Interesting things about mobile phones, but not necessarily smartphones, Florida photos from my phone and things that just make life interesting !

Wireless emergency alert texts going live this month on AT&T, Verizon, and other carriers

The Verge By Adi Robertson on May 14, 2012

A nationwide system of extreme weather and other emergency alerts is set to go live this month on all major US carriers. The wireless emergency alerts (WEA) system is a free location-based service that sends short texts to subscribers who are currently in areas experiencing tornadoes, flash floods, earthquakes, or other disasters. AT&T, Cellcom, Cricket, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, US Cellular, and Verizon Wireless are all participating; Sprint began testing its system late last year.

When the system goes live, customers will be automatically signed up to receive three types of text: presidential alerts for national emergencies, AMBER alerts for missing children, and the aforementioned weather alerts, although they can opt out of all but the presidential messages. In some cases, users may need to update their phones to accept the specialized text messages; more information is available on the CTIA’s site.

For the most part, the texts will simply alert readers to the situation and urge them to seek more information using radio, web, or television; in particularly dangerous situations, they might include instructions like “seek shelter immediately.” This alert system, a collaboration between carriers, the National Weather Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and other government organizations, isn’t meant to replace any of the other warning methods, and it’s good to see emergency services utilizing a widespread and (almost) always-on communication network.

Now 4 billion people know the joy of txt

  • The humble SMS is 20 years old… and a far more important invention than the flashier inventions that have followed it.

Here’s a question: what’s bigger and far more important than Facebook? Hint: it’s very low-tech and doesn’t need a smartphone or even aninternet connection. And this year marks its 20th birthday, which means that in internet time it’s 140 years old. Oh, and it doesn’t involve LOLcats either.

Got it yet? It’s SMS – text messaging to you and me. Or txt msng, if you prefer. Two-thirds of the world’s population – that’s over 4 billion people – have access to it because that’s the number of people who have mobile phones, and even the cheapest, clunkiest handset can send SMS messages. It’s had a much bigger impact on people’s lives than anything dreamed up in Silicon Valley.

Interestingly, Silicon Valley played almost no role in it. SMS emerged on our side of the Atlantic and was the brainchild of the kind of European intergovernmental initiative that drives Ukip nuts. The first mobile phoneswere analogue devices, and the market was bedevilled by incompatible technologies and protocols – rather like the early market in fixed-line telephony in the United States before the AT&T monopoly was established. But in 1982 a European telephony conference decided to tackle the problem. It set up the Groupe Spécial Mobile (GSM) committee and established a group of communications engineers in Paris.

Five years later, 13 European countries signed an agreement to develop and deploy a common mobile telephone system across Europe. The result was GSM – a unified, open, standard-based mobile network larger than that in the United States. The first GSM call was made by the Finnish prime minister in 1991, and the first GSM handsets were approved for sale in May 1992.

The idea for SMS emerged during the GSM project. It was based around a really neat trick – to transport messages on the signalling paths needed to organise telephony during periods when those control channels were quiet. This was a fantastic idea because it meant that there was no extra cost involved in transporting the messages. The only restriction was that they had to be short – no more than 160 seven-bit characters. So SMS was built into the GSM system from the beginning.

The strange thing was that almost nobody paid any attention at first. As an early mobile phone adopter (I could never understand why telephones had to be tethered to the wall like goats), I noticed SMS but thought it feeble; it looked like a truncated email. And it appeared that most other mobile users thought the same: what could one possibly do with 160 characters? As a result, SMS use remained low for years.

The reason for this became obvious only with hindsight. In the early days of mobile phones only adults could have them – because they were only available on contract and you had to be over 18 to qualify. And adults didn’t seem to know what text messages were for.

Then, in 1996, something changed: pay-as-you-go sim cards were introduced. Suddenly teenagers could acquire mobile phones. And when they got them, boy did they know what SMS was for. It was a tipping point. The graph turned skywards, and it’s been going in that direction ever since. SMS is now the world’s most intensively used data communication technology. One source claims that over 6 trillion texts were sent in 2010, for example, and that was more than triple the number sent in 2007.

The story of GSM and SMS has interesting lessons for technology policy. GSM came about largely because of Europe-wide governmental action: the establishment of a continent-wide technical standard effectively created an enormous industry and gave Europe a significant lead in mobile telephony. So the right-wing mantra that governments should keep their noses out of technology policy and leave it to the market is sometimes wrong.

Second, the story of SMS shows that the people who effectively invent a technology – in the sense of determining its use and making it viable – are not so much the engineers who design it as the consumers who discover what it’s really for. The telephone was originally conceived as a broadcast medium, whereas radio was conceived as a point-to-point medium. Exactly the opposite turned out to be true in both cases. And it was teenagers who “invented” SMS.

