I recently did research into the relationship between movies and mobile phones. What I learned from this research is that there are three main ways in which movies and cell phones are linked:

1. People watch movies on their cell phones. More and more phones are getting advanced enough to be capable of watching streaming or downloaded movies. There have been a lot of recent announcements about this link between movies and mobile phones.
2. People film movies on their cell phones. This is just cool. Lots of people use their phone’s video camera to film movies. There are film festivals specifically for these phone-made films. I love the creativity of it!
3. The movie industry markets on phones. There are tons of different marketing ploys used by movie promoters that involve mobile phones include interactive mobile advertising.

Are there other links between cell phones and movies that I’m forgetting?

Tags: art, cell phones, entertainment, kathryn vercillo, mobile phones, movies, society, Technology, Wireless

There are some wild predictions floating around about the predicted growth of Android-based mobile phone handset sales. Analysts in the industry are saying that there will be more than ten million of these handsets sold before the year is over. That’s a 900% increase! Is it possible?

It’s probably true that there will be a large increase in Android-based handset sales between this year and last year. That is because there are more companies offering these phones and the increased availability combined with the slow start of sales when the product launched could lead to a large percentage difference in sales.

But will there really be ten million handsets sold? We’re already almost halfway through the year so some major sales would have to take place in the last half of 2009 to make that happen. I’d be surprised if sales go that high but it’ll be interesting to see how close they get. There are definitely some interesting new handsets on the horizon.

Tags: android, google, mobile, phones, predictions, Technology

There’s a reason that they call them smartphones. Today’s advanced mobile phones serve as mini-computers that can take a lot of things off of your mind. You hardly have to remember anything on your own because you can program your phone to remember things for you.

The most obvious example of this is phone numbers. It used to be that people memorized the phone numbers that they called most often. Most people today memorize one or two numbers in case of an emergency and simply let their phones remember the rest.

The fact that we rely on our phones to remember things could mean that we’re thinking less than we used to. We simply don’t have to stretch our brain muscles so much anymore because we’ve got a world of helpful information at our fingertips.

If we’re not thinking as much as before then we run the chance that we’re losing our ability to utilize common sense. A lot of people are lost without their phones – they can’t calculate tips or find their way around a strange location without mobile applications to guide them.

Is your cell phone doing your thinking for you?

Tags: cell phones, kathryn vercillo, mobile phones, society, Technology

Japanese authors started writing entire books on their mobile phones more than five years ago. As cell phone handsets have become more advanced, this method of writing has become increasingly popular all around the world. A new cell-phone-written book called The Warded Man has gained attention in the media and is making best seller lists in Europe. Is this a trend that’s going to really take off?

It’s not necessarily easy to write a book on your cell phone but it’s getting easier by the day. With new options for keyboards on mobile phones and mobile web access for research, the mobile phone now serves as a small laptop. Budding authors can use their commute times to write rough drafts of their books on these devices.

It will be interesting to see if a culture springs up around this. It certainly has in Japan. It’s called keitai and it’s filled with books written on cell phones which all have a similar approach to the style of writing that is used in the novels. This approach is dialogue-driven and short-form so that it can be easily read in chunks on a mobile device. Whether or not that trend will truly go global has yet to be seen.

Learn about the short history of mobile phone novels.

Tags: cell phone culture, cell phone novels, mobile, mobile phone books, warded man, yoshi

There are a lot of changes taking place in cell phone design today. Most people now have touchscreen phones in either slider style or candybar style. It’s not too common to see clamshell designs and the old 0-9 numbered keyboard anymore.

Another change that we’re seeing is the increasing use of OLED screens to replace LCD screens on these new phones. Although these new OLED screens are only in a handful of mobile phones at this time, it is believed by experts in the industry that over 50% of mobile phones will have them in the next few years.

There are many benefits to OLED screens. They are more vibrant and offer a better user experience. They are more energy-efficient which means that they produce less drain on the battery of your cell phone and are kinder to the environment. They are faster, thinner and more durable.

Not everything is good about the new screens, of course, but designers are trying to work out any kinks to make sure that we see rapid adoption of this technology in the mobile phone industry in the near future. Samsung seems to be the company leading the way in this area and is one to watch if this interests you.

Tags: cell phones, design, kathryn vercillo, mobile phones, oled, touchscreen

A lot of people who shop are browsers and impulse buyers. They go out to look around and to see if anything captures their attention and demands to be bought. Smart shoppers don’t do this. Smart shoppers make lists of what they actually need and buy only those items to make sure that they aren’t wasting money on frivolous purchases.

One way to enhance your ability to be this type of smart shopper is to consider the use of mobile classifieds for finding what you want to buy. Classifieds are a great way to find used products at a discount so that you save money on any purchase. Mobile classifieds are even better because they allow you to access the power of classified ads for just those purchases that you actually want to make.

