HOME |
RSS | 
Lukáš Kmit was playing his best at a concert at the Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Presov, Slovakia when someone’s phone went off. I think he handled it in as classy a manner as he could! -via The Daily What
Nokia apparently feels like the smart phones we have today aren’t rubbery or flexible enough to take us into the future, so they are introducing a design that will change the way we use, and touch, our phones.
Called the HumanForm, this rubbery surfboard shaped device is virtually unbreakable, has twist control functionality, and will supposedly allow us to feel textures via “electro tactile technology”. I don’t know about you, but this phone makes me want to teach a squirrel how to ride it like a surfboard!
Going
on a little vacay but can't seem to untether yourself from your gadgetry?
Well, Marriott's Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel may just have the kick in
the pants you need to unplug and disconnect.
The hotel will require guests that buy the "detox" package to surrender their gadgets at the door:
This is chance to revive yourself from an over stimulated world. [...]
Your laptop, cell phone, and all other digital devices must be surrendered upon check-in, and will be held for you until your departure. Prior to your arrival, the television, phone, and ihome dock station will be removed from your guest room and replaced by literary classics.
Link - via The Next Web
You may or may not have seen some warnings on your friends Facebook posts the past few days warning of the social network’s importation of all your cell phone contacts. While this is true if you use the Facebook application for your smart phone, the company denies that is publishing all of your contact info without your consent. What has your experience been with Facebook phone book tool? Find out if your numbers have been saved by Facebook:
To see the phonebook that’s causing all the fuss, click on Account in Facebook’s top right corner, then click on Edit Friends, and click Contacts at the left side. Indeed, Facebook does store a list of phone numbers, both contacts you have imported from your phone as well as information your Facebook friends have themselves added.
We only keep a landline so I can call my cell when I lose it in the house. – @bulls_horns
This Tweet hit the nail on the head, so it had to be turned into a Twaggie, illustrated by artist Jeff Naslund. See more of his work at Twaggies. Link
Usually, when Tom Dickinson puts a piece of tech in his Blendtec, it’s rendered unusable (and sometimes aflame). But the world’s toughest cellphone, the Sonim XP3300 Force, came out ugly but still functioning. It looks like most of the damage was to the phone’s exterior. The Gorilla Glass screen remained intact, as did the military-grade component housing. It may have “mostly blended,” but this is the first time a phone was left un-obliterated by a Blendtec.
On April 3rd, 1973, 38 years ago today, Martin Cooper made a phone call while walking down the street in New York City. At the time, he was the general manager of Motorola’s communications division. He had promoted the idea that phone numbers shouldn’t be tethered to a place, but to people. And they should be able to take their phones with them, anywhere they went.
When Martin Cooper made that first cell phone call, he did not make it to another cell phone. People didn’t have them yet — who could he call?
No, he made the cell phone call to a land line — specifically, to the land line of his chief competitor at Bell Labs. Motorola had beaten Bell to become the first company to make personal cell phones work. Cooper, you might say, rubbed it in. Think how the Bell Labs research engineer must have felt when he heard Cooper calling him from the noisy streets of Manhattan.
That first cell phone was so big that it was often described as resembling a shoe, or a brick. It weighed 2½ pounds. Cooper would joke to friends and colleagues that the calls from that phone would have to be short in duration: Who had the strength to hold it to an ear for very long?
Cooper, now 82 years old, still works in communications. And he carries his cell phone with him everywhere -but not the 1973 model. Link -via reddit
Cthulhu Cell Phone Holder – $14.95
Help! Help! Cthulhu ate my cell phone!
Just kidding, it’s just the super awesome Cthulhu Cell Phone Holder from the NeatoShop! You know you want one!
If Cthulhu really did eat your cell phone is that covered by the insurance plan? Hmmm…something to think about.
Be sure to check out the other fabulous Mobile Phone Accessories and Cthulhu items available at the NeatoShop.
Comments Off
Oklahoma teenager, Kaitlyn Ladevaia, just got her first cell phone. Now she can get calls and texts from her family and friends. The problem is she also gets lots and lots of calls and texts from people she doesn’t know. You see, Kaitlyn ended up with NBA player Blake Griffin’s old cell phone number.
Kaitlyn does have unlimited data on her phone so all those extra text messages don’t cost her a dime.
However, she doesn’t have unlimited minutes and would rather use them chatting with her friends than letting people know she’s not Blake Griffin.
For now her family is set on keeping the number. Kaitlyn enjoys the claim to fame of having Blake Griffin’s old number. She just hopes that the texts and calls eventually stop.
Marika Lorraine of KFOR has more: Link
In "Mobile Evolution", Brighton designer Kyle Bean created this awesome papercraft of nesting mobile phones, in the manner of the nesting Russian dolls.
