Technology Info

For nearly three in 10 households, don’t even bother trying to call them on a landline phone. They either only have a cell phone or seldom if ever take calls on their traditional phone.

The federal figures, released Wednesday, showed that reliance on cells is continuing to rise at the expense of wired telephones. In the second half of last year, 16 percent of households only had cell phones, while 13 percent also had landlines but got all or nearly all their calls on their cells.

The number of wireless-only households grew by 2 percent since the first half of last year. Underscoring the rapid growth, in early 2004 just 5 percent had only cell phones.

Households with cell phones who rarely if ever use their landlines grew by 1 percent since the first half of last year.

Such families often either have their landline hooked exclusively to a computer or rely so heavily on their cells that they ignore landline calls because they are probably from telephone solicitors, said Stephen Blumberg, senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an author of the report. (Yahoo)

Check out this mod. Probably not useful for most of you but for frequent business travellers this can definitely keep you in contact with your multinational companies.

“DuoSIM is a very cool new conversion kit to upgrade standard mobile phones to dual SIM operation so you can have two SIM cards installed and switch between them at the push of a button. I’ve been looking for something like this for a while to make the best use of different data and call rate plans, but up till now the adapters have all required that you cut your SIM card up first, which is something I didn’t really want to do.” (link)

I could really use this, Spectec SDW-823 microSD wifi card. My phone doesn’t have wifi but this would definitely be a welcome addition.

The life of 20-year-old Emine, and her 24-year-old husband Ramazan Çalçoban was pretty much the normal life of any couple in a separation process. After deciding to split up, the two kept having bitter arguments over the cellphone, sending text messages to each other until one day Ramazan wrote “you change the topic every time you run out of arguments.” That day, the lack of a single dot over a letter—product of a faulty localization of the cellphone’s typing system—caused a chain of events that ended in a violent blood bath.

The surreal mistake happened because the ex-husband’s cellphone didn’t have an specific character from the Turkish alphabet: the letter “ı” or closed i. While “i” is available in all phones in Turkey—where this happened—the closed i apparently doesn’t exist in most of the terminals in that country. (link)

Lines stretched for blocks outside phone stores Monday as ordinary Cubans were allowed to sign up for cellular phone service for the first time.

The contracts cost about $120 to activate - half a year’s wages on the average state salary. And that doesn’t include a phone or credit to make and receive calls. Still, lines formed before the centres opened, and waits grew to more than an hour.

“It’s great. It’s really great. And everyone wants to be first to sign up,” said Usan Astorga, a 19-year-old medical student who stood for about 20 minutes before her line moved at all. (link)

Motorola Inc said on Wednesday it would split into two publicly traded entities to separate its loss-making handset division from its other businesses, sending its shares up about 5 percent.

The move, which comes amid an intensifying proxy battle against activist investor Carl Icahn ahead of a May 5 annual meeting, could be a prelude for a joint venture for the cell phone business, analysts said.

They said separating the cell phone business, which has been losing market share to rivals like Nokia and Samsung Electronics, could help Motorola find a strategic investor, such as among Asian handset makers that are keen to win a bigger share of the U.S. market. (link)

New legislation has a chance at doing away with US wireless carriers’ practices of phone subsidies, long-term contracts, and steep termination fees. With provisions that would require clearer language from carriers and non-subsidized handsets and plans, even Apple could be forced to open up the iPhone to other networks.

The iPhone is at the center of yet another squabble over US mobile phone consumers’ rights. After “permanently inoperable” firmware updates, a class action targeting mobile phone locking practices, and even an unlocking exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA),

Only a draft called “Wireless Consumer Protection and Community Broadband Empowerment Act of 2008″ (PDF link) for now, the bill is sponsored by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and actually has some broad intentions: “To require the Federal Communications Commission to promulgate new consumer protection regulations for wireless service subscribers, to restrict State and local regulation of public providers of advanced communications capability and service, to increase spectrum efficiency by Federal agencies, and for other purposes.” (link)

Nabila Mango, a therapist and a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country since 1965, had just flown in from Jordan last December when, she said, she was detained at customs and her cellphone was taken from her purse. Her daughter, waiting outside San Francisco International Airport, tried repeatedly to call her during the hour and a half she was questioned. But after her phone was returned, Mango saw that records of her daughter’s calls had been erased.

A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. “This laptop doesn’t belong to me,” he remembers protesting. “It belongs to my company.” Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself. (link)

Protecting your data from identity theft

The WiiPhone is one of those mods just adored by the House of Giz. It’s the bastard son of a Wiimote and a common or garden-variety DoCoMo cellphone, stuck together by a clever guy who’s good at this kind of stuff. I particularly like the wrist strap, to stop unnecessary accidents (just ask another writer here, whose CrackBerry met an unfortunate end when it hurtled to the floor following a difference of opinion he had with his wife). Anywii, take part in our exclusive poll below the gallery.

Gizmodo

It’s damn expensive! People do not realize how much they add to their monthly phone bills by typing a cutsie little “hi ;)”. Send a few of those a day and you’re costing your self a few extra bucks a month. Is it really worth the hassle to spend 1 minute typing in the message rather than calling the person? Stop wasting your money.

“I just found out that AT&T (A-fee&fee?) is raising their text message pricing. When I first signed up for AT&T 6 or so years ago it cost 10 cents to send an SMS message, and it was free to receive them.

When AT&T switched to Cingular the price of sending a message dropped to 5 cents, but they started charging for incoming texts - also 5 cents. Assuming you send a message for every message you receive, this works out at about the same price as before.” (link)