SMS Weblogs / Textually / 2004 / 11

Henry Sibley Senior High School's cell phone policy changed this school yea

With Christmas parties approaching, the Australian branch of Virgin mobile has launched a new service to stop people from making incoherent phone calls they may later regre

Mobile services company Zed is launching an advent calender for mobile users, offering them a daily item of seasonal content till December 2

Some restaurants, libraries and other businesses are resurrecting the phone booth -- sans phone this time -- allowing users to bring their own mobile phone and talk as loud as they want, reports the WS

You may have noticed, but Régine Debatty of near near future has been posting wonderful articles on the Textually blogs for the last couple of day

My Last Cigarette for Smartphone, by Mastersoft Mobile Solutions, helps you resist restarting smokin

CellSpotting is a global location based service built by its user

Companies are finding innovative ways to disguise ungly and unwanted mobile phone antenna masts, as Deutsche Welle found out (via The Register)

An Austrian company offers Pine needle and trees with leaves "wrappings

Scientists at the University of Warwick in England, in conjunction with hi tech materials company PVAXX R&D and Motorola, have found an amazing way to recycle discarded mobile phones – bury them and watch them transform into the flower of your choic

Spy and law enforcement agencies will be able to snoop on suspected terrorists and criminals e-mails, SMS messages and voicemail under a measure passed by the Australian Senate - but only for the next year, according to The Ag

A new service from Wherify Wireless will make it possible for parents to keep tabs on their kids by use of a special cellphone embedded with GPS technology, reports The Wireless Weblo

The email era is coming to an end because replacement communication means such as Internet messengers, mini-homepages (dubbed "one-man media"), and SMS are wielding their power, reports Digital Chosunilb

Scientists are to conduct the first major study into what effects mobile phone masts might have on our health, reports the BB

United States cellphone operators, hoping to bolster their brands, are flirting with selling handsets that feature their names exclusively, according to an article in The New York Time

Technology Review reports that scientists from Toin University of Yokohama have designed a single device that can both convert solar energy to electricity and store the electricit

Nathan Eagle and Sandy Pentland at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are working on a "mind-reading" software for mobile phones that will get to know you as well as your friend

A second article today on the cell phone cheat scam that has rocked South Kore

Seoul National University announced last week that it would install devices within its test rooms to block the use of mobile phones, but cancelled its plans on Friday when it said in a statement that it couldn't pursue the plan because of the law, reports JoongAng Dail

Threats sent by mobile phone text message are being blamed for a rise in violent crime figures, reports Manchester Onlin

This is one of the stranger stories to come alon

A new mobile phone which learns people’s daily habits could be used to predict what someone is about to do and judge how close they are to their friend

Samsung Electronics plans to launch a variety of handset accessories including handset-theater and virtual keyboard, reports Telecoms Kore

Taro Matsumura in Keitai Log has done some research on the origin of the term "thumb tribe

Russel Buckley for The Moible Technology Weblog reports that the latest weapon employed by football hooligans is - mobile phone

The Guardian reports back on Tony Blair's text messaging intervie

The number of SMS sent in the UK keeps on growing and growin

ShinyShiny reports that UK Marie Curie Cancer Care is asking everyone to dig out all their old mobiles from under the bed and hand them over to raise money for cancer researc

From Howard Rheingold on TheFeatur

Mobile media technology developer WINKsite has launched the Creative Commons Library for mobile user

Easy Group, the holding company of no-frills British airline easyJet, is close to striking a deal to launch a low-cost mobile telephone service in Britain, the Financial Times reported, relays the Associated Pres

Taking phone personalization one step further, a company called Customizedphonecover

India's booming wireless-game market will continue to expand, generating annual revenue of $336 million by 2009, according to new data released this week, reports New

High-tech 3-D hologram phones - like the one used in Star Wars - could soon be installed on the high-street, according to The Su

Italy's Banca Intesa is working with Vodafone to provide mutual customers with routine banking inquiries via text messaging, reports Finextr

Under a fledgling initiative dreamed up by the Kenya Agricultural Commodity Exchange (Kace) - which provides crop growers with up-to-date commodity information - farmers can access daily fruit and vegetable prices from a dozen markets through a text message, or sms, reports the F

There are indications that the Chinese government is, or is about to begin, monitoring cellphone text messages, according to Bosto

Japanese company KDDI has developed a cell phone that they claim can help detect strokes via transmitted CT scans with as much accuracy as scans viewed in hospital

The International Herald Tribune has a fascinating article on North Korea, picked up by Smart Mobs

