Did you ever sit in a traffic jam and think “I bet just one idiot on his cell phone up ahead caused this… jerk…”. We all know it’s probably unrealistic, but it’s much easier to blame one person than it is to blame the whole crowd around you. Well… Your inner thoughts may actually be correct. Using cell phone tracking data, thanks to a traffic study by MIT, we have learned a few things about when, why and where traffic jams start, and how they spread out from other areas. It’s not just one singular person, but the data does show that it only takes a select few to send those paved roads into utter chaos.
Feb 18
Jan 28
Unlocking your used cell phone may be illegal thanks to a strict anti-hacking law called DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) passed last year, with folks online pretty upset with it’s broad stroke of power. This didn’t really hit the public’s eye until recently though, with the closing of a short window of legality allowed by the librarian of Congress. Back in October it was decided that, under the DMCA, unlocking your phone was illegal. The Librarian of Congress allowed a three month window for people to unlock as many phones as they wanted… that window closed this past Saturday.
Oct 21
I am not sure about you, but now that it is getting colder outside here in the Philadelphia area – the first thing I do in the morning is check the weather. I was recently searching the net 
and found an interesting trend emerging on the other side of the world in Japan. According to research by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), about 20 percent of Japanese check forecasts on their new or refurbished smartphones. The thing is the people of Japan are not only looking up the weather, but they are now voting on it. Several weather services are competing via the official portals of cell- phone companies: DoCoMo’s i-mode iMenu, KDDI au’s EZweb and SoftBank Mobile’s Yahoo! Keitai. All of those services, provide basic information, such as today and tomorrow’s weather predictions, but the majority of the sites mentioned have a pay-for-service as well. Continue reading »
Sep 09
During these rough economic times, many are searching for a quick way to earn some easy cash–but a large percentage of people have no idea just how valuable that used cell phone sitting in their drawer, collecting dust, can really be. If you have a used phone collecting dust some where (like most people do) check out our Used Cell Phones for Cash at TheBlueDot.net.
Most people do not realize their used cell phone may be worth a significant amount of money.
According to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) in 2007, approximately 130 used phones ended up in landfills in the US. Only 14 million Americans recycled their used cell phones. Today, donating or recycling cell phones, PDAs, chargers, and batteries has never been easier.
By bringing awareness to the matter, we can make a huge difference. Right now the number of people properly disposing their cellular devices is right around 10%. If more people knew how simple it were to trade-in their device the affects on the environment could be substantial.
Sources: EPA.gov
Apr 06
I’m a little late on this, but I’m definitely interested in how this is/will be playing out. Verizon Wireless has officially announced that they will be releasing their own app store, called the V Cast Store, which will first be available for new and refurbished Blackberry phones. I’ve read several articles claiming that the V Cast Store would be unveiled on March 29th, yet five minutes of Googling (which the maximum amount of time I’m willing to Google any particular subject in this day and age) has yet to reveal anything exciting (and it’s April 6th).
I did go to Verizon’s website and found a tiny little link for apps but if the page it took me to is there new “big app store” that will compete with the iPhone and Blackberry’s app stores, my only response is, “Really?”
Now, I understand that Verizon has been around for a long time and that a lot of people who live in remote areas of the US have been loyal to Verizon and are thankful that Verizon covered them when no one else would but, for me, Verizon has always been a day late and a dollar short. Their phones are always the biggest versions in size and at the bottom on the “cool” list. The only thing keeping them in the game, as far as the technological forefront is concerned, is the Android platform, but it seems inevitable that Google will offer their own service via Voice Over IP in the near future, so who knows how long the Google/Verizon thing will last. If I were a Verizon customer, I’d be counting the days until my contract was up.
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.
