Can design ride to the rescue against obnoxious cell-phone users? Jim and the incomparable Aaron Draplin think it can. As a public service, we introduce the reasonably polite SHHH, the Society for HandHeld Hushing: downloaded hundreds of thousands of times and featured in Wired News, on Australian National Radio and in dozens of other media.
ELLEgirl Magazine (published by Hachette Filipacchi) and Mobot today announced a 12-month partnership to create “mobotized” advertisements for ELLEgirl. Mobot’s visual search and recognition technology solution combined with camera phones makes it fun, rewarding and easy, for ELLEgirl readers to interact with their favorite consumer brands, providing instant gratification to teens living the mobile lifestyle. “This partnership works well for ELLEgirl’s teen readers that use mobile phones daily,” said Russ Gocht, CEO of Mobot. “For the advertiser, each picture can launch a thousand possibilities.”
Recognizing that spam e-mail is a serious problem that requires a concerted, industry-wide effort to resolve, Internet Initiative Japan Inc., KDDI Corporation, NTT DoCoMo, Inc., Panasonic Network Services, Inc., Plala Networks Inc., and Vodafone K.K. today announced that Japan’s major Internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile telecommunication carriers have jointly established the Japan E-mail Anti-Abuse Group (JEAG) to examine and implement technological countermeasures against E-mail abuse.
Software developer Open Source Japan Ltd. will market a server system that simplifies the task of building and managing Web sites for wireless Internet phones. Using the new server system, municipal governments can easily set up Web sites for posting information, conducting surveys and sending mass e-mailings. According to the press release, the sites are easy to build, and data can be easily updated using a PC or a cell phone.
Telstra today launched Australia’s first text message service for home telephones, giving more than 10 million households the chance to join the “texting” revolution. The launch of this text message service means home phone users with compatible services can now read and send text messages on their landlines using specially designed telephones in the same way they do with mobile phones.
Is it just us, or does anyone else think this is uncommonly useless? “We anticipate that having text messaging available on the home phone will trigger a new wave of text messaging popularity, particularly among mums, dads and grandparents.” WWJ thinks Telstra’s launch of i-mode was a much more positive move for consumers and shareholders alike.
NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Monday the phone numbers and other personal data of about 24,600 of its clients have been leaked. The mobile phone operator said it has launched in-house investigations because there is a high possibility that the data were leaked by insiders. The leaked information appears to be partial lists of customers in Niigata Prefecture and neighboring areas, with names, addresses, mobile phone numbers and phone numbers used for inquiries.
