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.

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]

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.

Kashmir's impoverished residents resent ban on prepaid cell phone ban

A government ban on prepaid cell phones to prevent rebels from using them to clandestinely plan attacks has stirred resentment among Indian-controlled Kashmir's impoverished residents, who depend on prepaid connections for inexpensive communication.

[via Cellular News]

'Thatcher's dead' text message sparks government panic

Canadian Transport Minister John Baird sent a text message to a number of his political friends reading: "Thatcher has died", inadvertently causing a diplomatic crisis earlier this week.

Baird was in fact been announcing the death of his cat, named after the Iron Lady.

[via The Mirror]

UK Legislation to access public's texts and emails put on hold

Plans for a £2bn ($3.3m) Home Office surveillance project to track details of everyone's email, mobile phone, text and internet use have been put on hold after a consultation raised concerns over its technical feasibility, costs and privacy safeguards. The Guardian reports.

The Home Office has confirmed that legislation for the project, known in Whitehall as the "interception modernisation programme", will not be included in next week's Queen's Speech and is unlikely before a general election. The fresh delay follows concerns raised by internet service providers and mobile phone operators over the project's feasibility, and anxieties over who would foot the bill.

Read full article.

Quentin Tarantino advertising Japanese cellphones

The Guardian on Quentin Tarantino as the latest celeb to appear in a long-running series of ads for Japanese mobile phone manufacturer SoftBank.

Samsung Mobile Explorers viral video

Spotted on Adverblog, a viral-intended video for Samsung. Another one here.

Google buys Mobile Advertiser AdMob for $ 750m

Google Inc. is paying over $750 million for mobile advertising firm AdMob, one of the Web giant's largest acquisitions to date, reports The Los Angeles Times.

As AdMob itself has described, the volume and effectiveness of mobile advertising has been skyrocketing over the last several years as more advanced smartphones have caught on, making it easier to deliver more kinds of graphical and text-based advertising to phone-toting consumers.

In a recent report, Admob said that the number of mobile ads it served had increased nearly 540% from September 2007, to 10.2 billion per month from 1.6 billion.

Read full article.

Nokia to replace 14 million phone chargers

Nokia is replacing 14 million cellphone chargers which it says could give users an electric shock.

Three models of charger - AC-3E, AC-3U and AC-4U - made between April and October this year would be affected. Nokia urged users to seek a free replacement (chargerexchange.nokia.com).

[via Reuters]

How Men vs Women approach technology problems

Men and women have different approaches to dealing with technology problems, according to a gadget helpline. [via the BBC]

Among other findings, the service found that:

-- 64% of its male callers had not read the instruction manual before ringing up vs 24% of its female callers.

-- 12% of male and 7% of female customers simply needed to plug in or turn on their appliance.

In general terms men treat technology as something to be understood and conquered while women are more motivated by appliances that benefit them, said Joanna Bawa, chartered psychologist and editor Usability News .

Verizon Commercial calls iPhone misfit toy

Verizon makes fun of AT&T's 3G coverage. The ad places the iPhone on the mythical Island of Misfit Toys. It's an island inhabited solely by those things you don't need, don't want and don't work. Because of AT&T's poor 3G coverage, the ad claims the iPhone will fit right in.

[via News.com]

Motorola DROID: Stealth commercial

Spotted on PCWorld, a Motorola DROID commercial which was to start airing Friday.

Divorce in the Digital Age: The Perils of Text Messaging

In the age of digital communications, there now are three sides to every divorce story: His, hers, and what's being stored by the phone company. Reuters reports.

Many people who text often will message their spouse, friends or even a lover with whom they're having an affair, revealing intentions, intimate details and negotiation strategies.

Such conversations can become evidence in the mediation or courtroom setting. Yet, hitting "Delete" isn't enough to erase the conversation. The phone company often retains records of text conversations for up to 30 days. In a divorce scenario, those records can be requested or subpoenaed into evidence.

Image from The Chronicle.

Related:

-- French Courts to Admit Text Messages in Divorce Cases

-- SMS as evidence in Polish divorce court

Woman to do community service for hate SMS

How does Nairobi's court handle a complaint about someone sending hate messages? Making the culprit do community service, according to the Daily Nation.

Ms Regina Nyambura Muniu will do community work at Umoja Chief’s office for six months after she pleaded guilty to sending an offensive text message to Mary Stella Gathoni.

Left, this week's cover of The New Yorker with texting parents supervising their children's trick or treating. Right, the way it was. A picture of different era, via Mad Men.

[via Pocket-Lint]

Google relaxes single phone number requirement for Voice

Google has decided to relax the requirement that all calls must come in via the Google number, and is making available a range of features under its voicemail service to calls made directly to users' cell phones.

Read full article in Infoworld.

Mobile Phones allowed in Naypyidaw

Myanmar's government is reported to have permitted mobile phones to be used in its new capital, Naypyidaw. [via Cellular News]

Phones, which are already highly restricted were banned in the new capital city for security reasons.

