Cell Plaza

New Non-Profit: Parents Against Texting Teens

MobileMaiden — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 19:45:44 +0000

Chambersburg, PA—One local mother is concerned and doing something about teen texting while driving. When Pamela Rajtik learned of the statistics that 40 percent of young Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 have been in a car while the driver was texting and driving, she thought, “someone should do something about this.” As the mother of teens, she was more than just a little concerned. After waiting and learning, researching and taking notes, and talking with other parents, Pamela has started a new non-profit organization to help educate kids about the dangers of texting while driving.

New Non-Profit: Parents Against Texting Teens

“For awhile I waited for someone to come up with an idea or answer to the problem as I saw it,” she said. “Then I realized I was the ’someone’ I was waiting for to do something about texting and driving,” she said.

While Pamela’s organization (Parents Against Texting Teens) is just local to Chambersburg, PA, more awareness about texting while is growing. So far, 19 states have banned texting while driving, and for good reason; the statistics are horrific. According to the National Safety Council, 1.6 million accidents a year are caused by cell phone use. The Christian Science Monitor reports that 1.4 million crashes are caused by people talking on their cell phones, while conservatively estimated, there are another 200,000 caused by people texting while driving. Texting takes a driver’s focus away from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds. According to an article written by Vicky Taylor, PublicOpinion.com, this is enough time to travel the length of a football field at 55 mph—enough time to have or cause an accident.

Concerned parents are banding together to help. PATT (Parents Against Texting Teens) is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing awareness through education and community visibility of the dangers of texting while driving. According to Taylor’s article, the group is developing 10-second video messages that will be shown in school. Before the videos are shown, the plan is to distribute “text only” cell phones to the students. While the videos are being played, the students would randomly receive brief text messages such as “LOL.” They would have instructions to quickly read the messages when the phone they have been assigned receives it. The messages would always be sent to part of the class while a video was being shown. After the video was finished, the students, including the students who received the text messages, would be asked questions about the video. The aim would be to show how taking or sending a text message can distract an individual from the task at hand, including driving. PATT would like to see the program taken to not just high schools and driver education programs, but to middle schools as well. The idea is that early education is the key to preventing this dangerous behavior.

Texting, a major part of distracted driving, needs to be addressed. Even with the new laws against it, it is alarming to drive around and see people texting or talking on their cell phones. More awareness, more education, or perhaps just more common sense is needed. See my blog, Still Texting While Driving? (http://www.cellplaza.org/blog/2095/still-texting-while-driving/). How can we personally help cut down on the texting? We can each of us, personally, just stop!

Support for CellPlaza.org is provided by batteries4less.com, the leading online retailer of camera replacement batteries, cell phone batteries, chargers, mobile accessories and cordless phone batteries. Buy a Droid 2 Extended Battery online at batteries4less.

Unlock the Bootloader on Your Sony Droid Phone

MobileMaiden — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 18:38:48 +0000

photo credit: Unlock Your Sony Cell Phone

Sony Ericsson now gives you directions on how to unlock the bootloader on their Android phones. In the past, Sony has been known to unfriendly to developers and modifiers. However, now the Sony Ericsson Developer Blog has announced that the Xperia Arc, Neo, Play, and Pro will have a feature that enables an easy bootloader unlock method. Of course along with the directions, they warn you that you could majorly screw up your phone and not be able to recover from the screw-up.

Unlock the Bootloader on Your Sony Droid Phone

Bootloader? What’s that? A bootloader is part of the Android operating system that enables users to get into recovery mode. This is required in order to load custom ROM’s on Android phones. According to Andrew Kameka, Androinica, “Motorola originally had an anti-hack policy that the company has since begun to backtrack on, and HTC, which has traditionally been hands-off with hacking community, has begun shipping some phones with locked bootloaders. Android developers eventually discover workarounds for these roadblocks, but Sony Ericsson is surprisingly reversing its course on appealing to advanced consumers.”

