The Inquisitr » cell phones

4.1 Billion text messages sent every day in the US

Steven Hodson — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:04:33 +0000

In the semi-annual CTIA Wireless Industry Survey there were a lot of interesting facts and figures but of them all it has to be the fact that some 740 billion text messages were sent in the first half of 2009 in the United States alone. This works out to 4.1 billion daily SMS messages winging their way around the US each and every day.

Of course this is bringing about the old “running out of spectrum” bugaboo from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski who said at the CTIA wireless industry convention on Wednesday in San Diego:

“We are fast entering a world where mass-market mobile devices consume thousands of megabytes each month. So we must ask: what happens when every mobile user has an iPhone, a Palm Pre, a BlackBerry Tour, or whatever the next device is? What happens when we quadruple the number of subscribers with mobile broadband on their laptops or netbooks? The short answer: We will need a lot more spectrum The biggest threat to the future of mobile in America is the looming spectrum crisis.”

Source: Digital Daily – OMFG: 4.1 Billion Text Messages Sent Every Day in US

With those kind of figures it is only a matter of time until psychologists start lining up their next BMW’s as texting is declared a disorder of some sort.

Hugh Jackman tells cell phone user to STFU during performance

Kim LaCapria — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:01:21 +0000

Hugh Jackman was performing in “A Steady Rain” with Daniel Craig on Wednesday when an someone in the audience’s cell phone started to ring. He wasn’t pleased. Video below:

Play illegal music on cellphone and find it shut down

Steven Hodson — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:35:00 +0000

Word is beginning to trickle out of Japan that the country’s government and music companies are trying to get a pioneering system in place that is designed to stop unauthorized copying of music on mobile phones. As well repeat offenders could find their phone’s music playing capabilities disabled.

The system would be dependant on a centralized database containing information about music that is authorized to be downloaded as well as verifying that cellphone users weren’t downloading illegal copies of music files.

According to the folks over at FreakBits the system is planned to be in service by April 2010. I bet the RIAA is getting the biggest woodie possible at the thought of being able to do the same thing here.

Sprint To Offer Google Android-Powered ‘HTC Hero’ By October

AHN — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:45:47 +0000

Sprint Nextel will give search engine giant Google more support in the mobile phone market after announcing it will offer a a product that uses the Android operating system.

Beginning Oct. 11, Sprint will offer the HTC Hero, which runs Google Android, the open-source smartphone operating system. As a result, the $179.99 phone will come ready to sync up with Google Maps, Gmail and YouTube.

“The arrival of HTC Hero and the Android platform to Sprint’s network is an important milestone for our customers and the U.S. wireless industry,” Sprint Vice President of Product Development Kevin Packingham said Thursday. “With the dependability and coverage of Sprint’s 3G network, HTC Hero users will appreciate a much better experience than is possible now with any other Android phone operating in the United States.”

The move is a great sign for Google as it battles Palm, Microsoft, Apple and others to break into the mobile phone market. Google’s open-source approach has failed to gain serious traction, especially after Apple hit the market with its popular iPhone media player/cell phone hybrid.

Google Vice President of Mobile Platforms Andy Rubin put his spin on the deal: “Sprint and HTC are helping to drive openness and innovation in the mobile industry with the introduction of the Android-powered HTC Hero.”

[Image: Sprint]

Excuse me? $50,000 for texting? for a 15-year old?

Steven Hodson — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:40:00 +0000

Okay, okay, so texting is popular. Everyone is doing but way ahead of the bell curve has to be the pre-teens and teens as they bruise their thumbs in order to stay cool, or cheat at school. Does this mean though that we really have to condone excessive texting to the point that we have a national championship to figure out who is the fast texter?

Sure the publicity for GL, who sponsored this massive nonsense, is worth the $50 Grand that the winning 15 year old girl walked off with, but I still ask why do we need to do this?

Kate Moore, the 15 year old winner, said that parents should chill out about their kids texting through dinner cause they could end up just like her with a big purse of money and a new phone.

Moore, with a speedy and accurate performance, beat out 20 other finalists from around the country over two days of challenges such as texting blindfolded and texting while maneuvering through a moving obstacle course.

In the final showdown, she outtexted 14-year-old Morgan Dynda, of Savannah, Ga. Both girls had to text three lengthy phrases without making any mistakes on the required abbreviations, capitalization or punctuation. Moore squeaked through by a few seconds on the tiebreaking text, getting the best two out of three. As she anxiously waited for confirmation of her win, tears streamed down her face.

The teen dismisses the idea that she focuses too much on virtual communications, saying that while she has sometimes had her phone taken away from her in school, she keeps good grades, performs in school plays and socializes with friends — in person — on the weekends.

