Spyware Listens In On Cell Phone Calls

KKTV has a news segment on spyware that allows you to listen in on cell phone calls. They don't name the company, but in their video you get a glimpse of a web page of a company called Flexispy which offers this kind of eavesdropping as "a way to catch a cheating spouse or keep tabs on children".

The software downloaded into your cell phone allows someone to eavesdrop, see your text messages and read your e-mails. Every time that target phone receives a call or text, it alerts the phone of the spy.

The best way to protect your phone, according to KKTV, is to never let it out of your sight. The spyware can only be installed if it is physically downloaded onto the phone and it takes about 15 minutes to do so.

SMS Reminders Help people with Eating Disorders

People with an eating disorder may not want to attend a support group or meet with therapists, but a new report raises the prospect that "remote therapies" via e-mail, text messaging or through Web sites could help them recover. US News reports.

Related:

-- Nagging text messages help you save and stay healthy

-- Text messages may help smokers quit

Africa: Growing Use of Cellphones for Family Planning

Another way cell phones are being used in the developing world, by providing family planning information. allAfrica.com reports.

The secrets on your smartphone

Hang on to your handset ... smartphones are a goldmine of information for thieves, writes The Sydney Morning Herald.

... While many mobile-phone SIM cards might contain contacts and texts deleted from years ago, experts agree that it is the vastly improved data and storage capacity of the new generation of smartphones that presents the most potent risk to their owners.

... “It may not be what's recoverable from the phone that is valuable but what can be further discovered online, by ringing around and using the easily accessible information,” Kim Khor, director of Khor Wills & Associates says.

Mobile phone forensics comprise an important part of crime detection and corporate security, but they are increasingly playing a role for private detectives investigating marital or work disputes.

Read full article.

Related:

-- Mobile forensics turns up heat on suspects - How forensic science is developping new tools to investigate cell phone data - even when deleted - and solve crimes.

-- Fighting Crime With Cellphones' Clues - Extracting clues and leads from mobile electronics is no cakewalk.

-- Cellphone Forensics at Crime Scenes - Logicube has developed a portable kit which can extract data from over 160 handset when needed by the police and forensic staff.

--Digital evidence is increasingly crucial to criminal investigations - Cell phones have become the new "smoking gun" for prosecutors and police in the Twin Cities and around the world.

-- UK police making Gil Grissom jealous... - The Forensic Science Service (FSS) has developed a mobile laboratory which will travel to crime scenes and carry out real-time forensic investigation and analysis.

-- The field of Cell Phone Forensics - Modern detectives are now using cell phone forensics to capture more and more criminals.

-- Police turn forensic skills on handhelds - Handhelds are likelier to lead to handcuffs for techie criminals following the release of a report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

-- Mobile phone forensics 'hole' reported - Police investigations are being hindered by the use of proprietary mobile phone technologies, say forensics experts

Power wheelchair electronics displayed on iPhones

Dynamics Controls has integrated an iPhone with its power wheelchair electronics - enabling power wheelchair users to enjoy all the benefits of an iPhone or iPod touch.

The solution connects a user's iPhone or iPod touch to the wheelchair system to display speed, battery and other wheelchair information in a great looking and easily visible way.

Lee Kwok, a wheel chair user in Christchurch says it will be fantastic to be able to buy an off the shelf product that has so many features for powered wheelchair users. "Having access to mainstream technology via a wheelchair is a huge advantage," says Lee Kwok.

[via iPhoneFreak]

Twitter available in French

Earlier this month, Twitter rolled out a Spanish language version of its service. This was the first language to gain native support beyond English and Japanese. Today, it’s announcing French support as well.

[via TechCrunch]

Best of Twitter tunes album released

Musical twitterers have found a way to condense entire compositions to fit in single, 140-character tweets. New Scientist reports.

The trend started earlier this year when Dan Stowell, a composer and computer scientist at Queen Mary, University of London, encoded the sound of waves crashing on the shore using the programming language SuperCollider and then tweeted the results.

Other users of the micro-blogging site responded by devising and posting their own compositions. Now a free to download, best-of album of 22 Twitter tunes has been released, entitled sc140.

Cell phones don't ring everyone's bell

Most of us just can't live without a cell phone and we wonder how we managed all those years without one.

But according to The Houston Chronicle, a small group of die hard folks are surviving just fine without what some describe as a high-tech digital leash.

