Cell Phone Messaging Turns Mischievous

Grok Headline matches for Cell Phone Messaging Turns Mischievous

Cell phone messaging turns mischievous

Cell phone messaging turns mischievous 11/13/2003 01:46 AM
Boston Globe Nov 13 2003 1:06AM ET

Pride Communication Services, #1
Reseller of Krusell Leather Cell Phone
Cases, to Begin Selling Identity-Theft
Conscious Horizontic Plus Cell Phone
Case in April

Pride Communication Services, #1
Reseller of Krusell Leather Cell Phone
Cases, to Begin Selling Identity-Theft
Conscious Horizontic Plus Cell Phone
Case in April 03/29/2005 04:34 AM
To Better Accommodate the Needs of Today’s Identity Theft Conscious Cell Phone Users, Pride Communication Services (PCS), a Subsidiary Franchise of KaseIT and the Largest Reseller of KRUSELL Leather Cases, Announced Today that it Would Begin Selling the Horizontic Plus Cell Phone Case, KRUSELL’s Newest Offering, In its Online Store in April. [PRWEB Mar 29, 2005]

Cell phones, text messaging 'force to be
reckoned with'

Cell phones, text messaging 'force to be
reckoned with' 09/27/2004 07:02 AM
Canadian Press via Canada.com Sep 27 2004 11:03AM GMT

Iowa phone company tries to block
incoming cell phone calls

Iowa phone company tries to block
incoming cell phone calls 08/16/2004 05:48 PM
Iowa phone company plans to block cell phone call in a dispute with wireless carriers. The Iowa Utilities Board has prevented the plan for now.

Quick-'n-Dirty methods to determine
which competing label is better: "Cell
Phone" or "Mobile Phone"?

Quick-'n-Dirty methods to determine
which competing label is better: "Cell
Phone" or "Mobile Phone"? 04/28/2004 11:39 AM

On the SIGIA-L mailing list, Stephanie Berger recently asked: "My cohorts are not sure whether to use "cell phone" or "mobile phone". Any evidence that one is better than the other, or one is used more often than the other?"

This is a good example of the kind of labeling questions information architects face all the time. The answer to these labeling questions will depend on the target audience (a better label for whom?), on business requirements (maybe the business want to promote one term over the other) and on the context in which the label will be used.

I'll discuss the conversation that followed here and afterwards point to some useful tools for if you have a labeling question yourself.

Andres Sulleiro: "Without any empirical data I will go with my own opinion. [...] A quick survey of the phone carriers seems to suggest that "wireless" (as in "wireless phone", "wireless customer") is most common among US carriers, though you see some references to "mobile" as well. T-mobile, a European company, uses "mobile" which is more common in Europe as well as being the name of the carrier."

Method: check what other websites call it.

Jason Cho: "I think "cell" is more widespread in the US as Andrés noted. "Call my mobile" can sound pretentious to Yankee ears. But I would think everyone understands the term "mobile" on a business card."

Method: personal experience.

Peter Van Dijck (and others): "Google for "cell phone" (including quotes): 6,230,000, Google for "mobile phone": 6,360,000. Looks like a tie, assuming your audience is similar. Just pick one and make sure your search engine knows both terms."
Christina Wodtke: "Y ahoo for cell phone : 16,800,000, yahoo for mobile phone: 21,200,000. What does this really tell you? you'd have to know who each engine indexes, how much of the web, etc.. better to use a magic 8 ball. ;-)"

Method: check popularity of the terms on the web.

Peter Van Dijck: "My next step would be to find out what people search for on your site,
or if not available, on the web (assuming that's more or less your audience). Google adwords can help."

Method: Find out what people (preferably your target audience) search for.

Dave: "I like "mobile" for the reason that Christina stated (forward compatibility); USers and non-USers will equally understand it. Also, it is more interoperable w/ most of the vCard based addressbook programs out there. I don't know any that are using "cell" or "cellphone" ... I also like the clear and easy two word approach of "mobile phone" ... I'm always wanting to say "cellphone" where "cell phone" is really the more correct version. "cell" though just doesn't feel like a real word b/c the "cell" doesn't fit a meaning to me. I know what it means if I am forced to think about it, but it really doesn't mean anything to me at all."

