Thought Garage

There has been a lot of fuss about new Mobile Payment solutions and many unsuccessful attempts to get a pie of normal payment solutions. Many have built solutions and applications that need special software to be installed on mobiles and some applications are just waiting for mobiles go internet. I have been insisting that mobile solutions first must capitalize on the current infrastructure like SMS to make advances in to Mobile applications, in this case mobile Payments rather than targetting for 2 years down the line handsets and usage patterns. Here is one solution that does exactly that. Simple Mobile Payment solution using SMS. FEED by Feedtribes is a hot new mobile cash service currently being trialled in Boulder, CO, and in San Francisco. FEED was initially developed to provide high school and college students with a cool way to pay their favorite retailers while keeping a handle on their finances. “FEED is a prepaid account that is linked to your cell phone. To make a p

  (Screenshot of the TED Video ) Why do people succeed? Because they're smart? Or lucky? How about: Neither. Richard St. John compacts seven years of research on successful people into an unmissable 3-minute slideshow on the real secrets of success (Hint: passion, persistence, and pushy mothers help). Richard St. John is author of Stupid, Ugly, Unlucky and RICH: What really leads to success -- and it's not smarts, looks, or luck . He's also founder of the communications agency, The St John Group . (Recorded February 2005 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 3:40) Link to Richard St. John on TED Talks

There  was a mad rush to build Feature RICH applications. And then there was 'Less is More' conundrum that everybody has been touting about.  And if you just read it the way many people understand it and wondering what is better for your product, then for sure we are all missing the point. Joel reveals the mystery. Devotees of simplicity will bring up 37signals and the Apple iPod as anecdotal proof that Simple Sells. I would argue that in both these cases, success is a result of a combination of things: building an audience, evangelism, clean and spare design, emotional appeal, aesthetics, fast response time, direct and instant user feedback, program models which correspond to the user model resulting in high usability, and putting the user in control, all of which are features of one sort, in the sense that they are benefits that customers like and pay for, but none of which can really be described as “simplicity.” Source: Simplicity - Joel on Software So 'Less

Many must have watched movies on Google Videos or YouTube, which are infact illegally copied clips from TV or CD or DVD.  But now you can watch and download movie clips and full length movies from Google Videos while keeping your head high. BODVOD Networks announced the availability of feature films and other content on Google Video. BODVOD's content is presented under the name Saavn and available at http://www.video.google.com/saavn . The launch includes full-length movies available for immediate download representing some of the biggest recent Bollywood hits plus exclusive promotional videos, music clips, trailers, and more. Source: Bollywood set to scale new heights in US, Canada - India News Technorati tags: Bollywood , google video , india

Very interesting Cellular Life Styles, that are adding real value to People around the world in quite unexpected ways. Shared Phone Use Much of the growth in the telecommunications industry is coming from emerging markets - places like India and Africa and for many new consumers their first mobile phone experience is a shared one . This essay uses the term sharing in the sense of primary usage orientated around borrowing and lending rather than 'let me show you the photos I took at last night's party'. Mobile phone sharing is not just limited to personal use - from the streets of Cairo to Kampala kiosks are springing up with little more than a mobile phone and a sign advertising call rates. What happens when people share an object that is inherently designed for personal use? And based on how and why people share in what ways can devices and services be redesigned to optimise the shared user experiences? Indeed, should they be re-designed? A summary of this essay app

Videos of 9th Annual MIT Venture Capital Conference are now available. You can watch them here:  9th Annual MIT Venture Capital Conference . List of Videos: Mobile Innovations : The World Beyond Walled Gardens Decision Making in Biotech Innovation: Who makes the Ideal CEO? Investing in Energy Technology Innovation - How Long Does it Really Take? Keynote Address: Rebecca Henderson Monetizing Social Networking Businesses Keynote Address: Alan Spoon The Future of Digital Media: Are Companies Overprices and Overhyped? Lunch Keynode Address: Jeff Taylor Commercializing Web2.0 - Hype vs Reality MIT Innovation Showcase Global Ambition and Global Sales Corporate Venturing - Present and Future Venture Capital in India and China - Invest Globally, Innovate Locally Technorati tags: MIT , Venture Capital , Web2.0 , Mobile2.0

