After freezing the Droid X pre-sales, Best Buy has opened up the order queue once again. Best Buy had to shut down the pre-orders June 30th due to the overwhelming volume of sales.

Droid X Pre-Sales Open at Best Buy

The Droid X sports a huge crisp 4.3” screen. It has an 8 megapixel camera with LED flash capable of taking high definition video, and many cool new features. It’s launch was announced before the announcement of Apple’s iPhone4, and is an obvious competitor in the Smartphone market.

Am I rushing down to Best Buy to pre-order one? Nope. I will wait until they actually come out and play with it at the Verizon store first.

Tawkon’s app that measures cell phone radiation is still being banned by Apple. Just last week the app for the BlackBerry was released, but Apple is still rejecting the cell phone app. As more and more manufacturers embrace this new technology, you have to wonder why Apple isn’t. What is Apple afraid of?

Tell Apple to Stop Banning Tawkon’s App

Tawkon’s new patent-pending technology takes 3 factors into consideration for their measurements of cell phone radiation. (Quoted from Tawkon’s blog “tawkon: How We Help Avoid Mobile Radiation” )

• Hardware: The way a mobile device is engineered, the model of the phone, factors such as the location of the device’s antenna, the materials out of which it was constructed, materials that physically shield the device from the cellular network (covers, sticker, etc) as well as the shape and size of the phone are all components that affect your levels of exposure to radiation.
• Environment: The location of the mobile phone is a crucial point. The terrain (whether the user is shielded from the cellular network e.g. in a basement, elevator or behind a concrete wall), mobility (due to frequent handover between cell towers) as well as weather conditions are all characteristics that are factored into this equation.
• Usage: While the above two factors are not in the hands of the user (besides of course selecting a device and changing location when possible), the way we use our phones very much depends on us. Many people are unaware that even the smallest adjustment in the way we operate our mobile devices can drastically reduce our exposure to mobile phone radiation. Holding the phone vertically and not horizontally, distancing the device from ones body & head via peripherals such as headsets (wired or Bluetooth) or by using the phone’s speaker, we can actively take part in lowering our exposure to radiation.

Isn’t that simple to understand? Perhaps not, but do we need to know how electricity works in order to enjoy its benefits? The important things is that you can measure the radiation and make informed decisions based on that information.

Tawkon is actively seeking Apple’s approval for the iPhone app. They have an online petition you can sign (Tell Apple). The more people who sign the petition, the faster iPhone users can talk more with lower radiation. More information to consumers is always a good thing.

I urge you to go sign the petition.

A new copyright bill in Canada could hurt cell phone users. Even with the recent launch of several new cell phone service providers, Canadian consumers are limited by locked cell phones. Mobile phones sold in Canada are typically sold with a digital lock programmed into them that prevents them from being used on a different carrier’s network.

Locked Cell Phones Hurting Canadians

Canadian consumers have been used to incompatible cell phones between carriers. Canada’s big three cell phone company networks, (Bell, Rogers and Telus), were generally incompatible. There finally seemed to be a bit of hope though because in November, Bell and Telus jointly launched a new 3G High-Speed Packet Access network that is compatible with the one Rogers runs. In addition, 2 new carriers, Wind Mobile and Mobilicity, started up in December and are compatible with the other network.

With locked phones, none of this matters. Canadians are stuck with either buying a new phone when they change carriers, or sticking with the cell phone service provider they are using. The new copyright law solidifies the practice of locking cell phones. In addition, breaking a digital lock on a cell phone is currently illegal in Canada. The carriers justify the locks not only to prevent consumers from getting a free or cheap phone and then switching carriers, but also claim it is for technical support reasons.

Technical support is the justification to lock cell phones. Rogers spokeswoman Odette Coleman said “We don’t unlock them for customers or provide tech support for them because we did not certify those devices on our network and cannot guarantee how they will perform. The devices … go through the rigorous process of certifying so we can provide technical support and guarantee that they will perform.” (Can we smell something rotten?)

Here in the States we have a similar challenge. It is illegal to break digital locks, but cell phones are exempt from that law. However, incompatible networks plague us as well. Several of the carriers, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, use SIM cards (Subscriber Identity Module) to connect your phone. Verizon doesn’t use them except for world phones. Obviously then phones requiring a SIM card to operate wouldn’t be compatible with the Verizon network.

Cell phone service providers have long been known as bullies. They charge exorbitant subscription prices, and huge fees to stop the service before the contract is up. Apparently this practice is not limited to the US. We need more consumer protection, but should it be in the form of more laws? I am not an advocate of creating more laws. (Perhaps rescinding a few, yes, but not more.) I think we have far too many laws now, most of which are outdated and should be removed. Can we regulate cell phone service providers in a more “consumer friendly” manner? As a society we are hugely reliant on cell phones. Personally, I think they have us by the shorts. Got any solutions?