Finally, we need to stop being dazzled by the tech sensation du jour(Facebook, Twitter, Angry Birds, OMGPOP etc) and focus instead on something mundane that really works, reaches everyone, providesvaluable services for poor people, exploits nobody and is based on a sustainable business model.

New Service Will Enable Customers to Send 911 Short-Code Messages to Emergency Response Centers

Verizon press release

New Service Will Enable Customers to Send 911 Short-Code Messages to Emergency Response Centers

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., May 3, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Demonstrating its continued commitment to advancing public safety, Verizon Wireless is taking steps toward offering many of its customers a new way to communicate with 911 call centers run by public safety officials. The company announced today that it has selected TeleCommunication Systems Inc., of Annapolis, Md., to participate in an initiative that will enable customers to send 911 SMS (Short Message Service) texts to the call centers, which are known as public-service answering points, or PSAPs.

While consumers should always first try to contact a 911 center by making a voice call, this enhanced SMS service, when deployed, will offer an alternative for customers on the Verizon Wireless network who are deaf or hard of hearing and cannot make voice calls or who could be placed in additional danger by speaking.

“Verizon is at the forefront of 911 public-safety innovations, and today’s announcement is another step in making SMS-to-911 service available to those who cannot make a voice call to 911,” said Marjorie Hsu, Verizon Wireless vice president of technology. “Our company is continuing its long-standing commitment to address the needs of public safety and our customers by offering another way to get help in an emergency by using wireless technology.”

The company is working on plans to make the new capabilities available to select PSAPs by early 2013. Verizon plans to use its existing CDMA SMS network for 911 text notifications. The new service will be offered to Verizon Wireless customers who have a text-capable phone and a service plan that includes text messaging.

“TeleCommunication Systems has worked closely with the FCC over the past two years to develop its innovative technology for SMS to 911,” said Maurice B. Tose, president and CEO of TCS. “As the preeminent U.S. supplier of SMS and pioneer in wireless E911, TCS is well positioned to enable Verizon in advancing its public safety commitment.”

Verizon is working with others in the communications industry, PSAPs, the Federal Communications Commission and other federal and state agencies in the eventual deployment of this new service aimed at giving consumers new ways to communicate with designated public safety agencies.

Zidisha: The Online Micro-loan Platform That Kiva Wants to Be Like

by  at Mashable

Zidisha is the world’s first direct peer-to-peer micro-lending platform, providing Internet users the chance to directly loan money to entrepreneurs in the developing world.

Sound familiar? You may be thinking of Kiva, a much larger online micro-lending platform that has channeled more than $300 million of online loans to the developing world. Kiva recently launched Kiva Zip, which eliminates the middleman by sending loans directly to mobile phones — just likeZidisha does.

Zidisha has never used intermediaries. Borrowers return interest to their lenders, rather than sending part of their profits to a third party. The only portion of loans that don’t go directly to the borrowers is a transaction fee, which they pay from their loan.

Zidisha’s model allows lenders to develop a relationship with their loans’ recipient. As a lender, you can read the loan applications written by the small business owners, who have passed background checks. Borrowers share their stories, answer questions and establish the terms of the loan, including the repayment period and interest rate.

“Geography is becoming less and less of a barrier.”

“We’re proving that peer-to-peer can be repaid responsibly in the U.S.,” says Julia Kurnia, director of Zidisha. “People thought, ‘How do you know they’re going to be honest?’ We’re showing that it’s possible for poor people in developing countries to repay loans responsibly. They’re just as capable as you or I.”

In its two years of operation, Zidisha loan recipients have repaid more than 97% of loans. It has lent $193,441, financed more than 330 businesses and has more than 1,175 members around the world. Zidisha loans currently go to Indonesia, Kenya, Senegal and Burkina Faso, though the non-profit hopes to expand to more countries in the near future.

SEE ALSO: How Crowdsourcing Is Improving Global Communities

Zidisha’s model is made possible by the spread of Internet cafes, where business owners post their applications, and low-cost mobile technology, such as Kenya’s M-PESA. The mobile wallet — M for mobile, PESA is Swahili for money — allows Kenyans without bank accounts to receive loans.

“Geography is becoming less and less of a barrier,” Kurnia says. “A Paypal transfer over the Internet goes directly to a Masai villager’s cell phone and he doesnt have to leave his village. This wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago.”

One-third of Kenya’s GDP now goes through M-PESA transactions.

