By Jaylyn Burns
The gadget company Samsung is trying to patent a new filtering software that allows parents to spy on their children's cell phones. The software flags to the parent when the child may be looking at porn or sexting. (The technology itself is pretty cool: it detects how much skin is showing in an image and if it’s too much, the picture goes straight to the parent, while the child gets blocked from viewing it.
The software is supposed to help parents keep their children from looking at porn and/or sexting. Personally, I do not agree with giving parents the ability to spy on their children. Children are entitled to a certain amount of privacy when it comes to their phones. Parents: if you think your child is looking at porn, talk to her about it. If you don’t trust that your child is mature enough to handle it, then don’t give her a phone with picture messaging on it. Simple as that.
More context from New Scientist:
Read more...So can parents say goodbye to unwanted flesh on phones? Perhaps, but there's no reason to think the system will actually be implemented - companies register thousands of patents that never see the light of day. Even if Samsung does develop the software, they might find bare skin detection a tricky problem - the inventors of a recent Chatroulette filter had to resort to more advanced methods for keeping porn at bay.
I love texting. I enjoy having time to think about what I’m going to say, plus why waste minutes when I have unlimited text messages. But does my love for texting have anything to do with my gender or ethnicity? I doubt it, but according to a recent study African-Americans and women talk and text more than any other group.
The study released by Nielsen Co.—media tracking firm—showed that blacks talk an average of 1,331 minutes per month, whites talk 647 minutes, Hispanics 826 minutes, and Asians and Pacific Islanders use 692 minutes per month.
According to the study there might be a reason why phone usage is higher with blacks then any other race. “One reason blacks talk more on cell phones may be that fewer of them have home phones, but this hardly explains the whole difference. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 25 percent of black adults had only cell phone service last year, compared with 21 percent for white adults.”
As if we didn’t already know, women dominate men when it comes to talking, so it’s not surprising that we surpass men in the amount of minutes and text messages we use per month. Women talk 22 percent more than men. That's 856 minutes per month compared to 667 a month. We also text 34 percent moreeee...oh woops. I just got a text.
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UPDATE May 12, 2010: The 2010 Digital Media and Learning Competition winners have been announced and thanks to our supporters, Youth Radio/YMI has won a $200,000 grant for our Mobile Action Lab! Check out all the details here.
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It’s obvious that teens text frequently. Phones are being made to make texting much easier and faster by adding a full keyboard. But just how often do teens text? A study done by Nielsen breaks down just how many texts a teen sends in a day and in an hour.
Nielsen, best known as the people behind the TV ratings that always manage to cancel your favorite show, also has a division that measures and analyzes how people interact with digital platforms. The company analyzed over 40,000 cell phone bills to get a better understanding what customers spend their money on.
“American teenagers are using 3,146 messages a month, which translates into more than 10 messages every hour of the month that they are not sleeping or in school. Even the under 12 segment are sending 1,146 messages per month, which is almost four text messages per waking hour that they are not at school.”
The study also points out that text messages increased during the holidays such as, Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. Caleb Johnson from Switched points something even more interesting that benefits cell phone providers.
What does all this mean? Well, it means parents might want to consider talking with their kids about their texting habits. But it's also not great news for American cell phone service providers. Why? Well, these kids are sending plenty of text messages, but they're doing it for practically nothing. Looking at the Nielsen data, only a very small percentage of people use the pay-as-you-text method, which costs about $0.20 per message. Instead, they purchase plans that cost $10 or $20 a month and thus lower the cost of sending a message to about $0.01. It's like paying for a magazine subscription at a huge discount in lieu of purchasing each issue at a newsstand. You'll pay a large chunk on the front end, but it saves money in the long term.
I know my cell phone provider is benefiting from my texting addiction. I’m constantly texting, that is why I bought a phone with a full keyboard—making my texting addiction much pleasant and easier.
A study linking cell phone usage to brain tumors was conducted by IARC—International Agency for Research on Cancer—and is expected to come out soon.
“The WHO’s Interphone investigation’s results showed, "a significantly increased risk" of some brain tumors" related to use of mobile phones for a period of ten years or more," via Fox News
It’s been said that the more someone uses his/her cell phone, the higher the probability that the person will develop a brain tumor -- but there hasn’t been a definitive study that shows the numbers and substantiates this theory. Will this study be able to prove the link? We'll just have to wait and see the details.