Will cash become totally obsolete? Square, the plastic card reader cell phone attachment, makes it easy for street vendors to accept credit cards. No merchant account is needed for the vendor to accept payment.

Paying for Food on the Street with a Cell Phone?

Square, a product of Twitter Inc. creator Jack Dorsey, uses a little “square” attachment and downloadable software to make the transaction from a Smartphone. The Square plugs into the headphone jack of the iPhone or Android based Smartphone, and then is processed through Square’s secure servers. Apps for Palm Pre and BlackBerry are supposed to be coming in the near future.

After swiping the card through the reader, the buyer signs for the transaction by using finger strokes on the touch screen. The buyer can type in an e-mail address where a digital receipt will be sent. Square charges a fee of 15 cents and 2.75% of the transaction amount to the person processing the credit card. That would amount to 42.5 cents for a $10 purchase.

A version of Square for the iPad is also available. It enables store owners to input and track inventory and handle cash transactions, replacing pricey point-of-sale cash registers and terminals.

“The future has arrived,” tweeted Mayer Hawthorne, a singer and songwriter who used Square to sell his CDs and merchandise while on the road.

While convenient, where is this trend headed? Already you can send money between friends by “bumping phones.” With the app pulled up on both phones involved, the amount of the transaction is input on the payer’s phone. Money changes hands by physically bumping the two phones together. Both of the users must have a PayPal account tied to a bank account or the fees charged will be even higher than Square’s fees.

This certainly does eliminate having to carry a pocket full of change to buy lunch from the hot dog seller. Am I ready to eliminate carrying money? Perhaps not just yet. A concern is that we are giving more control to banks than ever before. There’s something reassuring about cash. What’s your take on it? Feel the need to actually “feel” your money? Like the weight of that money clip in your pocket?

Electromagnetic energy exposure can cause serious health issues. We have all heard the horror stories about electromagnetic energy causing brain tumors and cancer. A large number of trinket devices claim to protect us. Two companies are now taking that need for protection very seriously. Belly Armor and Pong Research are taking a scientific approach to the problem.

Protection from Unseen Radiation Hazards

Belly Armor, out of Singapore and New York, is specializing in blankets and t-shirts that protect developing fetuses from electromagnetic energy. Belly Armor says that in tests conducted by the Shanghai Institute of Measurement and Testing Technology, a Chinese government testing agency, the blankets and shirts blocked between 90 and 99.9 percent of electromagnetic radiation.

Pong Research, based in Los Angeles and Middleburg, Va., has taken a different approach. Pong has come out with patent-pending cell phones cases that effectively redirect about 60% of the dreaded killer energy. Right now these cases are only available for BlackBerry and iPhones, but Pong founder and case inventor, Professor Alfred Wong (UCLA), plans to have models for other phone lines out in the near future.

Does exposure to electromagnetic energy cause cancer? The International Agency for Research on Cancer published a study last week about prolonged exposure to electromagnetic energy. The study proved inconclusive even though it drew on 10 years of data. However, there is enough concern that both California and Maine have called for warning labels on cell phones.

Hype or fact? John Walls, vice president of public affairs for CTIA-The Wireless Association, a wireless communication trade group, says while these new products could theoretically work to protect you, they are unnecessary. “Science has not indicated there is a problem,” Mr. Walls said. “Phones are already emitting radiation below acceptable levels as per the F.C.C. regulations.”

Professor Wong still advocates caution! Wong says that the radiation from a cell phone works much like a microwave, heating molecules of water in the objects. Since we humans are made up of 70% water, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to draw the conclusion that our goose is being cooked! Perhaps we should be paying a bit more attention to the parts of our environment we CAN control, like cell phone usage, computer exposure, microwave ovens themselves.

Ready to buy a new cell phone case? I can hardly wait for the new models to come out from Pong. I doubt I will be using a blanket or t-shirt as protection, but I think pregnant women ought to check it out and make their decisions based on “what might happen” scenarios. Do we trust government studies that tell us products aren’t harmful to us? How’s that been working? Let’s see, cigarettes, arsenic as a pesticide, Thalidomide? These products were reported to be safe for consumers. Now we know differently. I am not so trusting of government studies. How about you?

Drug dealers are using their cell phones as scales. New downloadable apps turn your Smartphone into a small scale. iPhone has the iScale, while other Smartphones are also making ounce and gram scale apps available.

Drug Dealing 101! There’s an App for that!

There is a growing trend for apps that thwart the law. One of the apps is “cop corder” which warns the user not to talk to cops without a lawyer present and then turns into a pocket-sized recorder to document the conversation. Another app, called “trapster” warns of traffic speed trap locations.

Law enforcement agencies are poised and ready to confiscate cell phones used for weighing drugs. Current drug paraphernalia laws allow cops to seize pipes, razor blades, beakers, regular scales, etc, and now any cell phones they believe are related to a drug case. No modifications in the law are needed for them to take your Smartphone. So far, no cell phones have been confiscated. Could it be that drug dealers are weighing their product before they hit the street?

