I just saw an entry in Ted Leung's blog about SMS messages where he wrote

[via Trevor's ETech notes]

become rude to make a phone call without first checking via sms. [this is becoming more and more the case in europe also]

I would love it if this became the etiquette here in the US as well. For all telephone calls, not just cell calls. People seem to believe that they have the right to call you simply because you have a telephone.

The so-called SMS craze that has hit Europe and Asia seems totally absurd to me. I can understand teenagers and college students using SMS as a more sophisticated way of passing notes to each other in class but can't see any other reason why if I have a device I could use to talk to someone I'd instead send them a hastily written and poorly spelled text message instead. Well maybe if text messages were free and voice calls were fairly expensive but since that isn't the case in the US I guess that's why I don't get it.