Four decades ago I quit smoking—and I still remember how hard that was to do. The project Rudy writes about below should be available in every language!

In a tag game blog post, Barcelona mobilist Rudy De Waele describes in item 7 how he quit smoking in 2004 with the help of mobile phones and SMS text messages:

Basically, smokers could send a date they wanted to quit smoking to an SMS short number; one week before you wanted to quit, the system tracked your smoking habit -> every time the user lit a cigarette, he/she needed to send an SMS, then the system sended back a text message preparing the user to quit; when the user finally quit, the system send back a kind of positive ‘haiku’ text message supporting the user in this process; after a week the system knew your habit, thus pushed an SMS to the user at crucial moments. This went on for a week and afterwards on regular times whenever the user needed support. I was the first to test the system and simply quit After delivery, I don’t know how come the project never got out of Spain, I thought it was really great and I still believe it’s one of the better mobile projects I was involved in. Some original press release available here and a website of the current project conelmovil.com (both only available in Spanish!)

Four decades ago I quit smoking—and I still remember how hard that was to do. The project Rudy writes about below should be available in every language!
In a tag game blog post, Barcelona mobilist Rudy De Waele describes in item 7 how he quit smoking in 2004 with the help of mobile phones and [...]