While I'm not sure I would use this as "more personal, more emotional" texting - I'd still just call - I see the value for lessening misunderstanding. Texting is pretty low bandwidth, by comparison.
The part about tying in all your SIM cards when travelling is interesting to me. I'm constantly across borders and I don't yet have a cost-effective solution to getting SMSs on all numbers (Skype works fine for call-forwarding).
That I could forward my numbers locally to a number I choose. Say my U.S. cell, Australian, UK and Spanish cell phones: I just buy a new SIM when I'm back somewhere longer than a few days, but that's getting ridiculous (though it's cheaper than roaming). If I'm away for a while it expires, so I get yet another number. I could email everyone or call them but they have an old number for me and it's a hassle for my friends, less me as my Android phone is great at keeping me up-to-date.. so maybe it's something as simple as an iPhone/Android app that pushes cellnumber changes to your friends? I'd pay for that. I can't imagine the telcos letting go the noose on their number forwarding..
Yes, if additional numbers were actually priced well. Skype for example, you're paying 20-50cents a minute for forwarding to non-U.S. cellphones so that's worse than roaming in some cases. It's a telco issue basically: cell phone calls are ridiculously priced outside of the U.S. and Canada.
I understand what you are looking for, and I think it could be achieved as a tier 2 telco... in the meantime, here's something that might be better than your current solution (no affiliation): http://www.worldsim.com/featuresMulti.aspx
This was Seesmic's original idea, short video messages, threaded into conversations, but for the web. iPhones are more intuitive and useful. Though I find myself more enthralled with FaceTime and enjoying focusing for a period of time instead of spreading it in bursts.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 37.3 ms ] threadGood article, Peter.
Good luck with this.