photo credit: Casio Bluetooth Wristwatch

Ever had to dig in your bag to silence your ringing cell phone? Now you can just tap your wristwatch twice and it will silence your phone. According to Martyn Williams, IDG News, Casio has developed a prototype system that can mute a phone with a couple of taps to a wristwatch. The wristwatch works with Bluetooth Low Power technology (BLE-technology) and an app that enables it to link with your cell phone. The watch is scheduled to be out to consumers by the end of the year.

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photo credit: 911 Oral Histories

None of us will ever forget the tragedy of September 11, 2001. We are coming up on 10 years since it devastated New York, and really the whole world. A new app, Broadcastr, seeks to make audio clips available as an oral history of the terrible event. Debuting this month, this app will make those stories available on both the Internet and Smartphones.

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photo credit: GPS Systems Jammed

Despite warnings and concerns by the FAA and the Defense Department, LightSquared was given conditional approval. The plan is for LightSquared to install up to 40,000 terrestrial cell phone base stations across the U.S. to augment its mobile satellite communications service. The FAA is concerned with test results involving the Garmin International GPS system that was jammed by the LightSquared transmitter. Not only does this affect GPS systems in vehicles, but also in airplanes. This can’t be good.

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photo credit: PGA Allows Cell Phones

The PGA has long banned fans having cell phones at Tour events. Finally, after significant pressure, Andy Pazder, the PGA Tour’s Chief of Operations, announced the policy change Tuesday after allowing cell phone use at five previous tournaments as part of an experiment to enhance fans’ overall experiences, according to Reuters. The PGA’s new rules allow the mobile devices with the some restrictions. The volume must be on silent, you can only make calls in designated areas, you may only take still photos during practice rounds, and there is to be no video recording at all.

The Tour will formally introduce the new policy at the Honda Classic in March. After several months of testing, the powers-that-be decided fans could bring and use their mobile phones at Tour events. Of course there will be stiff penalties like being kicked out of the tournament if you are caught taking photos or don’t have your phone on silent mode.

“We understand that mobile devices are an important part of everyday life,” said Andy Pazder. “We concluded, after the five test tournaments, that allowing mobile devices on-site at Tour events was a tremendous fan enhancement, allowing them to stay connected to business and family.”

There are more benefits than just being able to make calls. With web browsing capable cell phones, you can also pull up PGATour.com and check the leader boards for the latest scores and statistics. According to Yahoo Sports, there are also some interesting stories about the old days when cell phones were banned at the Tour Events. Fans would use their cell phones up to the last minute before entering the event, and then toss them into a bush with a lot of other last minute users’ phones. When they came to retrieve their phone, they would use someone else’s phone to call their cell phone and pick up the one ringing. I bet that was pretty funny to watch.

Are you a golfing fan? Do you think the PGA should let fans bring their cell phones into events? Do you think fans can be trusted to only use cell phones in designated places and have the phones on silent mode? How many of us hear cell phones go off in movie theaters when it is clearly posted and even announced that cell phone usage is prohibited? Perhaps being threatened with expulsion from such a costly event, like the PGA Tour, is a good deterrent. After all, confiscating your cell phone probably constitutes some sort of personal freedom violation.

photo credit: Cloud Print from Cell Phones

Google launched Google Cloud Print for mobile phones on January 31st. It is a service that allows you to use your Gmail account on your cell phone to print to a cloud print enabled printer. Imagine how convenient that will be for commuters or business travelers.

“Let’s say you need to print an important email attachment on your way to work so that it’s waiting for you when you walk in the door. With Gmail for mobile and Google Cloud Print—a service that allows printing from any app on any device, OS or browser without the need to install drivers—you can,” Google wrote in its Official Gmail Blog. Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: Numbers Can Stimulate Emotions

Pushing the numbers on your cell phone can elicit emotions. Our brains have been so impacted by the numbers on your cell phone keyboard that just pressing numbers in certain sequences can affect your emotional state. Studies done at the University of Würzburg in Germany show that just by typing the numbers that correspond to the letters in a word like “love,” we can activate the meaning of that word in our minds. According to an article posted by USNews.com, our brains now understand number sequencing as it corresponds to our cell phones. The results of the study in Germany were published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

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photo credit: Top Virtuous Cell Phones

Wonder what impact your cell phone has on the environment? GoodGuide has just published a report rating the top 5 “virtuous” cell phones. The ratings are based upon not only environmentally safe practices, but also takes into consideration the social attributes as well? “Social attributes?” you may ask. This rating has to do with the safety and labor policies of the company manufacturing the cell phones. GoodGuide ranks individual models and manufacturers on 3 levels: health, environment, and social attributes. 576 phone models were rated.

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photo credit: It’s a Mobile World

There were 81 million Smartphones sold world-wide in the third quarter of 2010 alone. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, “Smartphones accounted for nearly one in five mobile phones sold that quarter. The chiefs of Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. think Smartphones could account for nearly three of every four phones sold by the middle of the decade. Between the emergence of the iPad, apps, Android Smartphones and the introduction of 4G networks, 2010 was the year the computer truly went mobile.” Welcome to 2011 and the mobile world. Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: Bubble Ball

Bubble Ball was downloaded over a million times in the first two weeks. I t has now reached over two million downloads. According to an article by John D. Sutter, CNNTech, the app debuted on December 29th, and hit the top of the iTunes chart in mid-January. It even beat out a free holiday version of Angry Birds. But the most amazing thing about this story is that Robert Nay, the developer of Bubble Ball, is a 14 year old 8th grader in Spanish Fork, Utah. Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: Link-to-Cell Cordless Phones

Link-to-cell technology may bring new life back to your home phone system. Have you given up your land line phone? Are you a mobile phone only user? The latest technology for cordless phones may just change your mind. Let’s face it—sometimes your cell phone just doesn’t get the reception at home that your land line phone did. Would you like to have the best of both worlds? The link-to-cell cordless phones may be your answer. Read the rest of this entry »