Sony’s blogger site gives dire warnings about unlocking the bootloader. On the Sony Ericsson Developer Blog they state, “If you unlock the boot loader and then flash a custom unsigned ROM to your phone, the custom unsigned ROM will not have gone through the thorough tests that we run for each phone and software version that we release. Because of that, the custom unsigned ROM might not work properly on your phone. Certain functions may cease to work, and the performance of the device might not be ideal. You might damage your phone permanently. In worst case, it will cause physical injuries or material damage, for example, due to the phone overheating. Therefore, you should only unlock the boot loader of your phone if you are an advanced developer with good knowledge of the technology and risks involved. We strongly recommend that standard users NOT unlock the boot loader, as it is not needed. We are proud to deliver great phone experiences through our rigorously tested and official software releases.”

The bottom line? Just don’t do it unless you are a very experienced developer. This is not something you should experiment with unless you really know what you are doing.

HBO Will Be Streaming Mobile

MobileMaiden — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 18:38:46 +0000

photo credit: HBO Go Mobile Apps

Your Smartphone isn’t just a cell phone any more. Starting next month you can start using HBO for streaming videos to your iOS and Android devices. Following Netflix and Time Warner Cable, HBO will start the new HBO Go for mobile devices next month. Available with subscription will be all your favorite HBO shows, including all the past seasons, as well as feature films. The new service will no doubt be especially popular with tablet users.

HBO Go has been available since 2009. It wasn’t really catching on all that well. Now with the new mobile app available for Android and iOS platforms, HBO is hoping it will gain some ground on Netflix. HBO snubbed Netflix by not allowing any of its content to be available on Netflix. Netflix already has free Android and IOS apps available. HBO is now taking on the mighty Netflix giant with 1400 choices, and more promised. According to an article posted by Don Reisinger, The Digital Home, In January, HBO senior vice president of corporate affairs, Jeff Cusson, told The Hollywood Reporter that his company “believes in content exclusivity, especially for high-value content.” He said that HBO “has no intention of making its content available for streaming on Netflix.”

An HBO video was posted last week on YouTube. According to the video, HBO Go is scheduled to be released May 2nd to Android and iOS devices. “Get every episode of every season of your favorite HBO shows, plus hit movies and much more,” the video’s voiceover states. “All free to HBO subscribers and all streaming on your iPad, laptop, or Smartphone wherever you are.” They aren’t specific about whether it will work on 3G, but since they are touting “Wherever you are,” I am assuming it will also work on 3G.

DirectTV won’t be streaming HBO Go through mobile apps. According to Richard Lawler, Engadget, a “mis-tweet” by the DirectTV Twitter account originally stated it would be including the HBO Go mobile apps. Corrected, it now stands that DirectTV won’t be adding HBO Go access through their own apps and DirecTV customers will have to use the native HBO Go app just like everyone else.

Are you anxious to watch HBO shows on your Smartphone? I think even with my Droid X’s 4.3 inch screen, I would rather watch shops on a tablet. Of course until I get a tablet (hint for Mother’s Day), I will probably try it out on the Droid X. What about you?

US Army to Deploy Droid Dev Kit

MobileMaiden — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 12:38:45 +0000

photo credit: Battle-Ready Droids

Battle-ready Smartphones are going to war in 2013. The US Army has announced that it will be issuing open Android Dev kits to its soldiers in July. This will allow apps to be written for use by soldiers on a variety of combat handsets and devices. According to an article written by Lewis Page, The A Register, the military Droid framework is known as Mobile/Handheld Computing Environment (CE).

US Army to Deploy Droid Dev Kit

“Using the Mobile /Handheld CE Product Developers Kit, we’re going to allow the third-party developers to actually develop capabilities that aren’t stovepiped,” says Lt-Col Mark Daniels. Daniels is in charge of the Joint Battle Command-Platform (JBC-P) handheld device, which is essentially a military Droid phone: it is expected to be issued to US Army and Marine ground units from 2013.