The impact of micro-loans is immediately visible. Ndeye Bineta Sarr (pictured above), one loan recipient from Senegal, used her $700 2009 Zidisha loan to buy an electric sewing machine, rent a workshop, hire her first employee and establish a fund large enough to fill a dozen client orders at once. Before her loan, she couldn’t work on more than two orders at a time. Sarr is now her household’s main earner, making enough money to send her three children, nieces and nephews to public school through the university level.

Aid officials aim to use apps and Twitter as new tools in disaster relief

Government will fund projects that explore how social networking technology can help rescue work

Smartphone apps, video game technology and Twitter feeds are to be recruited to help survivors of disasters as part of a British government scheme aimed at making increased use of social networking technology in rescue work after earthquakes, floods and famines.

The scheme will support projects with £48.5m of Department for International Development funding over three years out of existing aidfunds. Technologies to be explored as part of the project will include:

■ Mobile phone and satellite technology – already used in the wake of the 2010 Haiti earthquake – to track survivors and help deliver aid.

■ Twitter and social media channels to reach those affected, including direct guidance on medical issues.

■ Gaming technology to train people in disaster response scenarios.

■ Smart cards to deliver cash payments to those worst affected by disaster.

■ The use of Google Earth and e-mapping to locate people and disaster hotspots.

“The simple fact is that the frequency and severity of disasters will continue to increase and international governments need to stay one step ahead, encouraging a Tomorrow’s World culture,” said international development secretary Andrew Mitchell, who will outline his proposals at the World Bank on 20 April.

More Signs of Steep Text Message Erosion

Posted on Forbes, by Tero Kuittinen, 12/29/11

One of the pioneering text-messaging markets of late Nineties showed substantial declines in text-messaging during the key Christmas period. Customers of Finland’s dominant mobile carrier, Sonera, sent 8.5 Million text messages during the Christmas Eve of 2011. This is a surprisingly steep tumble from the 10.9 Million text messages sent during the Christmas Eve of 2010. The more youth-oriented operator called DNA witnessed a decline to 5.6 Million text messages from 5.9 Million text messages. Christmas Eve text messages traditionally form the biggest or second biggest SMS day of the year in many markets (eclipsed by New Year in some regions). A major winter storm hitting Scandinavia triggered YoY SMS growth on Christmas Day, demonstrating how national disasters still drive consumers towards old school text-messaging.

Signs of consumers moving on from text-messaging to social media, email and IP-based messaging systems started cropping up in 2011 in advanced SMS markets like Netherlands and Philippines. What we seem to be witnessing is a situation where those countries where SMS took off first during Nineties are now the first ones to see a steep decline in SMS usage.

In Hong Kong. the Christmas Day text message decline was nearly 14%. It does seem as though the SMS erosion rates in countries that originally pioneered the service are higher than most observers anticipated in early 2011. Possibly because new services such as mobile Facebook and Twitter are now widely adopted in the same markets where SMS took off after 1995.

Text-messaging boom started in the United States a couple of years after SMS vanguard nations in Europe and Asia. It’s quite possible that the SMS erosion will hit AT&T and Verizon in 2012 or 2013. The ambitious new messaging plans and more organic  Facebook/Twitter support of both Apple and Googlecould be the big threat for operator earnings growth in a year or two. As much as 20% of carrier earnings are derived from text-messaging. The fast fade of SMS usage in countries that were most obsessed with text-messaging tells us how difficult it is to project rates of decline of aging technologies – and how unfaithful consumers can be to services that they have loyally used for 15 years.

Twitter Adds Team Who Created Privacy Tools for Activists

Digits by Amir Efrati

Twitter on Monday announced the acquisition of a two-person startup called Whisper Systems, whose technology protected people’s mobile-phone calls and text messages from being obtained by third parties such as governments.

The deal terms weren’t disclosed. The acquisition led to speculation about what Twitter, an online-messaging service, might do with Whisper Systems founders Moxie Marlinspike and Stuart Anderson–who are well-known in computer security circles–and the technology they built exclusively for devices running on Google’s Android software.

Whisper Systems created a suite of services for human-rights activists or other privacy-conscious individuals, which were used by activists during the recent “Arab spring” actions. In a blog post, Marlinspike and Anderson said the services they created will “live on” though they had to temporarily shut them down.

Twitter acknowledged in a statement that Marlinspike and Anderson will join the company, without providing details. “As part of our fast-growing engineering team, they will be bringing their technology and security expertise to Twitter’s products and services,” the company said.

One piece of software from Whisper Systems, called RedPhone, encrypts people’s voice communications, while another called TextSecure scrambles text messages. A third Whisper service let people download applications from the Android Market without sending private information to the application developers, who sometimes require it.

