Mobile pollution sensors deployed

Cyclists, buses, cars and even pedestrians will become mobile pollution detectors in an initiative launched on Tuesday, reports the BBC.

Led by Imperial College London, the Message project will trial three types of mobile, wireless pollution sensor.

These will measure traffic pollutants throughout the UK, and transmit their data via the mobile phone network.

Scientists say such detailed mobile measurements could help improve the management of air quality.

Four UK universities are collaborating on the project, which will deploy 100 sensors in London, Leicester, Gateshead and Cambridge. Each one will measure up to five different traffic pollutants simultaneously, including carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide.

Other projects where cell phones monitor pollution:

-- Cyclists' cellphones help monitor air pollution - Cellphones used by bicycle couriers are monitoring air pollution in Cambridge, UK, and beaming the data back to a research lab.

-- Cell phone Air Pollution Monitor - Squirrel is a Bluetooth-enabled gadget that monitors pollution developped by The University of California San Diego and Calit2.

-- Cell phones to sense our environment and its pollutants - Tiny environmental sensors in cell phones and turn phone users into roving citizen scientists who continuously sample and respond to their personal environment.

Orange unveils solar concept tent at Glastonbury Music Festival

Spotted on News.com, Telecom giant Orange's concept solar tent for the opening of this year's Glastonbury music festival in the U.K.

Related: - «Text Me Home Tents» and «Text Towers». At Glastonbury 2004 festival-goers had a helping hand finding their way "home" thanks to Orange tents that light up by text message.

Wireless charging comes to Apple's iPhone 3GS, thanks to WildCharge

Starting today, iPhone (3G and 3GS included) and iPod touch users can order up a WildCharge Skin along with a WildCharger Pad in order to bring wire-free charging to their smartphone.

Just slap the skin on, plug the pad in and toss the handset down on said pad. Just like that.

[via Engadget]

Related, very remotely: - Skins on cell phones to make mobile payments

Hi-tech helps Iranian monitoring

As protests continue in Iran, details are emerging of the technology used to monitor its citizens. The BBC reports.

Iran is well known for filtering the net, but the government has moved to do the same for mobile phones.

Nokia Siemens Network has confirmed it supplied Iran with the technology needed to monitor, control, and read local telephone calls. It told the BBC that it sold a product called the Monitoring Centre to Iran Telecom in the second half of 2008.

The product allows authorities to monitor any communications across a network, including voice calls, text messaging, instant messages, and web traffic.

But Nokia Siemens says the product is only being used, in Iran, for the monitoring of local telephone calls on fixed and mobile lines.

Rather than just block traffic, it is understood that the monitoring system can also interrogate data to see what information is being passed back and forth.

A spokesman described the system as "a standard architecture that the world's governments use for lawful intercept". He added: "Western governments, including the UK, don't allow you to build networks without having this functionality."

... Nokia Siemens markets the Monitoring Centre product to 150 countries around the world where it does business. The firm says it does not supply the system to China or to Burma.

Traffic in and out of Iran is largely controlled by Iran Telecom. On 13 June, the day after presidential elections, data traffic come to an almost complete halt, according to analysis by network security firm Arbor Networks.

Since then, traffic has gradually recovered, and analysts have speculated that the slowdown and re-start was caused by authorities putting in place filtering and monitoring systems.

Because Iran is effectively reading every message, this results in an inevitable slow down of traffic.

Related: - Iran's internet dilemma

Skins on cell phones to make mobile payments

Instead of a contactless payment sticker for your mobile phone, why not just skin the entire phone? That’s the reasoning behind Phoolah the product that that Mobile Payment Skins, a Knoxville, Tenn.-based provider of mobile contactless payment service solutions that is launching this fall. The name comes from a combination of payment card, personalized skin and mobile phone.

When a card holder receives his personalized vinyl skin embedded with a contactless payment chip linked to a prepaid debit card, he peels it from its backing and wraps it about his phone.

[via NFC News]

Human ear inspires universal radio chip

A computer chip modelled on the human ear could be used in universal receivers for radio-frequency signals ranging from cellphone and wireless internet transmissions to radio and television broadcasts.