Blue Force Tracking will let the soldiers see where “friendly” units are located. Hopefully this will prevent “friendly fire” incidents. In addition to the Blue Force Tracking, the Smartphones come with other apps that the Army is developing. These include mapping, TIGR map-marking and messaging. According to Daniels there will also be an address book and OpenOffice for document viewing.

The new software will work on a variety of Android platforms and phone models. It will have a “ruggedized tactical sleeve or case”. According to Page’s article “Networking will be provided by any of a variety of existing military radios: specifically named are the Joint Tactical Radio System, JTRS Soldier Radio Waveform, Netted Iridium, and the PRC 117G and PRC 152A used by the Marines. The system and its baseline apps are expected to tie in with existing vehicle-mounted and headquarters kit provided under previous command-and-control/blue-force-tracking projects.”

“That’s going to allow us to be interoperable across the entire family of systems, which would include the platforms, the aviation, the logistics community, the tanks, the Bradleys, the handhelds,” Daniels says.

It was only a matter of time before Smartphones were used for war. It just begs the question however, that if the software locates “friendly units,” does it also locate enemy units? And will the enemy also be deploying Smartphones in battle, thereby tapping into our guys’ information and location? It’s beginning to sound like a video game. What’s your take on it?

Mobile Television is Gaining Ground

MobileMaiden — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 12:41:44 +0000

photo credit: Mobile TV

With the popularity of tablets rising, mobile television is fast becoming a favorite pastime. Last week’s trade show in Las Vegas for the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) shows that the technology is making progress. According to an article written by Maisie Ramsay, WirelessWeek, “The Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC), the main proponent of mobile broadcast television in the United States, announced that 76 television stations in 32 markets are now doing mobile television broadcasts.” Using a WiFi hotspot or at home, you can download TV episodes and store them to watch later. If you are using a Smartphone, it gets stored on the MicroSD card, so make sure you have at least 2 GB free per show.

Mobile Television is Gaining Ground

Streaming TV and Movies over 3G or Wi-Fi to your phone is so cool. There are a slew of apps available to enable you to watch shows. I have downloaded and used both Android TV and TV.com apps for my Droid X. I wasn’t sure I would like watching a show on the tiny screen, but it really is good quality. See my blog TV Apps for your Smartphone on technewscorner.com for a list of apps for both the Droid phones and the iPhone/iPad.

Droid TV is a good free app. The paid version of Droid TV is really just a subscription so you have more shows on the menu. All in all, I like the app. The only real downside to the app is that the shows are older. Still if you have missed an episode of one of your favorite shows, it’s a good app. Streaming live TV would be better, but being able to watch favorite shows is great.

Mobile TV apps will become more prevalent soon. With all the attention mobile television is getting at the trade shows, you can see the trend. As more stations become available, app developers will focus more on providing apps. It is the law of supply and demand. With iTunes and Pandora apps for music, and YouTube for short videos, mobile TV apps will fill in the gap.

Have you tried watching mobile TV on your phone or tablet yet? I think with the tablets getting more popular, it will be the device of choice for mobile TV. Which are your favorite apps for mobile TV? Had any trouble with the functionality of the apps? Let us know.

AT&T Finally Gets On Board

MobileMaiden — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 13:07:23 +0000

photo credit: AT&T’s LG Thrive Pre-Paid Droid

AT&T is the last of the cell phone service providers to offer a Droid Smartphone in their pre-paid lineup. Beginning April 17th, AT&T is offering the LG Thrive for $180. The Thrive is a mid-range Droid, running on the Android OS 2.2 (Froyo). It only has a 3.2 megapixel camera and 160 MB of memory, although it can be expanded to 32 GB with a MicroSD card. The customers will have to pay pretty dearly for using this phone however. Customers can choose the “Smartphone 10 cents per minute” plan or “Smartphone $2 USD per day for unlimited talk and text” plan. Their choices for data plans range from $5 for 10 MB to $25 for 500 MB. There is no contract, which is probably a good thing since customers may dump AT&T once they find out how poor the service coverage areas are.

