Kate Moore has won $60,000 for her messaging habit. She never expected her “whirlwind texting adventure,” as she calls it, to be successful.
“Texting was just something I picked up, and I’ve been doing ever since,” she says. “When I saw a commercial advertising a texting championship, it never ran through my mind that it would be something that I would be good at.”
She won the championship after texting a long string of words. A phrase which took her less than 60 seconds to type was “Zippity Dooo Dahh Zippity Ayy…My oh MY, what a wonderful day! Plenty of sunshine Comin’ my way…ZippittyDooDahZippityAay! Wonderful feeling, Wonderful day!”
She did a lot or practice and preferred phones with hard QWERTY-style keyboards rather than touchscreeens or numeric keypads. Her current favourite is an LG mode, the fold-open env3
“It works perfect for me — it’s perfect for the text messaging enthusiast,” she insists.
Where did she spend the prize money?
“I saved a lot of it. I didn’t splurge too much…I bought a laptop, some new clothes, nothing really major,” she says. With last month’s winnings she’s considering taking a vacation with her family and making some charitable donations.
Up next for Moore? Defending her title at the 2010 US championship. She’s bullish about her chances.
“It’s going to be a lot bigger, and a lot tougher, but I’m ready for it.”