For those who want to create lively Ajax based websites, mostly inspired by looking at Google applications like Gmail, Google maps, this is a great news. Google has opened to public its Web Toolkit that is being used to build its own websites. Wow! Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is an open source Java software development framework that makes writing AJAX applications like Google Maps and Gmail easy for developers who don't speak browser quirks as a second language. Writing dynamic web applications today is a tedious and error-prone process; you spend 90% of your time working around subtle incompatibilities between web browsers and platforms, and JavaScript's lack of modularity makes sharing, testing, and reusing AJAX components difficult and fragile. GWT lets you avoid many of these headaches while offering your users the same dynamic, standards-compliant experience. You write your front end in the Java programming language, and the GWT compiler converts your Java classes to br

Time's Cover Story for Holidays and almost the Retrospective Climax for year 2006 is all about YOU. It named 'YOU' as the Person of the Year 2006. The YOU behind the explosion of Web2.0. That means, I am the Person of the Year 2006. (:-)) Time for celebrations !!! All the Video I shared, all those videos I watched, all those posts I blogged, all those comments I have ever written, all those social profiles I have created, all those people I met online, all those pictures I shared, all those bookmarks I shared, all those blogs I read, ................................. deserves a big pat on the back and the Award as 'Person of the Year'. Thank you Time for the Award! America loves its solitary geniuses—its Einsteins, its Edisons, its Jobses—but those lonely dreamers may have to learn to play with others. Car companies are running open design contests. Reuters is carrying blog postings alongside its regular news feed. Microsoft is working overtime to fend off us

Latest M:Metrics report on usage of User Generated Content and Social Networking indicates that Teens are taking Mobile Content to a new level. Figures mentioned for All Mobile Subscribers are also very encouraging. I expect these number to grow substantially during holidays in Nov and Dec. M:Metrics examined the usage of photo messaging, video messaging, IM, chat, dating and usercreated content, including video content and ringtones, among mobile subscribers age 13-17 and 18-24 in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. User-Generated Content and Social Networking Application* Usage: October 2006 Source: M:Metrics, Inc., Copyright © 2006. Survey of mobile subscribers. Source: M:Metrics News

Frontier Visionary and Leadership Interviews for hardware, software, system related business and academia : Past, Present and Future. For some of the interviews, MP3s are also available.   Source: Frontier Podcast - Frontier Visionary and Leadership Interview for hardware, software, system related business and and academia

Rob Greenlee's Must Have 'Not Just For Geek' Media Phones: NSeries Nokia N95 phone T-Mobile Dash Excalibur / T-Mobile Dash / S620 Cingular 3125 Str Trk / Cingular 3125 / Smartflip / HTC 8500 Cingular 8525 by HTC HTC TyTN / Cingular 8525 / JasJam / HTC Hermes Source: Mobile Phone Podcast Blog: A Must Have Nokia N95 and HTC Smart Phones- Podcast News, Listening, Discovery and Creation Trends - Melodeo, Mobilcast and Mobilcasting

According to NPD’s Mobile Consumer Track, personal e-mail usage on mobile phones increased from 3 percent of mobile phone users in March 2006 to 6 percent by the end of the third quarter. Unlimited Data Plans are reported to be helping the increase of Mobile Email adoption. There’s a correlation between unlimited data plans and an increase in the use of personal e-mail. Those with unlimited data plans are much more likely to use personal e-mail (35 percent in September) versus those with limited data plans (12 percent), or those who pay by usage (7 percent). Source: NPD Press Release - December 4, 2006

