Loud Mobile Phone Talkers Leads List Of Mobile Etiquette Annoyances

from the just-quiet-down dept

There are all sorts of annoyances associated with mobile phones, but apparently the biggest one remains the fact that people talking on mobile phones seem so prone to do so loudly, greatly disturbing those around them. A recent study found that loud mobile phone talkers were considered a bigger nuisance than things like answering a phone at the dinner table or having a really annoying ringtone. The company that put on the survey notes that people should remember to move away from noisy areas when on the phone, and should try to find a quieter place to talk. I also wonder if better speakers, to hear who you're talking to more clearly, combined with adding or improving sidetone (the ability to hear yourself through the phone's speaker) on mobile phones would go a long way towards decreasing mobile phone yelling.

Filed Under: annoyances, loud talking, mobile phones, talking

UK Phone Buyers: Must Show Passport & Register In National Database

from the surveillance-state dept

It appears that the UK is really moving towards a total surveillance state. Along with plans that we've already discussed to monitor all communications, it appears that you may not be able to buy a mobile phone without a passport and without registering your information in a national database. The reasoning, not surprisingly, is to try to keep tabs on terrorists who have been using prepaid phones that can't be traced easily back to their owners. Of course, what this really will do is create a much bigger nuisance for most (non-terrorist) residents, opening up potential privacy breaches all while doing almost nothing to slow down terrorist activity. That's because it won't be that difficult for terrorists to find other means of communication that don't require registration. It's really a shame to see countries give up the freedoms that made them great.

Filed Under: ids, mobile phones, passports, prepaid, surveillance, uk

Forget Driving While Yakking; Now You Should Be Worried About Parenting While Yakking

from the the-blame-game dept

There are plenty of news stories that seem to blame some form of technology for actions of individuals. The latest, as pointed out by reader Rose M. Welch, is an article that seems to be blaming mobile phones for bad parenting. Apparently, child development folks are worried that parents are paying more attention to the person on the end of the other phone line than their kid trying to get their attention, and this may stunt child development. The article doesn't cite any evidence of the problem other than some weak evidence (which the article admits is weak) concerning a study about kids whose mothers talked a lot on a mobile phone while they were pregnant. Of course, that's a totally different issue from parents ignoring kids after they're born, so it's not clear why the study is even mentioned. Either way, it seems that the point is pretty basic: parents should pay attention to their kids. That would seem to be true no matter what technology is around.

Filed Under: mobile phones, parenting

Dear Motorola: Instead Of Suing Competitors, Maybe Figure Out Why Employees Are Leaving

from the blame-everyone-else dept

As a company, if things aren't going well, it's often difficult to accept that some of the blame may be on your end -- which makes it especially easy to lash out at competitors, assigning blame to them. This becomes troublesome when it starts to involve lawsuits. Just a couple months ago, we noted that Motorola was suing a former exec for jumping ship to Apple. And, now the company is suing RIM for getting a bunch of Motorola employees to leave Motorola and join RIM. To any outsider, it seems clear that Motorola has some problems that make it so employees are tempted to jump to other companies. But rather than focus on figuring out how to fix that, and make things such that employees want to stick around (making cooler phones might be a good place to start), it's lashing out at competitors who are more appealing to Motorola's own employees. In the meantime, Motorola might want to check out the research that shows the free flow of employees between competitors helps spread innovation across the entire market. In other words, stop suing people because your employees are leaving, and start figuring out ways to make employees want to work for you.

Filed Under: employees, mobile phones
Companies: apple, motorola, rim

Mobile Phones Being Used To Bring Fairer Elections To Africa

from the good-news dept

We report on so many stories where technology is used in bad or oppressive ways, that it's important to note when it's being used in positive ways as well. Technology, itself, is just a tool that can be used in both good and bad ways (not to mention neutral ways), but somehow the good ways don't always get as much attention. CNN has an article detailing how the rise of mobile phones throughout Africa is helping in making elections that are more fair. It's certainly not perfect yet, but the ability to communicate has allowed citizens to report abuses of the election process and get the word out when they see any kind of cheating happening.

Filed Under: africa, elections, mobile phones

Before We Ban Mobile Phones On Planes, Why Not See If They're Really A Problem?

from the we're-congress,-we-don't-do-empirical-evidence dept

We've already explained why it's rather silly for Congress to pass an outright ban of talking on mobile phones in-flight, but that probably won't stop the effort from going forward. However, new research is showing how this may be even less necessary than many assume. First, contrary to the idea that most people are worried about in-flight phone use, most younger users seem to actually support it.

As for the concern that it would just be really "annoying"? It turns out that when you look at actual tests (what a concept), this turns out not to be a problem. Passengers develop their own etiquette for keeping quiet and not pissing off other passengers. In other words, social pressures can handle most of the worst scenarios without the need for any sort of law that bans it in all situations. But, of course, this is Congress we're talking about. They're not huge fans of basing laws on what actually happens, but on what will generate the best headlines.

Also, just to respond to some of the misconception in the comments to the previous post: the potential ban has absolutely nothing to do with the technology issues related to using mobiles on airplanes. It's entirely about the etiquette/annoyance issue. Most of those technical issues have been worked out by putting a "picocell" on the airplane itself to redirect the voice traffic in a more efficient manner, rather than having the phones try to connect directly to towers on the ground.

