Edible Chips ...its outputs might be monitored and collected and retransmitted to an Internet web site by a cell phone

Grandma's pillbox with the days of the week neatly marked is set to go high tech. Tiny edible chips will replace the organizer, tracking when patients take their pills (or don't) and monitoring the effects of the drugs they're taking. Proteus, a Redwood City, California, company, has created tiny chips out of silicon grains that, once swallowed, activate in the stomach. The chips send a signal to an external patch that monitors vital parameters such as heart rate, temperature, state of wakefulness or body angle. The data is then sent to an online repository or a cellphone for the physician and the patient to track. Proteus says its chips can keep score of how patients are responding to the medication. That may be just the beginning, as the chips could improve drug delivery and even insert other kinds of health monitors inside the body. Now doctors may have a better answer to a common patient complaint — they will know exactly how it feels. Outlook: If proven in clinical trials, edible chips could let physicians look into a patient's system in a way that could change how medicine is prescribed and how we take the drugs.

Scientists Hack Cellphone to Analyze Blood, Detect Disease, Help Developing Nations

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/12/gallery_microscope_phone?slide=2&slideView=2

Although not primarily a cellphone-based application its exciting

http://www.privier.com/ While this money transfer service requires ATMs and or online banking, this service is facilitated by the widespread availability of cellphones that enable the required coordination between individuals one of whom doesn't have a bank account .

A perfect example of a standalone digital device that can be duplicated in a cellphone form factor

I love this application. But it obviously is implemented in a manner to create revenue for the company that conceived of it as a service based on the Internet. But the technology and service can just as easily be incorporated into a cell phone and the service offered by the cellphone company. Now you may argue...why would I want to protect my car by leaving in it my expensive cell phone as a means to detect when my car has been stolen. Well, obviously, you would not want to...but can you imagine a very cheap version of this technology being incorporated into a throw away cell phone supported by a minimum voice plan. Well obviously this notion is not perfect...but lets just assume that we could describe a service that would be wonderful, useful, great...without regard of the manner that cellphone operators would choose to implement it. Heh!..there is a reasonable conflict between those who offer services for profit and those who pay for the service in order to acquire its benefits...no idea is therefore 'out of bounds' when it comes to balance between consumer and provider...its the essence of the 'market'. therefore 'Snitch' is a great idea...but I can imagine a better implementation...and I'm sure that the entrepreneurs out there can think of a way to make money from this service while providing me the consumer with a great service at a price less than offered here. http://gps-snitch.com/marketing/moreAbout.html

Your cell phone as a large image projector?

http://internetcommunications.tmcnet.com/topics/enterprise/articles/41083-projector-phone-launched-chinavasion.htm

Nissan to offer a car door opener in a cellphone

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/09/nissan-and-shar.html

Do-It-Yourself Medicine is enabled by a cellphone

Almost every strategy to contain...maybe even reduce... medical costs is essentially a scheme to ration medical care and especially high technology-based drugs or procedures such as cat-scans. This seems backward to me. Isn't a better way to reduce the costs of using technology and to make it more widely available... rather than limit it to those who can afford to pay for it. Perhaps the only way to realistically reduce medical costs is to make medicine less labor-intensive and to miniaturize tests and most of all to anticipate the onset of disease. Perhaps in the future, disease can be eliminated but until then, early detection and treatment remains the best way to manage the inevitability of disease as a part of the human condition. Medicine must move in the direction of home monitoring and measurement, computer-aided self diagnosis, and do-it-yourself treatment. It would seem to be the only way we will be able to afford comprehensive care. Hospitals and doctors' offices must be replaced by specialist treatment clinics and home-based diagnosis. There is a deregulatory element to this as well. As technology progresses, people and lower-level medical professionals will be able to do more without a doctor's supervision; the laws that restrict certain types of decisions and permissions to someone with a license to practice medicine will have to be relaxed. Will doctor's fight home-doctoring like lawyers have fought home-lawyering? Do it yourself tax software has reduced the need for the lowest level of tax accountant. Will do-it-yourself doctoring eliminate the need for the general practitioner, leaving only specialists for the most complex and uncommon cases? Wide use of comprehensive electronic medical records, updated regularly with data from individual sensors, analyzed by computers using constantly improved diagnostic algorithms can probably identify incipient disease earlier with greater accuracy than infrequent hurried examinations by primary care doctors. Cell phones, as ubiquitous digital powered devices, may be an excellent vehicle for housing individual medical sensors that don't require embedding in the body. Cell phones also offer an inexpensive and widely available means for interacting with a centralized computer-based medical monitoring center. Read the Telemedicine article in the Economist.