I welcome visitors to my blog with a question, "Would you like to carry an iPod, a Sony recorder, a Palm PDA, a cell phone, a digital camera, a gaming console, a GPS navigator, a jump drive, a laptop, …………….. OR a cool smart Cellular phone?". I strongly believe that Smartphone will rule the markets. I have also posted why it is so inexpensive to buy a multi tasking phone than buying individual gadgets that can do one thing better ( Busting The myth of Smartphone Market ). NewYorkTimes reports about some surprsing skills that new cellphones are equpped with this Christmas, indicating the trend towards Multitasking phones instead of plain old cell phones, that can just do one thing better. You don’t need to own a smartphone or a blackberry to do multiple tasks. Almost all new phones are like smartphones that can do whatever you need.  Now folks at Computer World says, " the pocket communication gadget of the future will be an "everything device. "

Citigroup, MasterCard Worldwide, Cingular Wireless and Nokia today announced a consumer technology trial of Near Field Communication (NFC)-enabled mobile phones with MasterCard PayPass(TM) contactless payment capability in New York City. The goal of this trial is to evaluate the speed and convenience that "tap and go" payments made through mobile phones can provide to Citi credit cards and Cingular customers in the New York City area. The trial is expected to run three to six months. Pre-selected Citi MasterCard cardholders with Cingular Wireless accounts are participating in the trial and will receive Nokia NFC-enabled mobile phones with MasterCard PayPass payment functionality. MasterCard PayPass is a "contactless" payment program that provides consumers with a fast and convenient way to pay. With their NFC-enabled phone, trial participants can pay for purchases at any merchant that accepts MasterCard PayPass by simply holding their phone near a secure PayPass p

Mashable compiled a list of 19 Social Networking sites where you can get paid for creating and sharing content. Well, while it looks very promising, its time to build filters that can cut content exclusively created to make money. Soon, one can expect books and blogs fluorishing on teaching how to make money on Social networks and soon just like SEO, there will be SNO, that can take you content to top levels irrespective of quality of content. And ... cycle of crap factories will repeat, yet again. With the top YouTube users becoming paid shills for Coke , and the top Diggers being accused of taking ‘ cash for Diggs ‘, it seems that the users of social sites are looking to be rewarded for their efforts. In fact, there are already plenty of services that will pay you for your participation. Here are nineteen of the best, plus a few bonuses. Source: 19 Ways To Make Social Sites Pay - Mashable!

There is news around that Cingular is going to hike SMS price to 15 cents per message from its current 10 cents per message. There’s word out that Cingular is changing its per text-message fee from 10 cents to 15 cents starting late January. This site says 1 : Effective January 21, 2007, the pay-per-use pricing for SMS and IM will increase to $0.15/msg. This will affect all postpaid and Pick Your Plan customers who do not currently subscribe to an SMS package. . . Notification will be in the December bill and in [an] SMS sent to Pick Your Plan customers. Source: GigaOM » Cingular To Boost Text Rate?

Recently I learned Bangalore Set To Beat The Silicon Valley  when a Hindustan Times news item that declared Bangalore to be the second WiMAX city ahead of Silicon Valley and caused Silicon Valley to spur into action to pump up their efforts. Now GigaOM reports an announcement by BSNL to go WiMAX to powerup six Indian cities. Certified WiMAX took a big step forward in India today, when local incumbent Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) announced that it would roll out fixed wireless networks in six Indian cities, and will offer high bandwidth connections to corporate customers. The cities where networks would be rolled out include Kolkata (in West Bengal), Bangalore (in Karnataka), Chennai (in Tamil Nadu), Ahmedabad (in Gujarat), Hyderabad (in Andhra Pradesh), and Pune (in Maharastra). Source: GigaOM » In India, WiMAX Takes Wings Thats quite a wonderful news.

