The seemingly exponential growth of portable technology has sparked fears that people are becoming addicted or swamped by gadgets and their uses.
One major consequence of this phenomenon is that the line between work and private life is much more blurred, now that e-mail and phones provide a 24-hour link between employers and staff.
Experts believe that even the decision-making process of the average person can be adversely affected.
However, others think that the bombardment of various communications can enhance the brain's ability to process information.
Addiction symptoms
Nada Kakabadse, a Professor at the Northampton Business School, said: "Your judgement is impaired. Equally your decision making processes are impaired.
"It's like losing your spatial judgement, so instead of walking through the door you walk into it. You're more prone to have a car accident if you drive."
Prof Kakabadse added: "It's addiction to portable technology, which you take with you practically to bed, the cinema, to the theatre, to a dinner party. The symptoms are, like with any other addiction, that people spend more time using their technology than spending it in socialising or in family time."
The growing importance of the issue was highlighted at a gathering in Geneva, Switzerland, for the LIFT 07 technology conference.
One of the conclusions reached by experts was that "tech overload" is the price people have to pay for always-on communication, where the line between work and play has become blurred.
Mobiledude says: You cant be serious!?!? Did anyone complain about people being addicted to the phone 70 years ago?
Monday, March 5, 2007
GSM Association Aims For Global Point Of Sale Purchases by Mobile Phone
Fourteen operators join initiative to develop global mobile payment enabled by contactless/NFC technology
13th February 2007 - Barcelona, Spain: The worldwide use of mobile phones for payments at point of sale is the aim of a new initiative announced today by the GSM Association (GSMA), the global trade organization for mobile operators.
The ‘Pay-Buy Mobile’ initiative is a natural progression for the industry, following the GSMA’s program - announced last year - to define a common global approach to enabling Near Field Communications (NFC), the technology used to link mobile devices with payment and contactless systems. By embedding mobile contactless services, such as credit and debit payments, in the SIM card the mobile industry will extend the role of mobile phones in customers’ everyday lives.
Fourteen mobile operators are participating in the ‘Pay-Buy Mobile’ initiative, which seeks to define a common global experience for mobile phone payments, on which seamlessly interoperable services will be provided.
The fourteen operators, representing more than 900 million mobile users, are Cingular Wireless, now part of the new AT&T; China Mobile; KALL; KTF; MCI; MTN; NTT DoCoMo; Rogers Wireless; Smart Communications; Telenor, TeliaSonera; Telecom Italia; Turkcell, and Vimpelcom.
"The mobile phone is now becoming an essential life management tool for mobile users," said Rob Conway, CEO of the GSM Association. "By bringing payment capability into the device, users will benefit from the ability to purchase items in a secure and convenient way from the comfort of their own mobile phones, hailing an end to bulky wallets full of notes and coins."
Whilst various forms of mobile payment trials and services have been announced, this is the first truly global approach to facilitate payment by mobile. Secure, transparent mobile payments will be made using a SIM / Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC) card in mobile phones plus contactless/NFC technology. The result will be an interoperable and transparent service for mobile customers, financials institutions and the banks.
This approach will further accelerate the efforts of the major credit card companies, which developed the specifications to ensure global interoperability between chip cards and Point of Sales (POS) terminals, regardless of manufacturer, the financial institution and location of transaction. The GSMA intends to work closely with leading financial intermediaries to provide the transaction solutions.
The first phase of the GSMA initiative will begin with a business model analysis followed by an end-to-end trial in Korea later this year. The trial will be led by KTF and will include all key participants in the value chain, from banks and credit card providers to retail organizations and handset manufacturers. LG Electronics will provide handsets for this initial trial in Korea. KTF will share the results of its trial with the GSMA’s operator community as part of the program. Following this, similar trials will be deployed involving other operators and financial institutions.
Mobile phone based transactions are already becoming commonplace in South Korea, where there are already more than 12 million mobile payment enabled handsets in circulation, with 80,000 terminal payment machines in shops, restaurants and cafes.
13th February 2007 - Barcelona, Spain: The worldwide use of mobile phones for payments at point of sale is the aim of a new initiative announced today by the GSM Association (GSMA), the global trade organization for mobile operators.
The ‘Pay-Buy Mobile’ initiative is a natural progression for the industry, following the GSMA’s program - announced last year - to define a common global approach to enabling Near Field Communications (NFC), the technology used to link mobile devices with payment and contactless systems. By embedding mobile contactless services, such as credit and debit payments, in the SIM card the mobile industry will extend the role of mobile phones in customers’ everyday lives.