"Hard intelligence is difficult to come by in North Korea, one of the world's most tightly controlled societies, where people are barred from sending letters abroad, making international telephone calls, emigrating or talking to foreigners without supervisio

A call to a cell phone during a drug sting operation resulted in two additional arrest

For young people, sending messages using SMS over cellular phones is more powerful than doing so through the Internet, according to a recent survey, reports E-Media Tidbit

Over the past two years, federal safety officials have received 83 reports of cell phones exploding or catching fire, usually because of incompatible, faulty or counterfeit batteries or chargers, reports CN

A cellular phone message board service that proved incredibly useful for those caught in the aftermath of last month's Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu Earthquake will be extended across three major cell phone service providers from next year, reports The Daily Yomiur

Korea is really shaken by the largest ever student cheating scandal which occured last week, involving nearly 100 students who used their cell phones to relay answers by text messaging during the national college entrance exa

Italians love their mobile phones and often carry out love affairs over them -- but they must beware, flirting with text messages can carry a fine - or so reports Reuter

A new California law requiring all cell phone retailers to provide a way to collect and recycle used cell phones was recently signed into law by Go

With the heaviest air traffic of the year expected as usual over Thanksgiving, the Tucscon International Airport joins the ranks of airports to provide a free "Phone and Go parking Lot

The number of UK drivers using mobile phones at the wheel has increased dramatically since a ban was introduced a year ago, according to a survey, reports Ananov

Mobile phone owners in the UK are being urged to register their phones with a national database of handset ID numbers, reports the BBC

"Backed by the police the Mobile Equipment National Database is intended to get phones back to phone owners if their handset is lost or stole

Owners of some Nokia smartphones are being warned to watch out for malicious wallpaper, reports the BB

From the Associated Press - via China Digital News : "The number of mobile phone users, the biggest in the world, long ago outstripped the number of fixed line users, which stood at 310 million by the end of last month, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing the Ministry of Information Industr

This is fabulous! Predictive text, T9, in it's latest version allows for Euro spea

A Nottingham school is piloting the country's first mobile phone text messaging scheme to deal with bullying, reports the BB

The new Nintendo DS handheld video game comes with a very entertaining application called PictoChat for exchanging text messages or small drawings with other DS owner

DJs and Pop stars are joining forces with the Government and the Anti-Bullying Alliance to launch the first ever Anti-Bullying Wee

Nokia has launched design-a-phone site to promote its new Nokia 3220, reports adrant

A 17-year-old girl was sentenced to 21 days in jail for contempt when her cell phone rang after a judge warned everyone in the courtroom to shut off all electronic devices, according to Newsday via Techdir

Some 83 per cent of European Union citizens have a mobile phone, according to the Financial Times newspaper, quoting a European Commission report due to be published later this month, a figure equivalent to 379 million peopl

Employees can now use their mobile phones to log expense claim items as they occur with a new service launched today by Signifo Expenses, according to Mike Grenville for 160character

A Spanish scrapyard has come up with a smashing way of helping people take out their frustrations on modern living, reports the BB

Britain's BT re-entered the mobile-phone market, launching its own branded cellphone service on Vodafone's network as it looks to boost revenue with its fixed-line business in declin

Mobile Baby Toy aims to entertain your baby when there are no toys in sight, by turning your mobile phone into amazing developmental toy, with which your baby can play alone, or with yo

LG handsets will be built in BMW 7 series which will be on sale in Korea from the first half of next year, according to Seong-ju Lee for Telecoms Kore

While all the talk is of the latest 3G handsets, Retrofone is hoping to tempt consumers back to classic designs such as the Nokia Nokia 71

Threatened by declining TV ratings in some countries, advertisers have been looking for new ways to capture the wandering eye of the consumer, reports Newswee

According to The Korea Times, police are expanding an investigation into what appears to be the largest cheating scandal involving high school seniors after securing evidence suggesting about 100 students allegedly used cell phones to cheat during the national college entrance exam held on Wednesda

There is an alarming rise in sexual harassment of women through SMS and mobile photography, India's's largest women's body today said and called for implementation of an effective mechanism to check this, according to newkeral

People sick of manhandling large newspapers on their way to work will soon be able to view the days headlines on their mobile phone, reports Moconew

This one is really for my files, I love to collect reviews on performances which involve audience participation and mobile phone

A potential audience of two billion people will be able to vote for Miss World this year, reports Ireland Onlin

Following the release of Chinese cell phone novel "Out of the Fortress" in September, a mobile literature channel has now launche