Method: personal experience, check what software programs use.

Christina Wodtke: "> As can Ove rture's keyword tool (couldn't find URL straight away).

You also might consider some adaptation of the freelisting technique on a subset of your target. E.G., a write in survey: what portable electronics do you own, then analyze for use of "cell phone" and mobile phone".

Method: freelisting technique.

Eric Reiss: "Having worked closely with several telecommunications companies, including Tellabs (US), Nortel (Canada), ADVA (Germany), and NetTest (Denmark), this discussion is one I've heard before. Europeans generally don't recognize the term "cell phone." North Americans seem to accept both "cell" and "mobile." ATT insists on promoting the term "wireless." In most instances, we've agreed on the word "mobile" since it is understood by the widest audience. Nortel, for instance, used "cell" almost exclusively until the late 90s, but now leans toward "mobile." I think there is a trend here."

Method: ask the subject matter experts.

Pabini Gabriel-Petit: "There's also Wordtracker.
[...]
In this vein, you might try just walking up to people, holding up your cell/mobile phone, and asking them what they call it."

Method: Analyze what people search for.

Method: Find out what labels your users use.

Quick-'n-Dirty methods to determine which competing label is better.

So, as a review, here are some of the methods used to determine which label is better.

1. What do you think?
Method: personal experience/insights.

2. What do your users think?
Method: freelisting technique.
Method: Find out what labels your users use: show them the item you're trying to label and ask them what it is. (You could build an online tool for this).
Method: Find out what people (preferably your target audience) search for / check popularity of the terms on the web. Ove rture's keyword tool. Google adwords. Wordtracker. Google and Yahoo both list how often a term is used on the web (use quotes around your terms!).

3. What do the experts think?
Method: ask the subject matter experts.
Method: check what other websites/software call it.

Gotcha's: be careful when using these techniques. You are looking for a label that works for your audience and your business requirements. Most of these techniques use audiences that may be very different from yours, and most are indicative only (ie: they're not hard science). Use your judgement.

FreeHeadset.org launches program to
promote wireless phone safety by giving
away free cell phone headsets.

FreeHeadset.org launches program to
promote wireless phone safety by giving
away free cell phone headsets. 07/26/2004 02:22 AM
New laws that mandate the use of cell phone headsets have recently passed in several states. In response, FreeHeadset.org has developed a program to provide wireless phone users with a free cell phone headset. [PRWEB Jul 26, 2004]

Cell Phone Users Interrupt Sex for Phone
Calls

Cell Phone Users Interrupt Sex for Phone
Calls 04/11/2005 08:07 PM
user survey reported

consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/cell_sex.html
track this site | 3 links

Nokia 6820 messaging phone

Nokia 6820 messaging phone 05/29/2004 12:16 AM
Review Yes, the one with the fold-out keyboard

Docomo turns cell phones into wallets

Docomo turns cell phones into wallets 08/09/2004 10:18 PM
CNET Asia Aug 10 2004 2:38AM GMT

Carrier turns cell phones into wallets

Carrier turns cell phones into wallets 08/09/2004 05:06 PM
NTT DoCoMo launches a service that lets people make credit card transactions and bank withdrawals via a handset.

Xdrive Turns Cell Phones Into PC's

Xdrive Turns Cell Phones Into PC's 03/23/2005 01:29 PM
I4U Mar 23 2005 4:46PM GMT

Motorola Debuts Messaging Phone
(NewsFactor)

Motorola Debuts Messaging Phone
(NewsFactor) 07/02/2004 02:56 PM
NewsFactor - Motorola's (NYSE: MOT) latest creation, designed to appeal to text-messaging fans, offers an array of bells and whistles packed into a compact mobile phone.