Fourteen mobile operators are participating in the ‘Pay-Buy Mobile’ initiative, which seeks to define a common global experience for mobile phone payments, on which seamlessly interoperable services will be provided.
The fourteen operators, representing more than 900 million mobile users, are Cingular Wireless, now part of the new AT&T; China Mobile; KALL; KTF; MCI; MTN; NTT DoCoMo; Rogers Wireless; Smart Communications; Telenor, TeliaSonera; Telecom Italia; Turkcell, and Vimpelcom.
"The mobile phone is now becoming an essential life management tool for mobile users," said Rob Conway, CEO of the GSM Association. "By bringing payment capability into the device, users will benefit from the ability to purchase items in a secure and convenient way from the comfort of their own mobile phones, hailing an end to bulky wallets full of notes and coins."
Whilst various forms of mobile payment trials and services have been announced, this is the first truly global approach to facilitate payment by mobile. Secure, transparent mobile payments will be made using a SIM / Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC) card in mobile phones plus contactless/NFC technology. The result will be an interoperable and transparent service for mobile customers, financials institutions and the banks.
This approach will further accelerate the efforts of the major credit card companies, which developed the specifications to ensure global interoperability between chip cards and Point of Sales (POS) terminals, regardless of manufacturer, the financial institution and location of transaction. The GSMA intends to work closely with leading financial intermediaries to provide the transaction solutions.
The first phase of the GSMA initiative will begin with a business model analysis followed by an end-to-end trial in Korea later this year. The trial will be led by KTF and will include all key participants in the value chain, from banks and credit card providers to retail organizations and handset manufacturers. LG Electronics will provide handsets for this initial trial in Korea. KTF will share the results of its trial with the GSMA’s operator community as part of the program. Following this, similar trials will be deployed involving other operators and financial institutions.
Mobile phone based transactions are already becoming commonplace in South Korea, where there are already more than 12 million mobile payment enabled handsets in circulation, with 80,000 terminal payment machines in shops, restaurants and cafes.
Global Money Transfer Pilot Uses Mobile To Benefit Migrant Workers And The Unbanked
GSMA and MasterCard piloting a programme to make it far easier and cost-effective to transfer remittances globally
12th February 2007 - Barcelona, Spain: The GSM Association has launched a pilot programme aimed at tapping the ubiquity and ease-of-use of mobile communications to enable the world’s 200 million international migrant workers to easily and securely send remittances to their dependents, many of whom don’t have bank accounts. By exploiting the extensive reach of the mobile networks, the programme will complement existing local remittances channels and make transferring money internationally significantly more affordable.
Spearheaded by a special group of 19 mobile operators with networks in over 100 countries and representing over 600 million customers, the GSMA believes the programme could double the number of recipients of international remittances to more than 1.5 billion, while helping to quadruple the size of the international remittances market to more than $1 trillion by 2012.
To combine the strengths of the mobile and financial ecosystems, mobile operators are partnering with banks at a local or regional level, while the GSMA is setting up a pilot with MasterCard Worldwide, a global payments leader whose cards and network provide international authorization, clearing and settlement. The GSMA and MasterCard, which has a 25,000 member-bank network, plan to pilot a global hub that will link together national markets and the local payment systems run by mobile operators in partnership with those local banks. The hub will enable migrant workers to trigger international money transfers using their mobile phone and their families to be notified via their mobile phones.
"The creation of a global hub will enable the mobile networks, which now cover more than 80% of the world’s population, to offer the world’s burgeoning migrant population a convenient way to securely and cost-effectively transfer money to their families back in their home countries." said Rob Conway, CEO of the GSMA, the global trade association for mobile operators. "We are mobilising financial services for the billions of people who are unbanked and the underbanked."
12th February 2007 - Barcelona, Spain: The GSM Association has launched a pilot programme aimed at tapping the ubiquity and ease-of-use of mobile communications to enable the world’s 200 million international migrant workers to easily and securely send remittances to their dependents, many of whom don’t have bank accounts. By exploiting the extensive reach of the mobile networks, the programme will complement existing local remittances channels and make transferring money internationally significantly more affordable.
Spearheaded by a special group of 19 mobile operators with networks in over 100 countries and representing over 600 million customers, the GSMA believes the programme could double the number of recipients of international remittances to more than 1.5 billion, while helping to quadruple the size of the international remittances market to more than $1 trillion by 2012.