Along with micro-finance goes cell phone-enabled micro payment

M-PESA is a Safaricom service allowing you to transfer money using a mobile phone. Kenya is the first country in the world to use this service, which is offered in partnership between Safaricom and Vodafone. M-PESA is available to all members of the public, even if you do not have a bank account or a bankcard. I would expect to see this service rapidly adopted by developing countries. As the cellphone is used more frequently by buyers and sellers to determine prices, such a service as M-PESA will be used to settle small transactions. Read of a new US-based startup that provides micropayment via cell phone.

The cell phone as a universal 'remote' controller

In an earlier post I had listed several functions that I would like to see applications for on my perfect cell phone that fall into the 'universal remote' category:

1. remote control of TV, stereo, iPod,

2. House hold security systems

3. Door lock opener

4. Car door opener

Here's a story about how manufacturers are developing applications for the iPhone to control home security systems

Guess what?...QIK and Kyte service meets my requirement for video streaming from my 'perfect' cell phone...Great!!

See for your self....and here... these new services...Even subscribe easily.

I find 'crowd-sourcing' or amateur journalism a very exciting idea enabled by this new service.

More cellphones include video cameras. Streaming live video of current events to web sites for the friends or the rest of the world to view seems to me the ultimate in personal communication and citizen vigilance.

Of course, I recognize the opportunity for abuse and the loss of privacy in this vigilance thing...vigilantism is easily foreseeable...but the injustices in the world... which might be reduced, if exposed to the world...maybe the risk is worth the reward and a gain may be worth the effort to devise successful means of protecting individual privacy.

Schlage Link is first implementation of web controlled lock

I'll admit that my idea first identified in a early posting to the blog was not original...but at that time I had not been able to identify a lock company offering the capability as a standard package.

Now Schlage is. Read about it's functions.

But the Schlage lock is expensive and requires a subscription...neither characteristic do I like.

I still prefer an implementation that I conceived for the condominiums at 2068 Fifth Avenue using a standard electronic keyless lock plus another gadget that controls the power to the lock that is accessible from the internet either from a PC and standard web page or via cellphone in a similar manner. Contact me for details.

A user interface that would enable illiterate people to more easily use a smart cell phone

One of the functions that I hoped, early in my thinking about the ideal cellphone, would be developed is a user interface that enables users who are illiterate to use the cellphone for functions that, while available, require reading and writing text.

I thought of the user interface being created based upon a language of symbols or pictographs rather than an alphabet.

Well Microsoft has  assisted in the definition of  a model for a text free interface that cellphone operating system creators can adopt and incorporate:

http://research.microsoft.com/~indranim/text-free.htm

I had a particular use of  a text free user interface in mind. In Pakistan after the earthquake in 2005, there was consideration given by some aid groups to providing as many cellphones as could be funded to victims of the natural disaster as a new approach to improving the effects of international medical interventions.

Some means of providing  the medical aid recipients with an incentive to continue to follow the recommendations for, as examples, clean water and sanitation practices and children's vaccinations schedules.

A cellphone might be that incentive because cell phones are highly regarded and, when possessed, cared for with great intent.

The idea behind this plan was that the cell phone could also enable communications between families, support increased and more effective economic activity, provide a portable means of storing and carrying valuable documents, and facilitate health care and health maintenance by allowing health authorities to contact affected individuals to remind them of health care options and obligations.

But a large majority of the effected populations in northern Pakistan were illiterate. So any such cellphone would require a text free user interface if it were to meet all the requirements the aids groups had envisioned.