I recently mentioned that MIT OpenCourseware project started hosting Video/Audio lectures as well for some select courses. Thats an excellent opportunity to go to MIT and take a class without ever leaving your home. I never studied formally about Computer Algorithms. So I started taking the course : 6.046J / 18.410J Introduction to Algorithms (SMA 5503), Fall 2005 . After spending so many years in Software Development, I must admit, I have not much to take away from the first 1 hour 20min class, but here are some thoughts and notes on the size of input. [ Source:Wiki ] In theoretical analysis of algorithms it is common to estimate their complexity in asymptotic sense , i.e., to estimate the complexity function for reasonably large length of input. Big O notation , omega notation and theta notation are used to this end. For instance, binary search is said to run an amount of steps proportional to a logarithm, or in O(log(n)), colloquially "in logarithmic time". Usually a

Can You? The following article says that You can. And it literally says that you can dream whatever you want to dream. huh! Dream to me is what your sub-conscientious mind thinks when you are sleeping. Well, if you can teach how and what your sub-conscientious mind think, then, paradoxically, it is not your sub-conscientious mind any more. Isn't it? I do not know how night dreams influence (except a few stories and movies), but I strongly believe in day dreaming. Day-dreams are your direct thoughts out of imagination, and hence they are the blueprints of your future if you have the courage to act on them. What is a dream? According to Wikipedia, A dream is the experience of envisioned images, voices, or other sensations during sleep . However we are not talking about dreaming while we sleep, we are talking about dreaming while we are awake and conscious. We are talking about imagine and visualize what is our future scene looks like. Basically dreaming is the first step for whate

Economist has a story " A different route ", that looks at Car makers in India and how they are differentiating from other low-cost car making counterparts in China. ( You need Premium access to read the full article or buy Print version.) While China's carmakers copy, India's are inventing Source: Economist.com | Articles by subject | India's economy Earlier this year BBC World News produced a documentary,   Race to the Top of the World - India vs China  that compares China and India on the way to becoming the Economic Super Powers of 21st Century. One of the striking message in the documentary is that India is differentiating itself from the rest of counterparts by pioneering Innovation and focusing on Quality rather than Quantity. Now Economist has a story that affirms a similar message, particularly taking Automobile industry as an example.  While India looks to be leading on the Innovation front, on the domestic market consumption, China looks much bett

Another wonderful manifesto within a ChangeThis Manifesto. Why Simple is Better. And Elegance is much better.  Source: ChangeThis Manifesto :: Elegant Solutions: Breakthrough Thinking the Toyota Way Mention innovation, and people immediately think, technology. The truth is that business innovation is about value, not gadgetry. But the pace of technological progress sweeps us off our feet and we get all caught up in the gizmo, losing sight of the why behind the what. People don’t want products and services. They want solutions to problems. That’s value. And when it come to solutions, simple is better. Elegant is better still. Great innovation requires understanding and appreciating the concept of elegance as it relates to solving important problems. Oliver Wendell Holmes once said: “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the  simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Elegance is the simplicity found on the far side

Rob Greenlee points to a couple of articles that discuss about Cellcasts and Mobilcasts. Question simply put, Do you want to listen to streaming music or downloaded music on your cellphone? Here is an article that talks about " Cellcasts ". I also found another more recent article talking about The Coming Age of the “Cellcast” or “Mobilcast” :  Resource Shelf blog . Few Resources on Cellcasts from   Resource Shelf blog : + UpSnap This mobile service ( http://wap.upsnap.com ) offers a number of features and is one that we’ve mentioned on ResourceShelf for several years as a mobile portal. They provide several free features (local directory search, sports scores, price comparison info and more) along with audio content. They also a number of podcast and other types of audio programming . UpSnap delivers the audio material over the plain old telephone system (U.S. phone numbers). After you select the program, you’re given a phone number to dial and the program