[via New Scientist]

Reflex Technology

A company called Kent Displays has developed something called Reflex Technology, whereby a thin but rugged LCD "skin" can be applied to laptops, cell phones, MP3 players, etc. and change color. Most impressively, it only requires power for the instant you change the color; after that it keeps the new shade but draws no juice.

[via Core 77]

Samsung Introduces Its First Solar Powered Mobile Phone

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, today announced its first solar powered mobile phone, the “Crest Solar” (E1107). The new handset enables its users to charge the battery anywhere the sun is shining when electricity is unavailable.

[via YTN]

iPhone 3G S to be Oleophobic

According to Electricpig, the iPhone 3G S will be Oleophobic - which does not mean “scared of cookies”. No, what this means is that the new batch of iPhones won’t be quite as prone to picking up fingerprints.

Apple coated the new iPhones screens' in a special material that repels the oil on your hands that leaves greasy fingerprints.

‘Oleophobic’ material (”lacking affinity for oils”) means that you will no longer have to keep wiping your iPhone with a slightly damp cloth in order to keep it grease free.

Check out the iPhone's cleaning instructions page.

Air Writing: Next Big Thing in Cell Phones?

Forget fumbling with tiny cell phone keys. A prototype of a new application allows cell phone users to write short notes in the air and send them automatically to an e-mail address. LiveScience and FastCompany report.

Travelers and other mobile users could air-write notes to themselves rather than have to text on the run.

"By holding the phone like a pen, you can write short messages or draw simple diagrams in the air," said Sandip Agrawal, an electrical and computer engineering student at Duke University in North Carolina.

The air-writing app takes advantage of accelerometers already inside cell phones such as Apple's iPhone. Accelerometers normally keep track of phone movements and orientation, such as having the display screen rotate from portrait to landscape mode.

Related sort of: Air texting and wave messaging

-- Beaming Text and Images in the Air - South Korean SK Telecom announcedhat it would launch an Air Beam service that displays text messages or images in the air. (2006)

-- SMS Messages in the Air - Sun Data, a handset accessory company, announced it developed AirBeam that can display SMS or image stored in handsets in the air using LED. (2004).

-- Wave Messaging - By waving the Nokia 3220 camera phone from side to side, the LED lights of the Nokia Xpress-on FunShell light up to "write" a message that appears to float in mid-air. (May 2004).

-- In March 2003, the WSJ reported from CeBIT about a phone called Kurv, made by Kyocera Wireless Corp which featured airtexting: "The company believes airtexting will be one of it's most popular features, especialy in night clubs. To airtext, you type in a text like 'call me' then wave it back and forth in the air. As the phone moves, a row of blinking red lights along the top of the phone leaves the phrase trailing behind it."

-- A company called Wildseed actually tested airtexting with teenagers - which was a big hit. cf post in Textually on airtexting.

-- And an article from Wap.com (no longer online) several years ago, featured a California company called Neoku.com which developed a platform called haikuhaiku. The article described a form of mobile graffiti, using a cell phone as a paint spraycan, "by waving it into the air to form a word, the text would appear onto the screen of a person passing by".

Nokia develops phone that recharges itself without mains electricity

The Guardian reports on a new prototype phone from Nokia that is able to power itself on nothing more than ambient radiowaves – the weak TV, radio and mobile phone signals that permanently surround us.

The power harvested is small but it is almost enough to power a mobile in standby mode indefinitely without ever needing to plug it into the mains, according to Markku Rouvala, one of the researchers who developed the device at the Nokia Research Centre in Cambridge, UK.

... Instead of harvesting tiny amounts of power (a few microwatts) from dedicated transmitters, Nokia's prototype is able to scavenge relatively large amounts of power — around a thousand times as much — from signals coming from miles away. Individually the energy available in each of these signals is miniscule. But by harvesting radiowaves across a wide range of frequencies it all adds up, said Rouvala.

