Feb 03
If you live, work, or just spend time in any city with a subway system, you probably know the frustration of not receiving service on your new or refurbished cell phone while you’re on the train. Well Alexander Kendrick, a 16-year old from New Mexico, may have developed a solution to the problem.
Kendrick won the 2009 International Science Fair by creating a low frequency radio that is capable of sending messages through hundreds of feet of rock. His radio reportedly sent a message to his father from 1,000 feet below sea level. According to Switched, “The feat marked the deepest known digital communication ever achieved in the United States.”
The 16 year old developed the radio to save the lives of people injured working/exploring in underground caves but if the technology can be reduced in size, it could mean an end to that “no signal” on your daily commute.
Tagged with: subways • texting
Feb 01
Apparently, the majority of British people don’t have Internet packages on their new and refurbished cell phone plans because their connection speeds aren’t that great and their cost is high (which seems weird that it would be worse from here in the US as I thought we were always behind with things like this). BizReport wrote that 76% of all cell phone owners in England do not have wireless Internet plans.
What they do use, and use the heck out of at that, is text messaging. According to the U.K. based Mobile Data Association, 96.8 billion text messages were sent out in 2009, – which is 11 million text messages per hour or 265 million per day. That figure was up 23% from 2008 when the Brits sent 78.9 billion texts. The number of picture texts sent in 2009 was 601 million, and 4.5 million of those were sent on Christmas day.
With companies working to make texting safe in cars and with companies like Google allowing you to verbally dictate texts to your phone, these numbers will surely go nowhere but up.
Tagged with: Britain • text messages • texting
Jan 26
(Dark Blue) States that have banned texting - (Light Blue) States debating over passing the ban
Texting from your new or refurbished cell phone while driving is obviously not a responsible thing to do, but the number of state legislators who feel that you are not responsible enough to govern your own actions while driving is steadily increasing.
19 states (Shown in dark blue on the map) have already banned texting while driving, and 23 states (shown in light blue) are currently debating over passing the ban. AAA’s director of state relations, Justin McNaull, believes that at least 12 more bans will pass in 2010. He feels, “There’s clear public disapproval of the behavior, and there’s strong public support for a law.” The president of FocusDriven, Jennifer Smith, says, “I’m kind of at a loss as to why every state doesn’t have a no-texting law. That’s a no-brainer.”
According to the department of transportation, 5,870 people, 16% of all highway fatalities, died in distracted-driving crashes and 515,000 were injured in 2008.
While I do agree that texting while driving is extremely dangerous, I don’t, realistically speaking, see people turning their phones off until they get home. Hopefully more car manufacturers will follow Ford’s lead and incorporate safe ways to use your phone without ever having to take your eyes off the road.
Tagged with: texting • texting and driving • texting ban
Dec 29
I recently did a little review of Swype, but a new app from Tiki’Labs is challenging Swype for the fastest touch texting app title for your new or refurbished cell phone. They’ve even put a video in which Tikinotes wins (by a very small margin).
Tikinotes seems to be focusing on the idea that the bigger the “button” on the touch screen, the quicker you can type. They have designed a two-touch system where the initial screen shows you six large boxes, four containing six letters and two containing a combination of letters and symbols. To type, you first tap the box containing the letter you need, which changes the six boxes of multiple letters to six boxes, each containing only one letter. You then tap the letter you need. It sounds tedious but if you watch their tutorial video, you’ll see that it actually looks pretty quick. Again, the idea is that you eventually memorize where the letters will appear and can type really quickly because the buttons are so big, so you don’t have to worry about hitting the wrong letter.
I’m still not entirely sold, but I think that if I try it out, I will be. I still swear I could text faster on the old two-letter-per-button layout of the Blackberry Pearl than I can on a full QWERTY because the buttons were just a little larger, so maybe Tikinotes is what I need. You can get the app at iTunes for, I belive, $1.99.
Tagged with: texting • Tikinotes • touch texting
