Deadline looms to save red phone boxes

In a cartoon-like moment, with BT revving the bulldozers and the townspeople standing together in front of the much-loved red phone boxes, the iconic booths have until Saturday to be adopted or face the scrapheap. Techradar reports.

... Over half of the boxes are loss-makers for BT, so it's no surprise the company wants to scrap them... especially as many of them appear to be an 'escort' service ad-venue or a public urinal.

One village has already rescued a box at the princely sum of £1, despite the parish council leader admitting nobody used it.

The ‘Quickphone’ Kiosk

Spotted on Trendhunter, The ‘Quickphone’ Kiosk, one of the 42 amazing vending machine featured in their gallery.

The idea is to provide a ‘Quickphone’ for travelers or phone users who know what they want and don’t need the boring patter of a sales person counting out endless features.

Also featured: "The used underwear vending machine", "the bicycle vending machinE", "the boyfriend vending machine", "the innovative idea vending machine", "vending by mood"...

Links to Other cell phone vending machines.

Experience soccer games through your cell phone vibration

By synchronizing a cell phone’s vibrations with the ball in the field, researchers have designed a method that allows cell phone users to experience soccer games in a new way. Physorg reports.

The cell phone is synchronized with a soccer ball in the field, so that the phone vibrates whenever the ball is kicked. Different kinds of vibrations let users know the ball’s location in the field and which team has possession.

The technology is being developed by a team of researchers consisting of Shafiq ur Réhman, Li Liu, and Haibo Li, all from Umeå University in Umeå, Sweden, along with Jiong Sun from Ericsson Research in Stockholm.

Read full article.

MasterCard gets the ball rolling on US cell phone payments

In parts of Japan, all you have to do in order to pay for something is wave your cell phone. MasterCard is now working on getting the ball rolling for a similar system here in the US, but actually getting equipped phones into the hands of the public will be the real challenge.

[via ars technica]

Google brings text-messaging to online chat

Google is expanding the instant-messaging feature built into Gmail so people can use it to send text messages to their contacts' phones, reports News.com.

To use the feature, people can click on a chat window's settings to send a text message with SMS or type a contact's phone number in the chat contact search box. ... But the Gmail text-messaging feature doesn't work with Google's other instant-messaging options, including the chat gadget that can run on iGoogle or the Google Talk software that can be downloaded and installed on a computer.

Some Shed Their Gadgets by Turning to One: iPhone

According to The Wall Street Journal, lower-income households are turning in force to the iPhone and may be doing so to save the cost of a separate broadband connection and music devices.

... While consumers have long used cellphones to substitute for landlines, U.S. telecom operators have recently also reported sharp slowdowns in the number of households adding broadband lines to access the Internet from home.

Read full article.

AT&T iPhone Customers to Receive Free Wi-Fi Access

Cellular News reports that AT&T Wireless has announced it will begin offering free AT&T Wi-Fi service to current and new iPhone 3G and iPhone customers.

AT&T claims to have the nation's largest Wi-Fi network, with more than 17,000 hot spots including Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, and thousands of other locations.

AT&T plans to make the offer available to more mobile devices in the future.

UK phone users send 217 million text per day, says study

Britons are sending an average of 60 million more text messages per day from their mobile phones than they did this time last year, according to the latest industry figures, reported by The Daily Telegraph.

That equates to roughly 217 million messages per day, and more than 6.5 billion texts per month, says the report by the Mobile Data Association. In addition, British mobile phone users send almost 1.5 million picture and video-based text messages every day, an increase of 20 per cent on the same period in 2007.

Where Do I Vote? via txt Message

In partnership with CREDOmobile and the New Organizing Institute Mobile Commons are now providing polling place locations via txt message.

text pp then your street address and zip to 69866 (eg: pp 101 market st 94105)

Their system will respond with the appropriate polling place for your address, or the number for the Election Protection Coalition if they can’t find a match.

[via e-mail press release]

New York

Blogging may slow down until this weekend. In New York for a couple of days.