Why shouldn't the ubiquitous cellphone include sensors that would detect..well... whatever

The cellphone is the probably perfect container for a number of functions in addition to communications because it is the one digital device that more people carry with them at most times. The cellphone's utility as an instant means of communications with people and web sites makes it very attractive as the repository  for additional auxiliary functions. In other posts to the blog, I have described cellphone functions that go beyond just being a phone to include the device as a remote car door opener (like a key fob), an ATM card, a bar code reader which would permit comparison shopping on the spot, a video camera that can provide live video to a web site for instant citizen journalism, and almost an endless list of other functions. So why not as a universal set of sensor of bad things such as Sarine gas, or other theorists threats or polluted air or whatever. Read about a technology that could enable this function: But more important than sensors for external threats may be simply sensors that monitor your individual health. Although there are no very large studies confirming the value of constant monitoring of bodily functions, its is likely that for many classes of illnesses (and health) continuous monitoring may facilitate individualized treatment plans. So expect sensors that perform many different functions to be incorporated into the ubiquitous cell phone. Here's  a quote from an article by the Director of IBM India's research lab: "Doctors will get enhanced “super-senses” to better diagnose and treat you: In the next five years, your doctor will be able to see, hear and understand your medical records in entirely new ways. In effect, doctors will gain superpowers — technologies will allow them to gain x-ray-like vision to view medical images; super sensitive hearing to find the tiniest audio clue in your heart beat; and ways to organise information in the same way they treat a patient. An avatar — a 3D representation of your body — will allow doctors to visualise your medical records and click with the computer mouse on a particular part of the avatar, to trigger a search of your medical records and retrieve information relevant to that part of your body, instead of leafing through pages of notes. The computer will automatically compare those visual and audio clues to thousands or hundreds of thousands of other patient records, and be able to be much more precise in diagnosing and also treating you, based on people with similar issues and make-up."

Not a new idea..calling for a cab.. but its the combination of a rickshaw and cell phone that's interesting

http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/7141

Here's a good idea to alleviate the New York (and any other big city) parking problem

Read this article. Neat huh! What's wrong with this?..at the moment I see nothing...but, of course, the expense of installing sensors in every parking place and of laying out street with designated parking places...neither of which New York does. But if you've ever driven around a 2 blocks on the side square looking for a parking place, you can at least imagine what it would be like to look at your smartphone displaying a map of your neighborhood with blinking lights showing available parking places. But if such a service had existed in the 90s then we never would have had Seinfeld since many episodes were based on New York parking stories.

Extending cell phone usage to very low income populations

In the late 1990s, the conventional wisdom among industry analysts was that mobile phone penetration in the Philippines could not exceed 20 percent to 25 percent on account of the country's relatively low per capita incomes. By end-2007, however, over 60 percent of Filipinos had become mobile phone users. Nazareno attributed the Philippines' success in promoting the usage of mobile phones to the introduction of various innovations in cellular technologies and business models. He cited the introduction of prepaid services in the 1990s which Smart has aggressively promoted. "This innovation opened the door to just everyone -- students, housewives, employees, blue collar workers, farmers, fishermen and families of overseas worker," he said. More

FrontLine SMS

A lack of communication can be a major barrier for grassroots non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in developing countries. FrontlineSMS is the first text messaging system created exclusively with this problem in mind.

By leveraging basic tools already available to most NGOs — computers and mobile phones — FrontlineSMS enables instantaneous two-way communication on a large scale. It’s easy to implement, simple to operate, and best of all, the software is free.

More

Witnessing the Human Face of Mobile (cell phones) in Malawi

Friday, June 27, 2008 12:50 PM PDT

It may not seem like much to you and me -- indeed, it's unlikely to make a lot of sense -- but for the person who sent it, and more importantly the one who received it, it represents the dawn of a new era in rural health care in the region.

The first message read, "Ineyo ndinayenda mapesent awiri sakupeza bwino amenewa ndiavuto lakhasa," meaning, "There are two patients, very sick of cancer." It was quickly followed by another. "Mai laulentina adamwalira pa sabata kwa chamoto omweanali pa pa h.b.c." This one - "Laulentina, a patient in the Home Based Care program, died on Saturday." These messages, in Chichewa -- the local language -- represent the beginnings of a new mobile-phone-based health care initiative, centered around the humble SMS (short messaging service), which is set to revolutionize communication for doctors, nurses, staff and volunteers working to improve the health of a quarter of a million Malawians within a hundred-square-mile radius of St. Gabriel's, the hospital running the pilot.

More

My cellphone as a flashlight

Of course you have seem images of participants at music concerts or other public demonstrations who hold their cell phones up...opened...to create a similar effect as a candle.

So why shouldn't my cell phone truly be... in addition to all its other potential functions... a 'flashlight.'

