Its official, text messaging isn’t just for teens and college students anymore. A recent mobile market report found 50% of text users are aged 35 or older. No surprise, it also reported 75% are aged 25 and up. Verizon Wireless was recently the first American carrier to report the average SMS (Short Message Service) text messages sent by its subscriber base had passed one SMS sent per phone subscriber per day.

“There are more than 255 million mobile phone users in the U.S. alone,” says Scott Meyer, senior partner of MyTxtConnect, a local Orlando text-based marketing company. “That’s roughly 85% of the population, and almost all of them have a phone with SMS capability.” As for the rest of the world, cell phone subscriptions have reached a record 3.3 billion, according to Reuters newswire. “Worldwide, about 84% of cell phone users text, at least occasionally,” says Meyer.

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Opportunities in Information Technology (IT) continue to grow here in East Orlando. With businesses that already call Orlando home as well as those moving into the area, technology is playing a major role in how business is conducted. Today Orlando hosts a $13.4 billion technology industry that employs close to 53,000 people. Some of the leading segments include digital media; optics and photonics; modeling, simulation and training; aviation/aerospace; homeland security/defense; and information technology.

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One of the original tech companies to blaze a path to Central Florida was Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin’s history dates back to 1909 when Glenn L. Martin organized a company around an airplane construction business. The Glenn L. Martin Company merged with American-Marietta Corporation in 1961 to become Martin Marietta, and then in 1995 with Lockheed Corporation to form the Lockheed Martin Corporation.

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The Sleeve Monitors Activity, Sleep, Nutrition, and Overall Wellness It may look like an iPod or MP3 player, but the innovative new tool that dozens of health-conscious people in East Orlando are wearing is actually an armband called the HealthSTYLE™ Sleeve. Developed out of a partnership between Florida Hospital and Welnia, the HealthSTYLE™ Sleeve is designed to give people the tools they need to become healthier. Participants wear their armbands every day and download health information into their computer to monitor their goals and overall fitness.

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The attacks on September 11th, 2001 affected many aspects of American life but perhaps none so much as commercial air travel. In the past six years, there have been unprecedented attempts to close security gaps at airports. The result is a commercial aviation system that is safer, but also far more intrusive and time consuming. Behind the scenes, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), part of the Department of Homeland Security, is spending billions of dollars on research and new technology aimed at removing some of that hassle.

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