In between, she finds time to send about 400 to 470 texts a day. Among her uses of the text messages? Studying for exams with friends, which she says is better done by text because she can look back at the messages to review.

Source: Yahoo News

I realize full well that I am probably in the minority here but this just strikes me as being wrong. It’s right up there with kiddy beauty pageants as far as I am concerned.

[Kate Moore photo courtesy of LG]

Gee tell us something we didn’t know

Steven Hodson — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:04:59 +0000

I caught this one via Allen Stern’s post at CenterNetworks, but did you know that 35% of teens admit to cheating using their cell phones and that 23% don’t consider it cheating. This comes to us courtesy of a new report just posted to Common Sense Media (pdf).

Yes folks our kids are using those fancy cell phones they have emotionally blackmailed us into getting them for cheating at school. Whether it be as simple as storing notes to be used during tests to using the Internet as part of their cheating it is all happening under the ~~watchful~~ eye of teachers. Did we really think that our little darlings would do otherwise?

Here’s a few more findings from the study to cheer you up

Nearly two-thirds of students with cell phones use them during school, regardless of school policies against it.
Teens with cell phones send 440 text messages a week and 110 a week while in the classroom.
76% of parents say that cell phone cheating happens at their teens’ schools, but only 3% believe their own teen has ever used a cell phone to cheat.
45% of teens say that texting friends about answers during tests is a serious cheating offense, while 20% say it’s not cheating at all.

So much for actually learning anything eh.

Don’t have a smartphone – you’re a chump

Steven Hodson — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 06:00:00 +0000

It wasn’t really that long ago when the idea of having a carphone literally meant having a phone in your car and which you paid a really hefty price for. Then came the early days of cellphones and feeling like you were holding something the size and weight of a brick up to your ear. Those days have changed and just about everyone has, at the minimum, a cellphone.

Even I broke down this year and got one even though it was only because I got a deal on it and considering my health makes my wife a little more secure knowing I can get a hold of her at any time. As much as it might be a security blanket in our home for most people it has become their only form of telephone as the number of people opting strictly for cellphone has seen a decline in wireline phones.

However even that perception of cellphones being the standard is changing as more and more people are moving up to smartphones and all the services thy provide. In many cases that smartphone is becoming a lifeline both personally and in our business lives.

For a growing swath of the population, the social expectation is that one is nearly always connected and reachable almost instantly via e-mail. The smartphone, analysts say, is the instrument of that connectedness — and thus worth the cost, both as a communications tool and as a status symbol.

“The social norm is that you should respond within a couple of hours, if not immediately,” said David E. Meyer, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. “If you don’t, it is assumed you are out to lunch mentally, out of it socially, or don’t like the person who sent the e-mail.”

The spread of those social assumptions may signal a technological crossover that echoes the proliferation of e-mail itself more than a decade ago. At some point in the early 1990s, it became socially unacceptable — at least for many people — to not have an e-mail address.

Source: New York Times

It is this same type of attitude that is driving the sale of smartphones even if it means counting pennies or doing without other things. It is no longer a luxury, or a gadget, but is in fact becoming a social and business norm. In many places if you aren’t connected using a smartphone you are looked upon as being the next best thing to a luddite.

There is a downside according to psychologists though

The smartphone, said Mr. Meyer, a cognitive psychologist, can be seen as a digital “Skinner box,” a reference to the experiments of the behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner in which rats were conditioned to press a lever repeatedly to get food pellets.

With the smartphone, he said, the stimuli are information feeds. “It can be powerfully reinforcing behavior,” he said. “But the key is to make sure this technology helps you carry out the tasks of daily life instead of interfering with them. It’s about balance and managing things.”

Jeez .. I just get caught up with the cool kids and get a cellphone only to find out I’m still behind. Hopefully this same thing won’t happen if I managed to pull off a really good seal and join the really cool kids and et myself a MacBook laptop – because that would really suck crabapples.

Who has the best mobile penetration data? Not the FCC

Steven Hodson — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:21:11 +0000

As the agency tasked with keeping track of all things telecommunication based one would think that it would be the FCC who would have the most accurate numbers regarding wireless penetration in the US. It turns out that this isn’t the case in fact the source of the more reliable numbers found the FCC an unreliable source so it went out and found out for themselves.

Who is this mysterious agency you might ask.

Well it turns out to be none other than the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). More precisely it is the statistical clearinghouse, National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), for the CDC that compiles the actual data. It was the NCHS that figured out about six years ago that its stats gathering was suffering from a major problem – the rapid growth of cellphone use and the decline of wired telephones.

