After a year in the making, Ontario’s ban on gadget use while driving goes into effect today, and includes texting, e-mailing, or otherwise being distracted by handhelds while behind the wheel. For the next three months, the Canadian province will undergo an “education period”, where I presume perps will get let off with a warning, but as of February 1, 2010 (around the same time as B.C.’s law), tickets will be issued for fines up to $500. Many states in the U.S. have passed similar laws, with a potential nationwide ban in the works, and both carriers and manufacturers are throwing in their support. These legal requirements will likely generate a lot of new revenue in handsfree accessories and applications, let alone the obvious benefits of safer roads overall. At theis rate, it’s only a matter of time before no matter where you drive, it’ll be illgal to phone-fiddle on the road.

[via Ministry of Transportation]

Making Faces allows every iPhone/iPod touch owner the ability to take or import photos and literally put a smile on anyone’s face, lift their eyebrows, pinch their nose and a host of other imaginative treatments, all in real time.  Users can produce new images with a few simple strokes of the GOO brushes and other tools that can, for instance, bulge, pinch or twirl the photo into funnier versions of the original.  Then you click on the Movie icon and can get a real time animation of what’s been done to the image. Users can also share all their GOO’d images via popular social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook using their respective upload applications.

Okay so this isn’t going to win any awards for productivity, but it might do for relaxation…

Myreef 3D, from raiX UG, is an App that does pretty much what you might think it does – give you an aquarium in your iPhone!

As I said, it’s not a productivity app, it’s one of those ones where you occupy a small wedge of time just watching the fishes, and feeding them (should you so wish). That said, it is relaxing – the graphics are superb, and do animate extremely well – each fish is scientifically correct apparently, based on how it should move in real life!

I suppose you might prop your iPhone up on your desk and get your own mini-aquarium going on, which listening to the iPod current playlist, which can be included as backing music. All in all, as far as chillout apps go, it’s a nice one!

You can get Myreef 3D from the App store, costing £1.79 in the UK.

Telecom Italia and Movincom, the Italian consortium of companies and service providers for the promotion of mobile retailing, have signed an agreement that will let Telecom Italia’s customers use their mobile phones to purchase a wide range of goods and services via Movincom. Starting in 2010, Telecom Italia will be building in an ad hoc application into its new Sim cards. Using this application, directly from their mobile phones, customers will be able to buy tickets for public transport and trains, pay for parking, purchase ski passes, buy tickets for a night out at the theatre or other events, and book hotel rooms. Payment for these services will make use of methods offered by banks who sign up to the venture.

Using a SAT (SIM Application Toolkit) technology solution developed by Telecom Italia, this mobile commerce solution ensures high standards of security and authenticates the phone number from which each transaction originates. Specific menus integrated directly into the Sim card will guide customers through the process and make it quick and easy to make purchases. Orders placed for goods or services are dispatched by a text message generated automatically by the application. The text message features the purchaser’s cellphone number but no sensitive data about the selected method of payment. The configuration-free service will be available on all mobile phones. It will be possible to update the service at any time, as and when new goods and services are added.

The Movincom Consortium currently has more than 650 operational services on board, a figure that is destined to rise to over 1,500 services in seven different market sectors.

“After becoming an indispensable personal communications tool,” says Oscar Cicchetti, Manager of Telecom Italia’s Domestic Market Operations, “the mobile phone is transitioning into a personal gateway to the internet, content and services, ranging from information to entertainment and professional applications. Leveraging the potential of the latest SIM cards and terminals, mobile phones are poised to become a powerful and secure transactions and identity management tool too. Today’s agreement paves the way for this by offering a broad range of services and a secure, straightforward and intuitive method for making purchases.”

“We know that security and a user-friendly purchase experience are vital to the development of mobile commerce via mobile phones. This agreement with Telecom Italia is a major step in that direction,” says Enrico Sponza, Deputy Chairman of the Movincom Consortium. “Banks will have access to an integrated set of operational processes and be able to fast track their entry into the mobile payment business.”

This should be a successful solution all-round, because it does the key thing for service delivery – takes end-to-end control of the user experience, encompassing (in this case) device, network, and service provider(s).

[Via: Telecom Italia]

Another word of the today from tech dictionary site NetLingo – this time it’s:

beepilepsy

The brief seizure people sometimes suffer when their beepers go off, especially in vibrator mode. Characterized by physical spasms, goofy facial expressions, and stopping speech in mid-sentence.

Ha ha ha! This one made me chuckle, mainly because I’ve seen it SO many times in meetings! Not so much with beepers these days of course, but with phones that people have set to silent, for fear incurring the wrath of their boss! The random body jerks that occur always liven up a dull meeting

You can check out all that is tech-terminology, from the site that is Netlingo, here.

[Via: NetLingo]

InMobi has released a survey revealing nuances of mobile internet usage patterns in India. The survey was conducted at IIT School of Management and surveyed 205 college-aged consumers.  Although a very specific sample group, the results do offer some insight into India’s youth generation who make up the largest population sector in the country.

According to the survey, fifty-seven percent (57%) of respondents browse the internet on their mobile phones, and close to one-third of respondents who surf the Internet through their mobile phones engage with brands that advertise. Of whose who engaged with the ads, they were most likely to visit the ad’s website (72.5%) but also went so far as to call the company (10%), or buy the product (17.5%).

