Story Archives of 'cell phones'

A Cell Tower in Every Home

By Virginia Prescott on Monday, November 17, 2008.

Let me go out on a limb here and assume you’ve been the victim of bad cell phone coverage from time to time. Dropped calls, dead spots -- these are the small annoyances of modern day communication. And depending where you live, you might even get bad cell coverage in your own home -- a truly frustrating scenario. Well, the wireless companies are working on a solution to this issue. They’d like to put cell phone towers in all our homes. Well, not really full-sized towers. They’re devices about the size of a breadbox that provide coverage throughout the house.

Roger Crockett wrote about the contraptions for Businessweek, and he joins us Word of Mouth to fill us in. Roger is the Chicago deputy bureau manager for Businessweek. He covers telecommunications, technology, and e-commerce.

Click here to read Roger Crockett’s article on home cell phone towers.

(Photo by Jeff Kubina)

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Txting: The Gr8 Deb8

By Virginia Prescott on Thursday, October 23, 2008.

Sending a text message has become second-nature to so many of us that we barely think about it any more. Running late for an appointment? Send a quick text. Want to let someone know you’re thinking of them? Zip off a couple lines.

It’s become an accepted mode of communication - getting a message out without the time or disruption of a phone call. It’s amazing to think that just a few years ago hardly any of us were texting. Today about three billion people on the planet – half the world’s population – have cell phones. And at least a trillion text messages are sent each year.

The question of how all the abbreviations and vowel-less words used to text will affect our language hangs over us. Is texting eroding the way we write and speak? David Crystal is a linguist and author of over a hundred books on linguistics and other topics. His most recent is Txting: The Gr8 Deb8. He argues that all the popular beliefs about texting are wrong, or at least debatable. And that far from hindering literacy, texting may be helping it. He joins Word of Mouth from his home in Holyhead, North Wales.

(Photo by vossjose)

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Is Texting Affecting Our Language?

By Avishay Artsy on Monday, October 20, 2008.

Text messaging has suffered a bad rap ever since cell phone shorthand made its way into our written and spoken language. The media has done its part, playing up reports that students were handing in papers written in textese, and that professors were becoming accepting of it.

Cell Phone Disco

By Avishay Artsy on Tuesday, September 30, 2008.

Tired of text messages and voicemail? Amsterdam's Informationlab has found another use for your cell phone — creating digital art.

Can Cell Phones Cause Cancer?

By Virginia Prescott on Tuesday, September 9, 2008.

In May, when Senator Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with brain cancer, rumors circulated that his malignant brain tumor was linked to habitual cellphone use. The rumors prompted CNN's Larry King Live to devote an entire show to the subject.

Millions of people worldwide spend a lot of time with cell phones held up to their ears, and concern over whether cellphones cause or contribute to brain tumours is an issue that keeps surfacing. Maybe you saw the viral video of kids popping corn with their cell phones. Millions of people did, before it was discovered to be a hoax created by the makers of Bluetooth headsets.

We wanted to find out what the latest research can tell us about the potential health risks of radio frequency radiation. Melinda Wenner is a science writer based in New York. She wrote about cell phones and the possible link to cancer in the Canadian magazine The Walrus.

(Photo by Billie)

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Here's What's Awesome: Crime-solving Bees, Walkable Neighborhoods

By Brady Carlson on Friday, August 1, 2008.

Soda Can top

Word of Mouth is on the air Monday through Thursday, so on Fridays we take to the blog, to bring you "Here's What's Awesome." The name is tongue-in-cheek, but the links are, well... awesome.

Saving Lives, One Bottle At A Time?

Parking With Your Phone

By Avishay Artsy on Saturday, July 12, 2008.

Know what it's like to circle around for blocks, hoping desperately to locate a parking spot? It's a frustrating feeling, to be sure. Two years ago in San Francisco, a 19-year-old was stabbed in a fight over a parking space.

Dance-Powered Cell Phones

By Avishay Artsy on Friday, June 27, 2008.

Researchers are on the prowl for alternative sources of energy, and they're finding that the kinetic energy produced by our bodies might be the perfect source.

Digital Detectives

By Virginia Prescott on Thursday, May 15, 2008.

When you picture a stereotypical detective, it can be hard to shake the image of Sherlock Holmes clutching a big magnifying glass, looking for clues. But these days, if you’re out to solve a tricky crime, you may be better served with a laptop computer than the old-fashioned tools of the trade. Today on Word of Mouth, we meet two men whose detective work revolves around ones and zeroes.

Hany Farid is revolutionizing the field of digital image forensics – that’s the art of telling when a photograph has been faked. Modern technology is making it easier and easier for the average person to manipulate an image, and it’s getting harder and harder to detect the fakes. Hany’s job is to keep up with the technology and create tools that can separate the real from the phony. He’s professor and associate chair of Computer Science at Dartmouth College, and he has an article about his work in the June issue of Scientific American.

We also talk with Richard Mislan, assistant professor of Computer and Information Technology at Purdue University. He recently organized the first-ever Mobile Forensics World Conference in Chicago. It looked at the ways police can glean information from confiscated cell phones to help them solve crimes.

(Photo by József Sasvári)

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A New Phobia for the Wireless Age

By Andrew Walsh on Monday, April 14, 2008.

Word of Mouth intern Jacob Eaton has introduced us to a new phobia for the 21st Century: "Nomophobia" -- the fear of being out of cell phone contact.

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