Category Archive

A move by legislators in the US state of Maine to require brain-cancer warnings on mobile phones is expected to trigger a worldwide response, the Australian industry has said.

A Democrat state representative, Andrea Boland, wants new mobile phones to carry health warnings like those on cigarettes and is pushing ahead with the legislation despite a lack of scientific consensus.

Read more here:
http://www.watoday.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/push-for-cigarettelike-warnings-on-mobiles-20100104-lnvo.html

More on the story here:

http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/i_team_8/Sexting_20091112

According to a survey by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, about 75% of Australians are either “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with their telecommunications services. I was surprised to see that there wasn’t a massive difference between metropolitan and rural areas, despite rural areas having a much less options and less bandwidth as metro areas. Those users who weren’t happy largely focused on price, customer service and poor mobile reception.

Read more here:
http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_311777

Hackers claim to have stolen all T-Mobile US’s corporate data, customer accounts and network infrastructure. More information from the Register can be found below:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/08/tmobile_us_loss/

Medialets created the world’s first shakable advertisement for Dockers, together with agencies OMD and Razorfish. Users shake their iPhone to make the Dockers guy dance. This ad utilizes the iPhone’s accelerometer as well as audio capabilities and appears in targeted, free iPhone applications.

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090512/7278/?mod=ATD_rss

The research team, which included Edith Cowan University of Australia and BT, revealed some early results yesterday in news reports by the BBC and British television affiliates.

To read more about the research go here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/8036324.stm
and here:
http://www.darkreading.com/security/storage/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=217400054&cid=nl_DR_DAILY_H

You might know some of them but most of them are just an inside code and some can raise red flags.

Here are some of them:
D46 - “Do you want to have sex?”
LG6 - “Let’s have sex”
GNOC - “Get naked on camera”
TDTM - “Talk dirty to me”
LMIRL - “Let’s meet in real life”

See the link below wich includes a video:

http://www.wthr.com/global/story.asp?s=10310438

The video talks about a couple of people who’s lives are ruled by harrasing calls and threats. They claim that their phones are tapped with special software.

Rick Mislan talks about the software and how easy it is to be placed on mobile phones.

Software such as:

• http://www.mobile-spy.com/
• http://www.world-tracker.com/
• http://www.flexispy.com/
• http://www.e-stealth.com/
• http://www.fonefunshop.co.uk/spyphone/
• http://www.thespyphone.com/allinone.html

Link to Video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCyKcoDaofg

It looks and functions like a Blackberry 8830 but it sure is NOT a regular Blackberry. It is locked down by NSA. I am not really sure if it is a good idea at all. NSA is installing the SecurVoice software on it for both voice and messaging as one of the ways to secure the phone. I am sure that there is a whole infrastructure that is required to run his handset services. Even considering all that, I Still believe that a mobile-phone-carrying president opens so many doors for hackers.

Can NSA and Obama get away with using a (persumably) secure mobile phone service and handset? That is the question of the day!

Read more here:
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/04/obama-to-get-ba.html

It is persumed that the phones can be modified and used in receiving SMS verification codes sent from banks:

criminals have already collected thousands of login details for online bank accounts in countries such as Germany and Holland where banks send a transaction authentication number (TAN) code by SMS to a person’s mobile phone in order to complete transactions.

Read the original post byUltraScan here:
http://www.ultrascan.nl/html/press_room.html#25.000%20Euro%20for%20your%208%20years%20old%20Nokia%201100

Read more about it here:
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/553344-hackers-pay-top-dollar-for-old-nokia-1100-handsets

and here:
http://www.dialaphone.co.uk/blog/?p=2922

Many gay and lesbian books on Amazon.com were incorrectly being flagged as adult due to a cataloging error which made the books hard to find in searches.

Twitters got angry about the issue and started a discussion called #AmazonFail. Thousands of people were angry that gay-themed books had disappeared from Amazon’s sales rankings and search algorithms. The number of Tweets on that easter sunday afternoon that had the term “AmazonFail” surpassed even those with the words “Easter” or “Jesus.”

This led Amazon.com to quickly fix the cataloging error.

Read more here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/technology/internet/14amazon.html?_r=1&src=twt&twt=nytimes

http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archives/166384.asp?from=blog_last3

Read the discussion here:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23AmazonFail

Poken is a hardware device that connects the web 2.0 social networking virtual world to your real world contacts and people you meet in conferences, coffee shops and elsewhere.