AT&T Finally Gets On Board

Verizon has a whole bevy of Droid pre-paid Smartphones available. They include the Motorola Original Droid, Motorola DEVOUR, Motorola Droid X, Motorola Droid 2, HTC Droid Eris, HTC Droid Incredible, LG Ally, BlackBerry Curve 8330, BlackBerry Curve 8530, BlackBerry Storm 9530, BlackBerry Storm 9550, BlackBerry Tour 9630, BlackBerry Bold 9650, Palm Pre Plys, and Palm Pixi. Rumor has it that Verizon’s unlimited talk, text AND data plan will run about $80 per month. And Verizon certainly has better service coverage than AT&T. Of course this is just a rumor so far.

US Cellular is also in the game with the LG Optimus U and the LG Apex as their prepaid Android phones. The Optimus U features a 3.2mp camera, Android OS 2.2, 3.2″ display, and 140 MB of storage. The LG Apex runs on Android 2.1, features a 3mp camera, 3.2″ screen, and has 256 MB or Storage. The Prepaid Plans include: $70-Unlimited Talk & Text with 2GB of data, $60-450 minutes, unlimited text, and 2GB of data, $50-Unlimited Talk & Text, $50-2GB of data.

Sprint’s BoostMobile offers Droid and BlackBerry Smartphones. With the best deal in town, they offer a plan with unlimited talk, text and data for as little as $45 per month once you have paid your bill on time for 6 months. With $18 months of payments on time, your plan drops to $35 per month.

AT&T’s announcement of offering Droid Smartphones on a pre-paid plan just isn’t all that exciting. But they have to do something to stay in the game. They are losing customers and not signing up new ones. If they are able to buy T-Mobile, it may breathe some life into the company, but for now, they come in last on my list.

RIM BlackBerry: Retail Rep Contest

MobileMaiden — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:31:36 +0000

photo credit: RIM BlackBerry Theme Contest

A $500 AMEX card is up for grabs in the new RIM BlackBerry Retail Reps Theme Contest. Five winners will receive an AMEX gift card for $500 USD. The top winner’s theme will be developed as a BlackBerry theme and upon release, made exclusively available for 3 months to authorized retail salespeople. After 3 months, the winning theme will be made available on a non-exclusive basis in BlackBerry App World. Pretty sweet deal, or so it seems. However, royalties and income from the sales of the theme don’t actually go to the person submitting the theme idea. Hmmm…. Maybe not so sweet a deal.

RIM BlackBerry: Retail Rep Contest

The BlackBerry PlayBook is available in stores April 19th. Staples has the PlayBook available for pre-order for $499 for the 16 GB version. Unlike other BlackBerry products, you do not have to go through your wireless service provider to get your BlackBerry PlayBook. It will be available through retail outlets like Staples, Best Buy, Office Depot and other stores. There hasn’t been much advertising done other than the ads put out by the stores themselves. Here is the list released last month by RIM of the retail locations where the PlayBook will be on sale:
United States: AT&T, Best Buy, Cbeyond, Cellular South, Cincinnati Bell, Office Depot, RadioShack, ShopBlackBerry.com, Staples, Sprint, Verizon, and BlackBerry from Wireless Giant.
Canada: Bell, Best Buy, Chapters / Indigo, Costco, Future Shop, Mobilicity, MTS Allstream, Rogers, Sasktel, Sears, ShopBlackBerry.com, Staples, Telus, Tbooth Wireless, The Source, Videotron, Walmart, WIND Mobile, WIRELESS etc., and WIRELESSWAVE.

