Global Post reports on high-tech lingerie for women that sends electrical shocks to anyone who attempts rape or assault — designed by engineering students of SRM University in Chennai, India.
The lingerie (pictured left), which the students have named "Society Harnessing Equipment," (SHE) comes with pressure sensors, GPS and mobile communications that can be enabled to send alerts to police and the victim's family. "The shocks can be emitted up to 82 times," Manisha Mohan, an automobile engineering student at SRM University and co-developer of the product, told the Times of India.
The students future plan would be to interface this system with a smart phone using bluetooth and infrared. The pressure sensor would then send a signal to the
smart phone through bluetooth which will in turn send stressmessages instantly.
DoSomething is a nonprofit which aims to establish a 24/7 national text number across the US for teens with issues, in the hope that it will become their 911. TIME reports.
... Lublin hopes the Crisis Text Line, due to launch in August, will serve as a New York-based umbrella, shuttling texts for help to partner organizations around the country, such as The Trevor Project for gay, lesbian, bisexual and questioning youth or other groups already providing hotlines on dating and sexual abuse to bullying, depression and eating disorders.
Today, there are around 20,9 million victims of human trafficking worldwide. From 28 March, victims in the US will have the possibility to send “silent” text messages with the BeFree shortcode, in order to receive help from the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) hotline. NewEurope reports.
The program, launched by the Polaris Project and Thorn, has the potential to save thousands of lives in the country. In collaboration with API service Twilio and Salesforce.com, both associations aim to take advantage of mobile phones used by those children to communicate with their traffickers and turn them into a way to ask for help.
Approximately 66 percent of births in sub-Saharan Africa go unregistered, reports UNICEF. In Ivory Coast, however, mobile technology is offering an innovative way to bring that statistic down and make every birth count. At the helm of the campaign is the Môh Ni Bah project. RNW reports.
Môh Ni Bah also intends to prevent rural populations from having to travel long distances by registering births via their mobile phones. This seems logical since, as Ehui puts it, “people in villages own some of the latest mobile devices and know how to use them”.
How does it work? The organization operates with field agents who are trained to collect and transmit information to a data centre. There, the compiled information is checked for consistency and veracity and then sent to official birth registration centres.
Under the supervision of village leaders, trained agents use SMS or the Môh Bi Nah mobile app to submit information on new births to the data centre. A unique identification number gets instantly generated and the village chief records the number in a ledger that he oversees.
“The identification number can then be used by parents to apply for a birth certificate at the registrar’s office,” explains Ehui.
European Union regulators are examining the contracts Apple strikes with cellphone carriers that sell its iPhone for possible antitrust violations after several carriers complained that the deals throttled competition. The New York Times reports.
Although they have not filed formal complaints, a group of European wireless carriers recently submitted information about their contracts with Apple to the European Commission, according to a person briefed on the communications with the carriers who asked not to be identified.
In part through the help of a Knight News Challenge grant and South Africa's Praekelt Foundation, the non-profit's Wikipedia Zero effort will offer its content through SMS and USSD messages in the next few months.
Curious users will just have to send a text message to get an article in response, with no web required at all. It's a big step forward for democratizing online information for those who may not even have access to a smartphone.
The new service will respond to requests for assistance, inquiries and referrals involving suspected human trafficking activities.
The CFO said that the text-based 1343 Action Line is also deemed to fast-track the referral and follow-up of cases, efficiently direct immediate assistance to human trafficking victims and disseminate information on human trafficking through text messages.
Labor Link, a service that lets companies anonymously survey factory workers at their suppliers--hopes to make working conditions in the developing world more transparent. FastCompany reports.
Six billion people--many of them in developing countries--have mobile phones. They’re already used for such diverse purposes as tracking disease and transferring money. Labor Link, an initiative from Good World Solutions (a nonprofit subsidiary of Fair Trade USA), is working to make mobile phones an integral tool in improving factory conditions.
Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA all agreed to offer nationwide text-to-911 services by May 15, 2014, with "major deployments" starting next year. The service will help people contact 911 in situations where it's too dangerous to speak or if they're disabled.
Roughly six months after the Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) – a free, national alert system that sends emergency notifications to the public via their mobile phone during emergencies – went live, alert messages were sent out during superstorm Sandy, which swept across the eastern seaboard in late October. Despite damages caused by Sandy, however, some experts said CMAS was ultimately successful during the storm.
Citibank has launched a service which allows customers in Singapore to pay their credit card bills via SMS. Today Online reports.
Citibank will send customers an SMS when their credit card bill is ready. Customers can then make a minimum or full payment by replying to the message.
The SMS payment service is part of the bank's strategy to expand its mobile banking capabilities as it aims to be the world's leading digital bank.
India Today reports that you can now spot the International Space Station (ISS) commanded by Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams without a telescope as it passes your house, thanks to NASA's new SMS service.
Spot the Station will send you a text message as the ISS passes over your house.
The International Space Station is the third brightest object in the sky after the Sun and the Moon, however, most people still cannot tell where the orbiting laboratory is.
App developers need to work out a strategy to increase engagement, not just downloads.