Yahoo links instant-messaging, Net phone
tools

Yahoo links instant-messaging, Net phone
tools 06/22/2004 10:30 AM
The company is partnering with a VoIP specialist to beef up the telephony features it offers through its free instant-messaging client.

China steps up surveillance, targeting
mobile phone messaging

China steps up surveillance, targeting
mobile phone messaging 07/04/2004 09:54 PM

Zeosoft Technology Group Turns Sony
Ericsson Cell Phones into Application
Servers

Zeosoft Technology Group Turns Sony
Ericsson Cell Phones into Application
Servers 08/15/2004 02:36 AM
Zeosoft Technology Group announced the availability of ZeoSphere™ XR 2.1, for the Sony Ericsson P900 Smartphone. Zeosoft’s mobile wireless platform is the first application server running on cellular phones. [PRWEB Aug 15, 2004]

'Bluejacking' gets mischievous

'Bluejacking' gets mischievous 11/12/2003 10:16 PM
globetechnology.com Nov 12 2003 9:50PM ET

Skype turns heads with Net phone service

Skype turns heads with Net phone service 07/27/2004 07:44 AM
ZDNet Jul 27 2004 11:53AM GMT

The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora --
upcoming book

The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora --
upcoming book 09/20/2004 02:37 PM
Mark Frauenfelder: I'm waiting to get my copy of "The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora," a new book coming out from Fantagraphics. Flora was a record album cover illustrator in the 1940s and 1950s. I discovered him about 15 years ago when I bought a Benny Goodman record with a Flora cover at a garage sale for $1. Finding this illustration reconfigured my brain.

Here's a good description of Flora's style (from the back cover of the book):

Vintage music buffs have long been bedazzled by bizarre, cartoonish album covers tagged with the signature "Flora." In the 1940s and '50s, James (Jim) Flora designed dozens of diabolic cover illustrations, many for Columbia and RCA Victor jazz artists. His designs pulsed with angular hepcats bearing funnel-tapered noses and shark-fin chins, who fingered cockeyed pianos and honked lollipop-hued horns. In the background, geometric doo-dads floated willy-nilly like a kindergarten toy room gone anti-gravitational. He wreaked havoc with the laws of physics, conjuring up flying musicians, levitating instruments, and wobbly dimensional perspectives. Yet Flora's wondrous, childlike exuberance was subverted by a sinister tinge of the grotesque. As Flora confessed in a 1998 interview, "I got away with murder, didn't I?"

There's a nice Flora art gallery online, which is maintained by Irwin Chusid, who compiled the book for Fantagraphics.

Fantagraphics also published a book by one of my other main influences, Gene Deitch, called The Cat on a Hot Thin Groove. He did the covers for a jazz fanzine in the 1940s, called The Record Changer. In the '60s, Deitch was the art director for UPA, the cartoon studio that produced Gerald McBoingBoing. ABout 10 years ago I had the pleasure of visiting Deitch in his San Francisco home (He lives most of the year in Prague). He drew a great picture of his jazz character, The Cat, for me and presented it to me. I interviewed him for the print edition of bOING bOING, but I never got around to transcribing the tape. I hope I still have it.

One of my other big influences, Disney Artist Mary Blair, got her own book this year too! (Illustrator Bob Staake has a couple of pages with Blair's art.)

Now, all I need to round out my library of illustrator-gods are books about the work of Tom Oreb and Ed Benedict.

Yahoo! News - Wristwatch phone turns
your finger into an earpiece

Yahoo! News - Wristwatch phone turns
your finger into an earpiece 11/07/2003 06:33 AM
You want me to stick what, where? .. Est a telefonar

story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1539&ncid=1539&e= 2&u=/afp/20031105/sc_afp/science_phone_japan_031105212601
track this site | 5 links

Salling Clicker turns your mobile phone
into a remote control for your Mac

Salling Clicker turns your mobile phone
into a remote control for your Mac 07/20/2004 01:07 AM
Justin Reid of TheFeature has good things to say about a neat-sounding application called Salling Clicker that turns a Bluetooth device into a remote control for your Mac.

