Story Archives of 'cell phones'

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)

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)

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)