Georgia Tech  : Mobile Applications and Services with IMS by Russel J. Clark. IMS Research and Competition Georgia Tech, Cingular Wireless, and Siemens Communications are kicking off a new research program in IMS applications. This initiative brings the students and faculty of Georgia Tech an opportunity to gain early, first-hand access to the latest telecommunications application architecture. The IMS program is a joint effort of the Georgia Tech Research Network Operations Center (GT-RNOC) of the Office of Information Technology and the Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC). During the summer of 2006, Siemens is installing the IMS technology platform (valued at $5 million) in GEDC labs located in the Technology Square Research Building. The campus Wi-Fi infrastructure will be configured to enable access to the IMS platform for researchers. About the Course: This course provides an introduction to the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and covers the process of developing an applica

Georgia Tech  : Mobile Applications and Services with IMS by Russel J. Clark. IMS Research and Competition ( http://forgedbyims-research-competition.com/index.html)Georgia Tech, Cingular Wireless, and Siemens Communications are kicking off a new research program in IMS applications. This initiative brings the students and faculty of Georgia Tech an opportunity to gain early, first-hand access to the latest telecommunications application architecture. The IMS program is a joint effort of the Georgia Tech Research Network Operations Center (GT-RNOC) of the Office of Information Technology and the Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC). During the summer of 2006, Siemens is installing the IMS technology platform (valued at $5 million) in GEDC labs located in the Technology Square Research Building. The campus Wi-Fi infrastructure will be configured to enable access to the IMS platform for researchers. About the Course: This course provides an introduction to the IP Multimedia Subsys

Fantastic analysis of why there is no one BEST product or one killer application in any market space, but there will be 10s of products each targetted for different customer groups. Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer for The New Yorker, and best-selling author of The Tipping Point and Blink . In this talk, filmed at TED2004, he explains what every business can learn from spaghetti sauce. (Recorded February 2004 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 18:15) Source: Malcom Gladwell on TED Talks Technorati tags: malcom gladwell , TED Talks

Nice overview of Chacha at Read/Write Web, a real Human Intelligence powered search engine that help you find what you are searching for.  Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus  In this article we look at ChaCha , a search engine which brings a fundamentally different kind of intelligence to the problem - human brain power. The current implementation of ChaCha offers a combination of automation and people-powered search. The results can be organized by a vertical, like images or news. Also it has a set of related searches. But by far the most interesting and unusual aspect of ChaCha is its people-powered search . ChaCha employs people to help users sift through the results. This is cleverly done using a familiar chat interface. When you first come to the site, you are presented with a standard search box. Type in a query and you get back a traditional list of matches. In the testing we did, we found both the performance and quality of the results to be quite good. 

At Building Flexible Platforms  : The problems you owed to the PC and the iPod example looks a bit funny. Its like comparing Electricity delivered to your home and battery on your cellphone. Electricity can do many things for many of us while cellphone just does one special thing, power the phone. Does Electricity's genericness, flexibility and non-portableness makes it any inefficient and useless than a battery? To the point of flexible frameworks, What we must build is a platform that is agile and "flexible to adapt to any future requirements" than specially customized to current requirements. In simple words, build frameworks and Engines. Not monolithic platforms. Blogging platforms are an excellent example. As they built engines and templates, customization and specialization became so easy. Even the evolution to the new markets is just a jiffy. Many are tempted by specialized market segments to build a very specialized product/platform, for whatever reasons. M

We seem to have a new classification of information available on the web. This time from   Rajesh Jain(Emergic) .  Now Web : Now is about incremental in Time. It is about events that are happening now.  ... .. news channel with its constant updates of stock indices and prices is a view on what�s happening now... ... New Web : The New Web can be thought of as incremental in Topics.  ... A legacy search engine will index a page, but an incremental web search engine will focus on the feeds. Feeds are the containers and carriers for microcontent. Near Web : The Near Web can be thought of as incremental in Space. It is the Web that is around where we are physically present. It is a world of shops, malls, schools, hospitals, traffic, and much more. ... Neighbourhood events can be posted on to specific pages, organised in a weblog-format. By using standardized forms to do the post, it is possible to capture the information in XML format and use a matching engine to send out alerts to p