As Stephen Blumberg told Jordan Lite from Scientific American

Why is this an issue? Wireless-only folks differ from those who still keep a landline, Blumberg explains. Not only do they skew younger, but they behave differently, too. Introduce those differences into health surveys, he says, and the results are biased.

[….]

That said, "even if we control for age, renting, income, education, for family structure, where they live, race — minority individuals are more likely to be wireless only — we still see health differences," Blumberg says. "Wireless-only [users] are more likely to binge drink, they are more likely to smoke, they’re more likely to be uninsured so therefore, if these wireless-only adults are excluded from these surveys, they may underestimate binge drinking, smoking and the prevalence of uninsured adults. That’s why the CDC is concerned."

The actual numbers as discovered by NCHS breakdown as follows

number of wireless households rose from 3.5 percent in 2003 to 17.5 percent in the first half of last year
6 million adults and 2 million kids were wireless only in 2003 but as of last year 36 million adults and 12 million kids were wireless

This kind of begs the question – if the CDC has better data on wireless penetration what is the FCC doing?

Technology to take power usage through the roof

Steven Hodson — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:14:27 +0000

Last year the world spent $80 billion (USD) on electricity to power all the gadgets we can’t seem to do without anymore. This poser demand has increased due to the rise in computers, MP3 players, home video games, wireless routers, portable phones and those hot flat screen, high definition digital televisions. It is so bad that the estimate is that by 2030 the expenditure on electricity will grow to $200 billion (USD).

It is believed that to meet these demands will require the output of 200 new power plants and will double greenhouse emissions to on billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. This has prompted a move by the International Energy Agency (IEA) to start urging governments around the world to create new, lower, energy efficiency standards. The idea being to force manufacturers to include extra-low power modes for when our gadgets aren’t in use as well as improve the overall operating efficiency of those electronic gadgets.

Paul Waide, a senior policy adviser at the agency, says the digital revolution is transforming home electronics into ubiquitous, multi-purpose appliances. Some refrigerators now come with televisions in the door, while TVs are now high-definition computer monitors that can also be used to listen to radio.

He said consumers should shut down their gadgets when not in use and unplug when not in use the growing number of battery chargers needed for cordless phones, cellphones, iPods and laptops.

And they should listen to radio on an actual radio, rather than an energy-hogging television or computer.

At the same time, many jurisdictions are moving to digital-only television, which consumes far more power than the traditional analogue sets.

The IEA estimates the electricity demand for television usage will rise by 5 per cent a year.

Source: The Globe and Mail

Mobile computing has nothing to do with users – everything to do with money

Steven Hodson — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:01:58 +0000

There’s a lot of hot air being blasted into the tech blogosphere bubble trying to make it seem that the future of computing is mobile and how important this shift is to the user.

Bullshit.

Mobile computing is only about one thing – making bucket loads of money before the users get fed up with having to carry multiple devices and pay outrageous fees in order to keep up with where they are being told their wired lives are headed. If it truly was about making our digital lives easier the iPhone would be available for any network you wanted to connect to in any country you were in. The Palm Pre wouldn’t be making deals to have single providers in the US and Canada.

The problem is that we – as users – haven’t wrapped our heads around the fact that mobile computing, if it is to become ubiquitous, has to start being looked at as a single communication pipeline. This isn’t a matter of what operating systems are powering these computing handsets. It is a matter the networks that tie them all together and who controls them. It is a matter of the manufacturers of the devices that tie us increasingly to our digital world and them making deals with network providers that don’t benefit the users.

When Apple released the iPhone on the world there was a lot of press being written about the deal that they cut with AT&T being their sole supplier. This wasn’t to benefit the users, it was to benefit Apple with a single profitable delivery channel and it was a benefit to AT&T because they got to make a shitload of money. What did the users get out of the deal? they got an expensive first generation phone, that dropped in price not long after hitting the market, on a network that still to this day provides questionable service.

Now we have the Palm Pre going the same route. Just as Apple cut a deal with Rogers in Canada, Palm is making Bell Canada their exclusive provider for the Pre (get the Vaseline ready folks). Where are the users in all this deal making? getting shafted at one point or another.

Back when rail was king there was a period when it was a confusing mess of different types of rail for the trains to run on being used. This created inconsistencies in service with different companies providing service to different areas. It caused incredible expense because of duplication of everything from the rail being laid to the engines and train cars being built. Once they were forced to consolidate onto one size of track everything changed. Rail travel exploded and as a result businesses exploded.

Now fast forward to the day when mobile networks are the new tracks and the device manufacturers are the new train car builders. Except now there is no ideal of making the users world better by creating a level playing field that benefits them. Instead we have device manufacturers colluding with the transporters of our mobile communications and digital lives to keep the tracks a different size.