I have seen my plumber use his cell phone to illuminate a wiring connection in the depths of a circuit panel that he could not see with his naked eye. Using the cell phone was quicker than finding his flashlight. But the backlighted screen isn't as good a flashlight as is possible with some innovation.

I think a series of LEDs would suffice to create enough light and demand power within the capacity of the cell phone battery to provide... for short periods at least.

Update: (7/19/08) An application available free from the Apple App store for the iPhone is 'Light'...which simply creates a bright white screen that in fact provides a substantial amount of light. Its not as good an LED light might be but at least my original request does not seem so bizarre now.

Using a cellphone as a remote video camera and microphone

http://www.ateksoft.com/webcamplus.html

Well I had decided to try to develop an Android-based software application that would enable a smartphone...runing Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, iPhone OS etc.

It looks as if someone beat me to it.

I haven't tried the software but I intend to soon. I'm intrigued that it permits connection to the internet via bluetooth channel, WiFi, or GPRS.

However, it appears to be limited to Windows Mobile OS...maybe there's a Linux version. iPhone of course is problematic since it includes no native video capture capability

Well here's a complete remote surveillance camera package using celluar network

http://www.smartscouter.com/ssDefault.aspx

This camera appears to be modified cell phone and I have no idea why I can't find this setup except as an aid to deer hunting but that's it...and its expensive...but conceptually this is exactly what I have in mind as a perfect remote surveillance cellphone-based camera.

But this package (without the wireless subscription and web site...better would be to use your own subscription or a new one and your own web page) is exactly the ticket...that is..a long life battery, the ability to control the camera from a PC or cellphone and most important that uses the cellular network to receive instructions and to send images.

Singapore Telephone offers an interesting service that uses cellphone as a remote video camera

Read about this service and device offered by Singapore Telephone:

http://home.singtel.com/consumer/products/mobile/value_added_services/mobile_livecam_overview.asp

I have not discovered a similar service anywhere else.

But the concept makes complete sense. The easiest way to obtain remote video surveillance is to use a cellphone with camera and video recording. The cellphone needs to be 3G and to use a 3G service otherwise the large #s of images would clog the system.

Its possible to put together a configuration of equipment:

1. a video camera

2. a wireless receiver/transmitter

3. a battery power

4. A photovoltaic power source to charge the battery

5. A PC with proper software

But a mobile (cell) phone already includes all the functions above except the power source to charge a battery. But small photovoltaic 'setups' are readily available so even an amateur could easily install a remote battery powered surveillance camera that could be controlled by another cell phone and which would use the cell phone network to transmit images and to receive instructions from the an owner via another cell phone.

One solution to a no landline all cell phone home

http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-KX-TH1211-Expandable-Bluetooth-Convergence/dp/B00138FPY4 This Panasonic bluetooth-enabled technology is actually quite a neat solution. It has a couple of potential negatives...it is not an answering machine so one must use cell phone voice mail... so if the system is set up to manage ...for example two cell phones ....then some confusion can exists about how to check messages that would be taken if ..say..late at night you had set all phones to silent. This may sound trival but if in fact the idea is to eliminate a landline entirely the cell phones will be quite often in the cradle not being carried about. But this very reasonably priced solution manages the basic problem..how to add more easily managed cordless phones as extensions of a cell so that when employed say at home, a cell phone can be placed in its charger and left until the owner leaves but calls be be answered and initiated using bluetooth as the communications channel between the cell phone and the cordless base station and the handsets.

I want to drop my landline service and rely on cell phone only...but...!

