Nokia has patented a metal detector cell phone. The primary purpose of this cell phone is to help people with bad hearing position the phone on their ear, by detecting their hearing aid and emitting a high pitched noise as the phone gets closer to it. However, the metal detector can also be used to detect metallic objects at short distances.
Imagine what you could do with a metal detector in your pocket! The possibilities are endless…
Source: Yahoo News
They base their assumption on the case of a 15-year-old female teenager who was struck by lighting in a large park of London while talking on her cell phone. One year after the incident, she is still in a wheelchair and suffering from physical and emotional problems. The doctors of the British Medical Journal were surprised by the severity of the wounds and decided to bring attention to the case.
In my opinion, the Dominican Today is overreacting. What did they expect? The poor girl got hit by lightning and survived, that is by itself a miracle. I don’t see why they warn people to not use a cell phone during a storm - in fact, any contact with a conductive material is subject to increase the injuries.
So the real conclusion we can get from the article published in the British Medical Journal should be: you have more chance of being struck by lightning if you stand in the middle of a parking lot during a storm, and there is no evidence that using a cell phone during a storm will increase your odds of being struck by lightning.
As more people use their phones as digital agenda, a problem always comes up sooner or later: how to synchronize an Outlook Calendar and a cell phone? Tech Tag explains 2 ways to synchronize Outlook with a cell phone using a synchronization standard called syncML.
First, you need a few things:
Then, there are two Outlook plugins you can use:
This how-to sounds pretty simple and is very well detailed. Follow the steps and your synchronization should be up and running in no time!
On June 6th, Nokia has released the results of a global study they did to find out what else consumers do with their cell phone. This study allows them to get a feel of the future of what they call ‘digital convergence’.
Digital convergence is a term used to describe the current trend to combine multiple mobile devices into one, such as a digital camera, a PDA, a video game console and a mobile phone to give the multifunctional cell phones we have today.
According to the study commissioned by Nokia, 44% of camera phone owners use their cell phone as their main digital camera. This number somewhat contradicts the results of the poll Lifehacker did: 83.4% of Lifehacker’s readers are not using their phone as their main digital camera or prefer to use their digital camera instead.
The study also reveals that 66% of the respondents think their cell phone will eventually replace their portable MP3 player, and 50% think their mobile phone will allow them to interact with their home electronics.
If we compare web browsing between USA and Japan, 36% of the respondents in the US said they were using their phone to browse the web monthly, while in Japan 36% of the respondents use their phone to browse the web daily. My opinion on this matter goes the same way as the Nokia Cell Phone Blog: I don’t know how it goes for Japan, but one of the reasons I don’t browse the web from my cell phone is because of the costs involved to transfer data with my carrier. With Bell Canada, we are talking over $20 for 1MB of data transferred, this is ridiculous.
In my opinion, digital convergence is a good thing. However, if all your devices are combined into one, you’re not able to change just the camera. You have to change the whole cell phone, including all the other integrated devices, which costs you more and isn’t really necessary if you are already satisfied with them.
Nicolas Fogelholm from About Nokia writes on 3GWeek.NET about camera phones. In his article, he gives three tips when shopping for a camera phone:
Every cell phone has a camera nowadays, but they’re not all of the same quality. It is important to be well informed when buying a cell phone for its camera!
The Carnival of the Mobilists stops this week at All About Symbian.
For the best articles on mobile technology, head over to the 31st Carnival of the Mobilists and spend some time browsing through the excellent articles that have been submitted this week!
I have contributed to this edition of the Carnival with 7 tips to help protect your cell phone privacy.
Carnivals are a great way to discover new people who share your interests!
It’s hard to resist signing a 3-year contract when you buy a new cell phone. Cell phone carriers give you such a fat discount on the phone when you buy it with a contract, yet getting out of a contract can cost you hundreds in early termination fees.
Chip Chick gives a tip on how to get out of your cell phone contract and avoid fees. It involves transferring your contract’s responsibility to someone else. Finding someone willing to take on your contract can be hard though, but these two services can help you find people who’ve been waiting for this occasion: Celltrade and CellSwapper.
Now you can worry less about your cell phone contract while still enjoying a huge discount on your new phone.
Forget about expansion slots and memory cards! Nokia is trying to stay ahead of the competition with the Nokia N91, the first US cell phone with a 4GB micro hard drive, which is pretty impressive for a cell phone.
The Nokia N91 has all the features you would expect from a multimedia phone: MP3 player capabilities with an integrated 3.5mm earphone jack, 2.0 megapixel digital camera, video playback and more.
Nokia N91 Specifications
The N91 is a tad bigger and weights more than some phones currently on the market, probably because of the 4GB hard drive. However, the added data storage ensures you never run out of space to play your MP3s and take pictures!
Today I received a brand new credit card because my old one had expired. To activate the new card, I had to call my credit card company so they could verify the card was indeed in the hands of the rightful owner. Having dropped my land-based phone line recently, I made the call from my cellular phone, and I had to type in my credit card number on my cell phone keypad. After the call I had the idea to check if my card number could be found anywhere on my cell phone - it was indeed very easy to find.
It is important to realize how sensitive information on a mobile device can be. If your mobile phone is stolen, such information can be leaked and at worst lead to identity theft. There are basic tips you can follow to help prevent it from happening:
Cell phone privacy is something we should all be concerned about. While these tips are aimed at cellular phones, they can also be applied to other mobile devices as well. If you’re concerned about your cell phone’s privacy, take steps to help protect yourself. Better be safe than sorry!
Lifehacker is running an interesting read poll on its website - Do you use your camera phone or your digital camera to take most of your pictures?
So far the majority of Lifehacker’s readers are not using their camera phone for serious photography. Instead, they find their camera handy to quickly grab snapshots of everyday situations where they don’t have their digital cameras at hand. Camera phones can be quite useful for those of you who don’t carry a digital camera around or to send a picture to another cell phone.
The quality of a camera phone is not very good in general, and it’s not just about the megapixels - cell phones are made very compact and can’t house a very large digital sensor. The lens on a camera phone is also of quite low quality, which can further increase the blurriness of a picture.
Until I read that poll, I didn’t realize I was carrying a camera phone with me all the time. While the image quality is not very good, it is still useful to grab pictures of friends and various events. A low quality picture is better than no picture at all.