Text messaging may have some advantages, but a New Zealand drug dealer has found that it can be very bad for business when you don't know where the recipient is, reports SMS lands drug dealer behind bar

"An elementary school girl was kidnapped then killed in the Japanese city of Nara yesterda

The new Yokogawa VC200 W-CDMA (3G) mobile phone tester has been specifically developed for use in mobile phone service and repair centres, and is the world's first 'go/no-go' tester for UMT

NOPPA is a GPS enabled mobile phone with speech recognition that has been developed to help blind people navigate their way around Finalnd, reports Protein Feed via VT

"¿Tu vida es móvil?" ("Your life is mobile?") is the theme of the campaign launched by the Federation of Consumers in Action (Federación de Consumidores en Acción) (FACUA )- in a campaign to warn consumers of the dangers of mobile phone usag

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair will be answering questions from the public via a mobile phone chatroom session hosted by O2, reports Netimperativ

In a survey commissioned by QPass, a provider of mobile commerce software used by mobile operators, respondents overwhelmingly expressed a willingness to use their mobiles as a payment mechanism with 80 percent of those surveyed potentially happy to pay for a range of services with their phon

Agenda Live In

I stop by Telecoms Korea twice a da

Engadget (hey, welcome back, server problems yesterday?) reports that a high school kid in Utah broke the world record for fastest text messaging yesterday, tapping out the official sentence the Guinness people use to judge these thing

Hong Kong based Artificial Life, a leading provider of intelligent agent based mobile technology and applications (who brought us the virtual girlfriend for mobile phones) will develop and launch a mobile service for the UK real estate marke

Besides state laws, companies are beginning to ask their employees to stop phoning and driving, and plaintiffs are collecting multimillion dollar awards for wrongful death caused by cell phone-wielding drivers, reports the Seattle Post Intelligence

A group of Filipino hackers called "RB9" has breached the short messaging service servers of both Smart Communications and Globe Telecom, a posting on the blog of a concerned hacker said on Wednesda

Posted by pasta and vinega

NTT DoCoMo takes the wraps off the NEC N900iL combination Wi-Fi/cell phone, an industry first, according to industry analyst

Mark Frauenfelder has an insightful post in TheFeatur

The Aussie Federal Government has blessed new security laws that will mean authorities can monitor the emails and phone text messages of people suspected of planning terror attack

Summus has released the 2005 Hooters Calendar Girls for wallpaper for its mobile phone

Worldwide mobile phone shipments totaled 170m units in the third quarter, up from 16

Study finds that the majority of consumers admit that they can’t work out how to access or use mobile services which could impact the potential of mobile commerce, reports Mike Grenville for 160character

Passengers wanting to skip airport queues will be able to check in for flights using their mobile phone beginning next year, two European firms set to offer the service announced on Tuesday, according to Reuter

The clunky satellite phone is starting to make a comeback among travelers and workers in far-flung locations who are frustrated with the limits of cellphone coverage, reports the WS

The Swiss Federal Railway (SBB) has announced plans to sell tickets via mobile beginning next year, reports DMeurop

Mobile phones have replaced computers as the de facto e-mail terminal of choice for many Japanese who are not in technology, finance, engineering or other computer-intensive occupation

Mobile Scout is a public art project that collects audio narratives of your local surroundings, personal rituals and public sighting

A website devoted to smashing cell phones

24-year old designer Tao Ma won first prize in the Sony Ericsson Phone Concept Design Competition in Chin

Italians have reacted angrily to government proposals to bring in a tax on mobile phone text messages, reports the BB

Software downloads for mobile phones are finally starting to move beyond simple ring tones, reports Investors Business Da

Parents are having a tough time cracking the code kids use online and on their cell phones, Philadelphia television station WCAU reported via San Diegos News Leader, in an article on online safet

Code & Partners organized an sms-only booking for a private party gathering 2,000 people in Brussels on November 12, 200

The public cellular phone service providers in Mochudi, Botswana, are doing a booming business, reports Mmegi Onlin

Outlook Weekly, a Communist Party mouthpiece, reported recently that China experienced more than 58,000 major incidents of social unrest in 2003 - up 15% from a year earlier - with more than 3 million people taking part in the protest

The latest cabs in Australia are well equipped to give their drivers a run for their money: they can give you the news, help you work out the maximum mortgage you can afford, and offer informed opinions on just about any topic you could possibly be interested in, reports the BB

UK's The Mirror has a an article on mobile phones that are set to revolutionize our live

