mobile Archive

A new report by Common Sense Media out today “revealed that more than 35% of teens admit to cheating with cell phones, and more than half admit to using the Internet to cheat.” Apparently teens don’t even think that these methods should be considered cheating. Frankly I am shocked it’s only 35% considering how few teens can make change without looking at the register for the amount. When I was in school we passed our abacus’ around to get the right answers.

The report says that kids are texting each other with answers during the exams along with storing notes on their phones. I guess I am confused – when I was in grad school, we had to leave our bags at the front of the room and could only have a bottle of water/drink that was clear, pens, pencils, etc. Clearly the professor could see if someone pulled out a mobile device.

Other key findings from the poll include:

• 41% of teens say that storing notes on a cell phone to access during a test is a serious cheating offense, while 23% don’t think it’s cheating at all.
• 45% of teens say that texting friends about answers during tests is a serious cheating offense, while 20% say it’s not cheating at all.
• 76% of parents say that cell phone cheating happens at their teens’ schools, but only 3% believe their own teen has ever used a cell phone to cheat.
• Nearly two-thirds of students with cell phones use them during school, regardless of school policies against it.
• Teens with cell phones send 440 text messages a week and 110 a week while in the classroom.

The LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) is a commuter rail line that runs from NYC out to the Hamptons. Yesterday on our sister blog InsideTransit, we wrote about a proposal from Senator Charles Schumer. Schumer has reached out to the Long Island Rail Road to get WiFi access for passengers noting, “make commuting more productive and pleasant.” Apparently Obama’s stimulus funds can be used to pay for the $1,000 per train fee to get the access installed. If we can get WiFi on a plane, why not on a train as well? It appears many other commuter rail lines around the world have WiFi access already. No word if commuters will have to pay for the WiFi access.

Robert Andrews from MocoNews is reporting that the UK regulator is investigating whether the UK’s National Rail violated any rules when they forced some third-party mobile apps developers offline while pushing their own new mobile train tracking application. Interestingly, the two apps that were pushed offline were free while the “official” app is just over $8.

The two apps in question are the  UK Train Times mobile web app and the MyRail iPhone app.

Robert notes, “Now the Office of the Rail Regulator (ORR) says it’s ‘investigating the supply of Real Time Train Information (RTTI) (by NRE) under the Competition Act 1998, having been made aware of concerns in this area including from members of the public, and from Members of Parliament on behalf of their constituents. RTTI is a key input into the provision of live train running information to passengers through media such as train information websites or services accessed over mobile phones.’”

I’d love to see real time tracking for bus and train service in the U.S. — it would be a great way to create more usable time for passengers.

After walking past the Moscone Center where the Apple WWDC is being held, I noticed the sign below outside a coffee shop. It is from Symbian – they are having a “hackathon” in San Francisco this afternoon. They are pushing hard to get iPhone developers to switch to Symbian. It appears if you show up you get a free Nokia phone. In addition, they are offering free food and video games — what more could a developer want?

Chip manufacturer and rock star creator Intel has announced the acquisition of Wind River for $884 million. Intel will acquire all outstanding Wind River common stock for $11.50 per share in cash. Wind River makes software for mostly mobile handsets and will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intel.

“This acquisition will bring us complementary, market-leading software assets and an incredibly talented group of people to help us continue to grow our embedded systems and mobile device capabilities,” said Renee James, Intel vice president and general manager of the company’s Software and Services Group.

Here’s a bit on Wind River from the acquisition release, “Wind River is a publicly held company with headquarters in Alameda, Calif., with more than 1,600 employees and operations in more than 15 countries. During its fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2009, Wind River reported annual revenues of $359.7 million.”

The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of summer. Wind River will report into Intel’s Software and Services Group, headed by Renee James.

I first reviewed the Skyfire mobile browser back last summer (check out the video demo below) and thought it was quite good. Many of you know that I use a Samsung Ace with Windows Mobile. I paid $25 for the Opera Mobile browser but frankly I rarely use Opera and have been using Skyfire nearly 100% of the time.

To be honest, the Skyfire browser freaking rocks. Last week I had a family pickup at the airport and while waiting for them to arrive, I opened Skyfire, loaded up YouTube and Hulu and watched all the videos I wanted in perfect streaming. I’ve written full blog posts in Drupal on Amtrak using Skyfire.  Oddly, I can’t seem to activate the Javascript functionality in Wordpress from Skyfire.

Today the company has announced the 1.0 release of the Skyfire browser. The company notes 1 million installed browsers to-date.

The only gripe I had with the browser was that each time you loaded it, it seemed to call home and “authenticate” which meant I lost where I was. This appears to be corrected in the current release.

I still believe that Microsoft would be smart to acquire or partner with Skyfire and replace the nasty IE mobile browser with Skyfire or Skyfire-like browsing. It really makes the Windows Mobile OS much more powerful.

Here’s my video demo from last summer:

My very close friend (and CN designer) Mark loves Elvis. He has all the albums, the Atari video games and the videos. Luckily when we speak he doesn’t sing any of Elvis’ songs to me. So it was with great excitement when I received a note about a new iPhone application launching today that is perfect for Mark.

The app is called “Elvis Mobile” and here’s a list of what’s included:

• An “Elvis Sightings” section allows fans to submit their Elvis pictures, taken with their iPhone, directly to www.elvis.com from anywhere in the world and simultaneously update their Facebook pages with the same information.
• An “Image” section will be updated weekly and will feature never-before-seen and rare pictures of the life and times of Elvis Presley.
• A “Video” section will be updated periodically with clips of Elvis and special Elvis events/happenings.
• A “News” section features the latest information on all things Elvis from www.elvis.com.
• A “Livecam” section gives fans a real-time look at Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion in Memphis, TN.
• A “Podcast” section allows users to listen to The Graceland Beat from Elvis Radio.

I don’t have an iPhone so I can’t enjoy the King as a I travel around the city. It looks like the application is free and even offers a Facebook Connect option so you can share your Elvis Sightings with your Facebook friends. Hmm, I wonder if Elvis is on Twitter?

As I use my iPhone 3G more and more, I notice more and more things that frustrate me about it. Please don’t get me wrong; I am not complaining about the iPhone; I am simply positing ideas as to what I would like to see added. As a Web developer, there are quite a few things I would love to see added to the device. If you know of any iPhone apps available that perform any of these tasks or actions, please let me know.

Let me make this clear, however: I will not be jailbreaking my iPhone. Even if the phone was not owned by the government (which it is), I would still have no interest in jailbreaking it.

Saving E-mail Attachments

Aside from photos (which you can save to your Camera Roll by holding your finger on the picture while viewing the e-mail message), there is no way to save attachments. Ultimately, my ideal situation would be to be able to save a Word, Excel or PDF document attached to an e-mail message, then upload it to my Web server.

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