HP test mobile social network

An intelligent, mobile-phone-based social network is being tested by researchers at Hewlett Packard. BBC reports.

Friendlee analyses calls and messages to build up a picture of a person's closest correspondents.

Regular contacts are displayed more prominently so that users do not have to wade through a phonebook to find them.

The system also analyses which firms a person uses to generate recommendations to other people in their network.

"It builds a network of people that you communicate with," explained Bernardo Huberman, director of the social computing lab at the firm's Palo Alto research centre.

Read full article.

Cellphones could unite to broadcast disaster alerts

Cellphones could sound the alarm in the event of a disaster and pass on the alert from phone to phone - even if most of a cellphone network is down. So says Motorola in a new patent application, reports New Scientist.

In an emergency, such as a hurricane or terrorist attack, the US government can operate the Emergency Alert System (EAS), which harnesses all TV and radio frequencies, to broadcast warning messages to people in their homes. But not everyone will ave their appliances turned on.

Motorola engineer Jerome Vogedes' answer is a new generation of cellphones that can rapidly form a peer-to-peer network when an emergency alert is broadcast.

A phone on the edge of a disaster area, where a cellphone service still operates, receives the alert. It contacts the nearest phone using Wi-Fi, establishes a P2P network with it, and sends it the alert.

That cellphone then does likewise until as many mobiles as possible have received the alert.

Sony Ericsson Shows Off Eco-Friendly Mobile Phones

Sony Ericsson today unveiled two new "GreenHeart" products as part of its new(ish) plan to reduce the carbon emissions from its products. Cellular News reports.

The first flagship product to be launched, the C901 GreenHeart, will include an electronic, in-phone manual to replace the standard paper version, saving over 90% in paper.

The C901 GreenHeart phone casing is made from a minimum of 50% recycled plastics and includes an optimised display light sensor that uses less energy. The phone is coloured with waterborne paint that lowers exposure to Volatile Organic Compounds.

As well as featuring many of the innovations showcased in the C901 GreenHeart, Naite will come to market with a low-power charger, the EP300 GreenHeart charger, one of the first of its kind to be introduced to the market.

The company estimates that the overall Carbon footprint over the full life of the C901 GreenHeart and Naite is reduced by 15%.

Ericsson launches anti-fraud system using mobiles

Ericsson is courting major banks with a security service the company thinks could cut down on credit card fraud as well as eliminate an inconvenience for travelers using cards overseas. TechWorld reports.

Banks are increasingly blocking credit card transactions in certain high-risk countries due to increasingly levels of fraud. A business traveler who lives in the UK but goes to Russia can likely have a transaction rejected if the person hasn't informed the credit card company of their travel plans. It's embarrassing and inconvenient.

Ericsson's IPX Country Lookup service uses a person's mobile phone to provide a confirmation that a person is actually in the country where the transaction is carried out, said Peter Garside, UK and Ireland regional manager for Ericsson's IPX products.

For the service to work, Ericsson's technology must be installed on a mobile operator's network. Once installed, Ericsson will pay the operator a "small fee" every time a bank wants to verify a certain transaction by one of their customer's mobile phones, Garside said. Ericsson will then put a margin on the lookup fee and charge that to banks, he said. The lookup fee hasn't been set yet.

Read full article.

How cellphones will enhance reality

New applications will blend real and virtual worlds on cellphones. New Scientist reports.

... Instead of completely immersing a person in a virtual environment, augmented or mixed reality involves adding digital features to the world they see around them.

So what are the advantages of augmenting your reality? Simply, the technology allows you to point a phone at an object and see an enhanced version of reality on the screen – whether a mountain labelled with its height, a person tagged with their name, or celestial objects properly labelled in the night sky.

Sony Ericsson patent generates playlist based on facial expression

Sony Ericsson have patented a system whereby a cellphone could be controlled by facial expressions, shuffling between music tracks according to visual mood analysis. SlashGear reports via Go Get It.

The patent, titled “Generating music playlist based on facial expression”, describes capturing an image of a user and using facial recognition to build a custom playlist depending on the listener’s mood.

