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 PostNew Technology Allows Employees To Clock In Via Text Message. October 22, 2008
Revolutionary time and labor tracking company HourDoc.com announced today that it now offers clients the advanced technology of allowing employees to clock in and out using their cell phones. There will be no extra charge for this new time-saving feature, which will assist companies in tracking their mobile employees and those who work numerous locations.
Using SMS technology, otherwise known as “short messaging system”, employees using HourDoc.com’
s powerful and easy to understand, on-demand system can now confidently clock in and out—for the day or for breaks—using simple text messaging.
Here is how it works. Each cell phone has a unique 10-digit number: …
Email This PostMajor wireless carriers named in class action over text messaging fees October 20, 2008
The Madison Record reports that a class action suit filed against every major wireless telephone provider alleges conspiracy to fix, raise, maintain, or stabilize prices of text messaging services sold in the United States.
Matthew R. Bakay filed suit in the Southern District of Illinois on Oct. 6 against AT&T Inc., AT&T Mobility L.L.C., Sprint Nextel Corporation, Verizon Wireless, Verizon Communications, Inc., Vodafone Group PLC, T-Mobile International AG, and T-Mobile USA, Inc., on behalf of all individuals and entities that purchased text messaging services directly from the defendants. Bakay claims he and class members paid artificially inflated prices for text …
Email This PostA Phone That’s Not Afraid to Mess with Water October 14, 2008
Among the grievous wrongs done by touchscreen technology, the worst is its disregard for tactile feedback. Without the pleasant sensation of a button being pressed, we are woefully incapable of using any gadget without complete visual attention. This Nokia concept tries to right this wrong by using a small pump to fill a substrate beneath the screen that gives our fingers something to feel and press.
Read more and see pictures at Yanko Design
Email This PostHigh-tech bank robbers phone it in October 12, 2008
Your ordinary bank robber can now steal hundreds of account numbers from ATMs without so much as lifting a finger. Instead, he skims.
Skimming is the physical use of secondary readers to capture the magnetic tracks on the backs of credit and debit cards. On ATMs, skimmers and secondary keypads are used to capture account numbers and PINs. Often, the ATM transaction goes through, and the customer doesn’t realize that the account has been compromised until later.
Two risks these high-tech criminals face are being caught fitting a faux cover over an ordinary ATM card slot and keypad, then later retrieving …
Email This PostIs Text Messaging Making Subtitles Popular? October 6, 2008
According to Actress Kristin Scott Thomas, the ubiquity of text messaging means that subtitled movies could gain acceptance. Granted, this is an extrapolation of one throwaway comment in a New York Times interview, but it does make an interesting point.
People will now go to films with subtitles, you know. They’re not afraid of them. It’s one of the upsides of text-messaging and e-mail. Maybe the only good thing to come of it.
People read a lot of on-screen text. You’re doing it now. I read thousands of words a day to bring these posts to you. We all read messages on …
Email This PostAlmost two-thirds of the world population to have a mobile September 30, 2008
Hamadoun Touré, secretary general of the International Telecom Union (ITU), said he expects the number of mobile phone users to exceed 4bn, or 61pc of the world’s 6.7bn inhabitants, in December.
Soaring demand in developing countries has seen year-on-year growth average 24pc between 2000 and 2008. At the turn of the century just 12pc of the world’s population had a mobile phone, by early this year the figure exceeded 50pc.
Speaking at the UN’s session on the Millennium Development Goals in New York, Dr Touré said the huge uptake shows it is “technically feasible to connect the world” to the benefits of …
Email This PostVisa Unveils Massive Mobile Payment Plans September 28, 2008
Visa unveiled several partnerships on Thursday to move payment processing from the PC to the mobile phone.
The world’s largest credit-card organization said a partnership with Nokia would allow consumers to make payments with next year’s Nokia 6212 Classic and other next-generation Nokia phones. Visa will also develop an application with Google’s Android platform that will allow mobile payments, as well as deliver financial information to Android-based phone owners who also hold Chase Visa cards.
Visa also said that it would launch a trial with U.S. Bank and up to 6,000 cardholders to allow secure funds transfers to other Visa cardholders via …
Email This PostText messaging lowers your IQ by 10 points September 22, 2008
In an article on the dangers of being distracted while texting messaging when engaged in other activities, like walking or driving, The New York Times has a quote from aul Saffo, a technology trend forecaster in Silicon Valley who claims that sending an SMS lowers your IQ.
“The act of texting automatically removes 10 I.Q. points. “The truth of the matter is there are hobbies that are incompatible. You don’t want to do mushroom-hunting and bird-watching at the same time, and it is the same with texting and other activities. We have all seen people walk into parking …
Email This PostSend a quick txt to the pigeons September 18, 2008
From next month, you can watch your words go up in smoke as part of an art installation in London’s Trafalgar Square. Called Memory Cloud, the work by architects/designers Stephen and Theodore Spyropoulos will, over three evenings in October, create a huge cloud of smoke on to which the artists will project messages sent by members of the public via text message. Those of a sensitive disposition may need to look away - all the messages will be projected uncensored.
“We form an artistic platform which people can actually speak through and use to interact with each other,” said Theodore Spyropoulos. …
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