Many people do this already and manage by just keeping their cell phones with them wherever they are in their living space. Others (like me) who don't like to carry a cell phone around at all times and who live in spaces with multiple rooms or floors know that cell phone service is often unavailable depending on physically where you are at the moment. So I want a solution something like this: 1. A cell phone charging cradle that connects to cordless (meaning wireless) phones that just plug into an electricity socket for power. These phones will most likely be left over from a previous land line setup. 2. The cradle can be located in my space where cell reception is best. 3. The cordless phones can be located in convenient locations throughout. One cordless phone is connected to the cellphone cradle by 4 pair telephone cable with RJ-45 jacks so it must be nearby the cradle...not the best. (Or alternatively and better...requiring at least one new cordless phone with bluetooth... the first cordless phone would be located within bluetooth range of the cell phone cradle and then communicate with the other cordless phones utilizing the normal cordless frequency band.) 4. When a call comes in on the cell phone...all phones ring (or not depending on a mute switch on the cordless phone) 5. Calls can be originated from the cordless phone but travel on the cell phone selected network. 6. All cell phone features such as call waiting etc would be available on the cordless phones. XLink has a partial but expensive (to me) solution. I am relying on the review. I have not actually tried XLink. It uses bluetooth to connect the cell and cordlesss.) http://www.osnews.com/story/19593/Review:_Mobile_ Phone_Signal_Amplifier_and_Bluetooth_Gateway/ Heres the XLink web ref: http://www.xlinkgateway.com/bt.html This device is for someone who wishes to eliminate a landline entirely. XLink has a similar device for someone who wishes to retain a landline. 7. Last I would like the bluetooth channel to connect to any WIFI within range. (This is a function listed in the original specifications of a 'perfect cellphone' that chooses any WIFI for the communications channel if it make sense..of course this requires a VOIP function but then this is a blog about the 'perfect' hand held digital device.) I would want a software function on the cellphone, based on parameters I provide, to use WIFI as the communications channel rather than the cellular network, if a call characteristic matches a criteria ...for example if a call is out of the boundaries (to another country) of my unlimited cellular plan. Here's an About.com FAQ on the issues involved in settling on the use of a cell phone only. Here's a recent update about the choices being made to eliminate landlines and manage only with cell phones

Ray Kurzweil does it again ..a cell phone reader for the blind

http://www.letsgomobile.org/en/3521/phone-blind-people/

A nifty scheme for tracking a stolen GSM cell phone

http://www.gadgettrak.com/products/phonebak/

Elsewhere I list as a desirable cellphone function a mechanism that beeps a keychain watch fob when the cell phone and key fob are more than a certain distance apart.

This function is to reduce lost cell phone that are misplaced but not stolen.

The 'gadgettrak' function described in the web link is for stolen GSM phones.

Maybe the most important cellphone/PDA function is voice recognition

http://jott.com/jotters/index.php/blackberry

This link describes the voice recognition function provided by JOTT for blackberry users.

A similar function... however provided...by web service or native-to-the-device application.. is much more efficient than a keyboard or thumb board or hand writing recognition or touch technology for controlling the device or transferring information normally provided by text.

http://jott.com/jotters/index.php/blackberry

Air France enables flight boarding cards on mobile phones

AIR FRANCE REACHES TARGET OF FULL ELECTRONIC TICKETING Tuesday, June 03, 2008 Starting 1 June 2008, all Air France tickets will be electronic, in compliance with recommendations stipulated by IATA (International Air Transport Association) which represents 94% of airlines. E-ticketing*, which Air France has been gradually implementing on its entire network over the past few years, marks an important step for the air transport industry. At home, at the travel agent's or wherever there is Internet access, passengers can print their boarding card at airfrance.com and choose their seat from 30 hours before departure and up to the latest check-in time. *e-tickets contain all travel information for one or more passengers memorized in an airline's data base, once the booking has been made and paid for. Simple and easy to use, passengers no longer run the risk of losing or forgetting their ticket. The next major innovation: In June 2008, Air France will be offering passengers traveling between Paris and Amsterdam, without a connecting flight, the possibility of receiving their boarding card on their mobile phone. Customers can access http://mobile.airfrance.com on their mobile phone, choose their seat (aisle or window) and they will be sent an SMS, MMS, or an e-mail at the end of check-in, depending on the type of phone they have. The message received contains a bar code containing all the information written on a traditional boarding card. The mobile phone boarding card is another example, together with the e-ticket, of the «paperless» objective at the airport.

A novel use of a cellphone as a sensor of blood sugar levels

The concept to to combine a cellphone with a sensor to permit the monitoring of blood sugar levels. Why the cell phone? ..because it is a rapidly- becoming- ubiquitous digital device that many carry for other reasons already.

Below are two articles that explore possible approaches

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/technological-interventions-merge-health-fitness/

http://cellphones.about.com/b/2008/06/18/for-diabetes-patients-cell-phones-to-nix-need-for-finger-pricking.htm

Mobile phones outnumber fixed land line connected phones

In 2002 mobile phone lines outnumbered foxed lines. This fact argues for an even greater emphasis on using mobile or cell phones as comprehensive personal devices tot not only facilitate voice communications but all the other applications that can be enabled within the form factor of a mobile phone.

http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/ni/mobileovertakes/index.html

New technology portends cell-phone based sensors

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2008/08_45AR.html

Visual and speech interfaces for Cell phones for use by Lady Health Workers in rural health clinics in Pakistan

Cell phones have great possibilities to improve the delivery of health services in rural areas such as Pakistan and India. But traditional interactions with cellphones using an Internet browser and text is ill suited to rural illiterate populations.

