Wireless Guide News

Strangers and police showing up at all hours on your doorstep unannounced, banging on your front door, demanding to be let in and sometimes brandishing a gun: That’s the nightmare being faced now by homeowners in at least three states, thanks to a flaw in the technology used to locate cell phones. It falsely gives these homeowners’ addresses as places where lost or stolen phones can be found.

We wrote earlier this week about Wayne Dobson of Nevada. In the last two years he has lived in his North Las Vegas home, five people–all missing their Sprint cell phones–have come knocking on his door, demanding that he return their handsets.

If a GPS tracker for your lost cell phone leads you to Dobson’s home, you’ll find a sign that reads, “No lost cell phones!! This location gives a false ‘phone locator’ position due to a cell tower behind this home. Please contact the North Las Vegas Police and file a report.”

On Dec. 18, four men who Dobson described as “young” pounded on his door at around 2:30 a.m., shouting for him to return their phone. One of the men had a tablet with a tracking application, pointing to Dobson’s home.

“I understand w…………… continues on ABC News

CHAPEL HILL — A push by Town Council member Matt Czajkowski to repeal the town’s contested ban on cell phone use while driving failed this week in a 5-2 vote.

Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson voided the town’s cell phone use ban and its towing regulations in August when he sided with a civil lawsuit filed by George’s Towing.

The town has appealed the case to the N.C. Court of Appeals.

“As we all know, we have no shortage of lawsuits,” Czajkowski told council members Monday night. “In fact, I think I read … we’ve actually hired outside counsel to help us with one of these, because the time demands have reached a point where we need some help.”

He and council member Laurin Easthom voted to repeal repealing the cell phone ordinance, which bans both hand-held and hands-free calls while driving, except in limited cases. Town Attorney Ralph Karpinos has said it may be the strictest ban in the nation.

However, Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt and council members Jim Ward, Lee Storrow, Donna Bell and Ed Harrison rejected Czajkowski’s motion.

Flora Parrish, the Chapel Hill Police Department records supervisor, said the town continues to get complaints about towing every day. She got three Tuesday, she said.

Most are complaining about George’s Towing, and usually about the high…………… continues on News & Observer

SACRAMENTO — One of the state’s biggest technology endeavors, a $ 371-million overhaul of the government payroll system, is beset with problems and “in danger of collapsing,” according to the state controller’s office.

The company hired for the project is in over its head and may be unable to deliver on its promise to update a payroll system so old that even simple salary adjustments can tie it in knots, the controller’s chief administrative officer said in a letter.

The state has spent at least $ 254 million so far on contractors, staff salaries, software and more for the system upgrade, which is five years overdue and has nearly tripled in cost since lawmakers authorized it in 2005.

“The project … is foundering and is in danger of collapsing,” administrator Jim Lombard wrote to the contractor, SAP Public Services, in October. Lombard said the new system is not capable of processing “any portion of the state payroll population, let alone the full population of approximately 240,000 employees.”

An SAP spokesman, Andy Kendzie, said the company is meeting its contractual obligations.

“Considering the project’s complexity, and the many requirements involved in payroll processing, there have been some challenges,” Kendzie said in a statement. “Despite these, SAP remains committed to the overall success of the project.”…………… continues on Los Angeles Times

Bruce Bennett/Getty Images

Chicago’s Joakim Noah, center, the Knicks’ Tyson Chandler were among those ejected on Friday.

The last time the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on university affirmative action, upholding it in 2003, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor predicted the practice would outlive its usefulness in 25 years.

Now the end may come a lot sooner than that.

The high court revisits race-based admissions today, hearing the case of a rejected white applicant to the University of Texas. The court’s reconstituted membership makes new limits probable, even as dozens of the nation’s largest companies, such as Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., (WMT) call for continued use of affirmative action to ensure a diverse workforce.

“It’s just a matter of time before the use of race is restricted, prohibited,” said Ward Connerly, a former member of the University of California Board of Regents who led a successful fight to end preferences at public in…………… continues on Businessweek

by Meredith Yeomans

Bio | Email | Follow: @Meredith3TV

azfamily.com

Posted on September 8, 2012 at 9:09 AM

PHOENIX — Cell phone technology seems to move faster than our mouths. With updated models hitting the market constantly, it’s no wonder countless consumers will upgrade their cell phones this year.