Amos E. Joel Jr., Cellphone Pioneer, Dies at 90

Amos E. Joel Jr., an inventor whose switching device opened the way for the cellular phone business, died Oct. 25 at his home in Maplewood, N.J. He was 90. [via The New York Times]

Mr. Joel received more than 70 patents, but he was perhaps best known for No. 3,663,762, a 1972 patent that allows a cellphone user to make an uninterrupted call while moving from one cell region to another.

“Without his invention, there wouldn’t be all these people walking around with cellphones,” said Frank Vigilante, who was one of Mr. Joel’s supervisor at Bell Labs. “He really allowed that business to form and to be a business.”

The Hollywood Reporter Box Office Numbers Via SMS

THR is launching a mobile box office product this week that will send weekend box office estimates via text message. [via mocoNews.net]

Pulling from Nielsen data, the publication will push official studio box office tallies to users that sign up for the mobile alerts with a short code. The top five movies from each week will be sent on Sunday morning while more detailed data will also be sent to newsletter subscribers.

Kookiness on the campaign trail

Not related to cell phones, just election fever. A fun slide show from Daily News.

Nokia’s new Benches ‘Come with Music’

In an effort to promote its highly touted ‘Comes with Music‘ service, Nokia, the leading handset manufacturer has now started placing special benches at various public places in the UK. SMS Text News reports via Music Radar.

The benches are actually a clever advertising medium to promote their ‘Comes with Music’ service here in the UK. These benches are fitted with Nokia’s handsets and headphones into the armrests. These handsets will be pre-loaded with music, depending on the the region where they are located. For example, Liverpool may get The Beatles while Birmingham might just get Black Sabbath.

Man's arm trapped in train toilet after fishing for cell phone

File under how embarrassing. A passenger on a French train had to be rescued by firemen after having his arm sucked down the on-board toilet. He tried to fish out his mobile phone, which had fallen into the toilet bowl, and fell foul of the suction system.

[via BBC]

Happens all the time:

-- Student trapped in toilet after fishing for cellphone

-- Survey: The Loo is where people lose their cell phones

-- Connection and connections, down the drain

KDDI Fall Winter Cellhone Collection

Proving again that Japan has the prettiest phones in the world, au by KDDI has released its Fall and Winter lines, showing off eight new models with emphases on super bright and big Organic EL screens, multimedia “au BOX” connectivity, and a funky mobile personal trainer and calorie counter called “Karada Manager.

[via Gizmodo]

iPhone-controlled LEGO contraption pours a beer on command

Spotted on DVICE via CrunchGear, aniPhone-controlled LEGO contraption that pours a beer on command. Geeky.

Virtual touchpad lets you scroll in thin air

Microsoft is extending the concept of the touchscreen beyond the edges of the phone itself, reports New Scientist.

The company's researchers have developed a system called SideSight, which allows you to control a phone placed on a table by wiggling your fingers in the space around it. Infrared sensors pick up the movement of fingers up to 10 centimetres away.

This technology would be useful for very small phones, where it would be cumbersome to use fingers on the touch screen.

The technology was unveiled last week at the User Interface in Software and Technology symposium in Monterey, California.

Watch the the video demo.

The New Cell Phones on Gossip Girl

The wardrobe on Gossip Girl isn't the only thing that changes with the seasons — for season 2 everyone showed up with a new cell phone.

[via Geeksugar]

Radiation-Shielding Bracelet

Spotted on CoolHunting, a Shinju Binchotan Bracelet by Jacob Resneck.

The bracelets believed to emanate positive ch'i that defend the wearer from environmental hazards - from bad vibes to the potentially harmful EMF from computer monitors and mobile phones.

Is surfing the Internet and text messaging altering your brain?

The Internet is not just changing the way people live but altering the way our brains work with a neuroscientist arguing this is an evolutionary change which will put the tech-savvy at the top of the new social order. The Washington Post reports.

Gary Small, a neuroscientist at UCLA in California who specializes in brain function, has found through studies that Internet searching and text messaging has made brains more adept at filtering information and making snap decisions.

But while technology can accelerate learning and boost creativity it can have drawbacks as it can create Internet addicts whose only friends are virtual and has sparked a dramatic rise in Attention Deficit Disorder diagnoses.

Small, however, argues that the people who will come out on top in the next generation will be those with a mixture of technological and social skills.

