"The company said its shoutout portal will feature youth-oriented capabilities such as communities, a selection of ringtones and games such as KISS, which the company described in a statement as 'the ultimate text messaging flirting game.'

It also features romantic horoscopes, pick-up lines and local movie times, according to the company.

'These on-demand, interactive products sync up with the way the 14 to 24 year-old market lives and uses wireless services,' said Rob Hyatt, Cingular's executive director of consumer marketing. 'shoutout will take Cingular's offer of self-expression into a unique new realm of community and interactivity.' " [allNetDevices Wireless News]

Visit the site and time how long it takes before you are thoroughly annoyed by the spinning Cingular logos in the upper left-hand corner. Then try to read the text on the navigation buttons. It's okay - put your face up close to the screen and squint. Hey, here's the top 10 ringtones for March 2002:

1. Get Ur Freak On by Missy "Misdmeanor" Elliot
2. Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson; Alien Ant Farm
3. Pink Panther Theme
4. Big Pimpin' by Jay Z
5. How You Remind Me by Nickelback
6. Hard Knock Life by Annie; Jay Z
7. Enter Sandman by Metallica
8. Bad Boys - Theme from Cops by Inner Circle
9. Inspector Gadget Theme
10. Batman Theme

Very eclectic mix there! But then, this portal isn't aimed at you or me (as if we couldn't tell by the fact that Britney Spears is the featured artist). This seems like a tentative first-step towards an i-mode like service similar to what they have in Japan. Many a wireless portal has come and gone, so it will be interesting to see if the time has come for one to take hold.

Tonight we realized that Brent calls movies you watch at home "DVDs." He said he wanted to see Big Fat Liar again. When it was pointed out to him that it wasn't in theaters anymore, he said it was probably out on DVD now. The overwhelming majority of movies we own are on VHS videotapes, but the official term to him is "DVD." He's six.

" 'Their thumbs have become bigger, more muscular,' said Sadie Plant, author of a new report of 'On the Mobile,' a study of cellphone habits of people in eight major world cities. Talking from Birmingham, England, she said that Japan's 'oya yubi sedai,' or 'thumb generation,' was the most advanced in the world.

'What impressed me in Tokyo was their ability to tap in a message without even looking at the keypad,' she said of her study, which was financed by Motorola.

Television stations in Japan have held thumbing speed contests. Last year, one young woman was clocked thumbing out 100 Chinese characters in a one-minute burst, similar to typing 100 words a minute, a feat normally done with all fingers flying....

Across town, in a white tablecloth restaurant where talking on cellphones is discouraged, Ayako Inaba's right thumbnail — peach pink with little silver stars — silently guided her through the electronic tree in her cellphone display.

'It has changed how I live,' said the 22-year-old fashion journalist who bought her Web-capable cellphone as soon as she moved back to Tokyo from New York last spring. 'We used to say, `We will meet at 7:30 in the Ginza in front of the lion of Mitsukoshi department store.' Now we just say, `Let's meet at 7 in the Ginza....' '

Thumbing through her in box, she read from the text index — a message in English from her boyfriend in Italy, a message in Chinese characters, or kanji, from an old boyfriend in Japan, and a message from a college girlfriend....

Kannon Konno, a 20-year-old college student, paused from perusing her e-mail to watch a middle-aged man pecking at his cellphone with an index finger. She commented drily: 'I think he should use a P.C.'

On a cellphone, speeding thumbs make road kill of grammar and punctuation. Some cellphone companies include 200 pictographs in an electronic vocabulary....

In Japanese, cellphones are eroding people's writing skills. In a poll of 3,000 Japanese adults conducted in January by Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, 27 percent said that the use of computers and cellphones had made their handwriting worse, and 52 percent said they had forgotten some characters. With more young adults reading cellphones in subways, sales of books and magazines in Japan dropped last year, for the fifth year in a row....

Thumbs, the doctor cautioned, should not be belittled. Scientific research indicates that "thumbs dominate a huge area of the brain. In Japan, if you lose a thumb, you are redesignated under our national labor legislation as heavily handicapped.' " [NY Times: Technology]

I've already referred to this study once, but I like the examples the NYT articles provides. It's only a matter of time before this phenomenon hits American NetGens. It's already started. I've noticed myself watching Kailee and Brent to see if I can pick up on them using their thumbs or fingers differently than I do.