Filed Under: congress, in-flight, mobile phones, planes, voice calls

Putting iPhone Sales In Perspective

from the it's-good,-but... dept

We didn't have much (well, anything) to say about the recent iPhone launch because it certainly seemed as though the rest of the tech press/blogworld had that one... um... thoroughly covered. However, with the glowing reports earlier this week about how amazing it was that Apple had sold 1 million iPhones over the weekend, Carlo Longino has put that into perspective, noting that it's not quite as impressive as most people seem to think. First, as he notes, since the launch was international (rather than the original iPhones US-only launch), it's no surprise that it would sell many more. But, more importantly, he notes that recent stats on mobile handsets shows that 282 million handsets were sold in the first quarter of this year, and that Nokia alone appears to sell approximately 1.28 million handsets per day. So, yes, selling 1 million handsets over the weekend is a nice round milestone -- and certainly other handset makers are probably jealous of the attention it's getting. But, it's not having a huge impact on the overall handset market just yet.

Filed Under: iphone, mobile phones, sales
Companies: apple, nokia

Why Are People Being Sent To Jail For Unlocking A Mobile Phone?

from the bad-news-all-around dept

For a few years, we've been covering the various lawsuits over mobile phone unlocking, mostly involving the company TracFone. TracFone focuses on the "prepaid" mobile phone market. That is, rather than selling long term contracts to people with various total minutes, it just sells phones with a certain number of minutes already on them that can then be re-upped at the buyer's discretion. However, like typical mobile phone service providers, TracFone subsidizes the price of the phone in order to make it seem quite cheap (sometimes as low as $10 or $15). The idea is to hook people and make money on selling the minutes. However, there's no requirement that people buy more minutes.

What's happened, of course, is that people figured out a huge arbitrage opportunity. They buy TracFone phones on the cheap, unlock them, and then resell them for a higher price (often outside the country). The problem here is TracFone's choice of a business model. It decided to subsidize the phones and it set up a business model that doesn't require people to sign a long term contract or ever agree to buy more minutes. However, if you listen to TracFone tell the story, this is a case of felony interference of a business model, and anyone unlocking those phones must be stopped.

For a while it was abusing the DMCA for this purpose -- using it to claim that the unlocking was circumvention of copy protection. Of course, that's exactly how the DMCA is not supposed to be used -- and that was made even more clear when the Library of Congress explicitly carved out an exemption for mobile phone unlocking, making it quite clear that this is perfectly legal. TracFone has whined about this, but it still doesn't amount to much more than that the company just picked a bad business model.

However, the situation keeps getting more bizarre. Some folks involved in one of these arbitrage opportunities were eventually arrested for terrorism, after US officials assumed that anyone buying so many prepaid phones must be planning some sort of attack (don't ask). This had companies in the space suddenly claiming that this action of unlocking prepaid phones was a national security threat (seriously). What's scary is that some officials seem to believe it.

It turns out that TracFone actually is winning a bunch of the lawsuits it's filing, using both questionable copyright and trademark claims. However, the real kicker is that one man is actually facing jailtime for this. It's a little unclear from the wording in the article, as the jailtime may actually be as a result of him ignoring a judge's order to stop the practice of reselling unlocked TracFones -- but it's still not clear why it's illegal to unlock these phones that were legally purchased. The DMCA exemptions say that unlocking a phone is perfectly legal, and as long as the phone was legally purchased, it's now the possession of the buyer, who should be allowed to tinker with the software and resell it without having to worry about lawsuits or (worse) jailtime. Yes, TracFone is upset that it wipes out their business model, but the law isn't designed to protect their own poor choice of business models.

Filed Under: jailtime, legality, mobile phones, prepaid wireless, unlocking
Companies: tracfone

EFF, ACLU Sue To Find Out Details Of Gov't Use Of Mobile Phone Data To Track People

from the it's-like-your-own-personal-beacon dept

Back in November, the news broke on the Friday after Thanksgiving that the federal government routinely asked for and received information from mobile phone operators about the location of various mobile phones (effectively tracking their owners) without bothering to show any sort of probable cause. This should raise plenty of concern (especially combined with the warrantless wiretapping program), as it effectively would mean that if you own a mobile phone, you've given the gov't the freedom to figure out where you are at any moment in time with no probable cause.

The EFF and the ACLU filed Freedom of Information Act requests to find out details of the program, which were (not surprisingly) denied by the Justice Department. The two organizations have now sued the government to find out more about these programs. Given the government's reaction to similar lawsuits on wiretapping, don't expect much info to come out of this lawsuit -- and do expect a vigorous attempt to get the case dismissed with various bogus claims of "state secrets" and "national security." It all comes down to the same basic thing, though. The government seems to think it's above the law.

Filed Under: freedom of information, government, mobile phones, tracking
Companies: aclu, eff

Before Getting Bought By Verizon Wireless, Alltel Tried To Buy Sprint, T-Mobile And AT&T Wireless

from the merger-mania dept

After being rumored for years, Verizon Wireless finally bought Alltel earlier this month. However, Alltel's CEO has now admitted that the company wasn't just looking to be acquired these past few years. It had, itself, aggressively looked into buying Sprint, T-Mobile or even AT&T Wireless at times. In fact, it tried to buy Sprint three separate times. The other two certainly seem like longshots. Deutsche Telekom appears to have no real interest in getting rid of T-Mobile, and depending on which version of AT&T Wireless you're talking about, it would have been difficult to convince the various parent companies involved that a sale to Alltel made sense. And that, of course, ignores the fact that T-Mobile and AT&T Wireless were from the GSM camp, rather than the CDMA camp. Still, it is interesting to see that the smaller Alltel was looking at buying its way up the food chain.

Filed Under: mergers, mobile phones
Companies: alltel, at&t, sprint, t-mobile, verizon wireless