One of the really amazing features is that you can see not just ordinary information about the track you've got currently playing in iTunes - artist and song name, track length, etc. - but also the album art, directly on your mobile device.

Link

Miniature Khutu's Pyramid turns your
Japanese mobile phone into a PVR

Miniature Khutu's Pyramid turns your
Japanese mobile phone into a PVR 04/23/2004 01:34 AM
Engadget reports on a really cool-sounding, complicated and hard-to-explain device from Japan: a 1/2000 scale model of Khufu’s Pyramid with a Secure Digital slot in it. You put the pyramid atop your television and it turns your TV's video feed into 3GPP -- the file-format used by Japanese videophones. The idea is that you can load these into your camera phone's SD slot and watch TV on the way to work. Link

A Cell Phone in Every Pot

A Cell Phone in Every Pot 12/09/2003 02:39 AM

Ce ll Phones Sales Skyrocket

"The worldwide market for cell phones is outstripping even the most enthusiastic predictions from the beginning of the year, as consumers continue to snap up handsets at a dizzying rate, according to research released Monday by Gartner.

Handset vendors sold 132.8 million units in the third quarter of this year, up 22 percent from last year's third-quarter shipments of 108.8 million units, says Ben Wood, an analyst with Gartner based in London. Gartner calculated the figures using the number of units sold to end users, rather than units shipped into the channel.

'The total market is on fire,' he says. 'We had predicted about 470 million units for the year, but it's going to be about 500 million this year.'

Mature cell phone markets such as western Europe and the U.S. are going through a replacement cycle, as consumers with older black-and-white phones are trading them in for new models with color screens and cameras , Wood says.

'We're getting to a point where a mobile phone is as much about fashion as anything,' he says." [PCWorld.com]

It won't be much longer before purchasing a mobile phone will be as much about utility (staying connected to the internet) as anything.

You could have a 3G cell phone already

You could have a 3G cell phone already 04/11/2005 03:55 AM
Jakarta Post Apr 11 2005 5:22AM GMT

Cell Phone Zen

Cell Phone Zen 08/16/2004 02:27 PM
My phone sucks ass! The voicemail has never worked properly since day 1. At least once a week I have...

HP's iPAQ h6315 Pocket PC Phone turns up
on T-Mobile's website

HP's iPAQ h6315 Pocket PC Phone turns up
on T-Mobile's website 06/30/2004 11:25 AM
Engadget Jun 30 2004 3:16PM GMT

Cell Phone Tombstone

Cell Phone Tombstone 04/18/2005 03:07 PM

This might be the saddest tombstone I've ever seen. If this isn't the inventor of the cellphone—something I'm not sure I'd want looming over me in the afterlife, anyway—then I'd really like to dig him up and steal all the moldering gadgets with which he was inevitably buried.

I'm pretty sure I've seen this in come corner of the internet before. Has anyone seen a better quality image? I want to read the inscription.

Israeli Mobile Phone Headstone [UnwiredNews via LiveDIgitally]

Cell phone lockdown.

Cell phone lockdown. 12/06/2003 05:34 PM
CNet: Cell phone lockdown. Now that number portability is in effect, locked phones are even more evil. Two reforms that I would suggest are forcing carriers to unlock phones when contracts expire and allowing customers to take their phone rebate in cash when signing the contract.

Wi-Fi Hot, TV Not for Cell Phone Users

Wi-Fi Hot, TV Not for Cell Phone Users 04/12/2005 02:45 PM
Cell phone users think Wi-Fi access is important, but scoff at features such as the capability to watch TV on their phones, according to a study on future cell phone features by research firm InStat. InStat found that Wi-Fi, mapping features and traffic alerts, and voice activated text input scored highest with users.

Your $600 Cell Phone Bill

Your $600 Cell Phone Bill 06/01/2004 12:02 PM
Family cell phone plans have a lot of hang-ups, especially when a teen's on the line.