To provide them a blueprint to follow as they take these first critical steps Peggy Anne Salz has produced a new white paper titled Achieving App Impact: Using SMS to encourage interaction, drive loyalty (sponsored by Tyntec, a global mobile interaction service provider).
Sensors implanted in cows let Swiss farmers know when they are in heat. When that is the case, the device sends an SMS to the farmer’s phone — in any one of Switzerland’s three main languages; German, French and Italian, plus English or Spanish. The device is to marketed early next year. [via The New York Times]
The electronic heat detector is the brainchild of several professors at a technical college in the nearby Swiss capital of Bern. It fills a market gap, they say, because dairy cows, under growing stress to produce larger quantities of milk, are showing fewer and fewer signs of heat. That makes it harder for Swiss farmers to use traditional visual inspections to know when to bring on the bull or, in about 80 percent of the cases these days, the artificial inseminator.
Phone users can sign up to have incoming messages automatically translated from one language to another. Real-time voice translation could follow. MIT Technology Review reports.
AT&T is trialing technology that lets customers send and receive text messages that are automatically translated from English to Spanish and back. A person simply registers a phone number as having a preferred language. Messages sent to that number in a different language are then automatically translated before being relayed to the person's phone.
The current version of the technology only handles translation between English and Spanish, but AT&T is working on six more languages that could easily be added to the text message translation system.
The winner of Tanzania's Startup World, The Next Web’s global startup competition held in Dar Es Salaam was Safari Yetu.
Safari Yetu changes how consumers buy bus tickets in Tanzania; currently buying a bus ticket for travel means going to a bus station a day earlier than the expected travel date, spending two to five hours in traffic just to get your ticket and then do the same the day you are traveling.
With Safari Yetu, you pay online or via mobile, receive an SMS reservation or ticket and go to the bus station once; the day you are traveling.
Despite all its cutting-edge technology, Google Inc. has turned to the humble text message to break into Nigeria's booming economy. The AP reports.
The search engine has started a service in Nigeria, as well as in Ghana and Kenya, which enables mobile phone users to access emails through text messaging.
... A $20 mobile phone is as close as many in Africa will ever come to owning a computer. "We don't want to just come in and start looking for how to generate profit," said Affiong Osuchukwu, Google's Nigeria marketing manager. "We consider (sub-Saharan Africa) to be an investment region. We know we have to invest resources and time to develop the market in order for the market to become valuable to us in a way that we can do business."
You’ve heard of blood diamonds. Now get ready for the debate over blood smartphones. Bloomberg reports.
On Wednesday the Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to vote on an obscure section of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law requiring manufacturers to disclose whether they buy certain metals -- tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold -- that have fueled years of war in Congo. The metals are used in consumer electronics including computer chips, digital cameras, video-game consoles and mobile phones.
Although the measure is not the slam-dunk it might seem at first glance -- some criticisms of it are reasonable -- the SEC should vote to adopt it. Doing so would help consumers make informed choices and strengthen a voluntary effort by high-tech companies to rid their supply chains of these “conflict minerals.”
Since the fall of President Mobutu Sese Seko in the late 1990s, civil conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed more than 3 million lives. The eastern part of the country remains in disarray despite the presence of the world’s largest United Nations peacekeeping contingent and repeated efforts by the Congolese Army under President Joseph Kabila and Rwandan military forces to stamp out rebellious militias.
... Given the scope of the problem, the SEC measure is relatively weak. It would not forbid manufacturers from using minerals from any source; instead it would simply require about 6,000 companies to let consumers know where the minerals originated. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce objects that the sourcing would be prohibitively expensive, but the actions of many companies involved in the trade belie that claim.
According to The Jerusalem Post, the Israeli Home Front Command will begin a nationwide experiment on Sunday in which it will send mock text messages to cellphones warning of incoming missile attacks. The experiment will last until Thursday.
Called “Personal Message,” the alert system has been under development for several years. It can deliver area-specific warnings based on the projection of an incoming trajectory of a rocket or missile.
During the test, members of the public receive the following message, “The Home Front Command, checking cellular alert system,” followed by a number.
Messages will be sent in Hebrew, Arabic, English and Russian.
The IDF has been working on integrating the cellphone alert system into its early-warning program – mostly based on air-raid sirens – but has encountered resistance from several cellular companies. The carriers do not want to enable their phones to receive the warnings, which come in the form of a text message.
The Philippines looks set to expand its rapid monitoring system, based on mobile phone text messaging, to lessen the number of deaths and improve emergency response times. With over 7,000 islands and more than 100 million people, the archipelago experiences an average of 20 typhoons a year, with stronger storms in recent years.
According to The Next Web, Google has rolled out a new service in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya that lets Gmail users send and receive emails using the built-in SMS features of their mobile phones.
The implications of this are pretty big – this means mobile Internet access isn’t required, and users don’t need a new-fangled smartphone with 3G or WiFi capabilities either. For emerging markets, where iPhone and Android uptake may not be what it is in the Western world, not to mention limited Web access, Gmail SMS is a significant launch.
After farmers, now fishermen in India would soon receive SMS alerts relating to various government-sponsored schemes, climate warning and market price of fish on their cell phones. The Times of India reports.