But what happens to your old cell phone?

Ken Colburn with Data Doctors says selling your old equipment could earn you money, and possibly even offset the cost of your new device.

“There are lots and lots of companies now that will offer to buy your old devices,” he said.

But before you try to sell your cell phone, Colburn says, make sure data like your pictures and contacts are backed up and saved somewhere else.

“Most of these devices have a very specific backup system where you can back all the contents up to a computer,” he said.

But the key…………… continues on AZFamily

By Desiree Stennett, Orlando Sentinel
10:36 p.m. EST, September 8, 2012

Two other employees who were in a back room of the store at the time of the robbery ran to a nearby fast food restaurant and called deputies.

Officers quickly found the two who robbed the store and the man behind the wheel of what would have been their getaway car.

Deputies think the three men may have been involved in other similar robberies.

dstennett@tribune.com or 407-420-5447

Mobile phone spam is rising sharply in the U.S. as unsolicited bulk message abuse migrates from email to text messages, raising concerns among federal and state officials that consumers are putting their personal information at risk.
 “We are seeing complaints on the rise,” said Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine in an exclusive interview with the Dayton Daily News. “As people move more and more to texting, the scammers follow.”
 American cellphone owners last year received about 4.5 billion spam text messages, more than double the 2.2 billion received in 2009, according to Ferris Research, a market research firm that tracks mobile spam.
 A recent Pew Research Center report found that 69 percent of cellphone owners who use text messaging said they get unwanted spam text messages. Of those texters, 25 percent face problems with unwanted spam texts at least weekly.
 The Federal Communications Commission reported that unwanted telemarketing calls and texts were among the top three consumer complaints in 2011.
 DeWine said his office has received about two dozen complaints this year about text message spam, which is “just a fraction of what actually occurs.”
 “I would expect it to continue to go up for the foreseeable future,” he said.
 Spammers have the ability to send thousands of texts at once using automated dialing devices “programmed…………… continues on Dayton Daily News

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Motorola Mobility, the ailing cellphone maker that Google bought in May, told employees Sunday that it would lay off 20 percent of its work force and close a third of its 94 offices worldwide.

The cuts are the first step in Google’s plan to reinvent Motorola, which has fallen far behind its biggest competitors, Apple and Samsung, and to shore up its Android mobile business and expand beyond search and software into the manufacture of hardware.

The turnaround effort will also be a referendum on the management of Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, whose boldest move has been the $ 12.5 billion acquisition.

Though Google bought Motorola partly because of its more than 17,000 patents, which can help defend against challenges to the Android operating system, it…………… continues on New York Times

Verizon Motorola Droid A855 Android Cell Phone (no contract)
The first Android-powered phone for Verizon Wireless, the 3G-enabled Motorola DROID smartphone offers a full package of powerful m…

Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G Android Phone, White (Sprint)
Keeping a Sprint Sprint Samsung Epic 4G Touch Locked GSM Cell Phone in your pocket is the smart way to get connected to friends an…

ATHENS — It took months for international finance officials to piece together a bailout that was acceptable to Greek leaders. But it took voters just 12 hours at the polls to deal it a hard blow, leaving Greece on Monday at renewed risk of being pushed off the euro currency once and for all.

Infuriated by demands for harsh spending cuts that could exacerbate a crippling recession, Greek voters on Sunday overwhelmingly rejected politicians who had supported the $ 171 billion bailout that is keeping the country from bankruptcy. After just hours of trying to form a coalition government Monday, Antonis Samaras, head of the top-vote-getting New Democracy party, gave up, giving an anti-bailout party a stab at it.

From left: Charles Sykes/Associated Press; Larry Busacca/Getty Images (2,4); Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

From left: model Chanel Iman in a dress made of pheasant feathers molded to her body; actress Emma Stone wore a short pink dress made of plastic; Beyoncé in a gown that was sheer but beaded; Carey Mulligan, the actress who, as a co-chairwoman, wore a stiff gold halter made of shiny gold paillettes by Prada.

