“Where are you?” That’s one of the most common text messages sent, because you want to meet up with a friend or you got separated while shopping at the mall. In fact, over 600 billion text messages are sent in the United States each year posing that exact question. The echoecho app is supposed to streamline that so the core text message is no longer necessary.

It’s a “simple location-based mobile application for finding friends in the real world.” In some ways, you could say that it fits somewhere between Foursquare and Google Latitude, but it’ll work with anyone in your address book without having to reconnect through another social network. It’s available for Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Nokia Symbian, and the announcement this week is that Echoecho has received some serious financial backing in the form of $750,000. That seed funding comes by way of Google Ventures, as well as PROfounders Capital, a venture firm based out of the UK.

You send the “where are you” request and when your friend accepts, both your locations are shown on a graphical map. You can use it to set up meeting places, chat with friends via EchoChat, and share your location via the web with WebEcho. They’ve also worked so that the app “doesn’t destroy the battery life of your phone, broadcast your location to everyone in the world or force you to join yet another social network.”

“Checking in” is the hip thing to do these days, but maybe you don’t want it to be all that public. In any case, you can check out the echoecho app (and download it) through the official website.

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So, what’s so extreme about this new program from Rogers Wireless? Well, it comes with six additional features to bump text messaging “to the next level.” All of these features can be managed through the My Account section of the Rogers Mobile Internet Portal.

The first feature is Auto-reply. You can think of this as the vacation message that you might set up with your email account, automatically responding to incoming texts with a preset message. Other features allow you to block incoming messages from unwanted sources, to send copies (CC) of your messages to another number or email address, and to forward texts like how you would with call forwarding. Rounding out the list of six features in Rogers Extreme Text Messaging are distribution lists and the personal signature.

All in all, it’s almost like Rogers is trying to make text messages more like what you can do with an email account. There probably isn’t much value here for BlackBerry and iPhone addicts, per se, but it could be great for users of regular feature phones.

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Giving back to the community and to those less fortunate than you is very important, but it can be challenging to open up our checkbooks or to break out the credit cards to do so. As such, the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) has just announced that charity donations can now be sent via text message in Canada.

This comes via a relationship with the Mobile Giving Foundation of the United States and, for the time being, the functionality is limited to a small number of non-profit organizations. For now, you can send specialized text messages to donate to Plan Canada, Jays Care Foundation, Best Buddies, and the Children’s Wish Foundation.

Through the SMS donation system, donors can give five or ten bucks through their cell phones. This functionality is being targeted at a younger generation of users, since so many teens and other young people are sending so many text messages anyway. They’re looking at people in their 20s and 30s.

Not everything is completely set up yet, but Plan Canada and Jays Care Foundations are good to go. To give to the former, send HOPE to 30333. For the latter, it’s CARE to 20222.

Source: MobileSyrup

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