Phones

Cellphone Signal Leads Cops To Fugitive

GPS, Miscellaneous, Phones / By /

So this guy in Jersey stabs his cousin in the chest with a screwdriver, and initially evades capture but then eventually the police track him down by using GPS to zero in on his cell phone. What does this have to do with gizmos and technology? Everything. Obviously, if this guy really didn’t want to be captured and was aware of how thie technology worked, he would have ditched the cell phone a long time ago. While it’s very cool and amazing at the clip at which technology is advancing and ‘improving’ everyone’s lives, it is quite apparent from this story that most folks are quite content to use it without having any idea of how it all works.

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SIPphone releases Gizmo Project VoIP software

Miscellaneous, Phones / By /

Just a few days ago, we ran the story about Google launching Google Talk and that they had plans to work with SIPphone. Well, SIPphone has just released Project Gizmo (cool name! ;-)). Project Gizmo, which is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, is an application not unlike Skype that lets people talk to each other over the Internet using VoIP.

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PARROT Easy Drive Bluetooth Handsfree Car Kit

Gizmo of the Day, Phones / By /

PARROT Easy Drive Bluetooth Handsfree Car Kit

Go hands-free; get the Parrot EasyDrive Bluetooth kit. EasyDrive consists of a audio/speaker and a control pad. The control pad mounts to your dashboard and is connected to the speaker via a wire. Your cell phone can be anywere within range as long as you have done the Bluetooth pairing. The interface is intentionally simple, with only 2 buttons and a click knob – you know where you are in the system by voice prompts from the control pad. This way you can keep your eyes on the road. The speakerphone is clear and loud, and EasyDrive can even hold phone #s for voice dialing.

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Annual cell phone sales to reach 1 billion by 2009

Miscellaneous, Phones / By /

By Elle Cayabyab

Wow. A study of consumers in 12 countries predicts that sales of cell phones will exceed 1 billion handsets each year in 2009, becoming the most common consumer electronics device in the world. An estimated 2.6 billion people will own one by then, according to the Gartner Group, who conducted the study, and handset manufacturers will reap the profits, with vendors such as Nokia and Samsung generating combined revenues of US$1.7 billion in 2009. The Asia Pacific region is seen as becoming even more important, with one out of every three mobile phones sold in the area in 2009, up from one in four this year. The growth in cell phone sales can be attributed to developing nations eschewing traditional land-line telephone service in favor of cell networks, which are much cheaper to implement.

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Speed Read on your Cell Phone One Word at a Time

Miscellaneous, Phones / By /

By Ina Fried and Michael Kanellos, Staff Writers, CNET News.com

For those who have squinted to read text on their cell phones, Stanford University researchers think they have hit upon a better way: Do it one word at a time. The technique, known as Rapid Serial Visual Presentation, or RSVP, makes up for the tiny screens on mobile phones by presenting just one word at a time in the center of the screen for a fraction of a second before moving on to the next word. As a result, each word is far easier to read than is the case with standard presentations, in which a sentence or two of much smaller type scroll across the screen at a time. In a demo version of the software, dubbed BuddyBuzz, the user gets to decide how fast the text scrolls. At its fastest, the words fly far faster than a reader can sound them out. But those who learn to read words without pronouncing them in their heads can actually read as many as 1,000 words a minute, making it potentially far faster than traditional methods of scrolling.

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Apple’s Pie in the Sky

Audio/Video, Home Theater, Phones, Portable / By /

Barron’s Online
By Bill Alpert Published: June 29, 2005

THE IPOD SHOWS WHY Apple Computer is a great company. With elegant hardware and friendly software, Apple’s portable player made a profitable business out of digital music — a trick that had eluded record labels and such erstwhile leaders as Sony, Microsoft, Real Networks, and Napster.

Some Apple bulls argue that the shares could go 50% higher, noting how Apple has held its turf against the “iPod killers” of Sony and the digital-music schemes of Microsoft (MSFT). Little noticed by these iPod zealots, however, is a looming threat from overhead with a footprint as large as the continent: Wireless phone companies are teaming up with the music industry to make most mobile phones into music players.

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Sony Ericsson S710a Cell Phone – Star Wars Edition

Gizmo of the Day, Phones / By /

Sony Ericsson S710a Cell Phone - Star Wars Edition

Oh yeah, more Star Wars products! Now you can get this cool, stylish cell phone that already has tons of features preloaded with Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith content. The Sony Ericsson s710a sports an elegant, rotating design, support for high speed data networks, and a powerful integrated camera. Add these to a jumbo screen, Bluetooth, and support for expandable memory, and you’ve got one serious contender in the race to deliver the coolest of the cool in the high-end phone category.

The s710a also has a 1.3 megapixel digital camera, a Memory Stick DUO slot, USB, Bluetooth and infrared connectivity, a 240×320 display, a phone book that holds up to 510 contacts, polyphone ringtones, picture caller ID, and vibrate ringer mode. Not enough? Ok, how about text messaging, Internet access via the GPRS and EDGE protocols, instant messaging, e-mail access via POP3 or IMAP4, and web browsing not to mention a slew of applications like voice memo recorder, calculator, calendar, alarm clock and syncing software.

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Project Gizmo challenges Skype

Miscellaneous, Phones / By /

By Tony Lock, Bloor Research

IP Telephony is on the brink of becoming mainstream in both the business sector and for “personal” communications. At the forefront of much individual usage has been the solution supplied by Skype. So successful has Skype been that the company name has already started to transform into a verb — “To Skype”. However, Skype’s current pre-eminent position is now facing a serious challenge with the launch of Project Gizmo, the latest brainchild of Michael Robertson, the founder of MP3.com and Linspire. In many ways Project Gizmo at first appears to be very similar to Skype. The major difference between the two, lies in the fact that Project Gizmo has been built using an open source philosophy around the emerging SIP standards. In addition to being based on the SIP open standard, Gizmo has publicly stated that it is committed to interconnecting its IP telephony system with those operated by other organisations.

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Motorola to use Linux in its Midrange Cell Phones

Miscellaneous, Phones / By /

By Stephen Shankland

Motorola announced a new step this week in its plan to remake most of its mobile phone line with Linux, expanding use of the open-source operating system to midrange phones. The E895 is a flip-phone design that uses a version of Linux from MontaVista Software, said Cheryln Chin, vice president for Motorola mobile phone marketing. Motorola began selling Linux-powered mobile phones in 2003 but, until now, has used the OS only in high-end phones. Motorola expects to change that as software makers slim down Linux and hardware makers bulk up cell phone computing power, Chin said.

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