NASA’s Cancer Nanosensing Cell Phone Case

According to Gizmodo via MobileMag, NASA has developped a special chip that could diagnose cancer and measure blood sugar levels in diabetics with nothing more than a breath.

The implementation being demonstrated by Jing Li of NASA Ames has it as a cell phone case, looking very much like it would latch onto an iPhone. It could just as easily be adapted for other devices, of course. In a nutshell, there are 32 nanosensor bars on a chip about the size of a postage stamp. Each of these bars is composed of different nanostructure material, reacting to different chemicals in different ways and providing real-time monitoring.

Read full article.

Police track phones with silent SMS

In Europe security services have been sending thousands of Silent SMS messages, allowing them to locate and track phones without the recipient's knowledge. A legal vacuum exists around the technique. Owni.eu reports via @jranck.

Also known as Flash-SMS, the Silent SMS uses an invisible return signal, or “ping”. Developers from the Silent Services company, who created some of the first software for sending this type of SMS, explain:

The Silent SMS allows the user to send a message to another mobile without the knowledge of the recipient mobile’s owner. The message is rejected by the recipient mobile, and leaves no trace. In return, the sender gets a message from a mobile operator confirming that the Silent SMS has been received.

Read full article.

Previously: - Silent SMS track terrorists

SpareOne, A $50 Cell Phone That Runs On One AA Battery

SpareOne is a simple phone that can run off of an AA battery—perfect for stashing as an emergency phone along with a prepaid SIM card.

Spotted at CES by Brian Lam of WireCutter.

[via FastCompany and BlogLaptop.]

Police Report 90% of Crimes in India Solved by Cell Phone Records

According to The Times of India, 90% of the cases in one city are solved using forensic information derived from cell phones. Call data records, or CDR, obtained from cell phones is one of the most important tools Indian law enforcement deploys these days. Law Enforcement Today reports.

Almost everyone uses a cellphone these days. And these are very good tools to track a criminal, even when he or she is on the move," said a police official. Fixed landline phones might provide important data regarding an ongoing case, but cellphone records, on the other hand, prove to be not just the decisive indicators of a person's location, but important evidence for impeachment in many cases.

Cops say that CDR has come in handy for almost every high profile crime case which has occurred in the city in the last seven years. "Now we have better and more accurate CDR technology, which certainly has improved the capabilities of the force. We have solved cases within 24 hours using CDR," the official said.

Read full article.

New Samsung technology can make cell phones waterproof

Samsung has just announced their anticipation for a product known as superhydrophobic coating. The technology is said to be capable of literally making cell and smartphones waterproof and has been used on clothes for decades. Digital Journal reports.

This isn't the first time the notion of a waterproof cell phone has surfaced. There have been releases of similar technologies that keep the liquid off by means of third-party case, or particularly rugged features says AkaScope. Superhydrophobic coating, however is a technology the likes of which have not been seen before.

Read more.

Mobile Phone App Measuring Radiation Exposure is Launched in Australia

The Tawkon app for Android tracks and rates a phone’s level of mobile radiation exposure (low, moderate or high) and suggests situation-specific adjustments for lowering it to safe levels during a call.

Tawkon is currently undergoing tests for FCC certification.

[via ITWire]

Related links to articles on radiation detectors in cell phones, blogged by textually over the years.

Mobile Lorm Glove - A communication device for deaf-blind people

The Mobile Lorm Glove from The Design Research Lab in Berlin is a communication and translation device for the deaf- blind. It translates the hand-touch alphabet Lorm, a common form of communication used by people with both hearing and vision impairment, into digital text and vice-versa.

The prototype enables the deaf-blind user to compose messages via the pressure sensitive palm of the glove that are transmitted as a text message to the receiver's handheld device. Vibrotactile feedback patterns allow the wearer to perceive incoming messages. It supports communication over distance, provides access to autonomous information and serves as an interpreter for people not familiar with Lorm.

via Laurent Haug

Kenyans Going Mobile to Stay Healthy

In Kenya, the ratio of patients to doctors is 6,000 to 1, and the dearth of health professionals isn't the only challenge to accessing decent health care. Unlicensed impostors hand out expired medicines to people who don't know any better, and a shortage of public information on health services makes it easier for quacks to lure victims. Good.is reports via @mobileactive

... More than 25 million Kenyans have mobile phones, making apps a logical way to disseminate essential information about health. MedAfrica, a new smartphone app, has positioned itself as the go-to service for wired Kenyans in search of reputable health care. The app operates like a mobile yellow pages for medical services, providing basic listings of professionals in the area. Additional features include a symptom checker for patients to compare their ailments with different diseases and make decisions about seeking medical attention.

Read full article.

As Smartphones Get Smarter, You May Get Healthier: How mHealth Can Bring Cheaper Health Care To All

Smartphones and tablets are transforming the future of health care. Can we really trust them to save lives? FastCompany reports via @jranck.