Cell Phone Guns

Cell Phone Guns 01/27/2004 05:19 PM

Press M for Murder: Cell Phones That Kill: Can you program the phone to shoot the owner if it's answered in a movie theater?

Though heavier than normal phones, the lethal ones look nearly identical. The hollowed-out devices, made in Croatia, are fired by punching buttons on the keypad and can shoot four .22-cal. bullets in rapid succession.

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Your Cell Phone Is Tracking You

Your Cell Phone Is Tracking You 12/21/2003 03:43 AM
PollGuy writes "I had never heard until this article in the New York Times (sacrifice of first born required) about services that let regular people track the ...

New Cell Phone Tactics

New Cell Phone Tactics 12/03/2003 11:07 AM
How many of you have moved to a new cell phone carrier now that number portability allows you to take...

Cell Phone Directory

Cell Phone Directory 07/28/2004 04:28 PM

Cell phone directory gets hoots, hollers: This seems like a no-brainer to me.

The days of searching in vain for someone's cell phone number are almost over. Starting early next year, you'll be able to call directory assistance to get a mobile number.

However, some people object:

"These devices are considered much more personal than landline (phones)," says Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "People tend to carry them everywhere and answer them when they ring."

What's more, cell phone subscribers pay for incoming calls, even unwanted ones.

Such concerns prompted Verizon Wireless, the No. 1 wireless company, to keep its 40 million subscribers out of the directory.

Isn't it interesting how cell phones have made phone numbers personal? A phone number used to be associated with a family ot a business — a group of people. But now, everyone in my family can have a cell phone, and therefore a phone number associated with them personally.

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You CAN take your cell-phone number with
you

You CAN take your cell-phone number with
you 11/11/2003 10:17 PM
ZDNet Nov 11 2003 9:18PM ET

Keep on rockin' with your cell phone

Keep on rockin' with your cell phone 04/10/2005 11:41 PM
CNET News.com Apr 11 2005 3:03AM GMT

Get first aid instructions in your cell
phone

Get first aid instructions in your cell
phone 06/24/2005 10:03 PM
Finnish Red Cross has made a Java cell phone program ("midlet" for the technically inclined) which contains the most basic first aid instructions in an easy-to-follow format with pictures. The instructions are in Finnish only, but you can get yours by texting "LATAA7 SPR ENSIAPU7" to number 17116. You need to have WAP settings in place to make the download. I took a quick look at it and it certainly seems like something I'm going to keep on my phone for a long time.

(Though, be warned, the midlet costs 7€! Something that which Helsingin Sanomat completely forgets to mention (boo hiss, this is stupid), but that is declared on Red Cross's page...)

Just in time for the holidays, I would say.

(Via Helsingin Sanomat. Lisää tietoa Punaisen ristin sivuilta.)

Cell phone users and sex

Cell phone users and sex 04/11/2005 11:25 AM
David Pescovitz: According to a new global survey, fourteen percent of cell phone users stop screwing to answer their cell phones. Just like Paris Hilton. From Consumer Affairs.com report on a subscription-only Ad Age article:

The highest incidence of cellular interruptus was found in Germany and Spain, where 22 percent of users interrupted sex to answer their cell phones; the lowest was in Italy, where only 7 percent reported doing so. In the U.S., the figure was 15 percent, the magazine said, citing a study conducted by BBDO Worldwide and Proximity Worldwide.

Link (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)

16 mln US teens have a cell phone

16 mln US teens have a cell phone 03/27/2005 02:33 AM
ZDNet Mar 27 2005 5:48AM GMT

The Souped-Up Cell Phone

The Souped-Up Cell Phone 06/15/2004 10:00 AM
Business Week Jun 15 2004 2:25PM GMT
Grok Description matches for Cell Phone Messaging Turns Mischievous
GrokA matches for Cell Phone Messaging Turns Mischievous

Cell Phone Messaging Turns Mischievous

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