The Whisper Systems acquisition caused concern among some privacy-minded individuals who don’t see how the startup’s services mesh with Twitter’s core function—helping people send public “tweets” or messages of up to 140 characters. Christopher Soghoian, a well-known privacy activist who uses Whisper Systems software, said that “it makes sense that Twitter wants to beef up their mobile security team,” but he’s concerned the service is being shut down, even if the founders say it is temporary.

“If you’re concerned about internet freedom,” he said, the app suite “is the first thing you’d give to an activist.”

Twitter, of course, also lets people broadcast tweets to a restricted group of individuals as well as send private “direct messages” to other Twitter users, and it has fought to inform users that the U.S. government was trying to obtain personal information about them.

Like other Web companies such as Facebook and Google, Twitter has had problems in the area of privacy and security. In March the Federal Trade Commission finalized a settlement with Twitter to resolve charges that it “deceived consumers and put their privacy at risk by failing to safeguard their personal information.”

Specifically, the federal agency had alleged that the company claimed to protect users’ information yet “serious lapses in the company’s data security allowed hackers to obtain unauthorized administrative control of Twitter, including both access to non-public user information and tweets that consumers had designated as private, and the ability to send out phony tweets from any account.”

As part of the settlement, Twitter agreed to outside monitoring of its information-security program for 10 years.

Text messaging is still the biggest earner for mobile operators – Research

Joy Online - Samuel Nii Narku Dowuona/Adom News/Ghana - Nov. 3, 2011

A study by UK-based Portio Research indicates that the worldwide mobile messaging was the highest earner in the industry, raking in US$179.2 billion in 2010 alone.

The report said mobile message was set to rake in more than US$200 billion this year, and go beyond S$300 billion by 2014.

It said SMS (short message service) has consistently claimed the top spot and has long helped mobile network operators significantly offset the effect of falling voice revenues.

“SMS alone generated US$114.6 billion worldwide in 2010, and it promises to continue to play a significant role in revenue terms in the coming years,” the report said.

The report noted that SMS had seen very successful, having generated approximately US$585 billion for operators worldwide since it was invented in the mid-1990s.

Portio forecasts that SMS was still set to earn those mobile networks another US$726 billion over the next five years, to year-end 2015.

It however pointed out that, with the changing dynamics of the mobile industry and growth trends, there were signs that one day SMS would no longer be the biggest among non-voice revenues, adding “we envisage that the growth of worldwide SMS revenue will slow post-2011.”

Portio said the long-term future of SMS was less certain, but for now, mobile network operators should focus on the fact that SMS would generate more than US$1 trillion over the next seven years.

The report said MMS (multimedia messaging service) retained its status as the world’s second most popular messaging service in 2010, generating some US$32.5 billion of revenue worldwide from a total of 249 billion MMS.

It also noted that mobile e-mail and mobile instant messaging (IM) are gaining popularity among subscribers.

The initial growth of mobile e-mail was driven by the enterprise segment, but lately - with the upsurge in smartphone penetration and discounted and unlimited data plans, among other things, the consumer segment has also started gaining momentum.

There were 480.6 million users of mobile e-mail services worldwide by the close of 2010, and it is projected that this customer base nearly quadruple by the end of 2015.

Worldwide revenues from mobile e-mail surpassed US$25 billion in 2010 and are projected to cross US$82 billion by end-2015.

Portio’s new research finds that the worldwide mobile instant messaging user base stood at 311.2 million in 2010, and user levels are expected to reach 1.6 trillion over the next five years.

Meanwhile, worldwide mobile IM revenue stood at US$6.8 billion in 2010, and was forecast to cross US$31 billion by the end of 2015.

Planet Text

Planet Text
Created by: MBA Online

FCC: GPS Mandated For Mobile Phones by 2018

Mobile Marketing Watch October 05, 2011 — By Michael

The Federal Communications Commission is drawing a line in the sand regarding GPS availability in mobile phones.

The FCC has ruled that all operators must integrate GPS into mobile phones by 2018.

“The Federal Communications Commission will require all telephone service providers to use accuracy standards based on GPS capable handsets, and Voice over the Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers will have to require new subscribers to use GPS enabled handsets to pinpoint the location of 911 calls, by 2018,” writes Travis Sanford of Courthouse News Service.

 While the new mandate sounds cumbersome in theory, in reality, the burdens to meet the new demands shouldn’t be terrific.

At current adoption rates, the FCC estimates that even without the new rules, 85 percent of cell phone users would have GPS capable handsets by 2018, thus minimizing the burden of complying with the new rules.

For the time being, cellular networks remain obligated by law to provide the location of 911 calls by way of GPS enabled handsets or from triangulating the caller’s location using only cell towers.

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