Random Accesses

The screens on many mobile phones can leave a user feeling distinctly vision impaired, especially if her attention is divided between tapping virtual buttons and walking or driving. Fortunately, engineers at Google are experimenting with interfaces for Android-powered mobile phones that require no visual attention at all. At Google I/O, the company's annual developer conference held in San Francisco last week, T.V. Raman, a research scientist at Google, demonstrated an adaptive, circular interface for phones that provides audio and tactile feedback.

"We are building a user interface that goes over and beyond the screen," says Raman. Often, eyes-free interfaces are employed for blind users, but Raman, who himself is blind, assures that these interfaces have much broader implications. "This is not just about the blind user," he says. "This is about how to use these devices if you're not in a position to look at the machine."

Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/22731/

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. recently unveiled its new, innovative solar powered full-touch screen phone, the "Blue Earth." The Blue Earth phone is also part of "The Blue Earth Dream: Eco-living with SAMSUNG mobile," an environmental initiative by the company to reduce its CO2 emissions, eliminate its use of hazardous substances and encourage cell phone recycling.

Symbolizing a flat, shiny pebble, Blue Earth can charge with the solar panel located on the back of the phone, generating enough power to complete a call.
The phone is made from a recycled plastic prodct called PCM, which is made from water bottles. The packaging for Blue Earth is designed to be small and light, is made from recycled paper and comes with a 5-star energy efficient charger that uses standby power lower than 0.03W. The phone and charger are also free from harmful substances such as brominated flame retardants, beryllium and phthalates.

Source: http://www.livescience.com/environment/090221-solar-cell-phone.html

The iPhone is the hottest platform around, leading some small-time developers to overnight riches and spawning over ten thousand apps in only a few months. But without knowledge of Objective-C or the intricacies of the iPhone SDK, many talented designers have no way of getting their wares onto the App Store.

Today, Viximo has released a landmark new development platform called VixML that allows talented designers to create basic applications with a minimal amount of programming knowledge. The new development platform could easily turn into one of the most important tools for novice iPhone developers, and with the the tagline “this way to iPhone awesomeness”, it’s clear that Viximo has high expectations.

VixML is based on the XML markup language, which may still be intimidating enough to scare off some prospective designers but is nowhere near as complex as an actual programming language. Using a number of pre-designated tags, the VixML WYSIWYG SDK and emulator, designers can create rich, multimedia mini-apps in a matter of days that would have previously taken weeks or months of programing.

Source: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/05/vixml-a-revolutionary-new-iphone-development-platform-for-the-masses/

The mobile phone will become the primary means of Internet access across the globe, and DRM will be well on its way out the door by 2020, according to a survey of Internet leaders, activists, and analysts. Those are just two of the trends predicted by a panel of experts surveyed by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in order to get a feeling for where key influencers feel technology is going over the next decade or so. In addition to DRM and mobile phones, these experts also believe that we will be more hyperconnected than ever and that people will become more transparent, but that social tolerance will likely get worse.

Pew asked 578 Internet "activists, builders, and commentators" their opinions on social, political, and economic life in the year 2020, in addition to 618 stakeholders, for a total of 1,196 participants.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081215-the-internet-of-2020-more-cellphones-intolerance-less-drm.html

Mobile broadband speeds could hit a blistering 42Mb/sec as early as next year, according to Ericsson's chief technology officer.

The idea seems far-fetched given that even the fastest dongles currently hover at around 7.2Mb/sec, but according to John Cunliffe, the technology to smash that barrier is just around the corner.

"If you look at what's actually happening, the fastest service in the UK at the moment is 7.2Mb/sec, but we can easily see how we get to 14Mb/sec by improving the codes using the modulation," he tells PC Pro. "After that there are two steps that can boost speed..”

Source: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/240672/mobile-broadband-to-hit-42mbsec-in-2009.html