In his newly released fourth book "iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind," Small looks at how technology has altered the way young minds develop, function and interpret information.

Obama is like Nokia and McCain Apple

With the 2008 US presidential election just over a week away research into the two presidential candidates' brand strategies has compared Barack Obama to Nokia and John McCain to Apple. BrandRepulic reports.

The study by market research firm Synovate has summed up the brand strategy of the Obama campaign as being "you you you" because of the way he strongly associates himself to a handful of key issues.

Obama is seen to connect strongly with registered voters on four main issues -- healthcare, the desire for change, the Iraq war and education.

On the other hand, McCain's approach to his own brand is to focus on the personal -- himself, his experience, and his military background. This is a tricky strategy, used by brands like Diet Coke and Apple.

Read full article.

Mobile Phone Turned Spray Can

Mobispray by Jurgen Scheible, (or nicknamed MobiLenin) is a light based spray-painting tool that utilizes the motion sensor of a mobile phone and a video projector to paint on anything, anywhere at anytime, without damaging the environment.

[via Sky News]

Credit crunch hits telcos

The global financial crisis may hit new telecommunications operators harder than the established firms, said EU telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding. She argued against calls for lighter regulation of the industry. IT Web reports.

« Big companies by themselves have a lot of means to invest...but in these times it is much more difficult for new entrants, » Reding told Reuters on Saturday.

Reding, attending an event in Venice organised by the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO), sought to persuade its members of the continued need for regulation.

Read full article.

UK Train carriages to be coated with film to block mobile phone signals

According to The Daily Mail, a train company is planning to cover windows in its carriages with a hi-tech film that blocks mobile phone signals.

Travel firm c2c will use the coating in designated "quiet" carriages to stop shrill ringtones and loud conversations.

C2C runs busy commuter services from Essex into Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street.

Most train companies have similar zones, but it is thought C2C is the first to use the coating, made of a combination of metals, plastics and chemicals.

Related: - High-tech paint will block cell phone calls - A company called Natural Nano has found a way to use nanotechnology to blend particles of copper into paint that can be brushed onto walls and effectively deflect radio signals.

Google Earth now available for Apple iPhone

Google has just announced on their blog that they have released Google Earth for Apple iPhone and iPod touch. The application is now available on iTunes App Store.

[via Slashphone]

Mobile Gaming Now a $1-Billion Industry in US

A new report from market research group In-Stat claims that the fragmented, oft-maligned U.S. cellphone gaming market is already worth $1 billion. Gamasutra reports.

Titled IMobile Applications Series: US Mobile Gaming 2008–2013, the report covers factors necessary to promoting awareness of mobile games, limitation to purchase, the iPhone's impact, and mobile gaming revenue forecasts for the U.S. and global markets through 2013.

According to In-Stat's research, continued momentum in the global mobile gaming market is expected to result in revenues topping $6.8 billion by 2013.

Read full article.

Ralph Lauren launches iPhone application of collections

Ralph Lauren has released a free iPhone application. No matter where you are, you can look at Ralph Lauren's latest collection and runway shows. Who cares? Asks MobileCrunch. I do. I love the idea.

335,000 Cellular Base Stations to Include Solar Power by 2013

As mobile network expansion moves ostensibly to emerging markets where solar energy levels are more favorable, solar power appears ready to play an important role in reducing the costs of cellular service delivery and ensuring a more reliable power supply. Cellular News reports.

The OEMs’ drive toward reducing base station power consumption, along with improvements in photovoltaic cells, have meant that solar energy is now a very viable solution for powering cellular base stations.

ABI Research vice president Stuart Carlaw says: “The market for autonomous solar powered cell sites looks set to grow from extremely modest levels today to over 40,000 renewable energy sites by the end of 2013. A further 295,000 base stations are expected to supplement on-grid power usage with solar.”

TXTual Healing on a road trip for Obama

Paul Notzold is kicking off an interactive projection roadtrip with TXTual Healing for Barack Obama. 10 nights, 10 cities, and 4 states.

After doing an amazing job of registering voters, Obama’s people wanted to drum up excitement to actually get people to the polls with some TXTual Healing up until election day. Paul will be updating the site with photos and video from the road.