I do not know how many people actually get pulled over for driving while holding their cell phone’s up to their ear. I personally know 5 people who over the past year have gotten pulled over for such an offense. Very recently California and Washington just joined their east coast brethren in banning cell phone cusping while driving.
The solution of course is just to use a headset or some kind of handsfree device. And for those of you that find the concept daunting Headsets.com will send you a free headset if you have been cited for driving without one.
And while they acknowledge that studies have studies have shown that talking on hands-free devices are just as dangerous as talking on cell phones regularly, they nevertheless want you to be as safe as possible.
Oh, the handset they will send you is the sexy sleek Plantronics Discovery 925 Bluetooth headset.
Before you hit the streets chasing down cops to see you cell phone hand just remember that a fine in California will set you back 20 bucks and some other states 200 bucks (way more than what the bluetooth costs).
While half on the topic of driving and cell phones… check out this great find from Shiny Shiny…. A seatbelt that has a pocket for your cell phone. No more digging in-between you car seats.
This is one year old Make news but it has been getting a lot of blog flair since, it would appear, someone has finally capitalized on the idea of a mobile version of a rotary phone that links up to a cell network via a GSM card. The phone has that real authentic old time rotary ring to it of course and, no, it cannot send or receive text messages
Warning. The manufactures Spark Fun warn that the phone really works but is for entertainment purposes. Oh, and you have to unscrew the battery to recharge it. Oh, and this entertainment only 2 pound phone costs 400 dollars for the black model and 500 dollars for the red.
Not really something you want to make your main phone. But hey, if you have the luxury of an extra SIM card…
The website does have an interesting description of how they managed to pull it of which is kind of cool. 1
Sometimes we just yearn for that physical connection and technology clothing company CuteCircuit understands that. Thats why they invented the Hug Shirt which allows you to exchange the physical sensation of a hug over long distances. All you need is the shirt embedded with special sensors, a java enabled bluetooth handset and a warm compassionate heart. Simply put on the shirt, give yourself a hug and let the removable sensors beam the temperature and pressure data to your mobile phone. Your phone then automatically sends the hug to the person you designated hugs to go to via SMS and actuators of wearing a similar shirt. f the other person or the sender doesn’t have the shirt she can just send an SMS text message, and it will be transformed into a hug! If you don’t need a hug you can switch it off.
Think of it as turning your cell phone into a vampire,making it able to suck the juice out of any other cell phone for its own power hungry needs. Another thing to add to your keychain.
There is no price yet or availability info but here is what it does.
It allows you to essentially ‘jumpstart’ a cellphone with a dead battery, simply by attaching it to another one with some charge. You don’t even have to wait until the battery has been charged: you can make your call right away, with the other cell thusly joined.
Everybody knows it. One of the biggest problems about mobile devices today, as they become more and more smarter, is what we have come to know as “voice time” and “idle time.” In other words, how long will the device hold up under heavy or light usage. Will I have to travel with an extra adapter to charge my phone throughout the day? etc etc… All this, as you know, has to do with your mobile devices batteries and it appears that battery technology is having a hard time keeping up with the power needed in newer and newer portable electronics.
Well researchers over at the ever so technologically smart school M.I.T believe they may have gotten the problem licked (making long charge times and expensive replacements a thing of the past) by innovating some old power technology with some new microphysics. According to Joel Schindall, the projects director, “We made the connection that perhaps we could take an old product, a capacitor, and use a new technology, nanotechnology, to make that old product in a new way.”
I know, I had to look it up as well. A capacitor is a device giving capacitance and usually consists of conducting plates or foils separated by thin layers of dielectric (as air or mica) with the plates on opposite sides of the dielectric layers oppositely charged by a source of voltage and the electrical energy of the charged system stored in the polarized dielectric.
In other words while rechargeable and disposable batteries use a chemical reaction to produce energy (which after many charges and discharges loses capacity to the point where the user has to discard it), capacitors contain energy as an electric field of charged particles created by two metal electrodes. This allows them to charge faster and longer then normal batteries. The problem with this however is that storage capacity is proportional to the surface area of the battery’s electrodes, so even today’s most powerful capacitors hold 25 times less energy than similarly sized standard chemical batteries.
The clever researchers at MIT seemed to have solved this problem with Nanotubes. The article gets very scientific on this.
The point is “It could be recharged many, many times perhaps hundreds of thousands of times, and … it could be recharged very quickly, just in a matter of seconds rather than a matter of hours,” he says.
This technology has broad practical possibilities, affecting any device that requires a battery. Schindall says, “Small devices such as hearing aids that could be more quickly recharged where the batteries wouldn’t wear out; up to larger devices such as automobiles where you could regeneratively re-use the energy of motion and therefore improve the energy efficiency and fuel economy.”
It works for cell phones to
Schindall’s group expects their prototype to be finished in the next few months, and they hope to see them on the market in less than five years.
So, I was at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) here in New York City today to see the Dada exhibit. It was wonderful. While standing by Duchamps famous overturned urinal a security guard grabbed my shoulder as I took out my cell phone to put it on silent. He was going to confiscate my Nokia N70 because he thought I took a picture. I should have. It would have been in the Dada anti-art establishment spirit
Anyways, while perusing the gift shop I came across a rather interesting item left over from the museums “Safe: Design Takes on Risk” exhibit. The exhibit, which showed at the MOMA almost a year ago celebrated design as one of the most enlightened applications of human creativity by presenting a carefully selected array of objects that have been designed to protect body and mind from dangerous or stressful circumstances; respond to emergency situations; ensure clarity and information; and provide a sense of comfort and security.
