If you�d like to republish any comments or quotes from News & Views, you�re welcome to. We would however ask that you show the source reference of Phonechoice and include our URL (www.phonechoice.com.au).

2272  Articles   152 Pages         2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11  12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

• 16 Oct 07 - Mozilla browser for Mobiles
• 15 Oct 07 - Airline check-in from mobile phones
• 12 Oct 07 - US says No to inflight mobiles
• 11 Oct 07 - Spam spreads to mobile phones
• 10 Oct 07 - Burgar King to Launch cell phone games
• 09 Oct 07 - Eco seafood by mobile
• 08 Oct 07 - Its hard to get lost now.
• 05 Oct 07 - Mobile Phone Program Teaches Cooking
• 02 Oct 07 - WA Loses $756,000 worth of phones and computers
• 01 Oct 07 - Armani to launch mobile phone
• 28 Sep 07 - Mobile-phone novels hit bestseller lists
• 27 Sep 07 - Canadian Mobile class-action suit
• 26 Sep 07 - UK iPhone released
• 25 Sep 07 - Nokia unveils Wi-Fi handset.
• 24 Sep 07 - Study Links Mobile Use to Hearing Loss.

Mozilla Vice President Of Engineering Mike Schroepfer shook up the blogosphere on Monday by proclaiming in his schrep's blog schrep's blog that the open source internet browser provider plans to "rock" the mobile world with a version of Firefox. "People ask us all the time about what Mozilla's going to do about the mobile Web, and I'm very excited to announce that we plan to rock it," wrote Scrhoepfer.

The problem is the shock waves won't be felt for some time. Schroepfer said the new mobile version of Firefox that he has engineers working on won't arrive "before 2008."

That hasn't seemed to dampen the enthusiasm of solution providers looking forward to Firefox on mobile devices

Major airlines have agreed on a standard that will allow travellers to check in using a bar code sent to their mobile phones.

Passengers will register their number when buying a ticket and receive a bar code by text message, the International Air Transport Association, which represents most commercial carriers, said.

Check-in staff will scan the bar code directly from the phones, doing away with the need for a boarding pass.

Les Dorr, of the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), said this week that proposals to lift the ban on in-flight mobiles had caused such an outcry they had been dropped.

American resistance to in-flight mobile use is born out of fears that phones interfere with the controls of a plane.

In Britain, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) found that between January 2000 and August 2005 up to 20 incidents of aircraft malfunction were linked to the use of mobile phones, However, earlier this year, the European Aviation Safety Agency gave the green light for in-flight mobile technology provided by the communications company ON Air, whose new system will allow mobiles to transmit less powerfully and avoid possible interference.

Within Europe, airlines planning to allow mobile use include Ryanair, Tap Air Portugal and Air France. Farther afield, Emirates, AirAsia and Kingfisher airlines intend to do likewise.

The scourge of spam has spread to mobile phones, with Britons being bombarded by more than one million unwanted text messages every day.

A report from uSwitch.com, the consumer website, also showed that security groups are losing their battle with the criminal gangs behind conventional e-mail spam.

Nearly 82 million junk electronic messages – ranging from offers of counterfeit Viagra to “pump and dump” scams for penny shares – are getting through filters daily. The figure, equating to nearly 1,000 spam e-mails a second, is up 20 per cent from last year.

The appearance of mobile phone spam follows a warning from McAfee, the security group, that junk mail sent to mobile handsets is set to “explode” as hackers target new web-enabled smartphones.

Among the new mobile threats McAfee expects to blossom are “phishing” messages and other spy-ware angled at handsets and designed to steal personal data such as banking details.

Spit – or spam over internet telephony – is also becoming a problem on Skype and other internet voice services, it added. In recent weeks there has been a rash of fresh warnings over the rising amount of spam.

MessageLabs, the antivirus group, reported that malicious e-mails have reached levels not seen for two years. A virus threat is incorporated in one in every 48 e-mails, it said.

Sophos, another web security group, issued an alert highlighting that 25 per cent of London-based Facebook members have revealed information relating to their work through the social networking site

Still not sure which is more eco-savvy, farmed or wild salmon? Snd a txt msg.

The marine conservation group in the US Blue Ocean Institute has launched a cell phone-based service to send you text messages with the information you need to make smart seafood choices.

