AT&T goes wild with texting, announces four QWERTY phones October 24, 2008
If you’re into that whole SMS craze and you’re on AT&T, you’re in luck — four times over. The carrier’s gone ahead and announced not one, not two, but four QWERTY-equipped dumphones today, including a dual slider and a Pantech being billed as “the world’s thinnest device with a full QWERTY keypad.”
First up, the Pantech Matrix is available now in your choice of blue or green, with red being added on Thursday, October 16. It slides two ways — a conventional vertical slide to reveal a numeric keypad, and a second side slider for the full QWERTY action. …
Email This PostRepublicans, Obama ask supporters to text hurricane relief September 6, 2008
Republican National Convention leaders have asked convention attendees to pledge donations to hurricane relief funds via text to the code 2HELP, using the keyword GIVE.
… Barack Obama’s campaign could not leave it up to the Republican camp to harness technology for the betterment of the Gulf Coast. The Democratic presidential candidate contacted his cadre of supporters who receive text messages from the campaign, with a text that read, “Barack asks that you give to the Red Cross: give 5 dollars by texting GIVE to 24357 or give more by calling 1-800-435-7669 or at redcross.org/donate. Please fwd.”
[via News.com]
Email This PostGet iPhone availability updates every 15 minutes July 30, 2008
Can’t find an iPhone 3G? Well, TopMuffin has created a site that checks Apple’s store inventory every 15 minutes. According to the site, Apple updates the inventory throughout the day. TopMuffin’s site parses the feed (feed link) and shows iPhone 3G availability by Apple Store.
TopMuffin doesn’t just post availability info, they also do some statistics to find the percent available. When we checked the page, Apple had 45% availability for 8GB black iPhones, 53% availability for 16GB black iPhones, and 41% availability for 16GB white iPhones.
This site does not list availability for AT&T stores, and only …
Email This PostSubversive bathrom scales sends SMS with your weight June 30, 2008
Core77 writes up 3 subversive bathroom scales designed by Alice Wang, a recent graduate of RCA.On “White Lies”, the further back you stand, the lighter you become on the digital display. On the “Half-Truth” scale, your partner becomes responsible for deciding whether to lie or come clean, since the display is on the front face of the device, out of the subject’s view.
And relevent to this column, “Open Secret” reveals your weight every time you weigh yourself by sending a text message to a desired mobile phone.
Wang offers that “the receiver is then responsible to reveal the answer …
Email This PostEradicating TB with … cell phone minutes? June 11, 2008
One of the biggest challenges in fighting tuberculosis is simply getting patients to take their medicine.
MIT students have come up with a possible solution: A new testing and reporting system that is easy for patients to use and offers economic incentives such as free cell phone minutes.
Tuberculosis kills an estimated two million people every year, and treating the disease requires a strict six-month regimen of antibiotics. If patients abandon the treatment early, the TB bacteria survive and can become resistant to first-line antibiotics.
“TB is a massive problem, and it’s exacerbated by the fact that people have a lot of trouble …
Email This PostEco conscious mobile gaming June 9, 2008
NEW DELHI, India - An interesting new initiative has been launched using mobile gaming as a mouthpiece in helping educate gamers on issues of climate change. Dubbed Connect-2-Climate, this innovative program is a collaborative project between games developer ZMQ Software Systems and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), with the release of games such as ‘DeCarbonator’ and ‘Mission Lighting’ across India, it hopes to engage players on a fundamental entertainment level with an eco educational agenda in tow.
ZMQ has a history of giving games a sense of global social responsibility, having previously launched games in India to educate …
Email This PostMobile Advertising Revenue to Surpass $2.7 Billion in 2008 May 21, 2008
Worldwide mobile advertising is projected to surpass $2.7 billion in 2008, up from $1.7 billion in 2007, but the market has developed slowly and obstacles remain, according to Gartner. Ease of use and relevancy to consumers are two important factors that must be addressed to help build momentum in the mobile advertising market.
“Innovative developments, such as minimizing the number of keystrokes required to access information, using the phone’s camera to improve the overall user experience and tying content or shopping location relevancy to advertisements will move the market forward,” said …
Email This PostAnonymous Texts at Bus Stops - Big Brother’s Creepy Bluetooth Campaign May 19, 2008
To promote popular reality show Big Brother 2008 on Channel TEN in Australia, advertising agency Marketforce in Perth came up with a unique bluetooth SMS campaign that really caught people by surprise. The ads embodied the “Big Brother is watching” slogan, which is the essence of the show. Trendhunter reports.”The campaign installed Blue-tooth transmitters in over 20 high-traffic bus shelters around town. The transmitters automatically sent two anonymous messages to any bluetooth enabled phones in the area.
The first message was tailored specifically for the local location, with something along the lines of “Im watching u. Ur at the (customized …
Email This PostGlove converts sign language into sound May 16, 2008
It knows only 32 words, but someday, it may get a grip on the entire human vocabulary.
It is a sensor-equipped glove, known as HandTalk , that can translate gestures into spoken words on a cell phone. It was developed by students at Carnegie Mellon University as part of a class research project.
Three of the four team members, senior computer engineering students Bhargav Bhat, Hemant Sikaria and Jorge L. Meza , demonstrated the prototype yesterday at Carnegie Mellon’s “Meeting of the Minds” expo of undergraduate research projects.
Someday, the young inventors hope, it may allow deaf people to communicate with those who …
Email This PostMotorola creating mobile movie store? May 1, 2008
Motorola is developing a movie store for its phones, claims UK trade magazine New Media Age (registration required for full article). An alleged source at partner studio Paramount says that Motorola is in the “late stages” of offering a service that would offer full-length movies pre-formatted for Motorola’s more media-friendly devices. Paramount is currently the only studio known to be involved, though others are allegedly in talks to add their own catalogs.
The service is labeled as a “breakthrough,” but would offer virtually the same means of loading media as for the iPhone; rather than download videos directly to the phone, …
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