Although the number of holdouts is dwindling, U.S. Census data released Thursday indicates 29 percent of the nation's homes still do not have cell phones.

Yet Census data show the ubiquitous cell phone is increasingly becoming the communication tool of choice for the majority. Some are even disconnecting their landlines and using cell phones exclusively.

According to the new data, the number of households with cell phones exploded from 36 percent to 71 percent between 1998 and 2005. Landline ownership during this same period fell from 96 percent to 91 percent, with many in their 20s particularly seeing no useful purpose in having a hard-wired phone. Those age 65 and older were the most likely to still have landlines — 98 percent.

Money Transfers to Become Hottest Mobile App, Says Gartner

Money transfers and payments over mobile phones will be among the top 10 most important mobile applications by 2012, market research company Gartner said on Wednesday, reports PC World.

Mobile money transfers top the list, beating out location-based services, search and browsing.

"It's a way for users who don't have a bank account to get access to financial services," said Sandy Shen, of Gartner's.

Mobile payments came in sixth place on Gartner's list and will be used in both developed and developing markets, according to Shen.

Read full article.

Conde Nast releases 'virtual magazine' iPhone app

Conde Nast released a brand-new iPhone app Wednesday in conjunction with GQ's Men of the Year issue that provides readers with a replica of the magazine on their iPhone or iPod touch. New York Daily News reports.

But its more than just a replica: You can click on a product and be taken right to the product's Web site, you can touch a link in a music review and download that song right to your phone, you can watch video of interviews, and so much more.

Bangladeshis rush to learn English by mobile

In an ambitious new project, the BBC World Service Trust is harnessing the latest communications technology to provide English language learning for over 50 million mobile users in Bangladesh.

The first of its kind in the world, this project will provide high quality English learning tools using mobile, television and the internet to millions of people, many of whom live on less than £2 a day.

Central to the project is BBC Janala (“Window”) which uses the mobile phone as a powerful low-cost learning device by offering over 250 audio and SMS lessons to the growing 50.4 million mobile users in Bangladesh.

To make the lessons affordable, the BBC has teamed up with all six of Bangladesh’s mobile operators who have agreed to cut the cost of calls to the service by up to 75%. Each lesson is a three-minute phone call, costing about 3 taka (2.6p).

According to The Financial Times,

More than 300,000 people in Bangladesh have rushed to sign up to learn English over their mobile phones, threatening to swamp the service even before its official launch on Friday.

Part of a UK government initiative to help develop English skills in Bangladesh, it marks the first time that mobile phones have been used as an educational tool on this scale.

[via Switched]

AT&T Releases New Commercial Targeting Verizon

Spotted on Apple iPhone School, AT&T's new commercial targeting targets Verizon.

It's a reply to the Verizon's ads that compared coverage between the two networks.

App lets your iPhone blow out candles

Spotted on Gizmodo, a new iPhone app called Blower that uses its speaker to blow air. No peripherals. No attachments. Check the video for yourself.

The developers say that you can use it to "blow out candles, herbs, and refresh your skin during hot summer nights."

PCMag Unveils its First iPhone App

PCMag launched a mobile version of our online Tech Encyclopedia, which give users quick access to more than 25,000 tech terms.

In their own words: PCMag has, in collaboration with Computer Language Company, launched its inaugural iPhone app, a mobile version of its popular online Tech Encyclopedia. That's right, 25,000 tech terms, all searchable by name, in an easy-to-browse alphabetical format. Just as in the Web version, there are extensive entries, cross links to relevant terms and images that you can expand to investigate.

Thieves steal iPhones in rooftop heist

Thieves have made off with millions of dollars worth of iPhones in a daring heist from a Belgian warehouse. The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

The thieves climbed a fire ladder to the roof of the warehouse, Belgium's De Standaard said.

They then entered the building through a hole cut directly above where the 4000 phones, which had a market value of about $3.2 million, were being stored.

The iPhones were destined for mobile operator Mobistar, which had a long waiting list for the popular handsets.

GSMA Unveils Mobile's Green Manifesto

The GSM Association announced recently at the Mobile Asia Congress the launch of Mobile's Green Manifesto, which has been developed in collaboration with The Climate Group.

This manifesto sets out how the mobile industry plans to lower its greenhouse gas emissions per connection, and demonstrates the key role that mobile communications can play in lowering emissions in other sectors and industries. It also makes specific policy recommendations for governments and the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15), December 7-18.