Take a look at the video clip of the artwork in action: Link
Brian Westerfield approached a man in a Nampa, Idaho Walmart store who had just bought a smartphone. He grabbed the phone and fled.
He got away the first time but when the victim and police got together they came up with a plan to call the stolen phone and talk to the man who took it.
“The suspect didn’t know that he was talking with the police,” Sgt. Mike Wagoner said. “(They) dickered over the price for the phone and so when the suspect did show up the police obviously where there to meet him.”
They arrested him after he tried to run he tripped and fell face first onto the ground.
It apparently didn’t occur to Westerfield to wonder how the “buyer” got the phone number when he didn’t yet know it himself. Link -via Gizmodo
Why can’t you user your cell phone on commercial flights (hint: it has nothing to do with technical limitation, you can use your mobile phones in flights in Europe) or why your seat has to be in their original and upright position a full 20 minutes before landing?
Willy Stern of The Weekly Standard has the REAL reasons:
Mike Munger, a political science professor at Duke University, says the FAA’s silly rules are, in fact, a form of what psychologists and zoologists refer to as “costly signals.” What’s the term mean? Costly signal theory explains actions that might seem crazy, but have a purpose. For instance, a gazelle espies a lion across the veldt and, instead of hiding, expends much energy by leaping high into the air, calling attention to herself. At the same time, she’s telling the lion, “Hey, I’m no simple catch so look elsewhere for your dinner.” Similarly, the FAA wastes a lot of energy and resources with its pages and pages of
inane rules, but is somehow trying to convey the message that planes are safe. Most of us would rather skip the message and finish our naps in full recline.
TechEBlog spotted an ultra-rare Star Trek Communicator cell phone by Nokia that is "intended to simulate the iconic voice comms devices of the original TV series."
A working cellphone made in the form of a Star Trek communicator. This is one of 14 numbered prototypes distributed internally at Nokia in 2008. I bought it on eBay from a former Nokia employee who received it as a gift and no longer works for the company.
This is a heavily-modified N76 with custom sounds, graphics, and hardware. It is very much a prototype and obviously in a late Alpha or early Beta stage.
Pics and video clip here: Link
See also: neat Star Trek stuff over at the NeatoShop.
Ivan Mavrovic of Mental Design makes awesome steampunk designs of pens, jewelries, watches and more – but I’m very impressed with his steampunk cell phones: the one above is a working Nokia 2330!
Techi has more pics: Link | More at Ivan’s blog
Phoot: Csont Zsombor
Got old cell phones? Rather than chucking them in a landfill, artists in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, used them to decorate this giant cell phone sculpture as part of the city’s film festival.
More photos of the art installations from around the city at 11even: Link – Thanks Zsolt!
It’s one thing to play music on a modern gadget -many people can tap out “Happy Birthday” on a cell phone. It’s quite another to perform classical pieces! Believe it or not, this person is playing “Rondo Alla Turka” {audio file} from Mozart’s Piano Sonota #11 on four telephones. Link
Steffest made a musical instrument by cobbling together several different cell phones and even an iPod! Link -via the Presurfer
Gabriella Nagy of Toronto is suing Rogers Wireless, her cell phone provider, for breaking up her marriage. She argues that the company disclosed her call history to her husband, which revealed her secret affair. He left her. Now Nagy wants $600,000:
In 2007, Gabriella Nagy had a cellphone account with Rogers which sent the monthly bill to her home address in her maiden name. Her husband was the account holder for the family’s cable TV service at the same address. Around June 4, 2007, he called Rogers to add internet and home phone.
The following month, Rogers mailed a “global” invoice for all of its services to the matrimonial home that included an itemized bill for Nagy’s cellular service, according to the statement of claim filed in Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
When Nagy’s husband opened the Rogers invoice, he saw several hour-long phone calls to a single phone number.
Link via Geekosystem | Photo: US Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project; Credit: NPR
If you think that your teen is spending a lot of time on his or her cell phone texting, that’s because it’s true. A new poll by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project reports that more than half of teens text daily and about a third of those send more than 100 text messages every day!
"There’s now an expectation that teens will contact each other via text, and they expect a kind of constant, frequent response," says the Pew Center’s Amanda Lenhart, one of the study’s authors.
The survey, which was conducted with scholars from the University of Michigan, finds the typical American teen sends 50 texts a day, and a sizable number send double that or more. Some teens text their parents, though most youngsters say they prefer to speak with them by phone.
This rapid rise in texting has led to confrontation as parents and schools try to control cell phone use. The report finds that parents are trying a variety of ways, from monitoring content to limiting the time of day or number of minutes children may talk or text. Many parents surveyed — 62 percent — say they’ve taken away their child’s cell phone as punishment, though Lenhart says this can backfire: Parents often give children cell phones to keep track of their whereabouts, and don’t like giving up that easy access.
At Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Maryland last week, students were tapping away on their phones before they even reached the exit doors after classes let out. Sierra Koenick, 17, said she and her friends talk about "everything."
"What’s going on, or meet me here, or something," she said. Then she added, laughing, "Usually they’re dumb texts, not even worth it."
Jennifer Ludden of NPR has the story: Link
Even if you’re not a particularly athletic person, there’s a sport out there for you. Whether you’re an avid ironer or are known for launching your cell phone 300 feet after dealing with an exceptionally annoying telemarketer, there’s something in the world that will play to your skills. Here are 10 of them.
1. Toe Wrestling. Yup – there’s arm wrestling, thumb wrestling… and now toe wrestling. As you might imagine, it’s a lot like thumb wrestling – competitors just use different digits. It apparently started when a group of men at a pub decided to find or invent a game that “the British could actually win,” and after a few beverages, they came up with just the thing. Ironically, the first-ever World Toe Wrestling Championships ended with a Canadian victor. Competitors have their own phalange-related nicknames: two of the most accomplished athletes are called the Itatoelion Stallion and the Toeminator. The face of the sport would probably be Alan “Nasty” Nash, a five-time champion who has appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to show off his technique. “I don’t think the size of your toe has anything to do with it as I have short, stumpy toes,” he has said. Picture from Metro.
2. Cheese Rolling. You’ve likely heard of this one, but it’s too weird to leave out of the article. Every year at Cooper’s Hill in England’s Cotswolds, a large wheel of cheese is sent tumbling from the top of the hill (pictured)… and a bunch of Cheese Rollers come tumbling after. The first person to reach the bottom of the hill wins the cheese. This may not seem like an outstanding prize, but be assured that the race for the Double Gloucester round is a heated one: injuries have included concussions, broken bones and sprained ankles. Injuries are usually incurred by the Cheese Rollers themselves, but on at least one occasion the cheese (which usually weighs seven or eight pounds) took a wicked bounce at the bottom of the hill and careened into a spectator. Picture from Cheese Rolling.
3. Poohsticks. Children’s lit fans (or Disney fans) will be familiar with Poohsticks from The House at Pooh Corner, A.A. Milne’s 1928 book. Milne actually played the game with his son, although we’re not sure if the game was invented for the book and then played by Milne and his son Christopher Robin or vice versa. Fans started actually playing the game, which involves dropping sticks in a stream or river to see which one crosses the designated finish line first, in 1984. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution needed some money and the lock keeper thought a Poohsticks competition – donations accepted – might help their cash flow. His hunch was correct – since its inception, the World Poohsticks Competition has raised more than £30,000. Every winner receives a gold medal and a Winnie the Pooh teddy bear.
4. Extreme Ironing. There are a lot of us out there that probably dread the tedium of pressing wrinkles out of clothes, but there are others who look at it as the opportunity for an adrenaline rush – namely, Extreme Ironers. It started out as just a fun, quirky hobby, but for the past several years an actual competition sponsored by Rowenta has taken place. EIs send in a photo of themselves ironing in strange and extreme places and points are given for place and style (just standing there with an iron will get you minimal points; striking a graceful pose while ironing underwater will get you more). Bonus: the sport has inspired cellists to do the same thing. Photo from OneInchPunch.
5. Buzkashi sounds like something made up for Borat, but it’s a real sport in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, among others. It’s kind of like polo, except the focus of the game revolves around a decapitated goat or calf instead of a ball. If you’re a Rambo fan, you might remember seeing the game depicted in Rambo III. Photo from AfghanNetwork.
6. Cell Phone Throwing. Fed up with your cell phone? Join the club. But now you can do something legal to vent your frustrations (as opposed to going Naomi Campbell on someone). Since 2001, the Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships have been held in Finland. Categories include the traditional toss, freestyle (points for creativity!), team, and junior. If you’re not near Finland and don’t care to travel there just to chuck a phone, never fear: the U.S. held its first event in Massachusetts in 2008. And if you love your cell phone but hate outdated technology, you can join in the Rotary Phone Throw at Lawrence University in Wisconsin.
7. International Regatta of Bathtubs. La Regate des Baignoires was created to boost tourism in Dinant, Belgium. As you can imagine, bathtubs don’t float very well, so it’s a pretty entertaining “race.” In fact, speed really doesn’t matter at all when it comes to winning this thing. It’s more about the creativity of your tub and whether your tub actually makes it across the finish line or not. Photo from P&O Ferries.