Its great to know that MIT started including Video and Audio sessions of lectures at MIT OpenCourseWare Project. If you are interested in Algos, you might take a look at this. 6.046J / 18.410J Introduction to Algorithms (SMA 5503), Fall 2005 This course is also very good.  6.033 Computer Systems Engineering, Spring 2005 Source: Link to MIT OpenCourseWare | Video and Audio on MIT OCW Technorati tags: mit , ocw , algorithms , inspions , video lecture

It looks more like my video iPod at first look. But its lot lot more than that. You can view more photos at the blog post Gorgeous New Sony Ericsson Concept Phone . Gorgeous New Sony Ericsson Concept Phone Concept Phones are great, as they show what designers can do when they don't have to worry about the mundane stuff, like actually fitting electronics into their designs. I mean, just ake alook at this: this is a new Sony Ericsson CyberShot concept phone that looks simply breathtaking. As slim as a credit card with a 3.2 megapixel camera, sleek slider design, and OLED touch sensitive keypad, this is a phone that would sell by the bucket load. Source: Gorgeous New Sony Ericsson Concept Phone Technorati tags: sony , concept phone , mobile Devices , mobile-handset , cellularlifestyle

If you are roaming in a foreign country and say watch a video clip or listen to a podcast or browse internet for 15 minutes, you could end up paying around $250, almost the retail price of a 30GB Video iPod.  Or if you are lucky and browse mad it may exceed your Airfare itself (:-)) I never really cared to look at the price of international roaming. I happen to read  Carl at MobHappy quite regreting browsing internet while in Amsterdam recently. I can handle the 99 cents per minute for voice and the 35 cents per text message, really, but the $15 per MB of data really gets  to me You Could Pay Anywhere between $10 and $26 I just looked up for different carriers in USA and their charges for international roaming. If you think T-Mobile's $15/MB is exorbitant, think again. Cingular charges $20/MB while in Netherlands. The price is anywhere between $10 and $26, depending on the country and carrier. For a sample, I included T-Mobile pricing. Use Internet and e-mail while roaming

If you are roaming in a foreign country and say watch a video clip or listen to a podcast or browse internet for 15 minutes, you could end up paying around $250, almost the retail price of a 30GB Video iPod.  Or if you are lucky and browse mad it may exceed your Airfare itself (:-)) I never really cared to look at the price of international roaming. I happen to read  Carl at MobHappy quite regreting browsing internet while in Amsterdam recently. I can handle the 99 cents per minute for voice and the 35 cents per text message, really, but the $15 per MB of data really gets  to me You Could Pay Anywhere between $10 and $26 I just looked up for different carriers in USA and their charges for international roaming. If you think T-Mobile's $15/MB is exorbitant, think again. Cingular charges $20/MB while in Netherlands. The price is anywhere between $10 and $26, depending on the country and carrier. For a sample, I included T-Mobile pricing. Use Internet and e-mail while roaming

Read/Write Web Reviewed a new search engine 'Hakia' that attempts to understand what you really want to search, instead of searching purely based on keywords. Does it Understand the Meaning? Does it understand the meaning at all is a big question and I am not quite convinced at all. But as a niche competitor to Google, it might get lots of eyeballs, though I bet, they may not frequent it, YET. The first company we'll cover is Hakia , which is a "meaning-based" search engine startup getting a bit of buzz. It is a venture-backed, multi-national team company headquartered in New York - and curiously has former US senator Bill Bradley as a board member. It launched its beta in early November this year, but already ranks around 33K on Alexa - which is impressive. They are scheduled to go live in 2007. Source: Hakia - First Meaning-based Search Engine My Meaningful Search Queries to Find Meaning I tried the following searches that are meaningful and useful to me.