In a more complex implementation, Sony Ericsson suggest that brief video could be captured, tracking emotional states of happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, fear, disgust, neutrality, etc. These would be compared to the musical characteristics of the tracks stored on the cellphone or PMP, similar to how Sony Ericsson’s existing SenseMe application works.

Nokia Patent Seeks Emoticons for Phones

Nokia has filed a patent for a system that would allow a phone to transmit the user’s basics emotions along a text or voice message and have the receiver’s device flash the appropriate light to indicate the emotion. Wired's Gadet Lab reports.

“Light messaging allows a user to express a mood while having an ongoing call or while sending a text message,” said Nokia in its patent filing. “The light messaging may set the tone of the communication. People react to lights and colors very deeply and emotionally.”

That means when a user sends a text message, they can choose an appropriate mood from the phone’s software options. A color corresponding to that emotion is embedded with the message and sent. The receiver’s phone then lights up displaying that color along with the message.

Click here to understand how it works.

These Shoes Are Made for Talking - To Your Phone

A startup is working on a product that can tell you exactly what it's like to walk a mile in someone else's shoes -- because the insoles record every touch of pressure. Top Tech News reports.

ESoles Inc., which makes custom insoles for athletic shoes, has created prototype insoles with pressure sensors that relay their information wirelessly to a nearby cell phone. Then an application on the phone can tell the wearer how much pressure he or she is applying in 11 different zones of each sole.

[via Go–GetIt Blog via Go–GetIt Twitter ]

Spatial Audio Transmission for Cell Phones

NTT DoCoMo announced today that it has developed a spatial audio transmission technology for mobile phones that enables an user to assign a spatial position to each sound source when listening to multiple sound sources, such as during a game or a conference call.

The technology enables a user listening with headphones to, for example, hear each speaker's voice as if it were coming from a unique direction, creating a virtual face-to-face communication environment.

Why? is what comes to my mind, but this is obviously way over my head.

[I4U and Press release]

Cell phones to sense our environment and its pollutants

Our cell phones have become portable guides to the world around us and are changing the way we move through it — towards the nearest ATM, or available taxi, or away from a restaurant that garnered bad reviews. But what if cell phones could measure the temperature and humidity or pick up unseen environmental contaminants like air pollution, UV levels, and pollen count in our immediate surroundings? Seed Magazine reports via Smart Mobs.

How would it change your ideas about moving around in the world, if you could suddenly sense things you couldn’t see?” asks Eric Paulos, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute. Paulos wants to put tiny environmental sensors in cell phones and turn phone users into roving citizen scientists who continuously sample and respond to their personal environment.

This type of local and real-time environmental data would not only facilitate science and satisfy individual curiosity, it will empower people to uncover, visualize, and collectively share information about their own neighborhoods and cities. It could ultimately encourage active participation in protecting and improving those spaces.

Read full article.

Related:

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

-- Cell phone Air Pollution Monitor (2007)

-- 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)

Mobile Phone ultrasound machine

Spotted on favorite Red Ferret, a cell phone ultrasound.

Researchers at Washington University in St Louis are on the way to perfecting a mobile phone based ultrasound machine which could radically improve medical diagnosis in remote and inaccessible areas.

The USB device can be used to scan internal body organs, eyes, and veins and arteries for IVs. The two boffins, David Zar and William Richard have set a target price of $500 for the device, which makes it orders of magnitude cheaper than current portable imaging products.

Read more.

Smash Technologies livens up Text Messaging

Well-known investor and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has led a $1.35 million first round of investment in Smash Technologies, a company that is creating newer, slicker ways to use text messaging. The New York Times reports.

Smash Technologies is providing a technology platform that lets software developers create new text applications on top of texting, to bring more sophistication.

In their own words:

Most texting applications today offer very limited functionality and therefore value, much like the early days of the Internet. Some companies have waded into the waters with simple, single-text call to actions, like text-in for voting, coupon codes, or to receive an alert. But text apps can be so much more!