... "mHealth," the rapidly growing business of using mobile technology in health care. Leveraging the wonders of a device that's fast becoming ubiquitous--two in three people worldwide own a cell phone--a new generation of startups is building apps and add-ons that make your handheld work like high-end medical equipment. Except it's cheaper, sleeker, and a lot more versatile.

"It's like the human body has developed a new organ," says Raja Rajamannar, chief innovation officer at Humana. Smartphones can already track calories burned and miles run, and measure sleep patterns. By 2013, they'll be detecting erratic heartbeats, monitoring tremors from Parkinson's disease, and even alerting you when it's prime time to make a baby.

At stake is the future of health care--and a share of the $273 billion medical-device industry, which is dominated by the likes of GE and Philips. Although today's mHealth market barely tops $2 billion, experts predict that number will skyrocket over the next decade as smartphones get smarter and patients lose, well, patience with the high costs and hassles of health care.

Read full article.

The Nurse in Your Pocket

In 2009, researchers at MIT gave a dorm full of students smartphones and tracked where they went, who they called and texted, and at what times they communicated. The researchers found that the data pouring out of the phones could reliably tell when a student was ill: Those stricken with the flu moved around much less, and those who were depressed had fewer calls and interactions with others. Business Week reports via @jranck.

Anmol Madan, the PhD student who led the study, concluded that the findings might be useful outside of dorms. There are now more than 60 million smartphones in the U.S., and they’re “incredibly powerful diaries of a person’s life,” he says. So in November 2010, Madan and his classmate Karan Singh, both 29, started Ginger.io to mine those diaries and provide the kind of detailed, persistent health monitoring that doctors and researchers have only dreamed of. “There hasn’t been large-scale, real-world data about how people behave” before now, he says.

Read more.

Portable printer plugs into your cell phone and prints your text messages

Spotted on PSFK, a small portable printer called The BlackBox that you can plug into your cell phone to print your text messages. By Joe Doucent Studio.

Professor's cell phone microscope honored as best innovation of 2011

A groundbreaking imaging technology developed by UCLA Engineering professor Aydogan Ozcan that can turn a simple cell phone into a powerful microscope has been named the top innovation of 2011 by The Scientist, a magazine focusing on the life sciences, research and technology.

Ozcan's compact, lightweight and inexpensive microscope has the potential to bring better health care and monitoring to impoverished and underserved areas of the globe.

The technology, known as LUCAS (Ultra–wide-field Cell monitoring Array platform based on Shadow imaging), was ranked No. 1 among a field of more than 65 entries judged by the magazine as part of its annual "Top 10 Innovations" contest.

Read full press release by UCLA Newsroom.

'Invoked Computing' can turn everyday objects - like a banana - into communications devices

Alvaro Cassinelli is an assistant professor at the Ishikawa-Oku lab at the University of Tokyo. He and his partner, Alexis Zerroug, have created a multi-modal, spatial augmented reality, a system that instantaneously changes household objects into communication devices. The Guardian reports.

The effect, known as "invoked computing", is a process that has enabled Cassinelli to transform a discarded pizza box into a laptop computer and a banana into a telephone.

... In the case of the banana phone, a real handset is not really required, only something that suggests the action of calling on a phone. That "something" can be a combination of a referential object, reinforced by an unequivocal, perhaps exaggerated theatrical gesture.

The idea won the grand prize at Laval Virtual, an international conference and exhibition on virtual reality and converging technologies.

Read more.

Apple Patent Describes New Type of Face-Recognition Tech

Swipe to unlock could be a thing of the past and iOS users could soon be using facial recognition technology to lock or unlock their iDevices. Wired reports.

As described in a recently discovered patent, Apple’s method would sense when a user is approaching the device — for example, if it’s seated in a dock, and the user walks toward it. The device would then use its image processor to execute facial recognition to unlock the device, all with low battery penalties. If the device is used for business applications, higher security levels could even be set.

Read full article.

Apple gets a patent for using apps during calls

This sounds interesting. Apple has been granted a patent for allowing users to switch to an app while taking a call.

According to CBS News, patent number 8,082,523 called "Portable electronic device with graphical user interface supporting application switching" was granted to Apple.

[via The Inquirer]

IBM Reveals Five Innovations That Will Change Our Lives within Five Years

IBM is predicting that in the next five years we'll no longer need passwords for email or even ATMs, we'll be able to control smartphones and laptops with our minds, and the digital divide will cease to exist. The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

From it's annual "5 in 5" report of five technologies "that have the potential to change the way people work, live and interact during the next five years."

You will never need a password again

Your biological makeup is the key to your individual identity, and soon, it will become the key to safeguarding it.