Cell phones are addictive for young people like me. It’s hard to put a cell phone down despite knowing that you’re harming yourself. Hopefully this study can help us break that addiction.
Previously:
- Cell Phone Boarding Passes: The Latest "Green Tech"
- Cell Phones As Wallets?
- Teen Drivers And Texting
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“It was like my life and it’s just gone”
Bold as it may sound, to many teenagers today, their cell phone is their most prized possession. Last week, the servers for T-Mobile’s Sidekick went down causing all customers to permanently lose all information from their phones. Many Sidekick owners, like Shakiyla Williams felt betrayed. “This is my last sidekick” Williams said.
The Sidekick is a phone marketed mostly to teenagers with its main selling point being its ability to access AIM, a popular instant messaging service.
What angers many teens about the loss of their information is that it should have been entirely preventable. A cell phone is an invaluable repository of personal information which is usually built up over time and saved on the phone. Danger, the developers of the Sidekick, assumed their customers were likely to lose this information by breaking or losing their phones. One of their solutions to the problem of presumably irresponsible customers was to save the information on the internet, to insure the fate of a phone’s information was not linked to the phone itself. Ironically enough this systems tragic downfall was irresponsibility, not from teenage customers, but from the company itself. Unfortunately for Danger and T-Mobile, liability to lose all information at no fault of the customers is not a very marketable feature on a phone.
Conventional wisdom has come around to the consensus that driving while doing just about anything with a mobile phone is a BAD IDEA. In California this even led to the passage of a law banning teen drivers from using a cell phone- even with a hand's free kit.
Now two new studies on the driving habits of teens were announced today by the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and State Farm insurance, suggesting that in families where parents set clear rules about how mobile phones can be used in cars the chance of disaster is greatly lowered:
The studies are based on the nationally-representative National Young Driver Survey of more than 5,500 teenagers. The first study shows that teens who said their parents set clear rules, paid attention to where they were going and whom they were with, and did so in a supportive way were:
* half as likely to crash
* twice as likely to wear seat belts
* 71 percent less likely to drive while intoxicated
* 30 percent less likely to use a cell phone while driving
A link to everybody's favorite ultra-graphic anti-texting PSA, and info on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Distracted Driving Summit after the jump.
San Francisco Airport is one of 30 US airports—and the only airport in the Bay Area—to use a cell-phone boarding pass system. This new system allows passengers to download their boarding pass onto their cell phone and have the two dimensional barcode read by an electronic boarding pass scanner. This system is free and most importantly paperless. According to TSA—Transportation Security Administration—this system has been in place at SFO for two weeks and has gotten little attention, with only 60 to 100 passengers per day taking advantage of the new system.
Jared Miller, Continental's senior director of customer self service, insists there have not yet been any issues with the program at SFO. He said if a passenger's phone dies, or has trouble loading the bar code, they can have a customer service agent at the airport print out a regular paper pass for them. Via The Oakland Tribune
Cell phones are no longer just for calling or texting, they're quickly becoming the center of our identity—at least in other countries. In Japan, cell phones are used to make electronic payments, open doors, access subways, and serves as a potential second form of ID. I’m not sure if we’ll ever see this country adopt Japan’s lifestyle but if it does it would mean we won’t have to carry as much.
Seeing SFO go “Green” is a reminder of how desperate this country is to have its culture change in a way that helps the environment. Like Cash for Clunkers, which allowed people to trade their 25 year old cars for a brand new and more gas effcient vechicle. That program was a triple dip that helped out the automobile industry, the environment, and rewarded participants with the means to drive off the lot in a brand new car.
Whatever the case is, one thing is clear, going green is in for America.
Carrying a cell phone has become a must for me—without it, I’m lost. My phone is my main source of communication. Phones are now more than just a tool for communication; they’re the wallets of the future.
Japan—a country that is far more advanced in mobile technology than the United States—has phones that allow users to make electronic payments, open doors, access subways, clip coupons, and serve as a potential second form of identification.
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