SMaSh lets text apps deliver enhanced functionality and interactions that drive real value for both business and mobile users alike:

-- Menu choices that can be navigated
-- Transactions
-- Targeted, tailored information delivery
-- Tracking each user's activity and choices through sessions ("cookies for mobile")
-- And more

Future Samsung phones to blast you with freshness?

engadget:mobile has found a patent for a Samsung phone with a scent strip. An idea that will surely appeal to cosmetics companies and their perfume divisions.

A fragrant strip is embedded either in the slide mechanism for sliders or in the hinge on clamshells; every time the phone is opened, friction against the strip releases the fresh scent.

Sun Dial calls Muslims to prayer

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a mobile phone application known as Sun Dial, which alerts Muslim users when it's time to perform the five daily prayers known as salat. TechRadar reports.

Sun Dial tells users that the time to pray is approaching by using an image of the sun lining up with a green circle. When the sun lines up with the circle, it's time to pray.

It's not yet available for download.

Links to articles related to other Islamic Phones.

Vibrating touch screen puts Braille at the fingertips

Touch screen devices like the iPhone are great when you can see them, but not much good if you are blind. Now a new way of presenting Braille characters on a mobile device could be the first step towards a Braille-ready touch-screen phone, reports New Scientist.

In Braille, letters are encoded using a two-by-three matrix in which each character is represented by a different configuration of raised and absent dots at the six locations. To display these dots on a touch-screen device, Jussi Rantala of the University of Tampere in Finland and colleagues used a Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, which has a piezoelectric material built into the touch screen that vibrates when an electric signal is applied to it.

The team installed software that represents a raised dot as a single pulse of intense vibration, and an absent dot as a longer vibration made up of several weaker pulses (see diagram).

Read full article.

Flowing Blood Could Power iPods and Cell Phones

Power generated from flowing blood, simple body movements or a gentle breeze could one day be converted to electricity to charge iPods, cell phones and other personal electronic devices. LiveScience reports.

Researchers reported today they can harvest energy by converting low-frequency vibrations, like simple body movements, the beating of the heart or movement of the wind, into electricity by using zinc oxide nanowires that conduct the electricity. The nanowires are piezoelectric — they generate an electric current when subjected to mechanical stress.

Read full article.

Turning Soldiers' Helmets into a Wireless Mesh Network

Engineers at Vanderbilt University's Institute for Software Integrated Systems (ISIS) have developed a Countersniper System that can give soldiers an edge by turning their combat helmets into "smart nodes" in a wireless sensor network. Cellular News reports.

Like several other shooter location systems developed in recent years, the ISIS system relies on the sound waves produced when a high-powered rifle is fired. These acoustic signals have distinctive characteristics that allow the systems to pick them out from other loud noises and track them back to their source. Current systems, however, rely on centralized or stand-alone sensor arrays. This limits their accuracy and restricts them to identifying shooters at line-of-sight locations.

Read full article.

Turning cheap cell phones into smarter phones

iSkoot is trying to make cheap cell phones smarter.

The company, which provides mobile Web services, announced Wednesday that it is offering a software development kit to mobile handset manufacturers so that they can turn their inexpensive feature-phones into Web-enabled devices that can access and get live updates for popular Web services like Facebook, IM, e-mail, Twitter and other social media sites.

[via News.com]

Vital Jacket Will Monitor Your Health

The Chilean based Company BioDevices recently unveiled Vital Jacket - a wearable vital-signs monitoring system. From The Future of Things.

Vital Jacket uses microelectronics embedded into a T-shirt that will continuously monitor heart rate and electrocardiogram (ECG) waves of the wearer.

Vital Jacket is currently available in two versions: HWM100 stores data on a SD memory card for viewing and analysis on a computer and allows for long term monitoring. Users can input heart rate limits and be alerted through a vibration alarm embedded in the T-Shirt when the set limits are exceeded.

The second version, HWM200, allows signals to be sent directly to a PDA or cell phone. BioDevices plans further refinement to the wearable heart monitor so that medical professionals can receive live data about their patients' health 24 hours a day using a wireless LAN.