Omio

Of Mobiles And Men

By MattyBcloseAuthor: MattyB Name: Matt Bortone
Email: matt.barr@trafficbroker.co.uk
Site: http://www.omio.com
About: I've been a fan of mobile phones...since the beginning. Being a poor sharecropper's son, I'm less gadget-obsessed than some of our reporters who seem to have developed an unhealthy attachment to the idea of the HTC Diamond. Instead, I'm interested in the way mobiles have changed our lives at work, at home and anywhere else that people cooler than me go.See Authors Posts (60)

The Internet has always been a virtual sausagefest, as the preponderance of scantily-clad ladies, misogynistic social bookmarkers
and useless ephemera should prove. Accordingly, it may come as no surprise that, even when the Internet is taken out into the real world, it’s still dominated by guys.

A survey from web-browser company Opera, from a study of web behaviours from February to June, has shown men outnumber women almost nine to one, with 88.1% of its users being of the gruntier sex. Though overall use is up 23% since March, that seems to have done little to even the gender gap. Perhaps one day, mobile’s ubiquity will even things out but for the moment, it’s a man’s playground.

So think carefully before you visit the mobile version of Match.com!

Ree-phone Madness

By MattyBcloseAuthor: MattyB Name: Matt Bortone
Email: matt.barr@trafficbroker.co.uk
Site: http://www.omio.com
About: I've been a fan of mobile phones...since the beginning. Being a poor sharecropper's son, I'm less gadget-obsessed than some of our reporters who seem to have developed an unhealthy attachment to the idea of the HTC Diamond. Instead, I'm interested in the way mobiles have changed our lives at work, at home and anywhere else that people cooler than me go.See Authors Posts (60)

If you were unlucky enough to see Rob Zombie’s atrocious remake of ‘Halloween’, you’ll remember all the unnecessary scenes of Malcolm McDowell as Michael Myers’ psychiatrist trying to understand the obsessions of the twisted little freak. In the real world, it’s more likely Malcolm would be dealing with children with a very different kind of obsession: mobile phones.

Two children, aged 12 and 13, have been sent to a “mental health institution” to combat their addiction to their beloved mobiles. Dr Maite Utges, who was in charge of their recovery, goes so far to suggest they “both had serious difficulties leading normal lives”.

But after three months of rehabilitation, their bad habits, such as lying to get money for phone-related purchases, appear to have been squelched.

Hopefully the men in white coats won’t be after our phone-obsessed Omio staffers but if some of them start mysteriously disappearing at least you’ll know why

Mother, May I Sleep With Nokia?

By MattyBcloseAuthor: MattyB Name: Matt Bortone
Email: matt.barr@trafficbroker.co.uk
Site: http://www.omio.com
About: I've been a fan of mobile phones...since the beginning. Being a poor sharecropper's son, I'm less gadget-obsessed than some of our reporters who seem to have developed an unhealthy attachment to the idea of the HTC Diamond. Instead, I'm interested in the way mobiles have changed our lives at work, at home and anywhere else that people cooler than me go.See Authors Posts (60)

While the Omio team considers itself to be a hip, young crowd, our childhood days were still back in the dark ages when having a mobile phone wasn’t de rigeur. Now parents must wrestle with the moral dilemma of when to let handsets into the grasp of their darling little angels.

Poll results, recorded by ParentLine Plus, suggest parents are keen for tweens to get on the mobile scene: 47% of parents felt the ages of 11 to 13 were the right time to bequeath a phone. And 26% would give one to a child under 10!

While fabulous new technologies could make a child more at risk to thievery, fraud, bullying and emotionally scarring video-clips, children always want shiny things.

The Future Of Phoning Is Scary

By MattyBcloseAuthor: MattyB Name: Matt Bortone
Email: matt.barr@trafficbroker.co.uk
Site: http://www.omio.com
About: I've been a fan of mobile phones...since the beginning. Being a poor sharecropper's son, I'm less gadget-obsessed than some of our reporters who seem to have developed an unhealthy attachment to the idea of the HTC Diamond. Instead, I'm interested in the way mobiles have changed our lives at work, at home and anywhere else that people cooler than me go.See Authors Posts (60)

Much as we love the mobile landscape, it can’t be denied that there are many nuisances that come with the convenience of being able to communicate with anyone anywhere at any time. And this goes beyond the hassle of having to listen to the high-volume yammerings of whoever you’re sat next to on the bus. Most obviously, there are the safety risks: not just to drivers, but pedestrians too - the current NYC mayor has wanted to ban phone use by pedestrians since so many ignored the traffic while using them! But even for the safest users, a mobile universe has caused a great change in the way we operate.

Jan Schaumann, a style-trainer and behavioural expert, has commented on how society’s morés have changed: “the cell phone generation turns to their beloved text messaging more and more often in conflict resolution.” This means relationships end with the flick of a text message and what were once heartfelt comments are delegated to syntactically poor SMS. Take, for example, the ‘Camera Phone Killer’, Stephen Price, who stabbed his victim 80 times and posed with the body for his mobile. To apologise to him mum, he sent the message: “Listen ma av been thinkin aboot everythin, n wit a put you through n am really really sorry ma!”

