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Story Archives of 'cell phones'
Here's What's Awesome: Robots in the Ocean, Lightswitch Ghosts
By Brady Carlson on Sunday, November 15, 2009.Welcome to Here's What's Awesome, answer the secret word and you'll get an extra fourteen cents. It's a common word, something you find around the internet.
20,000 Robotic Submersibles Under the Sea
Smart Phones for Pre-Schoolers
By Virginia Prescott on Tuesday, November 3, 2009.
Disney is offering refunds to parents who feel duped by its Baby Einstein videos, and parents and researchers alike are questioning brain-boosting tools for kids. So you might be surprised to learn that 60% of the 25 top-selling smart phone apps in the education section of iTunes are aimed at under five set.
Researchers are now finding that something as simple as a smart phone app might help little kids learn. The apps claim to teach children to recognize symbols and encourage kids’ interaction with the natural environment. With us to talk about whether smart phones are the next big teaching tool is Neil Swidey. He wrote about smart phones for toddlers for The Boston Globe Magazine
Boston Globe Magazine: Why an iPhone could actually be good for your 3-year-old
(Photo by Genta Masuda via Flickr/Creative Commons)
Demise of the Dial Tone
By Todd Bookman on Thursday, September 3, 2009.You can't tweet from it. You can't download ringtones for it. And in this economy, you can't afford it, either.
Flash Fiction Goes Mobile
By Virginia Prescott on Thursday, September 3, 2009.
Fiction is increasingly moving off the page and onto the screen – not the silver screen, but small screens, like the Kindle and iPhone. Few of us have the patience to read an entire novel on a palm-sized screen. But the iPhone has breathed new life into the genre of flash fiction, or microfiction.
Chicago-based publisher Featherproof Books is one of the latest practitioners, with their soon-to-be-released TripleQuick Fiction iPhone app. The stories are only 333 words long, and there'll be about 25-30 stories available when the app launches. There'll also be a rating system built in, so users can vote for their favorite stories. We’re joined by Featherproof Books co-publisher Zach Dodson.
Philip Roth: The Remix
By Todd Bookman on Tuesday, June 30, 2009.
There is a hot new ringtone jingling out of cell phones this summer. Layered over a funky techno beat is the so-called “Jewish shouting” of Philip Roth. During a taped interview with literary critic James Marcus last September, the Pulitzer Prize winning author belted out a disapproving yelp when asked what he thought of the movie version of his book Portnoy’s Complaint.
Phones for the Impoverished
By Virginia Prescott on Thursday, June 18, 2009.
The U.S. government now owns big shares in the auto industry, and is floating capital for banks. Health care may be the next item on the list, but subsidizing cell phone service for the poor?
While that may sound like the rallying cry for a right-wing talk show, it turns out that the feds have been subsidizing landline phones for welfare recipients for decades. Now advocates and wireless carriers want funding to get wireless phones to a needy and largely untapped market. Matt Richtel is a technology reporter for The New York Times and he’s been following the story.
The New York Times: Providing Cell Phones for the Poor
(Photo by JonJon2k8 via Flickr/Creative Commons)
Mobile Phones For Science
By Virginia Prescott on Thursday, May 7, 2009.Researchers gather environmental data all the time, to study air and water quality and other information. It can be a costly process. But what if you could convince people to carry sensors around with them? Scientists are now eyeing mobile phones for that very purpose.
There are about six cell phones for every ten people on the planet. A researcher named Eric Paulos wants to see them equipped with tiny environmental sensors that could detect pollution or track pollen density. He’s an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute. In 2007, he gave air-quality sensors to students in Accra, Ghana. Within two weeks the students began changing their daily routes to avoid exposure to air pollutants.
There are a host of other applications, from tracking harmful algal blooms, to monitoring invasive species in California’s Santa Monica mountains, to measuring earthquake aftershocks. Paulos joins us on Word of Mouth to explain how we can all become citizen scientists.
Seed Magazine: The Tricorder Arrives
Living on Earth: Where Have All the Fireflies Gone?
Word of Mouth: Become a Citizen Scientist!
(Photo courtesy of Eric Paulos)
Electronics in the School Room
By Ellen Grimm on Wednesday, March 18, 2009.More and more students these days are carrying around cellphones and ipods.
And public schools are trying to find ways to deal with all of it.
Many administrators says the electronics have no place in the classroom.
But some are embracing the devices as tools for learning.
NHPR Correspondent Ellen Grimm reports.
The Wristwatch, R.I.P.
By Avishay Artsy on Wednesday, December 24, 2008.Cell Phone Novels
By Virginia Prescott on Thursday, December 18, 2008.
A new trend has rocked the Japanese literary world: cell phone fiction. In Japan, nearly everyone uses a mobile phone to shop, surf the Web, play video games and watch live TV. Now cell phones are being used to pen, or rather, type, novels. More than a million titles of these novels are available online for free download. The books are filled with slang and emoticons, and the authors often use one-name monikers and keep their identities hidden.
Respected authors fear that cell phone novels may mark the end of Japanese literature, and yet they’ve become the unexpected titans of Japanese publishing. Last year cell phone novels held four of the top five positions on Japan’s literary bestseller list.
Dana Goodyear is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she wrote about this new genre for the cellular age. She joins us from her home in Los Angeles with more.
(Photo by Wonderlane)