You will no longer need to create, track or remember multiple passwords for various log-ins. Imagine you will be able to walk up to an ATM machine to securely withdraw money by simply speaking your name or looking into a tiny sensor that can recognize the unique patterns in the retina of your eye. Or by doing the same, you can check your account balance on your mobile phone or tablet. ...

Mind reading is no longer science fiction

IBM scientists are among those researching how to link your brain to your devices, such as a computer or a smartphone. If you just need to think about calling someone, it happens. Or you can control the cursor on a computer screen just by thinking about where you want to move it. ...

The digital divide will cease to exist

There are 7 billion people inhabiting the world today. In five years there will be 5.6 billion mobile devices sold – which means 80% of the current global population would each have a mobile device.

... Growing communities will be able to use mobile technology to provide access to essential information and better serve people with new solutions and business models such as mobile commerce and remote healthcare....

Read full press release

Google’s Siri Clone Might Be Ready by New Years

Google is reportedly feverishly working on its own version of the voice-activated, natural-language assistant, code-named Majel (Gene Roddenberry's wife—the voice of many Star Trek computers.).

[via Gizmodo]

Researchers shrink 3G phones' power needs with proxies in cloud

Researchers at a Finnish Aalto University wanted to make Internet access easier for developing countries with less-than-reliable power grids. But the proxy system they developed can work anywhere, and reduce the drain on smartphone's batteries by as much as 74 percent.

[via arstechnica]

To self-diagnose, spit on an iPhone

Handheld gadgets could one day diagnose infections at the push of a button by using the supersensitive touchscreens in today's smartphones. New Scientist reports.

Many believe that in the future collecting samples of saliva, urine or blood could be performed using a cheap, USB-stick-sized throwaway device called a lab-on-a-chip. The user would inject a droplet of the fluid in the chip, and micropumps inside it would send the fluid to internal vessels containing reagents that extract target disease biomarker molecules. The whole device would then be sent to a lab for analysis.

But Hyun Gyu Park and Byoung Yeon Won at the Korea Advanced Institute for Science and Technology in Daejeon think touchscreens could improve the process by letting your phone replace the lab work. Park suggests the lab-on-a-chip could present a tiny droplet of the sample to be pressed against a phone's touchscreen for analysis, where an app would work out whether you have food poisoning, strep throat or flu, for example.

Read full article.

CSi: Crime Scene iPhones Yield Forensic Evidence, Confusion About Data Handling

What smartphone and tablet data can be captured and analyzed? How does one do that correctly? And how reliable is the information, anyway? These are other questions beguile law enforcement officials as they confront mobile forensics. FastCompany reports.

Related articles on mobile phone forensics blogged by textually over the years.

Cell phone batteries to recharge in 15 minutes and last more than a week

Scientists are closer to developing a cell phone battery that will take just 15 minutes to recharge and last more than a week. ZeeNews reports.

A team of Northwestern University engineers created an electrode for lithium-ion batteries, used in cell phones and iPods, that allows holding a charge up to ten times greater than current technology.

Batteries with the new electrode also can charge 10 times faster than current batteries, the journal Advanced Energy Materials reported.

"We have found a way to extend a new lithium-ion battery's charge life by ten times," said Harold H. Kung, researcher, a university statement said.

Read full article.

An App That Senses When You’re Feeling Down

Ginger.io just won the $100,000 Data Design Diabetes challenge, because it silently analyzes your phone usage data to figure out if you’re upset. For diabetes patients, that could be a lifesaver. FastCompany reports via @JodyRanck.

Your smartphone is an incredibly powerful tool—one that we mostly waste by just using to make phone calls and check email. But it’s really an advanced bundle of sensors that is with us nearly 24 hours a day, collecting massive amounts of data. Doctors and health professionals are only now starting to understand the opportunity this data can provide. Take a new app that helps silently identify diabetes patients who might be slipping with their treatments.

Read full article.

USB-equipped urban bikes can charge mobile devices

German bicycle maker Silverback has recently launched two bikes with built-in USB ports that can charge devices as the rider pedals.

Springwise via @STKonrath.

Feel content of email without having to remove your hands or phone from your pocket

A vibration in your pocket only tells you that an email or text message has arrived, not what it's about. So researchers at the Nagoya Institute of Technology have developed a unique communication system that lets written messages be felt on someone else's hand, without any physical interaction. Gizmodo reports.

... The system provides another physical interface allowing visually impaired users to feel a braille message. And if eventually shrunk and integrated into cellphones, it could let users feel an email without having to remove their hands or phones from their pockets.

Read full article.

Screen-spy program can read texts and email

A team of researchers have developed a program called iSpy that can read what's being typed on a smartphone's screen from up to sixty meters away. New Scientist reports via Gizmodo.