The cool thing about mobile classified sites is that they allow you as a consumer to set up alerts that will notify you via your mobile phone whenever an item that you want has become available. So let’s say that you want a new bed; you enter that information into your account and then you’ll be notified by phone if someone posts a new bed to the site.

This allows you to identify what you actually need to buy. It lets the site do the work of searching for that item so that you don’t get distracted by ads for things that you don’t actually need to purchase. When you receive the alert, you can check the ad and see if it is what you’re looking for. If it is, you can immediately proceed with the purchase. What a great way to get discounted items without caving in to impulse shopping!

Tags: cell phones, classifed ads, kathryn vercillo, mobile classifieds, shopping, spending, Wireless

I think that the development of various mobile phone applications which we have seen grow in the past couple of years is a great thing. The iphone, Blackberry and new Android phones all offer phone users the chance to personalize their phones in such a way so as to make them more fun and efficient to use. However, I think that there are some mobile phone apps out there that are just a complete waste of time.

I’m not saying this just because there are phone apps that I don’t like. There are plenty of phone apps that I don’t use but can see the value of. For example, I am not someone who is interested in instant messaging from my mobile phone so I ignore all of those apps when I see headlines about them in the news. Nevertheless I think those could be valuable apps.

But there are some applications for phones out there that just seems absurd. There are applications that heighten your paranoia by informing you about crime rates in the area that you’re in. There are applications that remind you to pray at certain times of day which I think is something you should be doing without help from your phone. And there are applications that take features that you can already find on your phone elsewhere and try to market them in an appealing way even though you really don’t need the app to enjoy the features. It’s silly.

See my picks for ten of the most ridiculous mobile phone apps out there today. What do you think – agree or disagree on these?

Tags: cell phones, kathryn vercillo, mobile phone applications, mobile phones, phone apps, Technology, Wireless

I remember sometime in the late 1990′s when daily newspaper headlines constantly alerted us to the fact that kids in bad neighborhoods were being murdered for their sneakers. The point of these headlines was to highlight the senselessness of gang violence and other violent crimes. I was reminded of this recently when I did research into a rash of reports about people who have been assaulted for their mobile phones.

Just a cursory glance through the mobile phone news throughout the United States and the UK reveals that there are people all around the world who are getting physically attacked for the purpose of robbing their mobile phones. It’s hard to say in some of these cases whether the victim was assaulted for another reason and then the phone theft was secondary to the crime but it’s clear in at least a few of these instances that robbery of the phone was the sole motivation for the attack.

That’s some scary stuff. It reminds us of just how senseless most crime is. Phones are not that valuable and they’re easily accessible to almost anyone and yet we’ve got these crimes where mobile phones are valued as property to be stolen. It’s frightening and the reports are eye-opening as to what’s going on in the world around us.

Check out my whole article titled Today’s Thieves Want Your Mobile Phones.

Tags: cell phones, crime, law, legal, mobile phones, news, robbery, Technology, theft, violence

I really love looking at gadgets and technology that are only in concept form. I’m a huge fan of concept cars (like Terrafugia) and am also really interested in concept phones. Basically I think that any technology that’s only in concept form has the capability of showing us what things might look like in the future. And I think it shows off the kind of innovation that only a handful of designers in any field are actually capable of working on.

For example I’ve been reading lately about the Kyocera EOS Concept Phone. This is a phone that is made from a bendable polymer that allows you to reshape the phone. I don’t know that it would work well in actuality – you can just see it breaking over time – but I think it’s an idea that is going to be worked into handset design in some way in the future. Likewise the phone’s ability to self-charge using kinetic power is something we’re going to see in tomorrow’s mobile phones.

It’s not that I think every single concept phone brings about change and ends up being the device that we want in the future. It’s just that I think we start moving in a new direction with these types of products. Anything that’s different captures my attention and anything that’s cutting-edge in design manages to keep it for at least a little while!

Tags: cell phones, concept phones, creativity, design, innovation, kyocera, mobile phones, Technology

Quick – think of the ways that you could use your phone to catch a criminal. Obviously if you witnessed a crime in action then you could call the police with your mobile phone to report the crime. And if you were a victim in a situation such as a kidnapping then you might text to get out of trouble and get your captor caught. But did you know that there are quite a few other ways that criminals are caught because of cell phones?

Take a look at these ten ways cell phones catch criminals. You might be surprised by a few of them. For example, did you know that cell phones emit a certain smell and that the same dogs that are used to find drugs can be used to find cell phones in certain illegal situations? There is some strange stuff going on out there in the world of fighting crime.

Now, get creative … I’d love to hear your thoughts on the most creative ways that we, as average citizens, could use cell phones to catch criminals in the act so that they would be caught. Share in the comments …

Tags: criminal, criminal justice, justice, law, legal, mobile, phones, Technology, Wireless