Next time you're at the seafood counter or in a restaurant and can't recall whether farmed catfish is managed in an environmentally sustainable fashion, send a text message and within seconds you'll have the Institute's take on it.

The emerging technology of digital mapping, once reserved for the likes of airline pilots and spies, already has caught on as a dashboard device and now is set to make getting detailed directions as routine as flipping open your cell phone.

Nokia, the world's largest maker of mobile phones, made a huge play for this emerging technology by agreeing to buy Chicago-based digital mapmaker Navteq Corp. for $8.1 billion. It is a bet that the majority of consumers soon will expect their phones to not only make calls and take photographs but to lead the way to the nearest coffee shop.

"It's just in the infancy of what we think will ultimately take place," said Judson Green, chief executive of Navteq, which posted sales of $582 million last year.

The mobile phone, once a humble maker of calls, continues to add functions to a hand-held device that now frequently plays music, sends e-mail and provides Internet access.

Consumers, particularly in the U.S., have been cautious about adopting some of these functions. While 64 percent of cell phone owners have used a text-messaging service, only 2 percent have used their phone to find where they are going, according to JupiterResearch.

Nokia clearly believes the popularity will increase, which explains the rich premium it is paying for Navteq. Nokia already includes a mapping function on its higher-end phones that include a global positioning system, or GPS, along with access to a mapping database that shows up on the phone's screen in intricate detail.

The figures, revealed in response to Opposition questions in Parliament, have prompted accusations of financial mismanagement and raised concerns about access to sensitive information.

Deputy Opposition Leader Troy Buswell said the Government had failed to curb the thefts and losses despite its obvious embarrassment by the revelation that laptops and mobile phones valued at more than $740,000 went missing from departments in 2005-06.
  
Former premier Geoff Gallop first issued a warning over the levels of thefts and losses in 2003 after it was revealed more than $870,000 in equipment had gone missing.
  
Alan Carpenter issued another directive last year, instructing ministers to ensure their departments had appropriate procedures in place to minimise loss and theft.
  
The latest Government statistics reveal there were another 412 laptops stolen or lost last financial year worth nearly $680,000, as well as 311 mobile phones worth more than $77,000. The annual figures reveal that while the thefts and losses were reduced to 351 in 2003-04, the numbers have since returned to more than 400 each year.

MILAN (Reuters) - Italian designer Giorgio Armani has joined forces with Samsung Electronics to design a television and a mobile phone, along with other consumer electronics, the companies said on Sunday.

Armani, one of Italy's leading fashion designers, will unveil a mobile phone model on September 24 at his show for Giorgio Armani womenswear for spring and summer 2008, joining several other designers who have already tapped this market.

The Armani-Samsung phone will be the size of a credit card and 10.5 millimeters thick, the companies said in a statement.

Designers Dolce & Gabbana have teamed up with Motorola for a gold-colored version of the RAZR mobile phone model and Prada has developed a phone with South Korea's LG Electronics.

Armani said the liquid crystal display (LCD) television that it develops with Samsung will be unveiled in January 2008. Home electronics are still unusual territory for fashion designers, although several have launched interior design collections.

Luxury goods segments are benefiting from a surge in the wealthy alongside fast economic growth in countries such as China, India and Russia, while Middle East markets have strengthened as a boom in commodity prices increases incomes.

"We make as much of a personal statement with the mobile phones that we carry or the televisions that we have in our living rooms as we do with the shoes and bags we wear or the furnishings we choose," Armani said in the statement.

But unlike others, her main reason for typing on her keitai (mobile phone) is not to send e-mails, text messages or check the Internet. Instead, she writes bestselling novels. Rin is one of the most popular authors in the fast-expanding genre of keitai shosetsu (mobile-phone novels).

"I started writing stories on my keitai when I was a high-school student," Rin said. "Usually, you don't write novels during recesses between classes, and others might think you were a bit strange if you did that. But if you write on your keitai, nobody knows you are actually writing stories. I was writing stories when others thought I was sending e-mails."

Rin later released her novel on a mobile-phone novels site where users can not only write stories but also read novels for free if they register. After getting a huge number of hits in that cyber-realm, Rin's novel, titled "Moshimo Kimiga (If You . . . )," was published in January as a 142-page hardback book. Her story about a high-school romance and the couple's fight against the girl's illness sold 400,000 copies after it was published by Goma Books. The book was ranked second on the nationwide bestselling fiction list in the first half of 2007, according to nationwide publications distributor Nippan.