Frahm and Fabian Monrose, also of UNC-Chapel Hill, have built a program, dubbed iSpy, that can identify text typed on a touchscreen from video footage of the screen or even its reflection in windows or sunglasses. Video from an ordinary mobile phone camera can be used to spy on a person from 3 metres away. And a snoop with a digital SLR camera that shoots HD video could read a screen up to 60 metres away.

Read more.

Another device to enable smartphones to measure radiation

Russian scientists from Intersoft Eurasia have reported plans to manufacture a device that will enable iOS, Android and Windows 7 mobile devices to measure radiation and inform the user of normal or elevated levels. Profy reports via @mobileactive.org.

... The price of the dosimeter will be in the range from $30 to $50 in retail but of course if it could be integrated in the device body by manufacturers, the price could drop (down to $10 as the inventor claims) and every user could have the functionality by default. The company has already negotiated the idea of sensor integration with manufacturers such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Fujitsu but the results have not been disclosed yet.

Other radiation measuring technologies being developed for cell phones:

-- NTT Docomo to launch Smartphone jackets that measure radiation - The phone will come with changeable "jackets" fitted with sensors, to monitor body mass as well as level of skin-damaging ultraviolet light.

-- Silicon 'nose' turns cell phones into toxin detectors - San Diego's The University of California and a startup called Rhevision, are working a tiny silicon chip that can be embedded in cell phones that will detect and then map the location and extent of gas leaks and toxins in the air.

-- Cell-All could put chemical sensors everywhere (2009) - New technology that would add chemical sensing capabilities to cell phones.

-- Radiation detectors in your cell phone (2008) - Purdue University is developing sensors which fit inside a cell phone that can detect radiation, and thus perhaps stop the detonation of a nuclear bomb by terrorists is a bit outlandish to my way of thinking.

-- Saving the World With Cell Phones (2005) - As cell phones evolve to include souped-up games, streaming video and MP3 players, some University of California at Berkeley professors and graduate students want to slip a pollution detector into the mix.

-- Phones that detect terrorist attacks (2003) - A newly opened research center at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA is developing a cell phone that can also detect "dirty bombs" by containing detectors that then upload their information to a central database.

-- PCell phone could warn of gas leaks (2003) - A mobile phone able to warn against fire, leakage of methane or other types of toxic gas has been submitted to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office for patent.

-- :Cell Phones - For so much more than just talking (2003) ... And down the road, research is working on cell phones which can warn of gas leaks (thanks to sensors that verify changes in the atmosphere) and cell phones that will be able to warn about the presence of bacteria and viruses (thanks to bio-sensors) or detect dirty bombs (thanks to detectors that can upload information to a central database).

How Siri could revolutionize the 911 system

Next Generation 911 will allow for communications to be made by voice, video or text. Location will automatically be appended to voice calls, saving time and confusion when the caller doesn’t know where they’re location is — or isn’t able to verbally communicate it. John S. Wilson, an expert on health policy (with a focus on long-term services and supports) reports for GigaOM.

I believe that Siri, Apple’s recently introduced natural language voice technology, has the potential to change not just our 911 system, but also to be one of the biggest consumer-facing technologies in health care that we’ve seen in decades.

Imagine this scenario: an elderly person is having a cardiac event. She is having trouble breathing and is unable to complete a sentence. Dialing 911 is possible, but if the caller is unable to narrate the condition, first responders would still be in the dark until they arrive.

Even after they do arrive, information still eludes them: some critical — including prior medical history, current medications and allergic reactions to medicines — and some logistical, such as health insurance and next of kin.

Read more.

Medical ID bracelet uses texting to relay emergency info

The Los Angeles Times on a new medical identification bracelet that came on the market Tuesday, that uses text messaging to convey detailed medical information to first responders.

With the TextID bracelets, information can be accessed within seconds of an emergency responder sending a text to the five-digit number on the ID. That information is texted back in two parts – a first message that reveals the patient’s name, gender, age, condition and contact phone number, and a second message with a URL providing an entire medical profile. In a personal test of the system, both texts were received within 10 seconds.

Read full article.

UK Met police using surveillance system to monitor mobile phone

Civil liberties group raises concerns over Met police purchase of technology to track public handsets over a targeted area, reports The Guardian.

Britain's largest police force is operating covert surveillance technology that can masquerade as a mobile phone network, transmitting a signal that allows authorities to shut off phones remotely, intercept communications and gather data about thousands of users in a targeted area.

The disclosure has caused concern among lawyers and privacy groups that large numbers of innocent people could be unwittingly implicated in covert intelligence gathering. The Met has refused to confirm whether the system is used in public order situations, such as during large protests or demonstrations.

Read full article.

Voice wars: Apple v Google v Microsoft

Voice is the new black when it comes to interacting with our gadgets - and Google and Microsoft aren't about to let Apple's Siri personal assistant hog all the limelight.

[via The Sydney Morning Herald]