Omio

All Dogs Phone To Heaven

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)

Ridiculous ringtone stories usually start and end at Crazy Frog but here’s something just as absurd but far less homicide-inducing.

Dwango is offering NTT DoCoMo ringtones that only dogs can hear.  In Japanese, that’s “Inu ni shika kikoenai chakushinon”, which makes it sound much less silly.  If you sign up for their premium rate package you can get all the inaudible files that you fancy.

On the plus side, this will give me an excuse for anyone who claims my phone never rings.

SMS = Stinky Message Service

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 Institute of Sensory Analysis and Marketing Consultancy in Göttingen (ISI) and the Oberhausen-based specialist for interactive services Convisual have patented a smart-card-esque chip designed for mobile phones.  The idea is to let users send seasonal smells to loved ones (flower scents on Mother’s Day, cinnamon at Christmas) and add a sensory element to interactive games.

We’ll have to wait one or two years before the threat of receiving stinkbombs on your iPhones, but they promise to be affordable and compatible with all major handsets.

Portable Cellular Booth

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 (211)

Worried about the lack of privacy when you use your mobile phone? Nick Rodriguez’s art project may be exactly what you need. You can see a video of his “Portable Cellular Booth” in action here. The video’s pretty good, but if I saw him in the street I’d still probably wish bad things upon him.

Source: MAKE

Hello, is Rotting Corpse There?

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 (211)

I know this story is over three years old but, like a fine wine, I think stories like these only improve with age.

Back in 2005, Jürgen Bröther from Osnabrück, Germany created the “Phone Angel”. The idea is that you can keep in touch with a dead person through the power of the mobile phone. It is a “long-life battery powered cell phone device” and allows you to have contact with the deceased after they have shuffled off this mortal coil. If personal pain, distance, disability or sheer laziness is keeping you from visiting your loved one’s final resting place then this could well be the product for you.

Before you get the wrong idea, Bröther is not a mentalist. The Phone Angel is not a Ouija board, and it’s not a séance. It won’t provide a link to the spirit world, but it will provide comfort for those who want to keep in touch with a corpse. It’s just a mobile phone, a super strength battery and a small loudspeaker encased in a waterproof container. This is placed in the earth about 30 centimetres above the grave. The battery will allow almost a year of contact. What a dark, dark idea. Bröther sold three of these devices in 2005. At €1,500, they don’t come cheap.

Automatic call response means that your loved one can never pretend to be too busy to talk to you. The Phone Angel receives communication, as if the person on the other end had answered the call. “I’m sorry I can’t come to the phone right now, I’m dead”.

Source: DW-World

WTFerrari?

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 (211)

You’d have to be a pretty big Ferrari fan to appreciate this mobile phone beast. It looks like a Ferrari when you lay it on its front and there’s a 2.2-inch touchscreen LCD underneath. It has mp3, mp4 and 3GP support and the memory can be expanded via transflash card. The retail price is £96.54, which isn’t bad until you realize that you just paid £96.54 to look like an idiot.

Source: Chip Chick

Say it with Tame Cube

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 (211)

If you’re sick of sending the same message over-and-over again to friends who simply just don’t understand that answering the phone whilst driving is illegal, the Tame Cube could be the gadget of your dreams.

Each side of the cube can be customised with a status message of your choice and can be synced to your devices and applications. For example, if you’re in a really important meeting (AKA indulging in a marathon Mario Kart session) and don’t want to be disturbed, all you’d have to do is turn the cube over to the appropriate message and everyone who contacts you will be notified of your status.

The Tame Cube is wireless and should be easy to update via the internet. It’s not due for release anytime soon, but it’ll be interesting to see how useful the concept is in application.

Source: The Greener Grass

Stinking Phones

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 (211)

Sony Ericsson jumped on the pleasant-smelling phone bandwagon at the start of 2007. Now, thanks to NTT Communications, stinky phones just got that little bit weirder.

This is a freestanding $195 device which will possibly be released at the end of March 2009. It holds 16 cartridges of base scents, not unlike an inkjet printer’s basic colours. These base scents can mix up more elaborate and exotic stenches when they receive instructions from a mobile phone. The system also accepts smell messages via e-mail, so you can plan your evening smell-fest remotely.

Technology can be strange.

Source: Reuters

Nearly half of Japanese bathe with their mobile phone

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 (211)

A survey released today revealed that 41.2% of people in Japan have taken their mobile phones to the bathtub to make calls, type emails, listen to music or play games. The most common reason for risking their phone’s life was to type emails, closely followed by listening to music.

The results of Sega’s survey will come as no surprise to Japanese handset manufacturers, some of which already advertise that their phones are safe for the bath.

Japan has one of the world’s most advanced mobile networks in the world, with nearly 85% of users carrying third generation handsets. These are handsets which allow for internet access and other interactive features.

Source: Yahoo! News

Shield Of Dreams

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)

Given this blog’s propensity of stories about spying and general civil liberty invasion, you might be right to be something of a raving Harry Caul style paranoiac. But some people are worried about something else: deadly radiation.

Despite almost every study concluding that handset radiation has a negligible effect on humans, there’s always some people who rely on scaremongering to make a quick buck.

Enter PhoneShield to prey on this climate of fear. Asking such loaded questions as “Concerned about your home cordless phone and the children?” and “Concerned about your grandchildren and their mobile phones?”, the Quartz PhoneShield is a simple attachment to stick on the back of your phone (or laptop). As recommended by such visionary forward-thinkers as Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger, it not only “mitigates the biological effects” of phone radiation it’s also harmless if you’re stupid enough to swallow it.

Firecall

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)

Personally, I get annoyed whenever I accidentally delete a text message. I’m sure most people would be furious at losing their phone. But how about losing more than 400 mobile phones, worth over £20,000.

After walking out on his wife, a Weifang man got a nasty shock when she set fire to his entire phone collection. Gadgets really are homewreckers