... Government and military contacts tend to find it easier to get the paperwork to own a mobile phone - but often then rent out those phones to business users.

Related:

-- International Text Messaging Approved in Burma (2008)

-- Myanmar cuts phone service to activists, journalists (2007)

-- Myanmar. The lowest cell phone penetration rate (2005)

-- Military ruled Burma has few cellphones (2005)

-- Burma allows SMS but all messages go through censor
(2005)

Picture from the BBC.

Still No Internet or SMS Allowed in China's Muslim Region

Nearly four months after deadly ethnic riots in China's Muslim region led authorities to shut off the Internet there, local residents are still barred from sending text messages and getting online, reports PC World.

The clampdown on telecommunication in China's western Xinjiang province, where rioting claimed nearly 200 lives in early July.

The rioting between Uighurs, a mostly Muslim minority group native to Xinjiang, and Chinese Han, the country's ethnic majority, also led China to block various social networking Web sites nationwide. Twitter, similar Chinese services and Facebook all remain inaccessible in the country.

25 Insane iPhone And Gadget Costumes

Spotted on ismashphone, 25 insane iPhone and gadget costumes.

Vodafone Symphonia played on 1000 phones with 53 different ringtones

Vodafone NZ hired a production team to orchestrate cellphones into “playing” Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture. The effort took 1000 phones and 53 different ringtone alerts, synchronized to recreate the famous classical piece. [via Mashable]

Watch the video of the performance as well as the making-of in two parts (part 1, part 2)

Not a first though, a collection gathered by American composer Golan Levin initiated the first original «Dialtones Symphony», where the 200 instruments played were the audience's ringing cell phones. The first concert took place on September 2nd, 2001, at the Brucknerhaus Auditorium in Linz, Austria during the Ars Electronica's annual festival. Golan Levin performed his symphony again in the summer of 2002, at the Arteplage Mobile de Jura as a production of the Swiss National Exposition. (Ringtonia)

More on cell phone and ringtones concerts/symphonies.

The Cell Refuseniks, an Ever-Shrinking Club

The New York Times on the few cellphone "refuseniks" who resist cellphones, not because they can't afford them and not because their technophobes, simply because they do not want them. They resent the way that ring tones, tiny keyboards and screens disrupt face-to-face conversation. They savor their moments alone and prize the fact that no one knows how to reach them.

Stop Texting, to Save Lives in Africa

Activists asked cell phone users to stop texting for one hour yesterday -- not to save energy or focus on the road, but to call attention to one of the deadliest and most under reported conflicts in the world. [via Commondreams.org]

The "Cell Out" campaign is part of Congo Week, a series of actions being held worldwide between Oct. 18 and 24 to call attention to what many believe is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world -- the ongoing war over resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Coltan, a mineral needed for many electronic devices, including cellular telephones, is at the center of the conflict in the DRC, which the United Nations has called the deadliest conflict anywhere since World War II.

Related:

-- Coltan and Your Mobile: A M0pocket Repentance And Mobile Community Call To Action

-- Recycled phones and "blood Tantalum"

Nokia sues Apple

Nokia announced that it has today filed a complaint against Apple with the Federal District Court in Delaware, alleging that Apple's iPhone infringes Nokia patents for GSM, UMTS and wireless LAN (WLAN) standards.

[Nokia Press Release]

Mary Meeker: Mobile Internet Is “Bigger Than Most Think”

Mobile internet usage is “bigger and will be bigger than most think,” according to Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker’s bullish prediction. MocoNews reports.

Presenting her report on internet trends and the economy at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Tuesday, she said the overall tech industry was in recovery, and predicted that the mobile internet was the “next major computing cycle,” based on what she called the “explosive Apple iPhone / iTouch ramp.” Mobile internet usage, Meeker predicts, will “surprise to upside for years to come.”

Read full article.

SMS NeXT Time

I just noticed this. When you type "next time" on your iphone, it comes out "NeXT Time". A subtle tribute to Steve Jobs' 1988 NeXT computer?

Apple's iTunes Store Starts Tweeting

Apple has opened three new iTunes Twitter accounts, iTunesMusic, iTunesMovies, and iTunesTV.

[via Switched]

Plane dismantled over lost mobile

Offbeat. Passengers bound for Newcastle Airport were delayed in Spain while their plane was partially dismantled after a traveler dropped his cell phone, which slid out of sight, falling into an air vent.

Passengers were delayed for three hours while the cockpit area and front row of seats was taken apart.

[via the BBC]

Some hotels serve up free phone calls

Business travelers who rely on cellphones to avoid exorbitant charges for using hotel room phones may want to reconsider. USA Today reports.

An increasing number of hotels provide free local calls, and some provide free long-distance calls within the USA. That's a big switch for many hotel chains that profited from charging guests to use the hotel's land-line phones before cellphones and Internet communication became widespread.

Related:

-- Cell phones cut hotel bills

-- Do American hotels use cell phone jamming devices?

-- Mobile Phone jame scam in Scottish hotels exposed