Developed with the support of The Climate Group, the Green Manifesto shows that, with the right public policies in place, mobile can make a major contribution to the fight against global warming.

[via Softpedia]

Mobile Ads: Wait Until Next Year

Adweek on why mobile advertising still has some way to go.

The year of mobile has been predicted virtually annually for the past decade. There is compelling evidence that this time it's different. Overall, there are now more mobile phones in the world than personal computers. There are over 4.6 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, according to eMarketer. Yet mobile advertising remains a tiny market. eMarketer expects it to generate $416 million in U.S. ad spending this year, about the same amount spent on search marketing in two weeks.

This will undoubtedly change, although perhaps not as quickly as mobile's biggest boosters hope, according to agency executives, analysts and mobile veterans. Here are the key reasons why.

Guide to iPhone GPS Navigation Apps

Art of the iPhone has published a (very useful) Guide to iPhone GPS Navigation Apps, including their expert opinion on which two are the best: Navigon MobileNavigator and MotionX GPS Drive.

In their own words:

The App Store is cluttered with iPhone GPS apps, and sorting through them is a daunting task. This guide is designed to cut through the clutter, gather all relevant info in one place, and aid you in making the best choice. We also take a look at the strengths and weaknesses of iPhone GPS vs personal navigation devices, and examine the new elephant in the room, Google Maps Navigation.

Using cellphones to fight noise pollution

According to New Scientist, cellphones could soon be used to fight noise pollution.

In a bid to make cities quieter, the European Union requires member states to create noise maps of their urban areas once every five years. Rather than deploying costly sensors all over a city, the maps are often created using computer models that predict how various sources of noise, such as airports and railway stations, affect the areas around them.

Nicolas Maisonneuve of the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris, France, says that those maps are not an accurate reflection of residents' exposure to noise. To get a more precise picture, Maisonneuve's team has developed NoiseTube, a downloadable software app which uses people's smartphones to monitor noise pollution. "The goal was to turn the mobile phone into an environmental sensor," says Maisonneuve.

The app records any sound picked up by the phone's microphone, along with its the GPS location. Users can label the data with extra information, such as the source of the noise, before it is transmitted to NoiseTube's server.

Read full article and more about NoiseTube on their website.

Related, sort of:

-- Cell phones to sense our environment and its pollutants (2009)

-- Cyclists' cellphones help monitor air pollution (2008)

-- Cellphone masts can measure rainfall (2006)

-- Aero Phone measures air pollution (2004)

-- Saving the World With Cell Phones (2005)

-- Cell phones could warn of gas leaks (2003)

-- Phones that detect terrorist attacks (2003)

An App for Crossing the Border

A new tool to assist Mexican migrant workers safely cross over the border into the United States has been developed by Ricardo Dominguez of the University of California in San Diego, reports Viceland via PSFK.

Dominguez, an activist/hacker and performance artist cobbled together a cheap mobile phone and a free GPS application to make the “Transborder Immigrant Tool”.

Read more.

T-Mobile Customer Details Were Sold to Rival Company

T-Mobile UK has admitted that some of its staff may have sold customer details to a rival network. Cellular News reports.

UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has investigated and it appears that the information has been sold on to several brokers and that substantial amounts of money have changed hands. The ICO has obtained several search warrants and attended a number of premises, and is now preparing a prosecution file.

AdMob brings interactive video ads to iPhone

AdMob announced Tuesday that it will deliver interactive video ads to the iPhone and iPod Touch devices. The ads, set to run this week, will let iPhone users surf the Web and check out other videos while the video ad is playing.

... The video ads will automatically pop up as iPhone users access certain content and applications. The ads will also offer a video player so that people can control and interact with them.

[via News.com]

DENIAL-of-services attacks on cellular networks?

Patrick Traynor of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and his colleagues worry that hackers may have cellphone networks in their sights. New Scientist reports.

DENIAL-of-services (DoS) attacks are a common tactic used by "black hats" intent on bringing down a high-profile website, one owned by a bank or political party, say.

In a standard DoS attack, a network of infected PCs, a "botnet", would swamp a server with so many requests to view a web page that it would be unable to handle legitimate requests. Now Traynor and colleagues have shown how a cellphone network could be the vehicle for an attack that would cut off calls for millions of users.

Read full article.