Walking through the displays of ugly-chic dresses and slightly surreal designs in a new

London – There is still “no convincing evidence” that mobile phones can adversely affect human health, according to a major new report released on Thursday.

The comprehensive review of scientific studies, by the Health Protection Agency’s Independent Advisory Group on Non-ionising Radiation (Agnir), states that despite the “substantial” amount of recent research the only established risk is using a phone while driving.

Having combed through hundreds of studies, the group found that while there had been a number of reports about the risk of cancer caused by mobile phones, none of these findings had been replicated, either in the same laboratory or in another team’s lab.

Professor Anthony Swerdlow, chairman of the advisory group and an epidemiologist at the Institute of Cancer Research said: “There has now been a very large amount of research conducted, which wasn’t true 10 years ago, and we have much firmer information than we had on several areas, for instance symptoms, cognitive effects, brain tumours, than we had then.”

News updates all day from your Fast Company editors.

O2, one of the biggest U.K. Cell phone networks, has realized that it can seize a place in the digital payment revolution by launching its own system…the O2 Wallet. It’s a digital charge card system, which you fill up via payments from a traditional credit card, and then you can transfer funds between £1 and £500 between phones and to the websites of over 100 big-name retailers. For now it can’t work in stores, but showing the counter-cultural powers of mobile pay the app lets you scan the barcode of an item you like in a store, and then helps you find it cheaper online. Plus NFC capabilities will be added soon to allow in-store purchases. It’s clever, and is a taster of bigger things to come, but it’s also a demo of how muddied the mobile payment waters are becoming as every enterprise in the race, from operators to phone makers to credit card firms tries to jockey for best position.

To keep up with news like this,…………… continues on Fast Company

A group of scientists from the Environmental Health Trust (EHT) are refuting a study from last summer, which said cellphones do not lead to an increase of brain cancer in children and teenagers, according to a letter published Friday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

According to the study, published in July 2011, “the absence of an exposure–response relationship either in terms of the amount of mobile phone use or by localization of the brain tumor argues against a causal association.”

However, in the journal’s “Letters to the Editor,” the EHT scientists said there is a serious risk of brain tumors associated with using cellphones, and the peer review was flawed.

Last summer’s study, conducted by the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, said regular users of cellphones were not more likely to be diagnosed with brain tumors, compared to non-users, and children who started to use cellphones at least five years ago did not have more of a risk of developing a tumor compared to those who never used cellphones.

The letter’s authors said the study’s data actually indicates a 115 percent increase in brain tumor risk for children after more than two years of having a cellphone subscription. The authors said there was also an indication that the more a cellphone is used, the higher the risk becomes.

Another contr…………… continues on Fox News

Law enforcement agencies across the country, including the Reno Police Department, are tracking cellphone locations — sometimes without warrants — according to a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday.

The report sheds light on the procedures law enforcement agencies in the United States use to track cellphone locations as part of their investigations and crime fighting efforts that often does not include court oversight.

The cellphone companies, in turn, charge police departments money for that information.

Deputy Chief Dave Evans said Reno police have no recorded instances when they did not obtain a court order or use an administrative subpoena to obtain cellphone location information.

While a court order is required to obtain in-depth information about a particular cellphone and its user, an administrative subpoena can be directly sent by police to cellphone companies to get general location data from a phone, usually in cases when time is of the essence, Evans said.

“We’re not necessarily getting cellphone data or information, it’s usually GPS information that’s available,” Evans said. “It’s not listening to phone calls.”

Meanwhile, Evans said Reno police have not kept track of how many times they’ve used cellphone tracking, though it has become an increasingly popular option among la…………… continues on Reno Gazette Journal

Study in pregnant mice finds behavioral, brain deficits in offspring

Web edition : Monday, March 19th, 2012

Text Size

Round-the-clock cell phone radiation may harm growing brains, a mouse study suggests. Mice exposed to an active phone for the duration of a pregnancy gave birth to pups that displayed long-lasting behavioral and brain abnormalities, researchers write March 15 in Scientific Reports.

Although the results indicate that chronic exposure to cell phone radiation can disrupt the fetal brain in mice, it’s unclear whether the same holds true for people. “The paper is an interesting paper. There are no two ways around that,” says Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, Md., who has studied the effects of cell phone radiation. “The issue is, ultimately, what is the significance to humans?”