Either speech or visual (pictographs such as cartoons) interfaces could reduce this problem.

Read this: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jsherwan/JS-proposal.pdf

end#

Microsoft Funds 15 new research projects to advance use of CellPhones in rural health settings.

http://research.microsoft.com/ur/us/fundingopps/rfps/CellPhoneAsPlatformForHealthcare_Awards.aspx#EMD

New cell phone-based applications using NFC (Near Field Communications) Technology

The same technology used to sense RFID's (electronic tags) 'NFC' (near field communications...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_Field_Communication) can be employed to enable a cell phone as the instrument to make money transfers...subway passes, parking meters...can also be used to permit activation of keyless locks on hotel riooms, front doors. and car doors.


http://www.businesstravellogue.com/accommodation/remote-hotel-check-in-with-your-cell-phone-gives-you-keyless-entry.html

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17355&ch=infotech

Using RFID in a cellphone to board planes

Barcode scanning using either scanned jpgs or an image from the camera

Near Field Technology such as Barcode scanning on the iPhone and Credit Card trasactions

http://iphone.macworld.com/2008/05/iphone_cleans_out_your_wallet.php

This describes an approach...scanning the physical credit card card; but I have seen articles on using the camera in the phone to take an image which is sent to a web page which interprets the bar code.

But what I want is an near field technology function which will allow the phone to be used instead of a credit card.

MasterCard Paypass using near field technology can accept interactions with cell phones. http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2006/12/15/cingular-to-test-nokia-wallet-phones-with-mastercard-paypass/

MasterCard Teams with Motorola to Test PayPass for Cell Phones

(Digital Transaction News)

MasterCard International announced today it will launch pilots of its PayPass electronic payment system on mobile phones from Motorola Inc. The Purchase, N.Y.-based card company says the pilots will get under way at a "variety" of unspecified locations in the U.S by the end of the year. The Motorola phones in the pilots will also feature a technology called near-field communications, which will enable them to perform electronic functions beyond payment. These might include mass-transit ticketing, loyalty, or interactive marketing.

MasterCard expects NFC capability, while not necessary to PayPass, will make the phones more economically attractive to cellular carriers, which will be expected to distribute the phones to consumers. PayPass relies on radio-frequency identification technology to interact with payment terminals and, except for a pilot in Dallas that involved Nokia cell phones and ended last November, it has been based on cards and keyfobs as form factors. "The real issue [with cell phones] is a commercial one," says Oliver Steeley, vice president of wireless payment devices at MasterCard. "Banks don't buy cell phones, cellular carriers do. So we have to construct something here where there's enough to make it worthwhile for cellular carriers to pay for the phones because they won't come free. That's why we introduced NFC." Steeley says the added functionality of NFC including should help drive data revenue for carriers and justify the investments they make in the phones. The phones, for example, might allow users to pick up links to carriers' WAP sites merely by waving the phones near posters, labels, and the like.

Steeley says the new pilots with Schaumburg, Ill.-based Motorola will "take PayPass to the next level," building on what MasterCard learned in its Dallas pilot last year. One change from Dallas will involve the absence of snap-on back plates. These plates, rather than the phones themselves, communicated with readers in that pilot, but cell phone design changes make such solutions unrealistic for "large implementations," says Steeley. "Cell phones change shape and size," he adds. "At the start of the pilot we chose Nokia's best-selling models, but at the end it was difficult to get consumers to participate because Nokia had introduced 14 or 15 new models, and some didn’t accommodate the back plate." In the trials with Motorola, the transmitter will reside in the phone itself, and consumers will activate PayPass by logging into their banks' Web sites and entering identifying data about the phone. The banks will then download account data and cryptographic keys to the phones over the airwaves. The phones will be usable as payment devices wherever PayPass readers have been installed, though there are "several specifics still under discussion" with Motorola, Steeley says. He says MasterCard hopes the new pilots will reveal, among other things, how cell phone and card life cycles compare and how transaction activity on the phones compares with that on other form factors. MasterCard says its research has shown that consumers who like contactless payment tend to prefer cell phones as the form factor, owing primarily to their convenience and the fact that consumers usually carry them with them everywhere.

