Recently in Wireless Category

If you're an adult who feels disadvantaged over the fact that teenagers know more than you about technology, here's a story to make you feel over-the-hill.

It turns out, teenagers are now downloading a ring tone for their phones for incoming calls and text messages that is pitched too high for most adults to hear. If you've ever been near one of those devices that people install in their gardens to keeps critters from digging, you'll know that most adults over 30 cannot perceive the sound due to age-related hearing degradation, but most young people in their teens and early to mid 20s can hear acutely, even painfully. Some shopping malls today even project the sound in places they don't want teen mall rats to congregate.

It seems the young people have found a way to use the sound to their advantage to hear when text messages come in during class.

Touche.

TES

Here's a link to today's blog from Caroline Mayer from the Washington Post. Her issue is the continuation of the appalling customer service from Verizon. Since Verizon is one of my pet-peeve bad customer service organizations, I thought I would share:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thecheckout/2006/05/verizons_big_disconnect.html#comments

The comments posted to the blog, most of them by people who have run into the same problems (or worse) point to the fact that this company has GOT to clean up its customer service. What's the use of having a first-class network when you abuse your customers?

TES

If you own a cell phone, each time you pay your bill, you're paying a three percent tax for the war effort. Sounds like a topic that could get political? It's not...because the war you're paying to support is the Spanish American War, which happened in 1898.

http://www.newsnet5.com/money/6180216/detail.html

Talk about elderly war veterans.

Now, what I want to know is, what are we doing for those old boys laid up after the Battle of Bunker Hill? They deserve a little support, too.

TES

There are several things I hope for before I get on an airplane. One, that I won't be seated between two arm-rest hogs. I also hope for basic hygiene from my seat companions, which includes restraint from engaging in any bodily function that causes smells or extraordinary noises. Third, I usually hope to avoid being seated next to an infant who has just discovered the delights of using his or her lungs and vocal chords to maximum capacity; or a small child with an upset tummy, a bad case of motion sickness and uncanny projectile aim.

Until now, I've never had to worry about taking a six-hour flight stuck next to someone using a mobile phone to shout at his broker or recount his groin hernia surgery in minute detail to his cousin in Oklahoma.

Looks like I'll soon need to add another bullet point to my pre-flight wish list:

http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/-calling-from-troposphere-abi-research-examines-coming-market-/2005/nov/1206297.htm

TES

If you're a government/alien conspiracy theorist, or you just want to blend in among them at DefCon shows, here's a piece of news from MIT that should interest you.

An MIT study has determined that tin foil hats, a staple in the kits of the "X-Files-Are-Real" crowd, actually AMPLIFY rather than mask radio signals that fall into the frequencies allotted to the U.S. government by the FCC.

My friend Ainsley pointed this study out to me this morning. She believes that this news indicates that the actual conspiracy is one between the U.S. government and the Reynolds Wrap people.

Not coincidentally, Ainsley looks fabulous in tin foil chapeaus.

TES

An article in The Australian details how increasingly, deceased Irish people are taking their cell phones with them to the grave.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17175640%255E29677,00.html

In Victorian times, some people were so terrified that they would be buried alive, they were sometimes interred with a string around their finger, which extended through the coffin, up through the soil, and connected to a bell above the grave. Watchmen were employed to listen for the sounds of the bells in graveyards, signifying that a recently arrived resident was not quite dead yet.

Perhaps this is the modern equivalent. But which carriers could ever guarantee that one could get a signal through a casket and six feet of soil?

TES

A friend of mine recently directed a New Scientist article to me. The content of the article, published earlier this week, is pretty interesting, to say nothing of potentially, intrusively annoying as hell.

There has, of late, been a technology development wherein billboards and advertising posters use Bluetooth to beam multimedia ads directly to passing cell phones.

It goes like this, and I’m paraphrasing from the article (link to full story): As people walk past the posters, they receive a message on their cell phone asking them if they wish to accept the advertisement; if they do, they can receive still images, animations, music or even movies further promoting the advertised product:

The system works by having a large directional Bluetooth transmitter behind the billboard that searches the region up to 100 meters in front of the advert for any phones with their Bluetooth function turned on.

This way you can make sure that only people who can see the billboard are offered the additional promotion, says Simon O’Regan, Filter UK’s Technical Officer. “It’s inherently proximity-based broadcasting,” he says.

Furthermore, there is no risk of downloading viruses or other malware to the phone, says O’Regan: “We don’t send applications or executable code.” The system uses the phone’s native download interface so they should be able to see the kind of file they are downloading before accepting it, he adds.

Elsewhere, other software companies have been experimenting with making posters interactive by having 3-D barcodes printed on them.

With BlueCasting, downloading is quick, and more important, free, because it uses the Bluetooth connection and not the cell phone network.

If you are one of those people who find this sort of thing invasive and annoying as hell (I’m not alone, am I? Unless they’re beaming the soon-to-be-released Fiona Apple album — it’s been six years since her last), there is a simple solution: Simply make sure your Bluetooth device is set so that it’s not discoverable by other devices.

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DRB

San Francisco’s city government yesterday issued guidelines for its plan of “universal, affordable wireless broadband access for all San Franciscans.” The city wants ideas — from nonprofits and businesses, which would eventually bid on the Wi-Fi project — for making the entire 49-square mile city a cheap (or free) Wi-Fi zone.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom told AP that creating a network that is “not just cost-competitive with existing service providers, but substantially cheaper or free” tops his priority list for the project.

The California city, however, is taking its citywide Internet service a step further.

Newsom said, “We are going to be able to wire the city in a dynamic way so the entire city is a hot zone, but we are also going to be able to provide equipment in an unprecedented way.”

Dell and other computer makers already have pledged thousands of computers that will be given to residents of poorer neighborhoods, he said.

The invitation for citywide, cheaper Wi-FI makes San Francisco yet another major U.S. city attempting to bring Internet service to its residents on a major scale.

Philadelphia, the first big city to work on extending wireless Internet service throughout the city, is poised to choose a vendor to design, deploy and maintain a system that will cover the city’s 135 square miles.

Portland, Ore., Minneapolis, Charleston, S.C., and Orlando, Fla., also are at various stages in the same process, according to AP. As well, a number of small U.S. cities have created citywide wireless networks that are accessible to the public either for free or for a lower fee than is available commercially.

And in New York, we’re pretty much twirling our thumbs. Live in an older neighborhood of Brooklyn or in a "racially diverse" neighborhood of Queens (i.e., not upscale, i.e., low market potential, according to service providers), neither of which is a Wi-Fi hotspot? You have no choice but to go with DSL or dial-up or, in some cases, only dial-up. Bah.

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DRB