Group items tagged

"The RAC found 39% of the 1,109 drivers it surveyed were distracted by changing compact discs, fiddling with sat-navs and using mobile phones. "

"A safety device which prevents drivers using mobile phones by automatically intercepting calls and text messages when they are moving has been unveiled. The software tells callers the person they are trying to reach is driving and asks them to leave a message. "

"The recent completion of the first of several planned undersea cables connecting East Africa to broadband Internet has raised hopes that high-speed Web access will increase here. "

Not relevant directly for medicine, but very good overview of growing mobile phone use in East Africa

"Sneaky people and technology can turn your cell phone against you. Cell phone spyware makes it easy for someone to eavesdrop on your conversations, intercept text messages and identify your location. And you may never know it's happening, experts say."

"African entrepreneurs have successfully capitalised on cascading prices of digital technologies and brought widespread use of mobile phones, internet applications and media products to the doorsteps of many Africans. Local entrepreneurs have built services and infrastructure based on ordinary people's ability to pay. Productivity gains and higher incomes resulting from these services mean that people can afford them. The profitability of these companies invites competition, which lowers costs for consumers and leads to even greater innovations as competitors try to outdo one another. And competition prevents abuses."

"An emerging set of tools is making it easier than ever to track and compile all sorts of "data" and display it in a way that's relatively easy to understand. You can now point your mobile phone at a street and instantly get ratings for restaurants. Or type in your address and find reports of crimes that may have occurred in your neighborhood. It's even possible to track emotions on a national and global scale."

phone apps for tracking health data (cached version of WSJ article)

This article suggests that people on phones would NOT be annoying. I doubt that. I think the phones would be a good money maker and that's all they care about. Although, there are plans on limiting the number of calls that can be simultaneouslly placed.

A mobile phone-based health project is helping the Peruvian military to keep disease at bay.

A mobile phone-based health project is helping the Peruvian military to keep disease at bay.

"What IBM has shown is that with some simple off-the-shelf components and some clever software, telemedicine can give patients back one of the most precious things their treatment takes from them: their time."

But not everyone on dialysis now needs to visit the hospital every other day. Jonas Drawitsch lives 40km from Heidelberg's children's clinic but thanks to a system set up by IBM, he puts in his six hours of dialysis during his sleep and doctors check his progress at a distance. Every day Jonas takes his blood pressure and weighs himself. The measurements go via bluetooth to a mobile phone which then sends the information to the hospital.

2003 "''Flash mobs'' consist of dozens or even hundreds of well-wired folks who gather suddenly, perform some specific but innocuous act, then promptly scatter. A few weeks ago, for instance, a mob formed at a Toys ''R'' Us in Times Square, stared at an animatronic Tyrannosaurus rex, then fell to the floor with screams and a waving of hands before quickly dispersing. Such events, which have also taken place in San Francisco, Minneapolis, London and Berlin, are getting attention partly because they're weird and partly because the ''mobs'' organize by way of mobile phones and pagers and Web sites. Some observers have written off the phenomenon as a slightly annoying fad, the techno equivalent of streaking. Others detect a ''social revolution'' in the offing. "

According to Alexander Vo, an associate professor in preventive medicine and community health, telemedicine is a helpful measure to be taken in order to help patients from a remote location. However, he says that problems have arose when telemedicine was used in relation to diaster relief. One example given is the earthquake in Haiti, when many technologies were donated by companies in order to promote the use of telemedicine for immediate disaster relief. Vo says that this technology was not used, especially within the first few weeks, because the locations were staffed with enough doctors. Further, even if the technology could be used, the doctors were not trained to use it, and there was no time to train them at that moment.Only after the voluntary doctors went back to their home towns could they be of any use in regard to telemedicine. The patients in need of special care could then connect with the doctors in the remote areas, however, there could be problems if the internet was down, or if the necessary hardware was destroyed due to the diaster. Even though the egagement in telemedicine was not the best for Haiti, it was seen to be of great help for a hurricane in Texas recently. Vo explains that telemedicine was successful because it was already established within the communities. The technology was available throughout the affected areas, and could be put to use immediately. The use of cell phones was also crucial, because many of the patients had pre-established access to doctors who could help diagnose and alleviate the problems of the patients in affected areas. Because the protocols were established prior to the disasters, the care was planed out to be available to the most amount of patients. Plans in advance can also taken into account the problem of damaged internet service, cables, and networks, and determine what the best plan of action is given the situation. Thus, the relief would allow the affected area to be back on track quickly, and efficientl

"The project will exploit the current infrastructure consisting of Internet cafes in larger towns, mobile phones available to most families or communities, and radios that are an important way of providing information to people. We expect the following outcomes: "

This project looks interesting. I wonder if any issues have arisen from it. It was only established this year as a service project of W3C, but what are the potential issues here?

""It really is quite a program to seize control of all the new forms of media, one by one," said Jeremy Goldkorn, editor and publisher of Danwei.org, an English-language Web site about the Chinese media and Internet that is currently blocked in China. "It has been a bad half year for censorship.""

This news article specifies the considerations of using a cellphone to make secure payments. In order to make secure transactions using one's cellphone, a certain procedure must take place. Of course, the mobile phone must have access to the internet, and will go to any website of their choice in which they find something they want to buy, or to simply pay a bill. Also, this can be done using an "application" such as PayPal. PayPal is technically more secure considering that a consumer would only have to write they're credit card information in one place. But with so many people using it, it becomes easier for hackers to access this data, especially with vast quantities of money in the savings. Afterwards, no matter which way you started a transaction, encryptions are always used to transform the that so that only the consumer and business company can read the transaction with the decryption. One possible stakeholder is the consumer whom is indeed effected by making payments using their mobile devices. It's only been recently that they began trusting the internet using a computer, but using the internet via cellphone is a new change that must take time to adjust to. But they are effected since hackers can easily take their money. Plus a third party, can occur during the process of the transaction while the consumer is using another window, and might not notice that they're information is not only going to the business itself. These are all issues of security.