AccessNow, an NGO that works for human rights values in telcoms policy, took a resolution to the Vodafone Board meeting in London last week, holding the company to account for its network shutdown during the Egyptian revolution and asking it to endorse a plan to uphold its customers’ human rights in future. boinboing reports.
In addition to prolonging the misery and bloodshed of the Egyptian revolution, Vodafone’s network shutdown also resulted in the death of Egyptians who couldn’t use their phones to call ambulances during medical emergencies. Not to mention all the money the shareholders lost when millions of Egyptians lost their phone service.
MobilePortland has set up a test lab for for platform vendors, carriers, and handset manufacturers who develop applications.
In their own words:
One of the biggest challenges for mobile developers and businesses is getting access to devices for testing. Not even the largest of companies can afford to purchase all of the possible devices on which their software or services may run on.
We’re working on solving both of these problems by creating what we believe is the first community device testing lab in the United States.
The community device testing lab will be located in the heart of the Pearl District in downtown Portland. Developers, designers, and entrepreneurs throughout the region will be able to visit the lab to test their work on hundreds of mobiles devices. Developers working on location-based applications will be able to check out devices for field testing.
President Obama created a barrage of activity @BarackObama on Friday afternoon when he began urging his more than 9 million followers to tweet at their Republican Congressmen to “ask them to support a bipartisan solution to the deficit crisis.”
The account has also been making use of the hashtag #compromise in an effort to drive home the message of bipartisanship.
The results so far have been mixed. According to NM Incite, the #compromise hashtag had been used more than 22,000 times and reached 36 million users (followers of accounts using the hashtag) as of around 5 p.m. ET on Friday, and people had mentioned the President some 28,000 times in tweets.
NM Incite says 40% of the @BarackObama mentions and 28% of the #compromise tweets expressed positive sentiment, with only 13% and 12% of them expressing negative sentiment, respectively.
As we noted in our earlier coverage, however, some users felt the state-by-state tweets were creating way too much noise — the President has lost nearly 37,000 followers so far today. You can see the drop as the day progressed in a chart from Simply Measured.
-- Text messages were sent by the 5.3 billion mobile users worldwide, generating $14,000 per second for operators, assuming an average of $0.07 per SMS.
-- Texts were ranked by over 80 per cent of those surveyed as being the most popular way to send a message to a friend or relative -- significantly ahead of e-mail at 7 per cent--and Facebook with 6 per cent.
Facebook and Twitter have created a generation obsessed with themselves, who have short attention spans and a childlike desire for constant feedback on their lives, a top scientist believes, reports The Daily Mail.
Repeated exposure to social networking sites leaves users with an 'identity crisis', wanting attention in the manner of a toddler saying: 'Look at me, Mummy, I've done this.'
Baroness Greenfield, professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, believes the growth of internet 'friendships' – as well as greater use of computer games – could effectively 'rewire' the brain.
... The academic suggested that some Facebook users feel the need to become 'mini celebrities' who are watched and admired by others on a daily basis.
They do things that are 'Facebook worthy' because the only way they can define themselves is by 'people knowing about them'.
The NY MTA says it receives about 700 text messages a day seeking arrival or departure information for B63 buses in Brooklyn. Transportation Nation reports.
The transit authority last winter began piloting a GPS-based program on the Bay Ridge-Brooklyn Heights bus route, where users can send a text message asking when a bus will be arriving at a given stop.
The procedure involves texting a six-digit code number to “41411,” then waiting for a text back that tells users how many miles or how many stops the bus is away.
Unlike some privately generated apps, the MTA app doesn’t “find” users, nor does it tell how many minutes a bus is away.
But the authority it still has 18,000 “mobile interactions” and 13,000 “desktop interactions” a month.
With the deadline for raising the nation's debt ceiling closing in, President Barack Obama has flooded his @BarackObama stream yesterday morning with tweets directed at voters in every state (in alphabetical order) to ask their Republican reps in Congress "support a bipartisan compromise to deficit reduction." Tweets include the handles for members in that state.
Washington's Metro has fired 20 bus drivers for talking on a cell phone while driving since the beginning of the year. The culprits were caught on cameras mounted inside the buses.
The zero tolerance policy was activated two years ago when a photo of a Metrobus driver on a cell phone taken by a passenger became public.
The narrative power of the text message was revealed dramatically in recent days as the world mourned the deaths of almost 80 Norwegians, most of them young, all victims of a single mass murderer named Anders Breivik. Roy Peter Clark for Poynter.org.
