I've always wanted to make a messaging app that would vibrate in Morse code when you get a message. I love the idea of feeling a message in my pocket and 'reading' it without looking, but I'm also not great at deciphering it, so it wouldn't get much use.
Many years ago when I had an iphone I would set text vibrations to be the morse code of the first letter of someone's name so I knew who messaged me without looking. That's the only feature I still miss to this day with my android.
That would be fun. I think a lot of non-tech people didn't realise that the old Nokia default text message notification was the morse for S.M.S. (short message service). That was a worryingly long time ago though.
As a kid I didn't have a phone, but my parents gave me a cheap iPod Nano. I flashed a custom OS on it (RockBox), which used Morse code as the primary input, since iPods only have a single button.
Programming in lua and writing my diary in Morse code on this microscopic device was a lot of fun.
Morse was a clever way to bypass limitations, which is the definition of hacking itself.
Man. That looks pretty fun. I can't seem to get it to work on my iPhone in several different browsers. The sound won't play. Am I the only one that can't get it working on mobile?
I've been a licensed HAM for a while, but what actually prompted me to start learning Morse code was when I was troubleshooting some hardware that only had a blinking light to communicate back to me. Instead or print statements, I started using blinks to tell me what was happening. I realized it would be so much faster if I knew Morse code.
LICW is a great place to learn. But I also recently discovered https://morsecode.world/ and really like it.
I got my ham license before the "no code" license became a thing. I missed my "Extra" CW test by one point and never tried again, which is sorta cool, because the "Advanced" class is now gone, so I'm keeping mine.
I've got a lot of friends who are avid CW users. One friend used to do CW in his car, which is also very cool.
I learned CW with SuperMorse (on DOS). I went from no skills to passing the General/Advanced in two weeks. It was a fun and easy way to learn.
Related: The book "The Victorian Internet" [0] by Tom Standage was very interesting. I never realized how many social things that were impacted by the broad use of the telegraph would have future analogs during the dotcom age.
Highly recommend!
"For centuries people communicated across distances only as quickly as the fastest ship or horse could travel. Generations of innovators tried and failed to develop speedier messaging devices. But in the mid-1800s, a few extraordinary pioneers at last succeeded. Their invention--the electric telegraph--shrank the world more quickly than ever before.A colorful tale of scientific discovery and technological cunning, The Victorian Internet tells the story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it. By 1865 telegraph cables spanned continents and oceans, revolutionizing the ways countries dealt with one another. The telegraph gave rise to creative business practices and new forms of crime. Romances blossomed over the wires. Secret codes were devised by some users, and cracked by others. The benefits of the network were relentlessly hyped by its advocates and dismissed by its skeptics. And attitudes toward everything from news gathering to war had to be completely rethought.The telegraph unleashed the greatest revolution in communications since the development of the printing press. Its saga offers many parallels to that of the Internet in our own time--and is a fascinating episode in the history of technology."
Long ago at a startup, In-System Design, I was on a team that made one of the first USB-to-ATA mass storage adapter chips. Small company, having fun, one of us put in an easter egg so that when the drive was plugged in and before the OS enumerated it the drive activity light would blink our team cheer, "ISD rocks!", in morse. He even added a test to make sure it worked in verilog simulation.
The chip was fairly successful and years later someone out in the world noticed the funny blinking on their retail USB drive that used it and they figured it out. They wrote a letter to the editor of Byte or Dr. Dobbs or something, wondering what the message "Sis you rock!" meant. Twisted sister fan, maybe?
We saw the letter in the magazine and were chuffed that our easter egg had hatched but... It turns out the designer had typoed the table of ASCII-to-morse values and dot/dash timing he used to build the messaging circuit, so it really was saying "Sis you rock!". And because he also wrote the test it didn't catch the error. Doh!
Me and the other nerds used to send each other notes written in Morse code in high school.
This site is timely. Just the other day I turned on the emergency setting on my flashlight and thought oh that's an interesting pattern. Why would it flash three long then three short then three long? About 30 seconds later I realized that I had forgotten an entire alphabet.
Readit News
This would be a great learning tool for those of us who are trying to learn it also.
Programming in lua and writing my diary in Morse code on this microscopic device was a lot of fun.
Morse was a clever way to bypass limitations, which is the definition of hacking itself.
…kinda an unfortunate answer to have to give :) well they call it Silent Mode which makes it a bit better although it’s inconsistent … I digress
I journal a little bit about my experience here: https://owoga.com/posts/2025-03-18-learning-morse-code/
I've been a licensed HAM for a while, but what actually prompted me to start learning Morse code was when I was troubleshooting some hardware that only had a blinking light to communicate back to me. Instead or print statements, I started using blinks to tell me what was happening. I realized it would be so much faster if I knew Morse code.
LICW is a great place to learn. But I also recently discovered https://morsecode.world/ and really like it.
I've got a lot of friends who are avid CW users. One friend used to do CW in his car, which is also very cool.
I learned CW with SuperMorse (on DOS). I went from no skills to passing the General/Advanced in two weeks. It was a fun and easy way to learn.
"For centuries people communicated across distances only as quickly as the fastest ship or horse could travel. Generations of innovators tried and failed to develop speedier messaging devices. But in the mid-1800s, a few extraordinary pioneers at last succeeded. Their invention--the electric telegraph--shrank the world more quickly than ever before.A colorful tale of scientific discovery and technological cunning, The Victorian Internet tells the story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it. By 1865 telegraph cables spanned continents and oceans, revolutionizing the ways countries dealt with one another. The telegraph gave rise to creative business practices and new forms of crime. Romances blossomed over the wires. Secret codes were devised by some users, and cracked by others. The benefits of the network were relentlessly hyped by its advocates and dismissed by its skeptics. And attitudes toward everything from news gathering to war had to be completely rethought.The telegraph unleashed the greatest revolution in communications since the development of the printing press. Its saga offers many parallels to that of the Internet in our own time--and is a fascinating episode in the history of technology."
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28949978
The chip was fairly successful and years later someone out in the world noticed the funny blinking on their retail USB drive that used it and they figured it out. They wrote a letter to the editor of Byte or Dr. Dobbs or something, wondering what the message "Sis you rock!" meant. Twisted sister fan, maybe?
We saw the letter in the magazine and were chuffed that our easter egg had hatched but... It turns out the designer had typoed the table of ASCII-to-morse values and dot/dash timing he used to build the messaging circuit, so it really was saying "Sis you rock!". And because he also wrote the test it didn't catch the error. Doh!
This site is timely. Just the other day I turned on the emergency setting on my flashlight and thought oh that's an interesting pattern. Why would it flash three long then three short then three long? About 30 seconds later I realized that I had forgotten an entire alphabet.