Just as we saw a boom when the railways had to all use the same size track I believe we would see one of the most incredible booms if instead of mobile computing being geared to benefit the providers it benefitted the users. To do this our mobile devices need to be available at a cost everyone could afford and with access that is equitable worldwide. These devices would need to be able to be used anywhere in the world and on any network and with a quality of service that isn’t controlled by corporate boardrooms and shareholder greed.

Then we would see a different world.

Advertising courtesy of your local telco

Steven Hodson — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:46:50 +0000

Anyone who doesn’t think that advertising isn’t the backbone of our Internet age is only fooling themselves. Anyone involved with providing services at some point looks to advertising to add to their bottom line; and companies like Tegit Marketing are in the business of enabling companies like your local telco to take advantage of ad dollars.

Using their T9 Nav technology Tegit Marketing provides local telcos with the ability to leverage the power of keywords by linking keywords to a specific URL. So let’s say you type in; on the idle screen of your phone, the word ‘donuts’ which you local telco can then sell the URL associated with that keyword to Tim Horton’s (a Canadian donut/coffee shop).

The thing is that in this kind of scenario there is no way around being shown that telco provided ‘default’ search result, other than launch your mobile browser and using your search engine of choice. By defining a cloud of keywords and then selling them to anyone wanting to buy them your telco has effectively locked you into a passive advertising situation.

I think that when the services launches in late 2009 you will see a lot of the telcos looking very seriously at it as a way to increase their profits even further – at our expense.

[hat tip to Blog Herald]

Daughter’s texting cost family $4,756.25 – Damn!

Steven Hodson — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:32:49 +0000

Texting has become something of our next social disease but in most cases doesn’t much more damage that give you sore thumbs especially if you are in the habit of sending out 10,000 text messages. The real problem is when you suddenly find yourself with a hefty bill at the end of the month as Gregg and Jaylene Christoffersen did recently.

It turns out their daughter, Dena Christoffersen, got a little over active at school with her texting habit on a phone that her parents had thought the texting had been disabled. Well it turns out that it wasn’t and Verizon was good enough to send them a bill for $4,756.25.

Not only that but during this time Dena’s grades went from As and Bs to solid Fs right across the board. Combine the two things together and Gregg Christoffersen did the only thing a father could do – he took a hammer to the phone. Dena has also been grounded until the end of the school years, but since she has lost her phone her grades have made a marked recovery.

On the money part of it Verizon was good enough to take the ax to the bill and reduce it down to a more reasonable level.

[via 9NEWS.com]

Sony Introduces New W205 Walkman Phone

JR — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:00:09 +0000

Sony Ericsson is bringing a new version of its Walkman brand into the mobile world. The company has just introduced its W205 Walkman phone with the hopes of snagging more share of the cell-phone-meets-entertainment market.

Sony Ericsson W205 Walkman Phone

The W205 Walkman phone comes with 5MB of built-in storage and support for up to 2GB of add-on memory. It features a 128×160 pixel screen and 1.3-megapixel camera that also has video recording capabilities. The W205 Walkman phone is able to receive FM radio, too — a function the current iPhone has yet to incorporate (though the latest rumors do suggest the next-gen iPhone could add FM transmission).

The W205 Walkman phone also offers a “TrackID” music recognition system, which can identify songs and artists with limited audio samples. It looks more like a regular Walkman than a phone until the slideout keypad appears.

The Walkman phone operates on GSM/GPRS networks. It comes with Opera’s mobile browser as its default. The device weighs about 0.2 pounds. It’s expected to become available by the third quarter of 2009, though pricing and specific availability has not yet been revealed.

A gadget accessory I could really like

Steven Hodson — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:37:01 +0000

I’m not one much for gadget accessories but every once in awhile something comes along that you just have to admit to yourself that you would really like one of those things. You can keep your cat tail USB sticks or any number of the hundreds of other silly ass USB gadgets but show me something that looks cool and helps fill a need and I’m right there.

Such is the case with this Power Shelf as it perfectly answers the big clutter problem with all our rechargeable electronics. Now instead of a jumble of wires and valuable cell phones and laptops collecting around electrical outlet all ready for us to trip over you can use the Power Shelf to tame the wire madness and get those items up off the floor.

The company offers a complete line of Power Shelf’s starting at $15.95 and going up to $59.99

hat tip to Crave

What about the Obama girl’s technology?

Steven Hodson — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 22:33:45 +0000

Much has been made about President Obama not wanting to give up his Blackberry – or what he calls his lifeline to the real people of the the the country he is now in charge of. Every effort it seems has been taken to find the most secure version of his favourite communication tools but what about the rest of the first family – especially the children.