"I do not feel I am an author of bestselling books," said Rin, who graduated from a junior college this spring and now works as a nursery school teacher in Fukuoka Prefecture in Kyushu. "Now I'm very busy working and I write stories afterward, often on my bed before I go to sleep. I try to keep writing but sometimes I fall asleep while holding my mobile phone."

Original novels and other writings released and widely read on cell-phone Web sites have been one of this year's booming phenomena, with several titles as well as Rin's making the bestseller lists after being published in book form.

The lawyer at the head of a massive class-action lawsuit against Canadian cellphone companies said the service providers have become "addicted" to collecting unnecessary fees from customers.

"When the companies first had cellular service you had to have a wireless fee, and the companies got into the habit of charging this," Tony Merchant, the lawyer who initiated the suit, told CTV Regina.

"When they weren't required to pay the wireless fee, it was sort of like a crack cocaine that they were used to," he said. "They just kept charging, taking the money and mis-describing the money they were receiving."

A Saskatchewan court certified the lawsuit against Canada's cellphone providers on Tuesday.

The suit, first launched in 2004, alleges Canada's cellphone users are owed $12 billion plus interest for unfair "system access" fees collected over the years.

Apple's iPhone will go on sale in Britain on November 9 and have the O2 network as its exclusive carrier, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said on Tuesday.

The 8GB model will sell for £269 ($A640 or $US536), Jobs said at a news conference in London.

"We can't wait to let people here get their hands on it and see if they love it as much as we do," Jobs said.

The deal with O2 was described as exclusive and "multi-year". Customers will sign up for an 18-month contract on a tariff of either £35, £45 or £55 pounds, said Matthew Key, chief executive of O2 UK.

That would make the iPhone at least a £900 commitment over 18 months, a deal that places it at the pricey end of mobile phone deals in the UK.

As in the US, the phone will run on the 2G networks, disappointing many Europeans who were hoping for an upgraded iPhone that would run on the faster 3G network.

Jobs said the reason Apple wasn't introducing a 3G iPhone just yet was because the 3G chip sets were "real power hogs".

"Most [3G] phones now have battery lives of 2-3 hours and that's due to these very power-hungry 3G chip sets. Our phone has 8 hours of talk time life. That's really important when you start to use the internet and want to use the phone to listen to music," he said.

The Apple CEO said he expected a 3G model to be launched next "late next year", by which time battery lives for 3G phones would be up in the five hours plus range.

However, O2 have announced that iPhone users will have freeWiFi access to some 7500. hotspots dotted around the country.

Nokia, the world's top mobile phone maker, unveiled on Thursday a new phone featuring unlicensed mobile access, or UMA, technology. Nokia said this new UMA model, the 6301, will begin shipping in Europe in the fourth quarter for about $322 (230 euros), before subsidies and taxes.

UMA handsets can make calls over the Internet when they are in range of an unlicensed wireless network, such as Wi-Fi. When they move out of range, the connection automatically reverts to a GSM, GPRS or UMTS mobile phone network. Nokia started its first tests on UMA technology in mid-2006 and it has already launched its 6086 UMA phone.

According to research presented at the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation’s Annual Meeting & OTO EXPO in Washington, D.C. this week, people who used their phones for more than 60 minutes a day had a worse hearing threshold than those with less use.

The study, Audiological Disturbances in Long-Term Mobile Phone Users, was presented at the conference by Dr. Naresh Panda, head of India's ENT department. Panda and his team found those who used their phone for more than an hour each day, for more than four years, had noticeable losses in high frequency hearing.

Long-term use of a cell phone also may cause inner ear damage and can lead to high frequency hearing loss, researchers found. One hundred cell phone users took part in the study.

High frequency hearing loss is characterized by the loss of ability to hear consonants such as s, f, t, and z, even though vowels can be heard normally. Consequently, people hear sounds but cannot make out what is being said, according to the researchers.

The authors warn users of cell phones to look out for ear symptoms such as ear warmth, ear fullness, and ringing in the ears (tinnitus) as early warning signs of an auditory abnormality.