To combine the strengths of the mobile and financial ecosystems, mobile operators are partnering with banks at a local or regional level, while the GSMA is setting up a pilot with MasterCard Worldwide, a global payments leader whose cards and network provide international authorization, clearing and settlement. The GSMA and MasterCard, which has a 25,000 member-bank network, plan to pilot a global hub that will link together national markets and the local payment systems run by mobile operators in partnership with those local banks. The hub will enable migrant workers to trigger international money transfers using their mobile phone and their families to be notified via their mobile phones.
"The creation of a global hub will enable the mobile networks, which now cover more than 80% of the world’s population, to offer the world’s burgeoning migrant population a convenient way to securely and cost-effectively transfer money to their families back in their home countries." said Rob Conway, CEO of the GSMA, the global trade association for mobile operators. "We are mobilising financial services for the billions of people who are unbanked and the underbanked."
Cellphones open front in global fight against disease
By Thomas Crampton
Published: March 4, 2007
PARIS: To Rwanda's top HIV/AIDS official, communication within the national health care system can be slow enough to present an actual threat to health.
"Information from clinics is written on a piece of paper that a porter carries by hand to the district before the information can be brought to Kigali," said Dr. Innocent Nyaruhirira, who holds the cabinet-level post of minister for HIV/AIDS. "We are a country of one thousand hills, so it often takes one month to receive a message from the field about a disease outbreak or drug shortage."
The travel time cripples drug-supply management, prevents live tracking of disease outbreaks, undermines monitoring of health programs and delays delivery of laboratory test results back to patients.
Enter Voxiva, a U.S. company that has built a system for individual health workers to send reports by cellphone directly from the field. First deployed five years ago to track disease outbreaks in the Amazon basin, Voxiva's system is also being used in Indonesia for avian flu reporting and in India to test a new drug for leishmaniasis, a disease spread by sand flies.
In Rwanda, the system started tracking HIV/AIDS patients two years ago and now connects 75 percent of the country's 340 clinics, covering a total of 32,000 patients.
Published: March 4, 2007
PARIS: To Rwanda's top HIV/AIDS official, communication within the national health care system can be slow enough to present an actual threat to health.
"Information from clinics is written on a piece of paper that a porter carries by hand to the district before the information can be brought to Kigali," said Dr. Innocent Nyaruhirira, who holds the cabinet-level post of minister for HIV/AIDS. "We are a country of one thousand hills, so it often takes one month to receive a message from the field about a disease outbreak or drug shortage."
The travel time cripples drug-supply management, prevents live tracking of disease outbreaks, undermines monitoring of health programs and delays delivery of laboratory test results back to patients.
Enter Voxiva, a U.S. company that has built a system for individual health workers to send reports by cellphone directly from the field. First deployed five years ago to track disease outbreaks in the Amazon basin, Voxiva's system is also being used in Indonesia for avian flu reporting and in India to test a new drug for leishmaniasis, a disease spread by sand flies.
In Rwanda, the system started tracking HIV/AIDS patients two years ago and now connects 75 percent of the country's 340 clinics, covering a total of 32,000 patients.
Friday, March 2, 2007
Nokia N92
European Tri-Band
WI-FI/WCDMA
2 Megapixel
TV
Visual Radio
WMA and Real Player
3G
and more...
Mobiledude: Now why is this phone Euro tr-band? (900/1800/1900)
i-Mate JAQ3 pda
by PhoneScoop
This messaging smartphone combines the popular slim QWERTY keyboard form factor with the full Pocket PC edition of Windows Mobile. Wireless features are quad-band GSM, EDGE data, Wi-Fi, and stereo Bluetooth. Other key features include a touch-screen, side scroll wheel, 2 megapixel camera, and speakerphone.
This phone is not currently available from any major U.S. carrier. It is compatible with some U.S. networks, and may be available from third-party dealers or smaller, regional carriers.
Mobiledude says: I'd spend money for this---and not the soon to be a warranty exchange program nightmare iPhone...
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Serious Wireless GSM inks global service deal
Serious Wireless GSM, a Washington DC based telecom has inked a deal to provide innovative voice, data and mobile content applications to a niche segment, international business customers.
The network and service agreement will span North America, Latin America and Africa.
"Our products and services will add a key mobile solution for millions of mobile business people all over the world." A spokesperson for Serious Wireless GSM (SWG).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