The anonymity that a portable communications device offers also lets some people unleash their “inner jerk”. Obscene/prank calls have sky-rocketed since phones have become more readily available by teenagers. Nine people in Berkshire repeated this offensive to the fire brigade so often they have had their phones disconnected!

Phones themselves can cause a great deal of bother. A Halifax man, Christopher Cookland, was accused of common assault and theft after a fight with his girlfriend surrounding their mobile phone, which he scarpered away with.

With mobiles being such stressful things, that’s all the more reason to let Omio make things a lot easier!

Source:The Earth Times

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The Future Of Phoning Is Bright

By MattyBcloseAuthor: MattyB Name: Matt Bortone
Email: matt.barr@trafficbroker.co.uk
Site: http://www.omio.com
About: I've been a fan of mobile phones...since the beginning. Being a poor sharecropper's son, I'm less gadget-obsessed than some of our reporters who seem to have developed an unhealthy attachment to the idea of the HTC Diamond. Instead, I'm interested in the way mobiles have changed our lives at work, at home and anywhere else that people cooler than me go.See Authors Posts (60)

Phones embedded into human bodies!

Numbers dialed through the power of human thought!

Mobile phone that help identify and cure diseases!

This may sound like some sort of futuristic wonderland, but Martin Cooper, inventor of the first personal handset back 1973, thinks that it’s not an impossibility. “It’s not really the technology, it’s the people. People are really conservative,” he complains.

As we humans are a stubborn creatures, it may take a while before we’re willing to start transmitting phone signals from inside our bodies. But what about inside our homes? At the moment, the average punter may not be particularly keen to have a phone mast inside their house but by the end of the year this will be a reality, thanks to femtocells. These wireless-router-sized boxes have been designed to help improve connectivity in buildings, where 70% of all mobile data is used (Fun Fact: its name comes from the root “femto-” meaning “one quadrillionth”). With indoors 3G radio masts, not only will it be easier to use broadband services it should actually be safer, as the masts will have to use less power and, as a result, less radiation.

Stuart Carlaw, research director of ABI Research, claims there will be 70m femtocells in the world by 2012, with maybe 200 million people using them. You tech-savvy readers may be familiar with them, but they’re still a mystery to most of of population, yet one day they may be as common as ‘mp3s’ or ‘bluetooth’.

Source:Guardian

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Mobile Phones 1 – 0 Phone Boxes

By Kate CrowleycloseAuthor: Kate Crowley Name: Kate Crowley
Email: talk@omio.com
Site: http://www.omio.com
About: Kate's interest in mobile phones began when she realised she was supernaturally adept at Snake 2. She was less good at Battleships and, frankly, we shouldn't even mention Pipes.See Authors Posts (212)

Mobile phones are destroying a great British institution! According to the Office of Communications, Britain has more mobile phones than people. There are 70 million mobile phones and 60 million Britons. The use of pay phones has dropped by half in the last three years, according to B.T. They’ve removed about 30,000, or a third of all pay phones from the street since 2002. Of the remaining 61,700 phone boxes, 12,700 are of the archetypal cast iron or wood style.

Here are some of my favourite quotes from the USA Today article which broke this harrowing news:

“It would be a shame if they disappeared,” Londoner John Pearl, 38, says after using his “mobile” — what the Brits call a cellphone — a few steps away from a cluster of the unused phone booths in central London.

“It’s everybody from professional people to celebrities to a guy who saved up three years and wanted one,” says Dockree, 53, who has been in the phone box restoration business for seven years. “There’s no common denominator but a fondness for the red box.”

“The red box is iconic. It’s like big red, double-decker buses, which are dying out too,” says Toby Atkins, 23, a book illustrator in London. “You hate to see them go,” he says after making a call on his mobile.

Phoning Like It’s 2003

By MattyBcloseAuthor: MattyB Name: Matt Bortone
Email: matt.barr@trafficbroker.co.uk
Site: http://www.omio.com
About: I've been a fan of mobile phones...since the beginning. Being a poor sharecropper's son, I'm less gadget-obsessed than some of our reporters who seem to have developed an unhealthy attachment to the idea of the HTC Diamond. Instead, I'm interested in the way mobiles have changed our lives at work, at home and anywhere else that people cooler than me go.See Authors Posts (60)

Despite even the most cursory glance at Omio’s fabulous range of handsets, we can tell things have changed a lot on the mobile landscape in the past five years. But a large number of people are still missing out on this glorious future.

According to research by AppTrigger, 57% of UK phone users have not changed the way they use their mobile phones over the last five years - even though the majority agreed that functionality had improved by so much. Unsurprisingly, 16-21 year olds use their phones for the broadest number of activities, from listening to music, to playing games, to organising their personal lives and visiting websites.

Will the older generation eventually start using their phones more widely or keep the same phone habits throughout their lives?

Source: AppTrigger