As the killer stalked his young victims, gathered at a camp to learn about government and democracy, a 16-year-old survivor named Julie Bremnes began an urgent exchange of text messages with her mother Marianne.
... From Julie’s caring attention to others who are in harm’s way; to the reassurances mother and daughter provide each other; to the delivery of information that will keep her safe; to the gloriously Norwegian understatements of love; to the authenticity of the girl’s fervent exclamation points, her slang that she is “shit scared,” even one of the best uses of the smiley face I have ever seen.
Prepay accounts will account for a quarter of USA accounts by the end of this year, according to the New Millennium Research Council (NMRC).
According to new data released by the NMRC think tank, about three out of five new wireless subscriptions in 2010 were for prepaid cell phone service -- a margin of more than eight million new prepaid subscriptions versus just under new 4.8 million postpaid subscriptions.
According to The Sydney Morning Herlad, new regulations in China requiring bars, restaurants, hotels and bookstores to install costly web-monitoring software, are prompting many businesses to cut internet access and sending a chill through the capital's game-playing, web-grazing literati who have come to expect free wi-fi with their lattes and green tea.
The software, which costs businesses about $US3100 ($2840), provides public security officials the identities of those logging onto the wireless service of a restaurant, cafe or private school and monitors their web activity.
Those who ignore the regulation and provide unfettered access face a $US2300 fine and the possible revocation of their business license.
Twitter on Thursday began prominently promoting in user feeds the brands people follow, the latest move to boost its advertising model. USA Today reports.
What this means is that when people sign on to Twitter or refresh the site, messages from particular brands that they follow will appear at or near the top of their feeds rather than getting pushed down chronologically. Once viewed, those ads will sink. This assures advertisers that they will reach their followers, of course.
In “Talk to Me,” a show at the Museum of Modern Art, objects and people interact using cellphones, Twitter, video games and other forms of technology.
The exhibition focuses on objects that involve a direct interaction, such as interfaces, information systems, visualization design, and communication devices, and on projects that establish an emotional, sensual, or intellectual connection with their users.
Examples range from a few iconic products of the late 1960s to several projects currently in development—including computer and machine interfaces, websites, video games, devices and tools, furniture and physical products, and extending to installations and whole environments.
Social media allowed an ''unprecedented'' two-way exchange of information between the public and those given the task of preparing for and responding to major events such as earthquakes, floods and infection pandemics, said researchers, reports The Telegraph.
'By sharing images, texting and tweeting, the public is already becoming part of a large response network, rather than remaining mere bystanders or casualties,'' said the US team led by Dr Raina Merchant, an emergency medicine expert from the University of Pennsylvania.
Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, the authors say harnessing social media could help emergencies to be handled in a ''quicker, more co-ordinated, effective way''. The technology allowed officials to ''push'' information to the public while at the same time ''pulling'' in valuable data from bystanders.
The 2011 Digital Lifestyles Report focuses on behaviors and trends surrounding digital device usage, content consumption and e-commerce among the 300 million 18 to 30-year-olds in China. An infographic highlights key bits of data found in the report.
The Huffington Post on serious concerns regarding the methods and conclusions of the first study evaluating the connection between cell phone radiation and brain cancer in children and teens. Not only was the study flawed, they note, but it was also financially supported by the cell phone industry.
After looking at brain tumors and cell phone use among about 1,000 boys and girls between the ages of 7 and 19, European researchers determined that kids who averaged one or more weekly cell phone calls over a period of at least six months were not at an increased risk of developing a brain tumor compared to peers that were non-users. Overall, less than 15 percent of the children and teens had spent more than 4 years as a cell phone user.
"It’s ridiculous to think that because you didn’t find a significant increase in brain cancer among kids that now cell phones are safe," added Devra Davis, president and founder of the consumer advocacy group Environmental Health Trust. She likened the study to looking at 16-year-olds who smoked as children to see if they had lung cancer. “You’d find nothing,” she said.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. said Thursday a partner will launch at the end of July the first mobile phone in China to use an operating system developed by Alibaba, kicking off competition with Apple, Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in the smartphone operating system market.
A former News of the World journalist's allegation the newspaper paid police to track mobile phones raises serious questions about the UK's eavesdropping laws, according to experts.
Sean Hoare said it was possible to "ping" a handset's location for £300.
While there is no firm evidence to support the accusation, if true it would undermine safeguards within the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.
The law outlines a system of checks intended to prevent it being abused.
Software that lets drivers unlock car doors and even start their vehicles using a mobile phone could let car thieves do the very same things, according to computer security researchers at iSec Partners, reports PC World.
