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Mobile Phone

Burning Man 2009 (Image: JahFae)

Burning Man, the popular desert music festival, is this year featuring a free, solar powered cellular network for the duration of the festival which winds up on Monday. The open source software, OpenBTS (Open Base Transceiver Station) is a low-cost replacement for traditional cell networks. It allows mobile phones to connect to each other if they're all within range of the transceiver, or to connect with any other phones with Internet connection. It utilizes a Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) to create a GSM air interface on any standard GSM mobile phone. The founders of Burning Man, which began this week in Black Rock City, Nevada, have decided to trial the system by allowing the 50,000 or so attendees free access to the network. Read More

The eye-controlled earphones developed by DoCoMo could revolutionize the way we control ou...

The Japanese wireless carrier NTT DoCoMo has recently developed and demonstrated a peculiar pair of headphones that can precisely detect a user's eye movements without a camera, and use those movements to control electronic devices such as mobile phones and portable music players. DoCoMo started working on this idea back in 2008 by adapting an electrooculogram (EOG), a medical device used for measuring eye response, to their purposes. An EOG works on the principle that the human cornea has a positive electrical charge. As the user looks to the left or right, the charge shifts in the space between the user's ears – a change that can be easily detected by appropriate sensors. Read More

Thanko dual USB in-car charger caters for iPad

Japanese gadget giant Thanko has joined the likes of the iLuv by offering a dual USB in car charger that lets you juice your mobile devices while on the go. Selling for US$19.99, iLuv charger certainly fills a need. Thanko's iPad compatible unit fills a need as well, at a significantly lower price point: 680 yen or about $8. Read More

Review: Garmin-Asus nüvifone A50 - the new king of navigation smartphones

Forget mobile device convergence, that's old news. Every smartphone on the market now handles everything from camera and calendar duties to gaming, GPS navigation, web browsing and social media. Differentiation is looking like the name of the game moving forward - offering do-it-all devices that distinguish themselves through a particular focus. Take Sony's reportedly upcoming PSP phone, which takes an Android 3.0 platform and mates it with a dedicated PSP gaming experience. Or this, the Garmin-Asus nüvifone A50, a fully-featured Android smartphone that comes pre-packaged with a car kit and built-in Garmin map data so it can shine as an in-car GPS navigation system. I've spent several weeks using the A50 as my primary phone, and if you spend a lot of time on the road, this new nüvifone is built for you and does a very credible job. Read More

Strike a pose, answer the phone (Image: The Star)

The little black dress is an essential part of any girl’s wardrobe. And if this design from CuteCircuit is any indication it could soon also be essential for staying in touch too. The M-dress is a little black number that has a mobile phone built into it. The wearer answers the dress by lifting their arm to their head as if they were holding one of those passé mobile phone handsets and disconnects once they lower their hand. Read More

Josiah Cheslik, a UW junior and volunteer in the MobileASL field study, demonstrates using...

For obvious reasons, texting and email is a preferred method of communication for many deaf and hard of hearing mobile phone users. But as convenient as texting can be, it isn’t always the most reliable form of communication – messages can take a while to arrive and short messages can easily be misinterpreted. To address this problem University of Washington (UW) engineers are developing the first device able to transmit American Sign Language (ASL) over U.S. cellular networks. Read More

The shot distance of the macro lens is between 10-23 mm

Camera phones have come a long way in terms of resolution, but the pocket-sized form factor doesn't leave all that much room for improvement when it comes to lenses. These add-on Fisheye and Macro/Wide Angle lenses inject a little versatility into the equation by transforming your standard flat phone photos into wide and up-close images. Read More

'Dryer Box' salvages water-damaged mobile phones

For any unfortunate mobile users whose phone goes kaput due to water damage, there's now a new machine designed to suck moisture right out of your phone – if you live in Japan, that is. JMC Risk Solutions has installed a number of new 'Dryer Boxes' in selected Yodobashi Camera shops around Tokyo for those whose phones get caught out in the rain. Read More

Online surveillance is now easier than ever (Image: VoxEfx via Flickr)

If it hasn't become apparent to you yet, you are living in an age when your every online step is being monitored. The notion of communications privacy has been steamrolled in the interests of security, and the occasional tiny chance we get to peek back at the people who make it their business to watch us is truly frightening. Two new stories from America this week give a rare glimpse behind the curtain at just how closely you're being watched, and by whom. Read More

Samsung Galaxy Beam Smart Projector Phone release

Samsung's Galaxy Beam Smart Projector Phone will be available in Singapore to StarHub customers from July 17. The unit will feature a built-in Texas Instruments DLP Pico Projector which will enable you to project from your phone onto a wall. There's also Offline and No SIM modes, Hand Writing Recognition (English and Simplified Chinese), RSS Reader, Mobile Widgets and much more. This is going to be an amazing new product – it might be worth taking a trip to Singapore just to have a look at one! Read More

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