Funny Error Message from Technorati, when I tried search for incoming links to my blog. There seems to be an internal problem in processing the search. But its quite a creative way to get the message through. Here is the message snapshot.   Full snapshot here. Click on the image to enlarge. If you don't think the message is good and very innovative, look at this common crap error message, this time from Cingular ( reported on Joel On Software ) Quite often we will be bombarded with crazy error messages, geeky explanations and crappy error codes. But Technorati handled it quite well. They say all they wanted to say, just so you understand it. Great. Technorati tags: technorati , documentation , web2.0 , cingular , joelonsoftware

12 Days of Christmas video clip re-worked Indian style. Performed by animated popstar, Boymongoose and Indian boyband. Quite Funny. Link to YouTube - 12 Days of Christmas Technorati tags: youtube , india , christmas , boymongoose

I asked "Would you like to carry an iPod, a Sony recorder, a Palm PDA, a cell phone, a digital camera, a gaming console, a GPS navigator, a jump drive, a laptop, …………….. OR a cool smart Cellular phone?" at my blog, " The Cellular Life Style ". I stongly believe that Smartphone will rule the markets and also posted my thoughts why it is so inexpensive to buy a multi tasking phone than buying individual gadgets that can do one thing better ( Busting The myth of Smartphone Market ). NewYorkTimes reports about some surprsing skills that new cellphones are equpped with this Christmas, indicating the trend towards Multitasking phones instead of plain old cell phones, that can just do one thing better. You don't need to own a smartphone or a blackberry to do multiple tasks. Almost all new phones are like smartphones that can do whatever you need.    [Source: Link to Surprising Skills - New York Times ] The illustration is what caught my eyes. I strongl

Would you like to carry an iPod, a Sony recorder, a Palm PDA, a cell phone, a digital camera, a gaming console, a GPS navigator, a jump drive, a laptop, …………….. OR a cool smart Cellular phone? I strongly believe that Smartphone will rule the markets and also posted why it is so inexpensive to buy a multi tasking phone than buying individual gadgets that can do one thing better ( Busting The myth of Smartphone Market ). NewYorkTimes reports about some surprsing skills that new cellphones are equpped with this Christmas, indicating the trend towards Multitasking phones instead of plain old cell phones, that can just do one thing better. You don't need to own a smartphone or a blackberry to do multiple tasks. Almost all new phones are like smartphones that can do whatever you need.    [Source: Link to Surprising Skills - New York Times ] The illustration is what caught my eyes. I strongly believe that Smartphones or Multitak phones are going to rule the markets . Even

There were apprehensions about possible health hazards of using  cell phones. Some countries even banned using cellphones by kids and in schools to minimize exposure. Read about various effects, believed to be caused by using cellphones at wiki . On the otherhand, cell phone users continue to grow around the world, largely fuelled by the middle classes in China and India. There is no clear scientific evidence that links cellphones to increased risk of cancer. However, wiki notes that, In the USA , a small number of personal injury lawsuits have been filed by individuals against cellphone manufacturers, such as Motorola , NEC , Siemens and Nokia , on the basis of allegations of causation of brain cancer and death [14] . So far, most of these lawsuits have been dismissed by the courts, on lack of scientific evidence of such a causal relationship, and this has been reducing the motivation of tort lawyers to pursue these health injury lawsuits. For those who believed in the healt

What makes a cell phone off the shelf truly Your Phone? The Ringtones, faceplates, holders and your headset together can make it the faceless box off the shelf truly your OWN and speak your style . Washington Post  displays pictures of 4 different phones that are customized for Girls with rhinestones, colorful keys, tattoos and designer cases. Technology for Girls Companies are trying to get technology in touch with its inner fashionista, marketing to women and girls by tickling them with pink phones and rhinestones. Click through some of these new designer tech toys now available. Source: Technology for Girls (washingtonpost.com) Browse through some of the cool products at Amazon to make your cellphone truly yours. Bluetooth Headsets Designer Accessories Personalize with Face Plates Cellphones and Jewelry Funky Cellphone holders Cars & Cell Phones You can visit The Cellular Life Style Boutique for cool collection of Phones and accessories available at Amazon.