Japanese cell phones ward off gropers
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Did you just grope me? Shall we head to the police?
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(InfoWorld) - OKI Electric Industry Co. is testing a Safety Mobile Phone technology that could help pedestrians avoid being hit by vehicles. The phones use Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) technology to rapidly exchange location information about vehicles equipped with the same technology, the Japanese company said Monday. The OKI test is one of several supported by the Japanese government as part of an initiative aimed at deploying advanced communication systems across the country beginning in 2011 to lower the number of pedestrians killed in traffic accidents. The short-range service is designed to provide very high data rates in situations where minimizing latency in the communication link and isolating relatively small communication zones are important, according to a description of the protocol by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which helped standardize it. In the OKI test, pedestrians use mobile phones with an integrated DSRC module, while vehicles are equipped with communication systems embedded with the same technology, as well as GPS (Global Positioning System). The pedestrians and vehicles create a DSRC wireless communications area, which has a radius per device of several hundred meters. Each device sends out its location information at a regular time interval within the area. When a pedestrian device and vehicle device come close and the received power from each device exceeds a specific value that indicates a high possibility of a collision, the devices warn their users. Pedestrians are warned through the vibration function on their phones, while drivers receive voice guidance from their vehicle communications system. The technology can gather information about surrounding vehicles, perform the necessary calculation to identify impending collisions and warn pedestrians with DSRC-enabled mobile phones "in less than one second," OKI said in an e-mail response to questions. Such a quick response is possible because the system is able to send each vehicle's current GPS position and map its location against other devices in the area within milliseconds, the company said. The system warns the mobile phone user when a vehicle is within 150 meters, but the technology allows the distance from a vehicle to a phone user to be set freely, according to OKI. Although the trial DSRC system currently uses the 5.8 GHz frequency range, OKI plans to achieve compatibility with IEEE 802.11p, the international DSRC standard based on the 5.9 GHz band. The OKI development appears to be part of a growing trend to use mobile phones as safety devices. For instance, Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia has applied for a U.S. patent for aÂ lightning detector systemÂ designed for use in mobile phones. Â
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It&#39;s easy to be wowed by Japan&#39;s mobile communications infrastructure. &quot;Next-generation&quot; 3G coverage is now so ubiquitous that carriers have already stopped launching 2G phones; an impressive array of attractive handsets offer free digital TV; phones can be used to pay for goods and train rides, thanks to embedded contactless smart cards; and on the mobile information superhighway data whizzes along at 3.6Mbps. But watch out for the off-ramps.While Japan has led the world with many of the services offered to consumers, in some ways the mobile ecosystem here is downright backward as I found out last weekend when I tried to buy a new phone. A broken handset necessitated a new model and this is where my story begins.In Japan, phones are sold by carriers and not the phone makers. Companies like Fujitsu, NEC, Sony Ericsson, and a few foreign vendors including Nokia, Samsung, and LG sell their phones in the thousands to carriers. This gives carriers the ability to pretty much dictate to the phone maker what software needs to be installed.This model is one of the reasons that mobile Internet services like I-mode took off here so quickly. There was no chicken-and-egg situation with phone makers and users waiting for each other to take the plunge. NTT DoCoMo decided I-mode would be in new phones and so it was.But this model has a downside. Phones are so tightly customized to each carrier that it&#39;s not practical to keep the same handset when switching carriers, and if you see a phone you like you can only buy it if it&#39;s offered by your carrier.Back to my story. The new phone was looking quite expensive so I decided to switch carriers and take advantage of a free phone on a competitor network. Japan launched number portability a year ago, so I could make the jump without losing my cell-phone number. I&#39;d still have the hassle of a new e-mail address, but it appeared a small price to pay.Before long I had a new phone in my hands, but my phone numbers remained locked in the old handset. The new carrier didn&#39;t have a cable to hook up to my old phone so they couldn&#39;t transfer the address book and it wasn&#39;t possible to beam it between the phones. While my old carrier was gung-ho on Bluetooth, my new carrier wasn&#39;t so enthusiastic, so the new phone had no support. Similarly, while the new phone offered infrared, the old phone didn&#39;t. Heavy customization strikes again.Back home I fired up my PC and managed to get my address book from the old phone into the computer. Getting it to the new phone via a memory card seemed like an easy task ... but no! The VCard file wasn&#39;t being properly read by the new phone. Carriers, it was explained to me when I called the help line, often used custom fields in their VCards so there were sometimes problems. So much for a common standard.I won&#39;t bore you with the technicalities of how I eventually got my address book into my new phone, but suffice to say this story has a happy ending. I&#39;m now back in cruise control, enjoying all the attractions the mobile superhighway has to offer.The number portability system that enabled me to keep my phone number is coincidentally one-year-old this week. About 3 percent of users in Japan -- roughly 3.7 million people -- have made use of the system during its first year -- far less than the industry predicted, or feared.One thing that&#39;s said to be stopping users from switching is the inability to keep their e-mail addresses. While carriers fussed over the details of keeping numbers, they forgot, or perhaps ignored, the need to carry e-mail addresses between carriers. In other countries this wouldn&#39;t be a big deal because most messaging is done via SMS, which relies on phone numbers, but in Japan the advanced stage of the market has again caused hassle for consumers.