ABCNews looks into a high-tech way

Interesting, following a previous post just a couple of days ago, RSS has a great potential in mobile phones, a position paper by Sony Ericsso

This is an interesting marketing campaign, involving a wake up call (though not specifically on a cell phone) on the day of a big sal

FeliCa equipped mobile phones will soon have the power to unlock doors, the technology designed by Itochu Techno-Science and NTT DoCoMo Kyushu will be incorporated in a new apartment building in Fukuoka later this month, reports Mobile Ma

Latest statistics from the Ministry of Information Industry show that China exported more than four million Chinese-brand mobile phones from January to September, far exceeding last year's total of

The ECG-shirt monitors an athlete's cardiac rate and transfers the data via Bluetooth to a mobile phon

From Sony Ericsson position paper - Mobile Web Initiative Workshop

Mobile Web use cases #2: information updatesTo further address the issue of how to get users online, and their reluctance to browse the Web in the traditional meaning, we look at another major tren

An audit of San Jose employees' cell phone use revealed glaring examples of potential abuse by workers -- some of whom ran up thousands of minutes on their city-issued cell phones and never reimbursed the city, reports The Mercury New

Businesses could see big cost savings from - get ready - requiring certain workers to use only their mobile phone

Spanish bank Bankinter has launched an sms based service to inform people each time their bank card is use

The well-being fad has found its way into the cellular phone marke

Two girls in Tokyo's hip Harajuku district show off the latest in mobile-phone fashion accessorie

The BBC has signed up bestselling author Matt Beaumont to create its first drama to appear exclusively online and on mobile phones, reports the Media Guardia

Cellphone users who need directory assistance have become wearily accustomed to paying at least $1 every time they get help with a phone numbe

Italy's legions of mobile phone users are furious that they may be taxed for sending text messages under a proposal aimed at funding tax cuts, reports The Independen

Members of Bahrain's parliament's legislative and legal committee are being intimidated by anonymous SMS messages calling on them to veto the proposed new laws on rallies and vigils, it was claimed last night, reports the Gulf Daily New

Info2cel

Siemens has released the Gigaset M34 USB adapter to Internet users in Europ

The location based services provider, True Position has launched a report providing insights and recommendations for the rapid deployment of location technology to help the emergency services shorten response times and save lives, reports Cellular News

The SMS Guerilla Projector is a high powered, home made projection device that can be used to project SMS messages on to buildings, signs or any other surfac

A judge in England decided that it wasn’t enough to sentence a law student who had used a pre-paid cellphone to fake a friend’s kidnapping to two years in jail—he also banned her from using a pay-as-you-go cellphone, or any other cellphone that’s not in her name for that matter, for the next five year

According to an article in Italian La Repubblica, the opposition party won a decisive vote yesterday with a strategic call for voters - by sm

A solar-powered cellular payphone that was spotted on boat sailing around Lake Victoria in Afric

European business leaders in Japan lambasted on Wednesday a plan by the nation's ruling party to ban prepaid cell phones as a move that would raise questions about discrimination against a foreign-owned carrier, reports LA Time

National Semiconductor has announced a new power converter for mobile phone antennas that they claim can reduce power consumption by up to 80%, according to InfoSync Worl

The use of SMS (cell-phone text messaging) to make broadcasting more interactive is growing, generating millions in revenue, say industry players in South Africa, reports E-Media Tidbit

Teenagers are being offered a safe sex text messaging service in an attempt to cut pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, reports the BB

In theory, advertising agencies should love mobile telephone

Mobile phone calls made by a man moments before his car was hit by a train on a level crossing may provide vital clues for police investigating the tragedy in which seven people died, reports the UK Telegrap

An ingenious new Trojan is circulating that hijacks PCs and uses them to send SMS-based spam to mobile phones, according to PC Worl

On 10 November 2004 Fortis will launch an SMS texting service for reporters, allowing real-time press release headlines to show up on your mobile phon

IN-duce:De-duce published a list for mobile phone games using GPS or cell towers signals, there's also a lists of other location based (or augmented reality) mobile game

"Half of Ohio is REALLY sorr

One great bab

More cellular operators are interested in using cellphones that have Internet calling capabilities, too, via the technology known as Wi-Fi, reports the WS

It used to be that family members and friends of runners would try to attract the attention of runners with signs, colored balloons or flag

Mobile phone users have outstripped traditional landline connections in India, reports the AF

A must read article from SignOnSanDieg

According to the The Quad City Times, via YPulse, a company in Iowa called Mob Shopper is "trying to connect businesses to consumers through text messagin