Though the card network is not releasing specific locations for the pilots yet, Steeley says they will most likely occur where PayPass acceptance has already been implemented. "We want to coordinate issuance with acceptance," he says. So far, the biggest implementation of PayPass has occurred with McDonald's Corp., which announced in August it would install the payment system at 715 stores in New York, Dallas, and Orlando, Fla., later this year (Digital Transactions News, Aug. 18).

With PayPass, cardholders tap or wave cards or phones on or near a receiver linked to a point-of-sale terminal. McDonald's, whose PayPass implementation represents the first commercial rollout of MasterCard's technology, is using a terminal from VeriFone Inc., the Omni 7000. An antenna embedded in the form factor transmits encrypted card-account data to the receiver, and the transaction then proceeds as if a card had been swiped. Radio-frequency, or RFID, transactions have been found to result in faster transaction times than swiped and signed transactions, making them attractive to retail venues like fast food, where tender time is critical. All the card networks are targeting the quick-serve market, which accounts for some 6 billion cash payments annually. American Express Co., which is conducting a test of similar technology in Phoenix, says its ExpressPay system cuts tender time to 8.9 seconds, compared to 12.4 seconds for cash and 15.3 seconds for signature-based debit. RFID also promises to help convert small-value transactions to electronic processing. In its Orlando pilot, MasterCard found that tickets average $21 with PayPass, with 45% of the payments coming in under $10. "Right now we're very focused where we believe the transaction is large enough to be economically sustainable [given interchange and other fees], places where we're getting a share of transactions and want to get a larger share of transactions," says Steeley.

Remote medical testing using a cellphone as a sensor

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/20771/?a=f

Another example of how cell phones can be used as a remote 'sensor'...its camera capability in this case... to capture and transmit the results of a novel paper-based test chip.

New Functions

Land mine detector

wether forecasts in spoken language

air quality monitor

Ingenious means of transferring money by cell phone.

During a 2006 field study in Uganda, Chipchase and his colleagues stumbled upon an innovative use of the shared village phone, a practice called sente. Ugandans are using prepaid airtime as a way of transferring money from place to place, something that’s especially important to those who do not use banks. Someone working in Kampala, for instance, who wishes to send the equivalent of $5 back to his mother in a village will buy a $5 prepaid airtime card, but rather than entering the code into his own phone, he will call the village phone operator (“phone ladies” often run their businesses from small kiosks) and read the code to her. She then uses the airtime for her phone and completes the transaction by giving the man’s mother the money, minus a small commission. “It’s a rather ingenious practice,” Chipchase says, “an example of grass-roots innovation, in which people create new uses for technology based on need.”

It’s also the precursor to a potentially widespread formalized system of mobile banking. Already companies like Wizzit, in South Africa, and GCash, in the Philippines, have started programs that allow customers to use their phones to store cash credits transferred from another phone or purchased through a post office, phone-kiosk operator or other licensed operator. With their phones, they can then make purchases and payments or withdraw cash as needed. Hammond of the World Resources Institute predicts that mobile banking will bring huge numbers of previously excluded people into the formal economy quickly, simply because the latent demand for such services is so great, especially among the rural poor. This bodes well for cellphone companies, he says, since owning a phone will suddenly have more value than sharing a village phone. “If you’re in Hanoi after midnight,” Hammond says, “the streets are absolutely clogged with motorbikes piled with produce. They give their produce to the guy who runs a vegetable stall, and they go home. How do they get paid? They get paid the next time they come to town, which could be a month or two later. You have to hope you can find the stall guy again and that he remembers what he sold. But what if you could get paid the next day on your mobile phone? Would you care what that mobile costs? I don’t think so.”

Taken from New York Times April 11. 2008: Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?

Read Jan Chipchase's blog on the future with (not of) the cell phone...Good stuff

Cell Phone-based RFID sensor

One of the functions that I think would be great to have is a cell phone-based RFID code reader or sensor. RFID tagging will become much more prevalent and its use will take different forms than todays....for example, RFID tagging of animals...sounds cruel but is much more reliable than tags.

But finally...maybe there are earlier examples that I haven't come upon of a cell phone based sensor: Read about its intended uses here.