The item I found, that is relevant to MOpocket, was Karrysafe’s “Phone Safe” mobile phone protector (modeled above). The arm strap provides stealth mobile phone storage for one of the most information heavy devices you carry with you on a daily basis. Perfect for traveling etc etc…
As the box states, one mobile phone is stolen every 3 minutes ( I have heard that statistic somewhere else as well, somewhere during 3GSM). Anyways, The English company Karrysafe makes sure your phone is not one of them.
From the back of the box:
Hands free carrying convenience for your mobile phone. The ‘Phonesafe’ can be worn under clothes or on show. You can use it in situ. You know where it is - it’s your choice if others do or not.
Bodycool fabric ensures cool comfort
2-way stretch fabric gives universal fit for most types of mobile phones.
See through PowerNet allows ‘on arm’ dialing and talking
Low profile design allows comfortable concealment and easy access.
I actually bought one figuring that this may be a useful item when traveling to certain areas of the world.
I wonder if they can send me this phone to “review.” Moscow-based JSC Ancort Company announces the Diamond Crypto Smartphone designed by luxury accessories maker Peter Aloisson. The phone has sections of rose gold as well as 50 diamonds embedded into the cover, including 10 blue diamonds.
The phone costs 1.3 million dollars. But the diamonds and and rose gold is not all you get. The manufacturers uses powerful encryption technology to provide added security. And it sounds pretty high tech. The level of encryption they are talking about they claim will provide secure protection of information against kidnapping, technological blackmail, financial racketeers and corrupted state officials.
“The philosophic idea of the project is to attract the attention of the world community to the problem of the preservation of a person’s individuality and works in the contemporary man-caused world,” said JSC Ancort in a statement on their website.
“Modern technology can easily change (falsify) the voices and the speech of people speaking over the phone, and it costs very cheap.
“Naturally, boundless possibilities to manipulate a person’s consciousness appear, when a person is unable to define whom he is talking to on a phone; falsified conversations aimed to compromise people are created.
“The consequences may be catastrophic for mankind. The intrusion into the private life of people with the aim to compromise them may become global. First of all it may affect the prominent people of the planet who are the intellectual potential of the civilization.
“For example, a falsified phone conversation of the head of a state may cause tremendous internal and external conflicts.”
And of course, the phone MUST have a rose gold case with diamonds in order to make this work with style
The phone offers SMS, MMS, E-mail, Internet, WAP, JAVA support and a media player and is built on the Windows CE operating system with high-resolution colour TFT display and enough storage capacity for about 4,000 numbers.
Now you can make that styling (but not very functional) Motorola RAZR or SLVR even more SLYN (Styling MOTO style). Cingular and Motorola will now allow users to add “Phone Tattoo’s” to their phone allowing customers to change the look of their handsets to reflect their mood, style, and interests without going through all the fuss of getting knew phone shells etc etc.
You can get a 3 pack of of pre-designed stickers created in various colors and patterns. But in these days of “do it yourself” power customers can create their own designs with Phone Tattoos By You! , a pack that comes with four blank tattoos and complete instructions on how to design and print customized tattoos. So now you can pimp your phone with pictures of your cat or kids or your girlfriend / boyfriend (or something original and artistic). The pack includes practice sheets by the way
I think Cafe Press should pick up on this and start allowing people to create and sell their Phone Tattoo design.
The do it yourself rout is a smart one.
Both Phone Tattoos and Phone Tattoos By You! go on easily and stay on, but can be quickly peeled off without leaving residue. Phone Tattoos (3-pack) and Phone Tattoos By You! (4-pack) are available for $9.99 a pack at Cingular retail stores in select markets. The software can be downloaded here.
I am not a big fan of the bluetooth headphones. Maybe I just have not found the right one but every single one I laid down 50 dollars or more for gave me nothing but headaches for one reason or another. Some of them constantly needed to be re-synped others where not loud enough and some even decided to make phone calls my themselves. Therefore, I still use headphone wires with my Palm Treo 650 (my car has a built in bluetooth hands free system).
The one thing I hate is when my headphone wires get all tangled up in my pocket or my bag. Well, a reader of Lifehacker has a solution… and its worked wonderfully so far.
1. With your right hand make devil horns (third and fourth fingers tucked, second and fifth extended)
2. Use your thumb to hold the earbuds against your palm
3. Wrap the cable around your 2nd and 5th fingers using a figure-8. This is really the key part, the cris-crossing prevents it from knotting
4. When you have 6 to 8 inches of cable left, wrap the remaining cable around the center of the figure-8 a few times
5. Tuck remaining cable to taste. Somtimes I tuck it through one of the figure-8 loops, sometimes through the center wrapping, sometimes not at all.
Tightness of the wrapping determines how well it holds together, but if you use a loose wrap, you can just pull on the earbuds and the whole thing comes undone without a single knot.
The reader supposedly got the idea from watching his fiancee’s knitting technique. She uses the same technique (called butterflying) to create mini balls of yarn that don’t knot and can just be pulled on to get more yarn.
I do not know how many people actually get pulled over for driving while holding their cell phone’s up to their ear. I personally know 5 people who over the past year have gotten pulled over for such an offense. Very recently California and Washington just joined their east coast brethren in banning cell phone cusping while driving.
