Text privacy not a concern

Millions of fingers scurrying over mobile electronic devices might have paused momentarily this week, as news emerged of a trove of text messages containing flirty, sometimes sexually explicit chat between Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and a top aide, says mlive.com.

Even those engaging in more wholesome dialogue would be wise to wonder: Do such messages disappear into the ether or are they permanently logged for potential retrieval?

The answer is largely the former for standard text-messaging technology used by consumers. But the communications devices used by Kilpatrick and chief of staff Christine Beatty employ less-fleeting technology.

K-NFB Reading Technology, a developer of assistive technologies, introduced what it claims to be the first mobile phone software that reads to the blind and the disabled, reports Information Week.

K-NFB, a joint venture between Kurzweil Technologies and the federation of the blind, is making its reading software available on the Nokia N82 mobile phone.

It will be the smallest text-to-speech reading device to date, the company said.

Young people have always been more hip to technology and the Internet than their parents - and usually more politically out of it, says Macon.

But with the emergence of technology as an organising tool in the US presidential campaign, young voters are turning their expertise in all things digital into a real-life voice in elections.

Pointing to the record-shattering youth turnouts in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries, experts and young political types give credit in part to social networking and text messaging, saying they've helped young voters get involved more than at any time since the Vietnam era.