Also known as Flash-SMS, the Silent SMS uses an invisible return signal, or “ping”. Developers from the Silent Services company, who created some of the first software for sending this type of SMS, explain: Sending a Silent SMS is like sending a normal SMS, except that the mobile does not see the message it has [...]
Text-messaging might be an effective way for health care providers to help young adults reduce heavy drinking, according to a study funded by a research grant by the Emergency Medicine Foundation. The findings will be published in the March 2012 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research and are now available online. “When we used [...]
It’s a taboo of the digital era: using a cellphone in a darkened theater. Some performance spaces, like Carnegie Hall, politely flash a notice reminding patrons to turn off electronic devices, while others, like the Alamo Drafthouse cinema chain in Texas, go so far as to eject violators. One new hall near Seattle is turning [...]
NEXT time you’re tapping off a private text message or sensitive email in a public place, consider this: someone could be reading every letter you type from up to 60 metres away. “We can be in the second floor of a building and read a phone on the ground,” says computer vision researcher Jan-Michael Frahm, [...]
A new medical identification bracelet that came on the market Tuesday uses text messaging to convey detailed medical information to first responders. The TextID bracelets from the medical jewelry company Hope Paige are engraved with an identification number that, when sent via text, can access an individual’s emergency information, including an extensive medical history, current medications [...]
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has launched an electronic food voucher pilot project — the first of its kind in the world to use mobile phone technology — to aid 1,000 Iraqi refugee families in Syria. Iraqi refugees living in Damascus will receive a text message on their mobiles providing a code enabling [...]
Trevor Prideaux, who was born without his left arm, used to have to balance the smartphone on his prosthetic arm or put it on a flat surface to use it. But now Mr Prideaux, 50, can call and text his loved ones without moving the mobile, which is embedded into his fibreglass and laminate limb. [...]
In early September, 29 community health workers (CHWs) began using Nokia cell phones as the latest tool in the fight against cholera. The specially programmed phones help track information about cholera patients in isolated communities throughout Haiti’s Central Plateau – an important step in gathering the up-to-date infection data that could prevent more deaths. In [...]
The ability to contribute to your favorite California political candidates will soon be just a text message away, after the state’s ethics agency took a step Thursday to bring campaigning into the 21st century. The state Fair Political Practices Commission voted to allow contributions by text message as long as the candidates report the identity [...]
Africa is in the midst of a technological revolution, and nothing illustrates that fact than the proliferation of mobile phones. Consider this: more Africans have access to mobile phones than to clean drinking water. In South Africa, the continent’s strongest economy, mobile phone use has gone from 17 percent of adults in 2000 to 76 [...]
