How strange, that on the same day I come across an article in the local Sacramento newspaper indicating local government is considering a tax on text messaging, I also find myself knee deep in the latest SMS tech?  It’s called 3jam.  (Thanks Techcrunch.)  The whole thing is oddly curious.  But curiously odd?  It’s not.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a huge fan of the text message, be it SMS or MMS.  My biggest qualm being a general degradation of the English language form.  Which, if you’re keeping up, should seem kind of ridiculous —  I Twitter and Plurk.  Both services limiting input to 140 characters.  (What is it with that number?)

To be fair, the tax doesn’t really bother me.  The article claims there would be a reduction to my tax on the land line I keep.  Yea!  Some balance.  But the real reason is, I don’t do a ton of texting (verb?).  I typically distribute my GrandCentral phone number and it doesn’t allow for SMS or MMS.  (I’m saved.)

So far as I can tell, this tax is limited to the Sacramento area, so if you’re local, you might want to get involved in the November fourth election.

But even if you’re going to get taxed, the great feature of 3jam is that it only registers one text message regardless of how many folks you send the same message to.   (I can send a message to all two of my friends and only be charged for the price of one message.  Then, if either recipient replies to said message, it will go to every person on the original message list and only result in the cost of one message being sent for the sender.  It probably makes more sense if you have more than two friends.)

Good luck.

SMS Tax? Not 3jam! was first posted to justinll.com on June 18, 2008.