4:15 PM -- How can you tell when a technology has really come of age? All manner of spam-artists decide that it is an appropriate channel for their own particular brand of snake-oil hucksterism.

So, I was overjoyed to receive my first-ever spam text message in the U.S. yesterday, inviting me to "Go Hard or go home." Which, despite its suggestive title promised not, er, downtown miracle creams, but instead extolled the virtues of some dance party or other.

Spam texts have been a regular occurence in the U.K. for several years now. Indeed, there's a whole sector of the mobile business devoted to blocking the pesky texts. So their appearance stateside indicates a certain maturity in the U.S. SMS market, which has been initially slow to take off, compared to its European cousins.

Of course, analysts have been predicting a surge in SMS spam for a while now, but this is the first tangible evidence I've seen that it's really out there. And that probably signals that it is about time to get ready for the next wave of wireless nastiness. For where there's spam, there's viruses, as sure as night follows day.

— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung