Samsung's split mobile phone display

Samsung has developed a display for mobile phones it says saves power by dividing the screen into sections.

The display is divided into an indicator window showing icons and a main window for background pictures. The technology corrects a flaw of mobile phones that do not display the time and date or icons showing the battery status, waiting email and other information when the phone is switched to standby mode.

The Korean company said it will use the technology for bar and slide models and start mass production in the third quarter of the year.

(Via I4U < Digital Chosunibo)

Foundcity

Foundcity is a social mapping tool for creating a personalized map of your life on-the-fly. Using your mobile phone, you "tag" or capture photos, label them, and send them to your map. At home, you access and customize your map, which you can share with friends, keep private, or make public.

As a visitor to the Foundcity site, you view a map of all tags and connect with the people and places that share your interests. By plugging in to the network of Foundcity users, you learn what others value in the city as you surf their hotspots. By publishing your own tags, you share what you know about your city.

Via Mauro Cherubini.

Phone sex video inquiry

A British woman has been suspended over claims that mobile phone clips of her having sex were seen by hundreds of colleagues.

The worker was said to have downloaded clips to her mobile phone and sent the footage to friends. Within hours, the clips were said to have been sent to 300 fellow workers.

Many colleagues are said to have viewed the clips by the time managers stepped in.

"Nobody could quite believe what they were seeing," said one worker. "The pictures appeared to show her and her partner making love. They went from one camera phone to the next. I think at least 300 or so people had it on their mobile phones by the time it was stopped. Everyone was passing on the pictures."

The woman has been told to stay at home until the investigation is completed.

(via BBC News)

Suspects caught on phone camera

A mobile phone image has been released showing three men who are wanted for questioning after two friends were stabbed and beaten outside a pub in north London.

Both victims needed emergency life-saving treatment.

Det Sgt Alan Dawson said CCTV footage was not good enough to identify the attackers and they have hit a dead end trying to identify them through local inquiries.

"On the evening a friend of the victim took a camera photograph of him whilst he was sitting in the pub," explained Dawson. "She has also managed to capture three men in the background of this picture who we are eager to question about the attack."

The police said the attack was unprovoked and are offering a £20,000 reward for information leading to a prosecution.

(via BBC News)

A smart phone for pregnant women

Emma, developed by Hyoung Won, is a smart mobile phone concept for a pregnant woman. The mom-to-be captures foetus videos, pictures, heartbeat sounds and tangible movements with Emma's hand-held "Ultrasound transducer." Later on, she can build a blog website and upload captured multi-media data onto the website with Emma to share her pregnancy and foetus information with other family members and friends.

A 28-inch screen for a mobile phone ?

Scalar Corp, a Japanese manufacturer of optoelectronic equipment, has integrated its CyberDisplay 180K color-filter microdisplay into Scalar's Teleglass, the world's smallest video eyewear for video-on-the-go applications.

Connected to a mobile phone, portable DVD player or digital camera, Teleglass projects high- video on eyeglasses, creating a virtual 28-inch TV screen as viewed from seven feet away. This system has a switcher for the people to use dominant eye to watch video. The eyewear projects images in either the left or right eye, enabling the wearer to privately watch movies or TV, read text or view pictures without obstructing the other eye.

Weighing just five grams and easily attached to ordinary eyeglasses, the device is relatively inconspicuous compared to earlier generation video eyewear products.

(via Cellular-news)

Régine is taking over

Off to the US for 10 days. Régine from we-make-money-not-art will be taking over. So watch this space for great things!

French firm bets on TV service for cellphone

Fancy watching a French comedy on the Paris Metro? The quickening race to make mini-televisions out of mobile telephones means entertainment like "Les Guignols" - the look-alike puppets that mock the French political establishment - should be literally within a commuter's grasp this week.

As of this week, the French pay-TV company Canal Plus Groupe, which is controlled by Vivendi Universal, plans to give subscribers to Vivendi's SFR cellphone service access to about 20 television channels over their phones.

It will mark the first time a broadcaster has migrated a selection of its own channels onto a mobile platform. In the past, telephone operators like SFR's rival Orange, owned by France Télécom, had to negotiate with individual broadcasters to carry programs.

[via The IHT via Agenda Inc.]

Mini-series for upwardly mobile Chinese

A media group in China has filmed a soap opera to be broadcast only on mobile phones. Each of the five episodes, about two bikers vying for the love of a beauti ful woman, will last five minutes. There is very little dialogue and a lot of close-ups of characters striking exaggerated poses in the cinematic equivalent of a haiku.

The gestures I make are very limited," Luo Ji, who plays one of the motorbike racers, told the Associated Press. "Your emotions should only come from facial expressions. It's quite difficult acting."

Only a few people with the most sophisticated mobile phones will be able to see the drama. [via The Guardian]

Previously - China's first TV drama to be shown exclusively on mobile phones

Other mobile soaps:

-- Soapies the new mobile ring-ins - Australia's first mobile soap opera, is coming soon to a pocket near you.

-- Hollyoaks pushes mobile service with exclusive TV pics - Mersey TV, the maker of UK Channel 4's teen soap ' Hollyoaks', is hoping to cash in on the mobile text alert trend by offering subscribers unseen exerts of the show

-- Cellpop, The First Cell Phone Drama That is not for your Mama! Cellpop follows the lives of the people who make the hit music we listen to. Each day a new episode is delivered straight to your phone.

-- MMS Soap on Spanish Telefónica Móviles - Móviles has launched FanTESStic, an interactive series with real actors created exclusively for MMS

-- -- Launched on the Internet and closed in the late nineties, the Internet's first Soap, «The Spot» is back - on (Sprint) mobile phone.

-- «InYrShoes» - The plot of a UK soap called «InYrShoes» is not decided by scriptwriters, but by viewers sending text messages at the end of each episode, featuring a cliffhanger or dilemma.

-- Jong-Zuid: First picture soap opera for mobile phones The Netherlands came up with the first Picture Soap, Jong-Zuid, starring famous soap opera actors.

iWitness Mobile, Picture Your World

iWitness is an interactive photo gallery for your mobile phone. It reflects how the mainstream news media pictures our world and how, in contrast, a spontaneous community of mobile and online photo bloggers observe that same world through the camera lens.

On your phone you can passively observe and actively contribute to the news and photos on display. See what the mainstream news media are reporting right now or recall a moment in history.

When you come across a news item of particular interest you can request a "Fresh Perspective". This will generate and display an entirely new collection of images that broaden, and at times push the limits of, your associations with the original news item.

At any time you can share your own news and views by publishing them directly from your mobile phone. Each item thus shared becomes immediately available to everyone else on their mobile phones. And so the iWitness Community is born.

Each published item also appears on the online Internet blog, the iWitness Mobile Community Journal. This acts as a forum to share and discuss news items with the broader online community.

You can also enjoy an online slideshow of the photos contributed by members of the iWitness Community hosted on flickr.com. As you view the show you can click on the photos to learn more about them.

California Legislature Thinking About Restricting RFID

There's a bill currently being considered in California that would restrict the use of RFID tags because of privacy concerns. The Identity Information Protection Act of 2005 would prohibit the issuance of RFID tags designed to transmit personal information or allow this type of data to be scanned. If passed, RFID would only be used in places/applications including prisons, hospitals, public health facilities, or toll gates.

Since Wal-Mart is a major proponent of this technology, it'll be interesting to see if they lobby the state legislature to either water down or completely quash this bill.

reBlogged from The Wireless Weblog

Cameraphone Sand Sculpture

Spotted on Alfie's Blog.

Paedophile fears over school sports videos

As thousands of children prepare to compete in sports days this summer, the NCPTA called on headteachers to review their policies on videoing school events, reports the UK Daily Mail.

Some schools have chosen to ban video cameras from sports days amid fears that pictures could end up in the hands of paedophiles.

The NCPTA said this had upset many parents who wanted to record their children's achievements.

But the organisation warned that video cameras and mobile phones were "indiscriminate" in who they pictured, adding: "Children's privacy and protection cannot be guaranteed."

NCPTA chief executive David Butler said schools themselves could video sports days and other events while banning individual parents from making their own recordings.

Parents could then buy the official videos at cost price directly from the school, which would retain the master copy, he said."

While this would not solve the problem completely it would allow schools to "edit out" images of children whose parents had not consented to them being pictured."

Allegations of abuse levelled at military over nude photos

Shades of AbuGraid in South Korea... and how new technologies allow military mis treatment to be revealed to the world.

A bad week for Korea's security forces has been made worse by the publication online of humiliating pictures of young personnel, this time of what appear to be conscripts in the Marines, reports Digital Chosunilbo.

"The images follow a killing spree at a DMZ guard post apparently triggered by incessant bullying from senior soldiers, revelations about primitive living conditions of enlisted men and nude photographs from a riot police unit (picture left).

"Of the four Marine Corps pictures circulating in cyberspace, two appear to be souvenir photographs showing about 10 naked soldiers facing front. One shows a senior soldier looking in the underpants of a junior. The last shows a group of naked soldiers outside in the winter.

The Marine Corps said the caps in the pictures suggest the subjects are marines but estimated they were taken some years ago".

With the allegations of abuse levelled at the military over the nude photos, Defence Minister Yoon Kwang-Ung ordered an investigation, reports the AFP.

"Since the pictures of naked policemen have spread out through the Internet, we have been looking into any possible human rights violations or rigor actions (bullying by seniors) in police barracks," said a police spokesman in Wonju.

A Marine Corps official said the nude photos of soldiers had reportedly been posted on the Internet by a discharged marine.

In one photographs raw recruits trying to covering their genitals with their hands were foced to stand naked on a snow-covered drill ground as a senior stood by holding a stick.

Two-year national service is mandatory for men over the age of 18 in South Korea. Some choose to serve outside the military, as riot police".

Sony narrows R&D focus

SONY will narrow the focus of its research and development to promising areas such as next-generation video equipment, mobile phones and flat panel TVs, the company's new president said. [via Australian IT]

Drain Pipe Diagnosis

Obayashi Corp. developed a system for diagnosing drain pipes by running off water that contains ball-shaped RFID tags. The system can be used to check problems with pipe connections etc.

Checking drain pipes in a large residential building takes about a full day -- the company says, with this system, it may take only a few hours.

reBlogged from RFID in Japan

Camera phones and digital cameras to complement and co-exist

According to The Straits Times, Even though they integrate functions typically found in digital still cameras, camera phones will not replace them.

"Industry watchers who had forecast that cellphones - with their increasingly advanced features and greater portability - would give regular digital cameras a run for their money - may not have been right.

An International Data Corp report on the top 10 predictions for the 2005 consumer market in the Asia-Pacific region outside Japan seems to indicate otherwise.

The IT research agency predicts that camera phones and digital cameras will complement one another and co-exist.

Despite the blurring boundaries between the camera and the phone, IDC believes digital cameras will always be one step ahead of camera phones in terms of photography functionality.

It argues that digital cameras tend to be used for more meaningful occasions while camera phones tend to be used for spur-of-the-moment events.

Cellphone and digital camera companies generally agree with this assessment".

And interesting... "digital still camera manufacturers find that increasing interest in photography, brought about by the ubiquity of the camera phone,is actually leading to a rise in demand for digital cameras".

Schools face call to jam mobiles

Mobile phone signals should be blocked in UK schools to stop the growing "happy slapping" craze an MP is urging, reports The Observer.

"The government has agreed that it will 'review' the situation. But while one leading child-protection charity, Kidscape, welcomed the initiative, the chairwoman of Childline, Esther Rantzen, said it risked 'inadvertently' putting children in greater danger.

Such measures, she said, 'would make it impossible for a child to ring Childline, for example'. More than half of its calls now came from mobiles, in some cases from school premises, she said.

Rantzen said bullying was now 'the biggest single problem we deal with' and the number of incidents of violence appeared on the rise. But she felt banning or blocking mobiles risked creating a new danger to children."

Sex attack 'filmed on camera phone'

A group of youths sexually assaulted a girl while filming the attack on a camera phone, reports Ananova.

"The incident was uncovered after a teenage bank worker in Glasgow showed the graphic video footage to horrified colleagues.

The victim had passed out at a party and may not even know what happened to her, according to reports in the Scottish News of the World".

Related cameraphone-rape stories

-- Girl raped in 'happy slap' attack (UK)

-- Rape caught on cameraphone (Italy)

-- Saudi jails three for filming rape with mobiles

-- Pictures of alleged gang rape circulate (UK)

-- Ignominy (UK)

-- Camera phone cited in rape allegation (USA)

Snap happy

According to Analyst Tony Henning, managing editor of the Future Image Mobile Imaging Report, "We estimate more than 300 million camera-phones will be sold during 2005, compared to about 85 million digital cameras," Henning says. "Nine out of 10 digital images taken by consumers [this year] will be captured with camera phones." [via The Sydney Morning Herald.]

TV licence needed for TV-to-mobile services

The Register wondered whether you need a TV licence to watch TV on a handset or is this a loophole created by technological convergence? And this is what they found out:

"According to people at TV Licensing - the group that collects the TV licence fee that funds the BBC in the UK - the key, it seems, is whether a TV programme is broadcast at the same time as it is becomes available via a mobile handset or on a PC via a broadband connection. If it's not, then no licence is needed. If it is streamed live, or almost live, then it is.

Phone Companies Using Microsoft Hit TV Service Snags

The WSJ reportts that over the past two years, Microsoft Corp. has convinced some of the largest telephone companies in the world to use its cutting-edge software in their plans to roll out television over Internet technology. ...Making the Microsoft software work with hardware and software from other companies is proving difficult.

Now, as the carriers race to get TV services to millions of customers, they are experiencing growing pains trying to move the services from development labs to broad commercial rollouts within the next year. Most of the challenges focus on melding for the first time Microsoft software, complex hardware, existing telecommunications networks and other pieces of the infrastructure for a cohesive service.

... While delays are typical with new technology, telephone companies don't have the luxury of time. Competition from cable companies, wireless phone services and others is eating away at their land-line businesses. "Our speed to market is critical here," says Lea Ann Champion, an SBC executive senior vice president. Ms. Champion adds that Microsoft hasn't indicated that it expects delays.

...Microsoft concedes that there have been snags, as with many roll-outs of complex new technologies. But it says the scale of the service being developed is unprecedented and it is on schedule.

... Neither Microsoft nor phone companies have a good track record in TV".

Generate 360° panoramas with a mobile phone

Wonderful mobile|blog.it reports on software from PanoMan, which enables users to generate 360° panoramas with a mobile phone.

PanoMan includes an easy to use photo-gallery browser which lets you browse and zoom your snaps.

You can also upload your panoramas via bluetooth or infrared to your PC or another phone.

Citizen Journalism Project on Opening of New Bridge

Students and staff at Østfold University College of Norway were invited to participate in a citizen journalism project, by covering the historical opening of a new bridge between Sweden and Norway. [via pasta and vinegar]

Equipped with Nokia 6630 smart phones capable of storing images in high quality and wireless GPS receivers, the participants spent the entire day writing, photographing and describing the event in detail.

The result of the project, Locus Times is currently located at here. The service may become temporary unavailable in July, as the University College is moving to a brand new location during the summer.

Mobile phone to facilitate consumers' wholesome food choices

The Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT), together with the University of Kuopio and the Helsinki School of Economics, has developed a prototype for a service that can help consumers in their food choices, reports PhysOrg.

"Consumers will be able to read product-specific information directly from a package's barcode using a camera phone, or by using the service at home via the Internet.

The service shows the energy and nutrition information of food and also offers the possibility to use a food diary and an exercise calculator. Finnish test groups experienced the pilot system as rewarding."

Samsung launched mini handsets with facial expression editing option

Samsung Electronics has just launched small-sized camera phones (SCH-V730 / SPH-V7300) which are 8.76 cm in length, which is news in itself, but even more interesting is a new feature which allows editors to change the facial expressions of a subject.

"The “facial impact” of the camera mode offers various facial expressions such as smiley, sad, sulky, angry, plump, slim and startled faces."

[via Telecoms Korea]

Hospital introduces Baby Photo Messaging Service

In what is a perfect application for camera phones, Jen-Ai Hospital in Taichung County, Taiwan offers a free MMS service service to all parents who have their baby at the hospital.

Mark K. Chan, Program Director of Jen-Ai Hospital International Patient Center (JAH IPC), explains, "We were the first hospital in Taiwan to offer our Baby Web service, more than 2 years ago, where a webpage with basic information and picture of the baby is uploaded onto our hospital website within 72 hours of the birth.

But after many hospitals in Taiwan started to offer this service and receiving several requests to create the webpage 'as soon as possible' (and we were able to cut the time down to less than 1 hour), I started thinking that there must be a faster way to send a photo of the baby to friends and family members. And the solution was - MMS messages sent by camera phones."

A typical MMS would be:

A photo of the newborn baby, a few minutes after he was born, with the following text attached, "This is Jen-Ai Hospital Baby Photo Messaging Service! Please welcome Heather & Ciro Correia's newborn baby, Dylan Connor Amandio Correia! If you would like to send them an E-card, please go to: http://www.jah.org.tw/english/ecard.asp or please visit us at: http://www.jah.org.tw/babyweb/english.asp for additional photos, in the next few days."

Tele-Barcode: The Case of ColorCode

So, how is the Korean ColorCode being introduced in Japan? ColorZip (the company who owns the technology of ColorCode) announced recently that they are collaborating with two Japanese TV broadcasting stations (TBS and Fuji TV) to develop a system for integrating TV programs and wireless websites.

The system that broadcasts ColorCode will likely be put into real use this summer. Consumers can easily access wireless websites related to TV programs by simply taking a picture of a broadcasted ColorCode. For example, such websites may allow consumers to participate in voting, download sample music clips, buy products, or apply for free gifts.

It sounds like ColorCodes can be read from a distance more easily thatn other 2D codes.

reBlogged from RFID in Japan.

Enter the Blogarazzi Era

Mobile blogging is turning celebrity chasers into bona fide paparazzi, according to the China South Morning Post via Moco News.

"Snap happy: In Britain, mobile bloggers are swapping instant candid clips of celebrities - but Hong Kong may have to wait to give chase.

Since Hutchison launched mobile blogging services at its British operations last month, star-struck 3G users have discovered a new pastime: the candid celebrity photo.

"Yet despite the popularity of blogs with young people in Hong Kong - not to mention a strong mobile-phone culture with a penetration rate well in excess of 100 per cent - Hutchison Telecommunications and other Hong Kong carriers say they have no plans to introduce mobile blogging tools.

Operators claim they are not out of touch - they just do not see mobile blogging as viable business opportunity, though the services would give carriers another opportunity to earn revenue on data transmission.

"Right now, 3G service is still too expensive for the general public in Hong Kong.

Mr Yeung suspected closed blogging, in which users share content with a defined group of friends, would be more popular than open blogging, which is content that is shared with the world. Most Hong Kong blog authors preferred closed blogging, he said."

Photo-Me helped by digital kiosks

The growing popularity of digital photography has helped photo-booth operator Photo-Me International enjoy a 56% rise in annual pre-tax profits, according to the BBC.

The firm has benefited from the roll-out of digital media kiosks, which enable people to print pictures from digital cameras or mobile phones.

Photo-Me has an international network of 28,000 photo booths, in locations such as railway stations and Post Offices.

There are already 3,000 operational digital media kiosks and the firm hopes to add an extra 5,000 by the end of 2005".

Users can print out pictures by either plugging in their digital camera's memory card, or by using infrared or Blue Tooth wireless technology.