How does it work and when was it released?
It was released in March as far as I could tell. Here is how it works

Here are more links on it:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5987575.ece

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/mar/17/sxswi-startups1

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/dan_monsieurle/blog/2009/03/30/who_am_i__a_panda_or_a_chimp

If you want to buy a poken, then use the following coupon code for a 10% discount:
PUTUPYPAJFAZTSD3PEHM

Watch the 46 minute long Google TechTalk about Poken here:
http://www.pokenpokes.com/2009/03/08/poken-extending-online-social-networking-into-the-real-world/

The hardware details are here:
http://ameblo.jp/hfo/entry-10224130228.html

and here:
http://ameblo.jp/hfo/theme-10011686327.html

A blog about pokens:
http://www.pokenpokes.com/

Blog post about the release in Japan:
http://nthambazale.com/2009/03/tokyo-cgm-night-episode-poken-launched-in-japan/

Let me know if you have any questions about Pokens

A man accused of raping a university student was cleared because of the mobile phone footage showing the woman ‘actively’ having sex with him. The jurors voted to acquit the man, who’d been charged with four counts of rape, including two of rape by oral penetration.

Read more here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1166466/Man-cleared-rape-court-shown-phone-footage-woman-actively-taking-sex.html

Chris Ogle (29) from Whangerei, New Zealand has stumbled across the sensitive military details of U.S. military personnel after purchasing a secondhand MP3 player in Oklahoma, USA. He discovered around 60 sensitive military files dating from 2005 on the used music player. The files were clearly marked as ’secret’ and contained the phone numbers of numerous soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

For more on the story visit:

http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/200905/2852/Man-finds-U-S-military-secrets-on-secondhand-MP3-player

An interesting article about pedophilia and ’sexting’ in the mobile age. Sexting means sending nude or semi-nude pictures of oneself on mobile phones to others. Two cases are discussed in the article.

READ IT HERE.

In my opinion, lawmakers should consider the changes in technology and evolve the laws to deal with the new issues emerging from the proliferation of cell phones in our societies and changes to the ways mobile phones are used.

A guy at the US Airways crash took a picture of the Airplane and used Twitter to stream it to the Internet. Here is his account of the incident:

http://twitpic.com/135xa - There’s a plane in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy. 12:36 PM Jan 15th from TwitPic

http://twitter.com/jkrums/status/1121915133

Robert Scoble aka Mr. Twitter talk to Larry Magid at CES. Robert has 48,000 people who follow him (read his Twitter posts which are called “tweets”) but he follows nearly 21,000 people. How he does that? Tweetdecks is one way! They also talk about the Palm Pre Surprise. Listen to the whole podcast here:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-19518_3-10141183-238.html

This is starting to be like citizen reporting via tweets again. This time it has help from tweet decks. Can this be the beggining of a new way for us to get news from the inside of conflicts, disaster areas and maybe even anonymous news tips? Rumors?

I don’t know if this is true or not yet but here it goes! There seems to be a vulnerability that affects Nokia Series 60 phones, including N95 and N73 handsets that blocks all SMS and MMS from reaching the phone, hense the name “Curse of Silence”. attacker in this case sends a specially designed SMS message to the target phone. What’s worrying is that the recipient will receive no indication that they got the message.

The only way to get the target phone to recieve messages again is to factory reset it. Even after the factory recet, the phone still remains vulnerable to future silent curses. The attack will only work on phones running version 2.6, 2.8, 3.0 or 3.1 of Symbian S60.

Source: http://www.dialaphone.co.uk/blog/?p=2505

It can be done!

The video is Long (32 Minutes!).
- It starts with a parody song (as usual!).
- 3:35 Trends for 2009
- 4:30 VoIP cell phones
- 6:40 VoIP on Mobile Phones with T-Mobile (By the way BT has it too!)
- 10:40 Grand Central: A service that rings all your phone numbers at once at the same time on a single number! Watch the demo
- 12:50 Google Cellular: Free SMS and Voice initiated 411 directory enquiry service
- 16:25 1800 Cha Cha: Ask any question by voice and get answer by text
- 18:00 Voice Messagase by email or SMS services e.g. spinvox, PhoneTag and CallWave
- 21:00 More on Callwave and a feature demo
- 22:35 Popularity Dialer .com
- 23:50 iPhone beginings. How iPhone changed US carriers
- 25:00 iPhone with internet all the time
- 26:30 iPhone shuffle and App Store apps demos like: Midomi, Pandora, Urban Spoon
- 28:30 T-Mobile G1 and Verizon
- 29:30 End with a Song: The iPhone Song

A man in the United States used his mobile phone and the social networking service Twitter to inform the world even as he was trying to escape a burning 737. Read or hear more from the ABC:

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2008/s2453641.htm

I have previously heard of a case where a man used the twitter service to let people know he was arrested by Egyption authorities:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/25/twitter.buck/index.html

Both stories might be looked at as extreme uses of the twitter service or other micro-blogging and social services. As mobile phones become more location-aware, social networking services such as twitter are tapping into this capability of mobile phones making them even more usable in distress situations or even to report crime. Coupled with cameras, these services in addition to location-aware devices can become effective crime fighting tools.