Technology

If you are planning a trip to Mexico in the near future and forget your mobile phone at home, try to resist the urge to purchase a replacement (no matter how inexpensive the phone plans are over there!) The Mexican government has agreed to start a ... national register filled with the fingerprints and personal information of every new mobile phone owner in the country. Why start a national register now? A disturbing trend has emerged in which criminals are extorting money via kidnappings and using their mobile phones to text their demands for ransom. In Mexico, hundreds of people are kidnapped ... (view more)

According to a UCLA professor, today's kids might use their brains much differently than children in previous generations. The findings could mean that current teaching and testing methods are ineffective in estimating their intelligence. Patricia ... Greenfield looked at more than 50 studies of technology's effects on children. She found that media such as television and video games do limit some aspects of their mental skills, but also help improve them in other ways. Tests over the last 50 years show a clear and consistent increase in visual reasoning skills. These involve seeing information ... (view more)

Television stations in 22 major U.S. cities have come together to announce that they will soon broadcast their signals in a format designed for mobile devices like cellphones, mp3 players and GPS units. The 22 stations, which include broadcasts out ... of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston, would reach over 35 percent of all U.S. households. In total, 54 commercial network affiliates have committed to launching broadcasts, while another nine PBS affiliates are considering joining the project. (Source: canoe.ca ) The difference between these broadcasts and current mobile television ... (view more)

Everybody was talking about Barack Obama's inauguration on Tuesday morning, and it showed. According to reports, a number of mobile phone networks faced overload circumstances that day until late afternoon, when the chat sessions finally began to ... dissipate. Having the most trouble that morning appears to have been T-Mobile, with PC World reporting that one customer complained they were unable to make or receive calls throughout the entire morning leading up to Obama's appearance. With cellphones an often necessary lifeline for personal and business purposes, the victim's disgust is certainly ... (view more)

Palm recently unveiled their response to the Apple iPhone: the Pre. Among its many features is a new operating system supporting the device (Palm WebOS) and an iPhone-like touch-screen. The Pre uses a sophisticated interface which self-charges on a ... special platform without the need to attach a cable. The device also boasts 8GB of storage, GPS navigation, WiFi networking and a sliding mini-keyboard. (Source: iht.com ) Despite always being regarded as a major contender in the smartphone industry, Palm has suffered many recent setbacks, including the 2007 cancellation of their much-anticipated ... (view more)

It seems the abnormally low number of exhibitors at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has been paralleled by a startling slide in attendance by Joe Techie. With the recession on and consumer spending down, overall attendance is even lower than ... first expected. About a week ago, we reported that CES organizers expected the number of visitors for 2009 to be down slightly from last year's 141,000, perhaps between 130,000 and 135,000. That was evident the weekend prior to the event, when it was alarmingly easy to find a hotel room in Las Vegas, CES' annual host city. That's usually not the case ... (view more)

Hoping to turn their sagging fortunes around, Ford is set to debut a highly-anticipated technology allowing cars to parallel park themselves without driver assistance. Better yet, the entire self-parking experience is promised to be ... scratch-and-dent-free. The technology relies on ultrasonic sensors on the front and rear of the automobile, combined with electric power steering to angle and guide the vehicle into tight parking spaces. (Source: siliconvalley.com ) While the process sounds complicated, all a driver has to do is push one button and the system takes over from there. A visual or ... (view more)

Tired of reaching for that cellphone, only to find that your ensuing conversation is cut off because of a dying battery? Almost everyone knows the sinking feeling that accompanies a suddenly dead cellphone battery; in fact, consumers have been ... demanding a more efficient, longer-lasting device for ages. That might be on its way, thanks to the work of a doctoral student from Canada's national capital. PhD candidate Atif Shamim, an engineering student at Ottawa, Ontario's Carleton University, has reportedly built a technology capable of reducing the overall power consumption of mobile devices ... (view more)

Interested in taking advantage of your that expensive high definition TV by watching movies in the increasingly popular high-def Blu-ray movie format, but still not sure if it's worth buying a player that can't display your massive collection of ... standard DVD discs? An answer may be on the way from Infinity Storage Media, which has released the first hybrid Blu-ray/DVD disc in the Land of the Rising Sun. Although it limped out of the gates in its race against HD-DVD several years ago (primarily because its competitor's hardware offerings were much cheaper), by gobbling up the majority of major ... (view more)

Chip maker Intel wants to bring power to your mobile device. At a press event in San Francisco on December 5, Justin Rattner, the company's chief technical officer, unveiled Intel's vision for sensors that "scavenge" the environment for power ... sources. Called a Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform (WISP) the technology could continually scan the environment for possible energy sources. The WISP then takes in power through a variety of means, including solar and other light sources, body heat, radiation from cell phone towers, WiFi and television signals -- even the energy ... (view more)