Mobile

These days, it seems as if cash payments are settled using every medium but cash itself. Gone are the days of fumbling around in a purse or wallet to find the exact change needed to make a purchase. While cash is always an accepted tender, many now ... prefer to use debit or credit cards to alleviate wasted time and hassle. Several major banks and mobile operators all over Europe have come together to ensure that one more method of payment will be offered to consumers in the near future. The group assembled to talk about the possibility of enabling future cell phone models to act as a wireless ... (view more)

T-Mobile recently announced a new home phone plan that will eliminate the age-old attachment we have to landlines. The new T-Mobile@Home plan will use a wireless router to send and receive calls: "calls are transmitted from a handset to the Internet ... through the T-Mobile router; then, the call is completed through the use of voice-over-Internet-protocol technology." (Source: enews20.com ) Many cell-phone users prefer to retain their home phone and use their cells merely for convenience. Some also feel safer knowing that they have a fail-safe phone line at home, that won't have the problems of ... (view more)

Chrysler is planning to introduce a new feature in most of their 2009 models which will transform their vehicles into a traveling hot spot for mobile web access. This will be the first time WiFi will be available in vehicles on a mass scale. If you ... have even been stuck waiting for a train to pass or parked in front of those early-morning, never-ending red lights, you know what a frustrating time-waster each of these interruptions are. In these situations people may very well turn to cursing, playing the bongos on the steering wheel, or honking their horn at no one in particular. But what if ... (view more)

In a strange but visionary move, the city of Philadelphia re-started a plan to offer free out-of-doors wireless access throughout the city. The project was initially planned for 2005, but stopped production last week after complaints of signal ... weaknesses. The original project, run by EarthLink, also suffered from "cost overruns, spotty coverage, rapidly rising expenses, and unenthusiastic acceptance by paying subscribers." At that time 6,000 of the city's 1.4 million citizens had registered for the service. (Source: wirelessphiladephia.org ) The current project consists of wireless ... (view more)

Watch out. As industry marketers and publishers turn their attention to providing mobile content, spam and the web's unscrupulous are following suit. Ferris Research, based in San Francisco, estimates that 1.5 billion unsolicited text messages will ... be received by American consumers. That doesn't sound like much when you take into account that 48 billion text messages were sent in December of 2007 alone, but if you are a cell phone consumer that pays 20 cents a message, that can add up to big bucks! (Source: nytimes.com ) According to Juniper Research, $1.7 billion of "mobile adult content" ... (view more)

Adobe, Inc. is dropping most restrictions on the use of its Flash technology on mobile devices. The firm hopes the move will help boost the technology's appeal on cellphones, handheld PCs and set-top television boxes. Flash, which allows developers ... to produce interactive content and animations that appear the same way on all computers, is already widely popular on the web: around 98% of desktop computers with an Internet connection have the software installed. There's already a cut-down edition called Flash Lite for mobile devices, but licensing restrictions mean the full-scale Flash software ... (view more)

It appears Apple will sell an unlocked edition of the iPhone in Italy, which raises the question of whether the company will adopt a similar policy elsewhere in the world. An unlocked phone is one that will work with any telephone carrier. So far, ... Apple has always sold the phone in a locked state. For example, in the United States it only works on the AT ... (view more)

Remember those annoying TV interruptions testing the Emergency Broadcast System? Well, now federal regulators have approved a plan that would make your cell phone part of the emergency alert system by allowing blanket text messages to be sent to all ... cell subscribers within a given geographic area. Although cellular customers would be allowed to "opt-out" of the plan, the Warning Alert and Response Network Act of 2006 required the FCC to upgrade the ways the public can be alerted about emergencies. With more than 200 million cell phones in use in the U.S., and with texting becoming more ... (view more)

Microsoft is applying the power of the microprocessor to a traditionally low-tech problem: traffic jams. The firm is launching a web service that will give driving directions specifically designed to avoid busy spots. It's based on a technology ... called 'Clearflow', which took researchers five years to develop. The idea is that every time traffic backs up, it causes an effect that spreads across adjoining roads. Clearflow can quickly measure and analyse the way live traffic problems affect side streets as well as major highways. The system will cover 72 cities and will be free to use as part of ... (view more)

On Monday, regulators released plans to allow in-flight cell phone use across all 27 nations in the European Union once a flight has reached an altitude of 10,000 feet. The service will be provided for Global System for Mobile communications ... (G.S.M.) handsets only, a standard that is used by 90% of wireless users in Europe. A device called 'On Air', created by Airbus, will be used to create a small cellular network on board an aircraft and then send signals via satellite to cell towers on the ground. (Source: nytimes.com ) Despite the government's good intentions, various problems remain or ... (view more)