Apple Concierge app for in-store appointments

According to AppleInsider, Apple plans to release a new "Concierge" application for the iPhone and iPod touch that will allow customers to schedule appointments at retail stores. Makes perfect sense.

Orange strikes Twitter TV deal

According to The Guardian, European Twitter users will soon be able to tweet to each other via their TV sets while watching entertainment and sports shows, after Orange struck a deal to integrate the service into its mobile and television offerings.

Under the deal, Orange is aiming to integrate Twitter into football coverage, news, entertainment shows and films.

Orange said that Twitter services would be rolled out in the UK first, to be followed by France, Spain and Poland later this year. The service will be rolled out in other European markets next year.

Read full article.

Cell-phone Use - but Not Music - Reduces Pedestrian Safety

Two new studies of pedestrian safety found that using a cell phone while hoofing it can endanger one's health. Older pedestrians, in particular, are impaired when crossing a busy (simulated) street while speaking on a mobile phone, the researchers found. Cellular News reports.

The studies, in which participants crossed a virtual street while talking on the phone or listening to music, found that the music-listeners were able to navigate traffic as well as the average unencumbered pedestrian. Users of hands-free cell phones, however, took longer to cross the same street under the same conditions and were more likely to get run over.

... The first study, in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, found that college-age adults who were talking on a cell phone took 25 percent longer to cross the street than their peers who were not on the phone. They were also more likely to fail to cross the street in the 30 seconds allotted for the task, even though their peers were able to do so.

Each participant walked on a manual treadmill in a virtual environment, meaning that each encountered the exact same conditions - the same number and speed of cars, for example - as their peers.

The second (and not yet published) study gave adults age 60 and above the same tasks, and included some participants who had a history of falling. The differences between those on and off the phone were even more striking in the older group, Kramer said.

Related:

-- Mobile phone users cannot walk in straight line

-- 6 million people hurt in the UK in 2007 while texting and talking

-- Padded lampost to protect texters was PR stunt

-- Suggested Bill banning iPods and cellphones for NY pedestrians

-- Study: Walking and Talking in Step

Britney Spears Launches iPhone App

Britney Spears is getting up close and personal with her fans through the just-launched iPhone and iPod Touch app "It's Britney!". [via MTV]

In their own words: With the "It's Britney!" app, fans get to the front of the line with all things officially Britney. After purchasing the app, fans will receive official news first hand, get exclusive messages from Britney herself, be able to create and share images of themselves and friends on stage with Britney, have access to updated photo galleries which include real time photos, exclusive tour images as well as a photo gallery of over 100+ iconic images of Britney over the years.

Additionally, the app features a "Shake Shake Shake" feature in which Britney says "It's Britney Bitch!" every time the user shakes their iPhone or iPod Touch.

Official Harry Potter iPhone app

There are many Harry Potter apps, but Warner Bros. has just launched the first official Harry Potter app available in the US Apple store. VentureBeat reports.

Harry Potter Spells is a magic game that lets players cast spells at their opponents by using their phones as wands. With more than 100,000 apps on the iPhone, it’s getting harder and harder to stand out from the crowd. One way to do so is to launch an app with a familiar brand name. But only the highest-quality branded apps are standing out these days.

The game has 14 spells for wizards-in training. Players can conjure their magic alone or duel each other by casting spells from one device. See the trailer here.

MasterCard to Authenticate Online Transactions by SMS

In the face of mounting threats from hackers, MasterCard will use mobile phones to improve security for online transactions, the company said on Monday, reports PCWorld.

The added layer of security comes from a one-time password that the user is asked to enter when approving a transaction. The password is either sent via an SMS or created by an application that runs on a smartphone or a phone that supports Java.

The goal is to improve users' protection against phishing and man in the middle attacks, which are growing problems in the e-banking and e-commerce world, according to MasterCard.

Read full article

GCSE English Exam to include questions on text messaging

There have been as many articles on the benefits of text messging to the English language as studies condemning it's negative impact on students' writing skills, but this is the first time a major English litterature exam, the GCSE English, will actually include text messaging questions, The Telegraph reports.

In the new exam, being introduced by the Assessment Qualifications Alliance (AQA), students will get 10 per cent of their overall mark for the section on text message linguistics.

As part of their answer they will be required to include examples of common text shortcuts.

The subject of text messaging will be taught from next September as part of the Studying Spoken Language module intended to make GCSEs harder.

Not all faculty members agree, to some it's the ultimate "dumbing down". Read full article.