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January 16, 2010

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US$100,000 for fastest texters

TWO South Korean teenagers have been crowned fastest texters in the world.

The team of 17-year-old Bae Yeong Ho and 18-year-old Ha Mok Min went thumb-to-thumb against competitors from a dozen countries to win the title in New York City on Thursday.

The LG Mobile World Cup challenged nimble-fingered youths on both speed and accuracy. The winning team took home a US$100,000 prize.

Second place and US$20,000 went to the American contestants -- 16-year-old Kate Moore, the 2009 United States National Texting Champion, and 14-year-old Morgan Dynda, the 2009 runner-up. An Argentinian team came in third and the Brazilians took fourth.

"New York sure is an active, lively city!" said Bae, who has a beautiful bass voice and is saving his US$50,000 share of the prize to study to become an opera singer. Ha said she's saving for studies to become an engineer.

The drill of the third annual Mobile World Cup was simple: Copying words and phrases in one's native language off a monitor correctly, with no spelling mistakes or abbreviations, and as fast as possible with the required capitalization and punctuation. Some words were intentionally misspelled to test alertness.

Privately, Moore averages 12,000 texts per month, entering up to 3.5 characters per second.

She said that although she's almost always "carrying on a conversation with someone, texting," the habit doesn't detract from face-to-face social life. "I can talk and text at the same time, without looking at the phone."

Moore said female texters have an advantage. "Girls are faster 'cause their hands are smaller," she said.



 

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