"We will provide SIM cards to fishermen through which they can receive free SMS daily. The messages will help them remain updated about schemes, loan subsidies and climate in sea. By dialing a tollfree number, fishermen can quiz experts on different issues," said CEO of IKSL, S Srinivasan said.
"Initially we target 40,000 subscribers in Odisha," Srinivasan said.
Millions of smartphone users will soon begin receiving text messages about severe weather from a sophisticated government system that can send a blanket warning to mobile devices in the path of a dangerous storm. Users won't have to pay for the messages and can opt out, according to USA Today.
The new Wireless Emergency Alerts system gives the National Weather Service a new way to warn Americans about menacing weather, even if they are nowhere near a television, radio or storm sirens.
Beginning Thursday, the system will notify people about approaching tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards and other threats. When a warning is issued for a specific county, a message of no more than 90 characters will cause late-model smartphones in that area to sound a special tone and vibrate.
... The system does not yet work with all smartphones or in all areas. It is part of a broader alert network the Federal Emergency Management Agency launched in April that can also send public-safety warnings from the president and participating state and local governments. But the weather service estimates that more than 90% of the messages will be about storms.
Division I men’s basketball coaches are now able to send unlimited texts and make unlimited calls to recruits who have wrapped up their sophomore year of high school, reports AtlantaBlackStar.
The NCAA also will also allow coaches to send private messages to prospective players through social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
The NCAA is allowing coaches to text, tweet and talk to their hearts’ content because, as Missouri athletic director Mike Alden put it, the organization “recognized the evolving nature of communication with students".
We’ve already seen efforts to bring home appliances into the 21st century, with NXP Semiconductors’ GreenChip system for controlling lights via a smartphone. Now aiming to make rushing back home when you’ve realized the stove is still on a thing of the past, the AGA iTotal Control uses cell phone connectivity to enable users to control it from a remote location.
Verizon announced that it will be the first U.S. wireless carrier to offer nationwide text-to-911 services, which will let users send SMS messages to 911 call centers starting in 2013.
Verizon CEO Dan Meade was commended by the FCC the for answering his challenge to deploy next-generation 911 centers.
Aiming to provide a new solution to the lack of currency in Zimbabwe, local startup Yo Time offers an internet platform that allows retailers to give change in the form of mobile airtime instead. Springwise reports.
... Currently, shoppers whose purchases don’t add up to a whole-dollar amount are often forced either to buy an extra item to make the total round up, or to accept a credit note that’s typically good only at the store that issued it. With Yo Time, however, participating retailers can issue change in the form of PIN-less airtime credited directly to the shopper’s mobile phone number. The service can handle credits of any value between 10 cents and USD 50. Once sent, the shopper receives the airtime within eight seconds along with a confirmation message.
Yo Time has already been embraced by several leading retail chains and supermarkets in Zimbabwe, the company says.
The famous design company has come up with a notebook that allows text messaging without the need for a SIM card —or even a mobile phone. GMA News reports.
On its website, Moleskine said that it decided to celebrate the 20th anniversary of SMS texting —the first text message was sent in 1992— with a limited-edition notebook that becomes "a ballistic device for launching analog text messages".
Here's the fun part: to launch the message, the user must fold the paper in four, then load it onto a “slingshot” attached to the notebook cover.
The launching pad even has three notches indicating how far the message can be launched —up to 5.18m away, according to the company.
The notebook includes 56 pieces of paper ammunition, including pre-printed messages such as "I love you," "call me," "the answer is...," etc.
Moleskine's new notebook's brand of short messaging system allows the sending of texts the old-fashioned way, tech site ForeverGeek.com reported.
Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the Indian state of Kerala, is planning to introduce SMS and call facilities along with coins, to operate public toilets. IBN Live reports.
... We considered two options. One, to introduce an SMS facility so that the user can send an SMS for opening the e-toilet. But the problem was that the SMS could get delayed. We also thought of introducing a mobile phone number so that the user can call us and we can open the toilet for him/her. Now we are planning to introduce both options along with the existing coin facility,’’ Manohar Varghese, media and government relations head, Eram Scientific Solutions, said.
At present, there are 300-plus e-toilets across the State. Several more are being installed.
A Seattle startup has created what it calls a "Textspresso" machine. A simple text message instructs the unmanned espresso machine to whip up a custom cup of coffee.
The 
In part through the help of a 
Roughly six months after the
Phone users can sign up to have incoming messages automatically translated from one language to another. Real-time voice translation could follow. 
Despite all its cutting-edge technology, Google Inc. has turned to the humble text message to break into Nigeria's booming economy. The 
You’ve heard of blood diamonds. Now get ready for the debate over blood smartphones. 
According to 
According to 
After farmers, now fishermen in India would soon receive SMS alerts relating to various government-sponsored schemes, climate warning and market price of fish on their cell phones. 
Division I men’s basketball coaches are now able to send unlimited texts and make unlimited calls to recruits who have wrapped up their sophomore year of high school, reports 
Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the Indian state of Kerala, is planning to introduce SMS and call facilities along with coins, to operate public toilets. 