8. Chess Boxing. The old stereotype of chess being for skinny, geeky guys with no athletic ability to speak of is totally out the window with this extreme sport. The game started out as kind of a joke in a graphic novel, but people eventually picked up on it and thought it had merit in reality. The first world championship was held in 2003 and regulated by the World Chess Boxing Organization. I like to think that when you call a checkmate, you get to punch your opponent in the face… but it doesn’t work like that. Boxing rounds are alternated with chess-playing rounds; the winner can be determined by knockout, checkmate, or a decision made by the referee. Photo from Time magazine.
9. Unicycle Hockey. It would seem to me that unicycling and hockey each have enough opportunity for injury all on their own, but combine them and you’re almost guaranteed to get a cool scar at some point. There are a few extra fouls, such as “sibbing,” which is poking your hockey stick in an opponent’s spokes to trip him or her up, but for the most part, the unusual mode of transportation is the biggest difference from regular hockey. Oh, yeah, and the lack of ice. Really, ice + unicycle = asking for a shattered femur. Here’s a group playing unicycle hockey in Telluride:
10. Rock Paper Scissors League. Yes, there’s a Rock Paper Scissors League (to be known as RPSL from now on), and yes, it’s serious. The world competitions take place every year in Las Vegas with Bud Light sponsoring. There’s skill to the game, for sure, but it’s more mental than anything else. For example, statistics have shown that women tend to start off a game with scissors and men tend to start with rock. Know your opponent and you could be a $50,000 winner like Sean Sears, who beat more than 300 contestants at Mandalay Bay last year. If that’s not your cup of tea, there are plenty of other tournaments to participate in: there’s the National Xtreme RPS Competition, the UK RPS Championship and the World Series of RPS.
Prison inmates are an innovative bunch (case in point: pruno), so it should be of no big surprise that they’ve found ways to smuggle contrabands into prison. But this method is surely unique: inmates at a prison farm in Brazil have been using pigeons to smuggle in cell phones!
Guards at the Danilio Pinheiro prison near the southeastern city of Sorocaba noticed a pigeon resting on an electric wire with a small cloth bag tied to one of its legs last week. "The guards nabbed the bird after luring it down with some food and discovered components of a small cell phone inside the bag," police investigator Celso Soramiglio said Tuesday.
One day later, another pigeon was spotted dragging a similar bag inside the prison’s exercise yard. Inside the bag was the cell phone’s charger, Soramiglio said.
Businessman Andrew Cheatle lost his cell phone during a visit to the local beach. Believing it was gone forever after his cell phone apparently swept out to sea, he received a big surprise a week later.
Andrew, 45, said: “I was messing about with my dog and my phone must have fallen out and been swept out in the swell.
“I kept calling it but I gave up hope after a couple of days.”
He was shopping for a new phone with girlfriend Rita Smith, 33, when her mobile went off.
She told him: “Your old mobile number is calling my phone.”
Andrew continued: “She said some guy was going on about my phone and a cod so she handed it over to me and he told me where he had found it.
“I thought he was winding me up but he assured me he had caught a cod that morning and was gutting it for his fish stall and that my Nokia was inside it — a bit worse for wear.
“I didn’t believe him but went to meet him and found it was my phone — a bit smelly and battered — but incredibly it still worked after I let it dry out.”
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.
(Links open in a new browser window/tab)
 |
Juggling with Bowling Ball I kid: that's not a bowling ball, but it sure does look like one! Link |
 |
Dog Hates the Happy Birthday Song! |
 |
Physics Fun: Jell-O + Electricity = FIRE! Link (Includes the phrase "electrically active Jell-O mound" that is PURE WIN) |
 |
Cell Phone Reunion From the geniuses over at CollegeHumor: Link (NSFW language - the ending makes it all worth the wait) |
 |
The Crazy PS3 Kid Banned From Playing PS3 His range of emotion is amazing! Christian Bale, watch out! Link |
For more the web's most interesting videos, check out: VideoSift.
A modified cell phone could allow doctors to analyze blood samples for HIV, malaria, and other diseases in remote villages where costly lab equipment and the power to run them are unavailable! The device is called a LUCAS imager (Lensfree Ultrawide-field Cell-monitoring Array platform based on Shadow imaging).
UCLA researcher Dr. Aydogan Ozcan images thousands of blood cells instantly by placing them on an off-the-shelf camera sensor and lighting them with a filtered-light source (coherent light, for you science buffs). The filtered light exposes distinctive qualities of the cells, which are then interpreted by Ozcan’s custom software. By analyzing the cell types present in a much larger sample, a more accurate diagnosis can be made in a matter of minutes. No more sending blood away to a lab and waiting days or weeks for the results.
Ozcan is seeking a manufacture so these devices can be mass-produced. Link -Thanks, Dave Bullock!