In the study, reproductive endocrinologist Hugh Taylor of Yale School of Medicine and colleagues rigged up bare-bones cell phones (not smart phones) to pregnant mice’s cages. Half the phones were actively receiving a call on mute for the entirety of the mice’s pregnancies, which last about 17 days. The other phones were inactive.

On average, offspring from the mothers exposed to cell phone radiation performed worse on a memory…………… continues on Science News

There you are, right in the middle of a group discussion in history class. The teacher is explaining that, in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, when “DING DING,” a cell phone sounds.

Now, one of two things could happen: either everyone will panic and slyly check their phones to make sure it wasn’t theirs, or people will carry on with discussion and one person will quietly check his or her messages.

If you attend Glenwood High School or another school that allows cell phone use in class, the latter is the case.

Quite the opposite is true at most other schools. At Sacred Heart-Griffin High School, being caught with a cell phone on your person, even if it’s turned off, earns you a detention.

While I understand the reason for having a no cell phone policy and have no problems with it, Glenwood’s policy is interesting.

Instead of making the use of what are now appendages to teenagers a “violation,” the high school’s administration has chosen to live in reality, albeit with some restrictions.

Glenwood students may use their phones at lunch and at the end of class periods. High school students in Springfield schools also use their phones during lunch periods.

But, like SHG, if someone were to have their phone out during a lecture or in the middle of a class, it would earn students some form of discipline.

Being able…………… continues on The State Journal-Register

HTC ThunderBolt 4G Android Phone (Verizon Wireless)
Product: HTC Thunderbolt 4G LTE- VerizonNetworks: LTE 700, CDMA EvDO revAPlatform: Android 2.2 + HTC Sense Current software n…

Palm Pixi Plus GSM with WebOS, Touch Screen, 2 MP Camera and Wi-Fi – Unlocked Phone – US Warranty – Black
The Palm Pixi Plus weighs 3.26 ounces and measures 4.37 x 2.17 x 0.43 inches. Its 1150 mAh lithium-ion battery is rated at up to 5…

Last week my smartphone fell in the drink and was never heard from since. Eight out of ten people in this situation would use this as the impetus to finally upgrade from Android to iPhone. Let’s just say I wasn’t in the minority here.

Once my new magic Apple hand-computer came home with me, it was instantly a part of the family. My 5-year-old, who leads a largely media-free life as part of her Waldorf schooling, acted as if she’d waited far too long for me to finally come to my senses.

“Do you have Angry Birds?” she asked nonchalantly. Then she showed me how to use one of the camera features two seconds after laying hands on the phone and figuring it out herself. Somebody was going to need a pass code.

Truly, I’m not opposed to her killing a couple of monkeys in the name of bird rescue (yes, I had to Google search ‘Angry Birds’ to know that’s what it entails). But I do worry about the possible radiation effects of cell phones on children.

Most of the research on whether cell phone radiation leads to cancer is inconclusive. For the last few years there has been much debate (and many sensational headlines) on whether mobile phones increase your risk or not.

Instinctively, I figure this may be something that takes many years to fully study.

Sony Corp.’s next president and CEO, Kazuo Hirai, vowed Thursday to revive the struggling company, turn around its unprofitable TV business and focus on the mobile phone and medical equipment sectors.

At a joint news conference with current Chairman, President and CEO Howard Stringer in Tokyo, Hirai said he will also focus on strengthening the firm’s digital imaging and video game businesses, and plough resources into the mobile phone division.

But he also pledged to radically restructure unprofitable businesses, saying Sony will either scrap divisions that are unable to turn a profit, or slim them down by outsourcing services or by entering into partnerships with other firms.

“We will review all the businesses drastically and thoroughly,” said Hirai, who is currently Sony’s deputy executive president and will replace Stringer in April.

Some products have become unprofitable simply as a result of flawed business strategies, he added.

Asked at the news conference about Sony’s decline in recent years, Stringer said: “Obviously, I have responsibility. I’m the CEO.”

But he also said outside factors, such as the global financial crisis in 2008 and last y…………… continues on The Japan Times