Soon our Smartphones will be the “Swiss Army Knives” of this generation. Before too long there will an app for anything you can imagine. One of my very favorites is a little app on the Android that turns your phone into a very bright flashlight.  I am eager to see what they come up with next! What’s your favorite app?

A new iPhone app allows medical staff to monitor a patient’s status. The Nashville Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) Department of Anesthesiology created an iPhone application called VigiVu. This new app allows for the monitoring of up to 4 patients at one time.

New iPhone App to Monitor Medical Patients

VUMC’s VigiVu allows doctors and other medical practitioners to use their iPhones to monitor a patient’s vital signs and even see into operating rooms during surgeries. The app also allows communication between the practitioners.

Is VigiVu a glimpse of things to come in the medical field? Will doctors be monitoring us from the golf course or Tahiti? It’s a cool app and a great way to stay connected, but I am a bit worried we will be dealing with less and less personal attention for our medical needs. Do you think the next iPhone app will be robotic surgery? Will the doctors ever have to see patients again? What’s next, remote viewing and healing through a psychic? Is there an app for that?

Tokyo-based middleware company HI Corp. announced it has developed new software to convert your 2D cell phone games into 3D games without special 3D glasses. The claim is that you won’t need to upgrade your cell phone. Investigating further, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Play Cell Phone 3D Games without Special 3D Glasses

HI’s new image-rendering software, a new version of MascotCapsule, will be compatible to a special 3D LCD screen made by NEC LCD Technologies only. This means the software won’t work with screens by other makers, but NEC is already offering that display to a number of cell phone manufacturers. HI and NEC plan to have the technology embedded in ten million handsets by 2013.

Details of the new software are fairly scarce, but HI is going to demo the technology this week during an exhibition in Tokyo. What we know right now is that users will need to look straight at their handsets to get the 3D effect. If not, the view will be quite blurry.

The potential for this software is huge. The problem as I see it is that once again you will have to upgrade your cell phone in order to take full advantage of the technology. Since I am not a gamer, I doubt I will be looking for a cell phone with that new screen even once it comes out. What about you?

A new technology, Surround Vision, can use your Smartphone to view an image not yet on the main screen of your TV. Imagine being able to see different camera angles of a news cast by just pointing your cell phone. You could see all the shot footage from different cameras that never makes the main screen.

Surround Vision is just out of the box

Surround Vision is intended to work with standard, Internet-connected handheld devices. If you want to see what’s happening to the left or right of the edge of your television screen, you simply point your cell phone in that direction and an image would pop up on the screen of your cell phone. This is all done without affecting what everyone else in the room is seeing on the television screen. You could “tune in” to different camera angles of the same football play from the Super Bowl for an enhanced view of the play.

Santiago Alfaro, a graduate student in the lab of Media Lab research scientist Michael Bove, took the concept of surround sound and came up with surround vision. “If you’re watching TV and you hear a helicopter in your surround sound,” Alfaro says, “wouldn’t it be cool to just turn around and be able to see that helicopter as it goes into the screen?”

Imagine where this technology will take us. I thought IMAX was pretty cool. I can imagine being in a theater with 3 screens around me and surround vision enveloping me. Then take it a step further and make it 3D. Now I’m getting vertigo. We can call it Surround 3D. I had enough trouble with sitting still in the 3D of Avatar. It would definitely be the total experience. Wow! What do you think?

New technology looms in the near future that will enable your cell phone to detect toxic gas and air quality. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, specifically, its Science and Technology Directorate division, wants to create 40 new prototypes of cell phones by the end of the year that would detect airborne toxic chemicals.

Cell Phone to act as canary?

The new technology, dubbed “Cell-All,” would use a small chip embedded in the phone that would detect toxic chemicals in the air while a user goes about his or her normal activities. (This reminds me of the miners taking a canary into the mines to detect toxic gases inside.) Depending upon what it detects, the cell phone user would get an alert of some kind like a buzz or vibration to tell them to get the hell out of Dodge. The phone would also send an alert using the GPS system to a centralized service to report its findings. The reporting center would then tabulate all the reports from the area before calling in the National Guard, eliminating false panic and mayhem.

Qualcomm, NASA, and Rhevision Technology are working together to test the principal. Homeland Security’s Science and Technology arm is actively engaging the “big four” cell phone manufacturers, Qualcomm, LG, Apple, and Samsung with research and development agreements for the new technology.

It may still take years to get the technology out to public release. Thank goodness. Is anyone but me concerned with having a cell phone tied into a centralized reporting center at all times? I am more than a bit concerned about Big Brother and his long arms…

What about you? Is your fear of toxic chemical attack greater than the fear of Big Brother?