Don Bailey and fellow iSec researcher Mathew Solnik say they've figured out the protocols that some of these software makers use to remote control the cars, and they've produced a video showing how they can unlock a car and turn the engine on via a laptop. According to Bailey, it took them about two hours to figure out how to intercept wireless messages between the car and the network and then recreate them from his laptop.
Bailey calls his technique "war texting," a reference to another hacking technique called "war driving," which involves driving around cities looking for data on wireless networks.
Google already allows Gmail users to exchange chat messages with mobile phone users via SMS in 23 countries worldwide, but now French mobile phone operator Orange wants to help the search giant extend the service across Africa and the Middle East. PC World reports.
Gmail SMS Chat allows a Gmail user to send short text messages to someone with only a basic mobile phone and no Internet access or Gmail account. The phone owner can also reply to the Gmail user. Phone users pay to send messages, and may also pay to receive them depending on their contract with their operator. The Gmail user pays nothing, although Google does impose a limit on the number of messages that can be sent: each message replied to raises the limit, allowing five new messages to be sent.
Forget about the Turing Test. If you're an AI wiz, try the Levy Test. Create a social-network bot that can post on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc. so convincingly that it's more authentic than the human who is supposedly logged in. Good for filling in on vacations. And you can maintain your virtual persona even when you're dead.
This infographic by Android Tablet Fanatic is an exploration of mobile Internet cost around the globe (2 GB a month) which also takes into account the type of data network deployed by each country. Click here to enlarge.
Vodafone Group is to meet human rights campaigners to discuss how it can prevent its networks being hijacked by repressive regimes after it was forced to send out pro-government messages and shut down its network by the Egyptian government during the uprising at the start of the year. The Guardian reports.
... Access wants telecoms companies to agree crisis protocols with governments. These should ensure users can make emergency calls at all times, that calls and emails are not hacked, that networks are shut down for minutes or hours rather than days and that carriers cannot be used to disseminate propaganda.
Phone and internet companies are frequently forced to choose between protecting freedom of expression and commercial interests.
... Michelle Hackman, a recent high school graduate in Long Island, N.Y., won a $75,000 prize in this year's Intel Science Talent Search with a research project investigating teens' attachment to their cell phones. She found that students separated from their phones were under-stimulated -- a low heart rate was an indicator -- and lacked the ability to entertain themselves.
Most of the teens at Hackman's affluent high school own smartphones, she says, and could even be found texting under their desks during class. "It creates an on-edge feeling and you don't realize how much of the lecture you're missing," Hackman says.
For some, the anxious feeling that they might miss something has caused them to slumber next to their smartphones. More than a third of U.S. adults -- 35 percent -- now own a smartphone, according to the Pew Research Center, and two-thirds of them sleep with their phones right next to their beds.
Business Insider reports that a group of Senators questioned the general attorney for the National Security Agency Tuesday about whether U.S. intelligence agencies are using cell phone geo location data to track U.S. citizens without their knowledge.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the leader of the National Counterterrorism Center Matthew Olson told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that: "There are certain circumstances where that authority may exist."
A half-dozen apps with names like 'T2 MoodTracker,' 'PTSD Coach' and 'Breathe2Relax' have been developed by the Pentagon and Veterans Affairs Department, but not to diagnose illness or replace psychiatric counselling. Rather, the apps offer at-your-fingertips information about what the military calls 'invisible wounds' of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - and techniques for managing the symptoms.
In addition to prolonging the misery and bloodshed of the Egyptian revolution, Vodafone’s network shutdown also resulted in the death of Egyptians who couldn’t use their phones to call ambulances during medical emergencies. Not to mention all the money the shareholders lost when millions of Egyptians lost their phone service.
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The narrative power of the text message was revealed dramatically in recent days as the world mourned the deaths of almost 80 Norwegians, most of them young, all victims of a single mass murderer named Anders Breivik. Roy Peter Clark for 
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Software that lets drivers unlock car doors and even start their vehicles using a mobile phone could let car thieves do the very same things, according to computer security researchers at 
Google already allows Gmail users to exchange chat messages with mobile phone users via SMS in 23 countries worldwide, but now French mobile phone operator Orange wants to help the search giant extend the service across Africa and the Middle East. 
Vodafone Group is to meet human rights campaigners to discuss how it can prevent its networks being hijacked by repressive regimes after it was forced to send out pro-government messages and shut down its network by the Egyptian government during the uprising at the start of the year. 