BlackBerry PlayBook Specifications (according to RIM’s Press Release)
• 7″ 1024×600 WSVGA capacitive LCD touch screen
• Ultra-portable at less than a pound, less than 1/2 inch thick: 0.9 lbs (425g), 5.1″ x 7.6″ x 0.4″ (130mm x 194mm x 10mm)
• 1 GHz dual-core processor
• BlackBerry® Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
• MP3, AAC and WMA audio playback
• Support for high resolution video playback (H.264, MPEG4, WMV)
• 1080p HDMI output
• Dual 1080p HD cameras for video conferencing and video capture (3MP front and 5MP rear)
• 1 GB RAM memory
• Up to 64 GB internal storage (16, 32 and 64 GB models)
• GPS, Orientation Sensor (Accelerometer), 6-Axis Motion Sensor (Gyroscope), Digital Compass (Magnetometer)
• Stereo speakers and stereo microphones
• Wi-Fi® (802.11 a/b/g/n) connectivity
• Bluetooth® 2.1+EDR support

The PlayBook will be running on operating system called QNX. One of the downsides to the PlayBook is that is to get your music on the PlayBook you have to drag and drop the files from your computer to your PlayBook. The tablet comes with a wild, wireless Bluetooth connection feature called BlackBerry Bridge, enabling the tablet to view your BlackBerry phone on the tablet screen. Unfortunately this is the only way you can access the email, calendar, address book and BlackBerry Messenger on the tablet.

It sounds like the BlackBerry PlayBook is not ready to compete with the tablet “Big Boys.” What’s your take on it?

BlackBerry Enters the World of Touch

MobileMaiden — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 13:07:21 +0000

photo credit: BlackBerry Torch 2

BlackBerry should be renamed LeakBerry. Photos, videos and technical specifications have been “leaked” over and over in the past few weeks. Rumors are flying. There are now stories of four new RIM Smartphones (BlackBerry Bold Touch, Torch 2, Orlando, and Touch), all of which have new capacitive touch screens. Mostly they seem to be “re-made” versions of the Curve and Torch, although there is a touch only phone as well.

BlackBerry Enters the World of Touch

The BlackBerry Orlando is mostly a Curve Sedona with a touch screen. It is supposed to ship with the new OS 6.1, have a physical keyboard and a trackpad. With the touch screen and the keyboard, it is kind of a “mini-Bold Torch.”

The new touch screen only BlackBerry is called the “Touch” or the CDMA version, the Monaco Touch. It appears to be more like an Android or iPhone device, using capacitive technology. It is reported to be coming with a 3.7 inch screen, 800×480 pixel resolution, 1.2 GHz processor, 768 MB of RAM, a MicrosSD slot, and a 5 megapixel camera.

The Bold Touch has some nice new features, including a new battery type. It’s a GSM device with a 5MP camera, 4GB of internal storage, 768MB or RAM, a 2.8-inch screen (640×480), and according to an article written by Jeffrey Van Camp, DigitalTrends, it has built in NFC technology. Since Apple has decided not to include the NFC yet, this will be a bonus for RIM. NFC is “near field communication” which allows your Smartphone to communicate with terminals like cash registers, helping you to avoid long lines in restaurants and such.

“The unit itself is extremely solid and the touchscreen is very responsive,” said BGR (Boy Genius Reports). “And who could forget that great and spacious BlackBerry keyboard? The BlackBerry Bold Touch also uses a new battery from RIM, so hopefully the addition of a touchscreen to this famous BlackBerry form factor won’t have too much of a negative impact on battery life.”

The Storm 3 Touch is also known as Blackberry Touch 9860. Here’s a short video preview of the new Storm 3:

BlackBerry has die-hard fans. If you are one of those BlackBerry users and like the BlackBerry keyboard, you will probably want to upgrade to the new Smartphones with both the touch screen and the keyboard. If you are new to BlackBerry and have been an iPhone user or an Android user, you will probably want to try the new BlackBerry Touch Smartphones. Will the new efforts by BlackBerry to stay in the market be enough to keep up with the Androids and iPhones? Google reports that there are currently 350,000 new device activations per day, and 3 billion apps overall have been installed. iPhone is trying to keep up. Will BlackBerry succeed? Let us know what you think.