The NY Times looks into marketing on cell phone

A Swedish newspaper group has come up with the "SMS crosswor

A "lucky" cellphone number; 133-3333-3333 (3 is considered a very lucky number in China) has been bough up in Beijing for $215,000, according to Engadge

SK Telecom launches Moneta On service, a customized stock/finance information service based on wireless internet platform for interoperability (WIPI), reports Seong-ju Lee for Telecoms Kore

Wherewear underwear, a concept designed by Theo Humphries, sends a text message to the mate of the wearer if they are removed in a location that hasn’t been pre-approve

Now you can check traffic conditions across the Washington region from your cell phone by subscribing to a new video service that sends updates to any Internet-enabled phone, according to The Washington Pos

The recently published 17th edition of Emily Post's Etiquette is packed with helpful hints for gracious living in this stressful age and gets into daily issues such as intimidating drivers, cell phone abusers and X-rated e-mail

Examiners have given warning that pupils are increasingly using text message language in GCSEs, the first official acknowledgment that mobile phone shorthand is undermining standard English, reports the UK UK Telegrap

Following Japan and China, India has launched it's first SMS novel in English, called Cloak Roo

This week in Keitai Log, we get an exchange student's perspective on Japanese wireless cultur

Finnish mobile handset maker Nokia has said it hopes to launch as many as 40 new handsets next year - most of them smart-phone

Two "alternate reality games" are in the news toda

Regina Lynn, in her weekly erotic column, Sex Drive for Wired, looks into phone sex and report on "Midori, a sex educator based in San Francisco, of all places who believes we should all be using our mobile phones to spice up our sex live

In a novel twist on how Television gets the message, those addicted to the Scott Peterson trial, can sign up on Court TV for instant text messages with the jury's verdict, reports the Contras Time

"Stain-resistant pants are just the beginning for a technology that could someday be used to create cell phones so small they can be sewn into clothes and enhance electrical transmission through power lines - Words from Jack Uldrich, President of NanoVeritas Group, delivered at Basin Electric Power Cooperative's annual meeting this week on how nanotechnology will someday change the energy industr

Wired reports that one of the world's oldest living alphabets could be about to make its debut on a mobile phone, if a group of Ethiopian academics gets its wa

Roger for All About Mobile Life posts on how reading novels on mobile phones is popular in Japa

I forgot to thank Régine for filling in for me on Wednesday! Her stories were so good I had trouble blogging over them yesterday, I was tempted to just leave them at the top of the pag

KTF introduced Thursday new services that informs users when the person who they tried to reach is availabl

On Thursday, SK Telecom announced that it will provide a new text messaging service which enables its customers to know a vehicle's history, including accident

Cell phones might be used to manage the treatment of HIV/AIDS in countries where health care systems are overburdened and doctors are scarce, reports Wire

You already knew that you could send an SMS to a chandelier, now you can also text the wallpape

A 14-year old student in Tennessee was riding the school bus home the other da

Some people are already using their phone as portable music playe

Long-distance service for government-issued MCI cell phones in Iraq have been shut off due to monthly bills as high as $10,000 for one phon

Dexigner Forum informs that Nokia has developed a new Car Ki

Americans seem more than wary going into these elections and one organisation, ILCA Online (The resource for Labor Communications) is offering a text message service to be activated in case of election fraud which will send out notices, updates and calls to actio

Nokia said on Tuesday its phones would be used in a project next year to test wireless public transport fares in Hanau, near Frankfurt in Germany, beginning early next year, reports Reuter

The young cell phone crowd backs Kerry for president, according to a novel poll taken exclusively over mobile phones, reports New

Skiers and Snowboarders can get snow conditions for nearly 500 mountain resorts across the USA, reports Mike Grenville for 160character

Rebecca Ladd, the executive director of community services at the Deaf Society of New South Wales says that the biggest impact on Australia's deaf community has been the advent of SM

Anyone in their 30s can remember when voicemail was as much of a novelty as push-button phone

This is wil

Wireless technology is finding a place on the platform as the presidential election of 2004 winds down, according to WirelessI

The TOMP (Translation On Mobile Phones) service from A3UK allows any UK mobile phone user to translate words and phrases via text messaging, according to a company press releas

Totally unrelated to text messaging! But my vote for best Halloween costume: "The iPodders

A total ban on the use of mobile phones while driving took effect Monday in Japan, in an effort to reduce traffic accidents, reprots Menaf

BT Group is planning to launch a mobile phone next year that will allow users to make cheap calls over the internet from airports, stations, hotels and cafes, reports the F