Survey results also showed that the college-aged consumers are equally interested in almost all genres of mobile advertising, as long as the advertisements have something significant to offer and do not interfere with the mobile browsing experience. Among ads, those most welcomed are fast free coupons, free mobile games with embedded unobtrusive ads, money transfer services, free humorous clips and Bluetooth-based “alerts” for items on sale nearby.

Mobile internet usage broke down in the following way:

India is currently the second largest mobile market in the world after China, and nearly 10 to 12 million mobile subscribers are added monthly in the country. (Source: VitalAnalytics)

The country’s largest cities have the highest mobile Internet usage; however, many small to midsized towns such as Meerut, Aligarh, Jalandhar, Kanpur, Kota, Hassan and Trivandrum generated almost a fourth of the mobile browsing traffic.

Mobile internet browsing is also spread across income groups of those with mobile phones. Specifically, 20% of the respondents who access the Internet on their mobile phones are from the working class demographic, 38% are from the lower middle class and 42% are from the upper middle class. This data shows that mobile Internet usage is not limited to only the upper middle class.

Mobile is clearly becoming a mass medium in India – having extended out from only the most affluent individuals in the very largest metropolitan areas. In addition, Airtel is the clear leader in terms of the percentage of respondents browsing the Internet on their mobile phones. Reliance is the only service provider where less than 50% of the respondents browse the internet, most likely because Reliance phones are not used frequently for value-added services.

I like this word from NetLingo, my fave tech-language site…

internesia

The inability to remember which Web site a piece of information came from or which bookmark might get you back there

Wowzer,how many times has this happened to me?! It’s worse with Mobile browsing too, because until recently it wasn’t possible to open multiple browsers windows. The recent crop of smartphones seems to have solved that, but still, how often do you still find that you’ve missed a site, and/or info you wanted to save? If the answer is not at all, perhaps you have ‘Bookmark OCD’

[Via: NetLingo]

Too often when I am driving between IntoMobile Towers and other destinations, do I still find people in the UK holding phones to their ears (for those of you that don’t know, that’s illegal over here!). It is absolutely infuriating, because it is so dangerous, and yet people flaunt it on a regular basis. I’m not sure who is more dangerous, the school mom with kids in the back (!), doing her make-up and talking on the motorway, or the businessman in his ‘pimped’ 4×4, not paying any attention to what’s going on in front of him, but shouting furiously in to his work phone….

At any rate, TAKING ONE HAND OFF THE WHEEL, AND DISTRACTING YOUR BRAIN AT THE SAME TIME, AT 80 MPH ON THE MOTORWAY, TURNS YOU IN TO A VERY POORLY GUIDED (BUT VERY HEAVY) MISSILE.

I can’t even reason the logic out as to how people end up still doing this – do they think they need to be caught once to make them aware, is it because they think they are a good enough driver to compensate, or do they just not give a S**T?

Not very often to I get to the point where my blood boils over something, but this is one of those rare occasions – particularly now since I have two kids, transporting them around should be a relatively safe process – except now I get to play Russian Roulette on the roads, and hoping I don’t come across that one runaway vehicle – chances are, if I do, the driver won’t even have time to brake before they hit me as they’ll be too distracted – and that IS going to hurt – maybe even kill.

PLEASE PEOPLE – GET A HEADSET, A CAR KIT, OR DON’T TAKE THE CALL – IT’S NOT WORTH IT.

I’ve written before on Dr. Jim’s blog posts, because they always provide lively and stimulating commentary on various tech-related areas – recently culminating in a great piece he wrote on social networking (see my post on his post here).

Now Dr. Jim has turned his attention to Web Ads. Quite apart from listing an impressive array, he also delves in to the area of intrusion that some of these Ads crossover over in to.

Of course from a Mobile perspective, Advertising has been touted as the next big thing for a very long time – whereas the reality is that massive volumes of lo-value transactions are needed in order to generate any significant Ad revenue – but with Mobile becoming so capable that they can display even fairly complex Webpages, more and more of the Web Ads we know and love on the PC, might be coming to a Mobile device near you soon!

Find Dr. Jim’s original article here – well worth a read.

[Via: Fuzemobility.com]

What, more devices that are racking up multiple Mobile phone functions? Bring it on please….!

The Mintpad is one of those crossover devices that aims to do a lot of things – it’s been in the market a little while, but I’m never one to discount a device out of hand for that reason – we all miss gems now and again. The device is running Win CE 5 Pro, which again might not seem like a great reason to check it out, but let’s persist…

First of all, it does look very cool – certainly there’s no hint of Win CE poking through, as has been the case with less successful UI overlays delivered by other device manufacturers. Secondly, it’s quite diminutive, packing a lot in to a very small frame – and third, it claims to have very good audio indeed!

Here’s the specs:

I guess what  a lot of you might be thinking is yeah, but I can get most of this in an iPod Touch – yes, that’s probably true, and the Touch is smaller too – but not everyone wants one of those, so it’s nice to be able to see the alternatives from time to time – of which this is one.

If you want one, hope on over to Advanced MP3 Players, who are selling both 4GB and 20GB variants of the device.

[Via: Advanced MP3 Players]