on the go. You don’t need a fancy mobile phone with a full-blown web browser to get organized with your favorite webapps. Your cell phone with simple text messaging capabilities can be your powerful mobile command line.

You can manage Calendar events, send twitter messages, get instant reminders like a to-do list, manage your money, track gas mileage and even search the web, all through SMS. More.

Picture the following scenario: you’re driving your normal route to work, minding your own business. Then, out of the corner of your eye, you see that the car next to you started to slowly veer into your lane. You look over and see the driver next to you is busy texting.

How many times has this very scenario happened to you? Or, more importantly, how many times have you been the driver guilty of texting while driving?

It is currently illegal to text while driving in six states: Alaska, California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Washington. Attempts to ban text messaging are currently being made by many more states as well.

Are these bans prime examples of state governments overstepping their bounds and interfering with private matters, or should every state step up and ban texting while driving in an effort to protect ‘innocent’ motorists?

78% said texting while driving should be illegal
19% said texting while driving should not be illegal
3% said they were unsure or had no opinion More.

Pizza Hut joined other pizza chains this week and launched a service that allows people to place their orders on mobile phones. Dominos was the first pizza chain to implement this service, followed by Papa Johns and now, Pizza Hut.

People can sign up for the service at PizzaHut.com and then add their mobile phone number to the account. They can create a customized “Pizza Playlist” with their favorite menu choices and use it as a guide when texting an order to Pizza Hut.

Pizza Hut is offering a second option that requires people to visit its Web site on a phone’s browser. The Web site has been optimized to work on small screens, according to Pizza Hut. It works just like the desktop version where people can browse the complete menu and place their order on the site. More.

Do you ever go out shopping, to the pub or to the beauty clinic for your fortnightly waxing session and forget to put your Mac to sleep? I know I do, so I thought of a way to do it by sending a text message from my mobile/cell phone – well, technically we’re not going to be sending a text (SMS) message, rather a multimedia (MMS) message.

I have my mobile phone contract with Vodafone and I can send an MMS message to an email address instead of a phone number and Vodafone converts the message to an email.

You need to send an MMS message to your own email address and make a note of the email address it comes from – the ones I send from my phone are in the form 44xxxxxxxxxx@mms.vodafone.co.uk with the ‘xxxxxxxxxx’ being replaced with my actual mobile phone number. More.

Apparently a Kawanishi woman was taking her well-being for granted during her daily route to work, as she collided with a man in a subway station whilst texting away at 8:30 in the morning. Subsequently, she plummeted a few feet down onto the subway tracks, only to be saved by a station worker who fearlessly hopped down to rescue her SMS-focused mind.

The oncoming train screeched to a halt just 20 meters before running her over. Thankfully, the woman suffered just minor injuries in the fall, but an estimated 4,500 employees were blaming her for holding up their progress when clocking in late due to the train being delayed.

This is just another story of somebody dying, or almost dying due to carelessly using their phone when they should be paying attention to the dangers around them.

My first few days of reminders from Google Calendar came via my carrier’s email to SMS gateway. After a few days, I noticed that the reminders were being sent from SMS short code 48368. Being of the adventurous sort (and having an unlimited SMS plan), I wondered if I could send a Text Message (SMS) to my Google Calendar to schedule a new appointment. I sent the message ‘help’to 48368, and received a confirmation response saying it was possible.

Sweet! So I can repeat a reminder, get a list of days events for today and tomorrow. Even better, I can make a new appointment from my phone. The instructions hint that the ‘Quick Add’rules apply. So, for example, I can send ‘dinner at Zupas tomorrow 7pm’, and it will be added to your Google calendar instantly.

This is a great way to make sure you don’t forget about a meeting while you’re out and about. Just send a quick text message and your events will be waiting for you when you get home. More.

For the second quarter of 2008, U.S. mobile subscribers sent and received on average 357 text messages per month, compared with making and receiving 204 phone calls a month. The new statistic is a clear indication that Americans have jumped onto the SMS text bandwagon.

In the first quarter of 2006, Americans sent and received 65 text messages per month. The number of messages sent and received today has increased 450 percent. But even though people are texting more, it doesn’t mean that they’ve stopped talking on the phone. According to Nielsen, the number of phone calls that people make and receive each month has remained relatively flat over the past two years.

The wireless industry’s trade association, CTIA, recently noted the explosion in texting in its own report. It recently reported that for the month of June, American cell phone subscribers sent about 75 billion SMS text messages, averaging about 2.5 billion messages per day. This represents an increase of 160 percent over the 28.8 billion messages reported in June 2007. More.