Jennifer “JWoww” Farley Loses Her $100K BlackBerry

MobileMaiden — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:31:34 +0000

photo credit:
JWoww Loses $100K BlackBerry

This last weekend, Jenni “JWoww” Farley lost her BlackBerry. Jenni was apparently shopping at a Lowe’s hardware store in Toms River, New Jersey with boyfriend Roger when she lost the cell phone. Jenni reported the missing BlackBerry to the police, claiming the phone is worth $100,000. Why is Jenni Farley’s BlackBerry worth $100,000? Is Jenni’s BlackBerry made of Platinum? Jenni claims it’s because of her fame. “Because of all my contacts,” she told Toms River police. According to an article written by Fabiana Santana, Actress Archives, “It’s those contacts - all stored in her Blackberry - she is worried will wind up in the wrong hands.”

Jennifer “JWoww” Farley Loses Her $100K BlackBerry

Jenni is reported to be earning $100K per episode to star on season 4 of Jersey Shore on MTV. She will soon start filming a new reality show with Jersey Shore house mate Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi. Meanwhile Jenni is seen hanging out with celebrities in both Las Vegas and Los Angeles, when she isn’t with her boyfriend Roger Williams. The couple reportedly spends a lot of time in South Jersey. “She has a house here with Roger,” a source said. “They split their time between here and Long Island where her family is. For the most part they are pretty low key. But she was very upset she lost her phone.”

A Blackberry is just a cell phone, right? So why is Jenni so obsessed about losing it, and putting such a high value on it? Perhaps it is all the candid photos that are probably on it. Should we expect a nude photo scandal about Jenni coming to the tabloids soon? This may be a little too much of a reality for the reality show starlet.

What are your thoughts on this? Should Jenni just buy a new BlackBerry and stop creating sensational headlines? Do you think Jenni’s phone is worth $100K? Is this just a ploy for attention and tabloid space? Does anyone really care about her BlackBerry? Does anyone really care about Jenni “JWoww” Farley and her reality show, now running an incredible 4 seasons? Let us know.

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New BlackBerry Traffic App with Route Choices

MobileMaiden — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:31:33 +0000

photo credit: BlackBerry Traffic 2.0

Do you hate fighting traffic? There’s an app for that, especially if you are a BlackBerry user. Just released this week, BlackBerry Traffic version 2.0.0.1749 adds new features and a completely revised UI. It has new icons, a new color scheme, the ability to select from multiple routes, and the addition of pre-set destinations directly from BlackBerry’s native contacts app. It is compatible with any GPS enabled BlackBerry Smartphone operating on OS 4.6 and up in North America.

New BlackBerry Traffic App with Route Choices

BlackBerry Traffic predicts the future traffic. It can be accessed by selecting an ETA on the route selection screen or by flipping through the different views when a route is selected. One of the best feature is that it gives you the best time to leave for a destination based upon real time traffic data. Considering that traffic data is constantly being updated, this is a huge deal for commuters. The app has turn by turn directions in LARGE font size. There’s nothing worse than not being able to see your directions. But best of all is that it’s FREE.

In a nutshell, here are the improvements listed on the BlackBerry App site:
•A new route selection screen displays two route choices to a destination.
•A new future traffic view can be accessed by selecting an ETA on the route selection screen.
•A revised simple drive view displays the next maneuver with corresponding icon in a large font.
•Frequent search terms are now available on the search screen.
•Updated keyboard shortcuts are listed under the help menu.

Are you running a bit behind schedule? BlackBerry Traffic 2.0 gives users the option to share estimated arrival times via SMS, email, or PIN (BBM). Now you can be considerate and let people know when you’re running late. (Of course you can’t text and drive…. Very dangerous!)

Are you a BlackBerry user? Do you spend a lot of time on the road? This BlackBerry Traffic App may be just the thing for you then. It sounds like the improvements really are improvements. So many times the upgrades are just blasé. This new version seems to be pretty neat. If I were a BlackBerry user I would definitely download it and use it. As it is, being a Droid X user, my Google Navigation is pretty cool as well.