After all these two girls have grown up in a world where texting and cell phones are almost surgically attached to kids at birth. It doesn’t matter where kids go these days they are very rarely less than a back pocket away from their cell phones.They have become the very lifeline by which children keep in touch with each other and find out what is happening in their world – often before even their parents do.

But here we have two young girls who even more so that maybe their mother and father will be in the public eye for some time. In the matter of months their lives have totally changed. So one has to wonder how the technology that they have grown up with even more so than maybe their parents is going to change.

While immense precautions have been taken in order for President Obama to keep that Blackberry he swore they would have to tear from his hands what is being done with the technology that both Mrs. Obama, Malia and Sasha consider equally important to them. Even though the President by the looks of things will be able to break – even ever so slightly – out of the communication bubble with the real world how will this; or will this freedom also be extended to his children?

Screw the telcos help – government can find your cell phone by itself

Steven Hodson — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:54:34 +0000

Technology is a wonderful thing but it is also the way that our rights can be infringed upon without us sometimes even knowing. For many years the U.S. government agency; the FBI has had a technology called triggerfish. With this technology and in the beginning the help of telecommunication companies the FBI has been able to track cell phones. It was this technology which helped them catch Kevin Mitnick in the 1990’s but an importance change has happened between then and now.

According to documents gained from the Department of Justice by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act it appears that the triggerfish technology has advanced to the point that the FBI can track cell phone all by their themselves – no help from the telcos needed. As posted to Daily Kos by Rachel Myers of the ACLU

An earlier EFF FOIA lawsuit turned up documents detailing how a little-known FBI telephone intercept unit had developed triggerfish technology that agents use to monitor the physical movements of surveillance targets. Back then it seemed the process required assistance from the provider. But the new documents plainly say that triggerfish surveillance can be done without provider assistance, as at the top of page 18 in this document (PDF): “This can be done without the user knowing about it, and without involving the cell phone provider.”

The way this works is also outlined in the post

The FBI now has what is called “triggerfish” technology — a cell site simulator that forces cell phones in the area to register its phone number, serial number and location — allowing it to track cell phones on its own.

That might be the light version but if the comments on Bruce Shneier’s post about the story are any indication much of the detailed information of how this technology works is easily found with a little bit of searching. One commenter even called it all old news.

Well it might be old news but it still stinks to high heaven.

Does your cell phone come with blood on it?

Steven Hodson — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 06:33:00 +0000

Yup, we just can’t be without those irritating pieces of electronic wizardry. Whether it be the one that you want to shove down the throat of that guy on the train broadcasting his conversation through to the one your daughter spends more time texting on than you do trying to get into the washroom. There is no denying that cell phones have had a trans formative effect on our society but at what cost?

I’m not talking about the cost within our own insular little world but rather the blood that is being spilt to bring some of the rawest materials needed to make these contraptions work in the first place. You see there is a part of every cell phone that needs a single raw material which right now sees 60% of it coming from one place in the world. This raw material is called Coltan and when processed it becomes a heat resistant powder called metallic tantalum which has unique properties for storing electrical charge. As a result it is a vital component in the capacitors used to control current flow in the circuit boards of that cell phone stuck to your ear.

Of the 525 tons of tantalum used in the US in 1998 60% was used in these capacitors and there is expected to be a 14% per annum growth in the need for this product. The problem is that the Coltran we use in this process comes from place only – the Congo and its value is greatly affected by our increasing use of technology and with the increasing use of cell phones a raw material that was once worth $65.00 per kilo saw the price reach the dizzying heights of $600 per kilo before settling back down to $100.00; where it currently sits.

Because this is such a valuable natural resource the sale of it is being used by the various fraction in the on-going civil war in the Congo

A recent report by the UN has claimed that all the parties involved in the local civil war have been involved in the mining and sale of Coltan. One report suggested that the neighboring Rwandan army made US$250 million from selling Coltan in less than 18 months, despite there being no Coltan in Rwanda to mine. The military forces of Uganda and Burundi are also implicated in smuggling Coltan out of Congo for resale in Belgium.

As well the mining of Coltan is located in the area as the Kahuzi Biega National Park which is the home of the Mountain Gorilla and because of this mining the gorilla population has been decimated. Whether it be from starvation because the mining is removing their habitat or from being shot to feed the people doing the mine this need for Coltan has a growing effect on both the people and the animals of the Congo.

Here is a news report on coltan mining

But hey … you got a really cool cell phone out of the deal eh.

[hat tip to Tom Foremski]