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If you are in Sudan it is a &#39;missed call&#39;. In Ethiopia it is a &#39;miskin&#39; or a &#39;pitiful&#39; call. In other parts of Africa it is a case of &#39;flashing&#39;, &#39;beeping&#39; or in French-speaking areas &#39;bipage&#39;.
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Drivers go slow when on a call People who use mobile phones while driving are spoiling it for the rest of us - by driving more carefully and slowing down traffic, according to US researchers.â¦
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Performance venues there can now install signal-jamming equipment to deal with rude mobile-phone users.
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North Korea is cracking down on the use of mobile phones in border areas in a bid to stop smuggling and "spy activities," Japan's Kyodo news agency said on Monday.
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A satellite-alert system launches in quake-prone Japan that will instantly trigger tsunami and volcanic activity warnings by siren and radio to help speed evacuations. By the Associated Press.
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We're all guilty of using our cell phones in off-limits areas. But a new study shows that in hospitals they can be hazardous to medical equipment
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(InfoWorld) - Cellphones in Japan could soon provide a vital warning seconds ahead of a major earthquake. The country's three largest cellular carriers, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, and Softbank Mobile, plan to develop a way to automatically funnel alerts to cellphones from a new government advance warning system, which went into operation last year. The system, operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), ties together an extensive network of earthquake monitors on a high-speed network to provide data to a variety of users, including TV stations, manufacturers, and cellphone operators. The system provides warnings by measuring the primary waves (P-waves) from a quake, which are weak and fast-moving, to automatically predict when the slower and much more destructive secondary waves (S-waves) will arrive at a given location and how strong they will be. The amount of warning varies and could be anything from a few seconds to up to a minute. People closer to the quake's epicenter get shorter warnings -- and in some cases might get none at all -- but researchers agree that the possibility of any warning is better than none. The government data, which will provide the base for the cellphone system, has already been supplied to a number of groups, including manufacturers and hospitals. The buildings are equipped with receivers to receive data from the government or service providers. The alarm system is designed to automatically stop heavy machinery or save PC data. In the future, it may also be able to automatically shut off gas valves. In the earthquake that hit Kobe in 1995, more people died from resulting fires than from the quake itself. The cellphone companies hope to have a system launched in 2008. Â
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Tired of pushing all those buttons on your cell phone? Japanese handsets slated to hit stores next month are designed to solve that problem: They respond to shakes, tilts and jiggles.
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Japanâs once vaunted electronics industry has downsized to survive global competition, and is inadvertently setting off a brain drain.
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Anti-virus protection will ship later this month with some new phones in Japan, a harbinger of cellular threats to come. Security products are already available for handheld
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Young readers are engaged in the participatory media of text messages, instant messaging, YouTube and MySpace. So maybe Japan's success with cell-phone novels could work here, writes columnist Mike Elgan.
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One of the most frequent complaints voiced by air travelers over the past decade or so has been having to comply with the instruction to &quot;make sure your mobile phones are turned off&quot; before liftoff.
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SEOUL -- While Americans have been blitzed with news about the iPhone's debut, many in South Korea's and Japan's technology industries initially greeted Apple's flashy new handset with yawns.
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Some states have enacted or are considering bans on driving while holding a cellphone, but studies have shown that hands-free and hand-held cellphones are equally distracting.