Double Outage.

 Modern technology is so useful, but so annoying if it doesn't work.  I woke up this morning to find the Wifi in my apartment had quit.  It took until this afternoon for the techs to come along to fix it.  So no Internet.  On top of that I found out this afternoon that my cell phone wasn't working, and of course I couldn't check my account online because I had no Internet access.  I eventually tried a reboot, which has worked.  I guess it decided not to play nice because I was in Alberta on Tuesday and Wednesday, and disconnected at some point.  And if you don't use your phone, you don't know you're not getting calls because it's not working.

I Needed One Today.

You may find this hard to believe, but I don't have a cell phone.  It's not in my personal budget, and I don't have many people who'd want to phone me when I'm on the go anyways.  But I just had an experience where I could have used one.  Walking along I came towards a house.  An angry man was shouting at his wife.  Given how he was behaving I was worried he might attempt to attack her, but he decided to stomp back to his car.  If he had gotten violent all I could have done was run to one of the other houses, ring the doorbell, and hope someone was around to call the cops for me.  Trying to physically stop an assault would likely have just made things worse, as I have no training in any sort of combat art.

I hope the guy gets some sort of help, but I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't.

Fan Phone.

Walking down the street today I heard someone's phone blurt out a familiar sound.  It was the opening bars of "Green is the Color," the old Saskatchewan Roughriders theme song.  These days it's pretty hard being a fan given how poorly they've done this year.  But there is a consolation, the BC Lions are every bit as bad this year, so the Riders aren't alone in the CFL West basement.

Intelligence Implications.

The ongoing British tabloid scandal seems to just keep growing and growing.  The list of victims of cell phone hacking includes former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and may include Prince Charles on top of several lesser members of the Royal Family.  But in the reports that I've been exposed to I have yet to encounter any discussion of the possible espionage implications of all this.  If unscrupulous journalists, reportedly with the help of British criminals, can hack people's voice mail then what can professionals from the various intelligence agencies or the more sophisticated terrorist groups do?  The growing number of capabilities of cell phones and their cousins bring to mind all sorts of possible tricks that could be done by pro hackers, like say accessing camera functions to take pictures of secure locations, or tracking the movement of targets by GPS data.  But even access to voice mail could allow all sorts of mischief with proper analysis, especially if the target or those that contact them are less than careful with what they say.

Conversely the members of some organisations may not be happy with this scandal.  It has revealed the vulnerability of these technologies, and their current targets may as a result become more cautious with their phone use.  

Full Circle.

The earliest successful form of electronic communication was the telegraph.  It was a text only device, with Morse code eventually becoming the common method of encoding messages.  Hearing the clicking of someone's cell phone keyboard today as he wrote a text message reminded me of the sound of a telegraph receiver clicking away.  Although the method is different, in a way the rise of text messaging is a surprising throwback to that pioneering era.  When most people imagined the future of personal communications devices they likely thought that the video phone would become popular, not typing short messages.  Video phones do see quite a bit of use, but at nowhere near the level many would have thought.  Although the transmission method is different text messages often resemble Morse code telegraph messages, where brevety and the use of abbreviations of various sorts were common.  Then there's Twitter, which has gone from nowhere to ubiquitous in less than 4 years.  I'm sure that Samuel Morse and the other pioneers of telegraphy would find this quite interesting.

What Was The Sitch?

While riding on the bus today I heard someone's cell phone let out a familiar sound, the "ditditdidit" sound of the Kimmunicator from Disney's Kim Possible cartoon.  A good choice for a ringtone in my opinion, since it's short and low key.  Not familiar with the sound?  You can hear it in the brief YouTube clip below.

Porn, Is There Anywhere It Can't Go?

Ah, the amazing things technology offers us. The cell phone company Tellus has begun offering porn in photographic and video form on its telephones, much to the distaste of many. Of course, as Tellus spokesman Jim Johannsson noted porn has been available for mobile download ever since web capable phones hit the market. The new Tellus service will provide material that is legal under Canadian law and will attempt to block underage users from accessing said content. Of course there's also the fact that they might end up making a good bit of money doing so if a prediction by a British research group proves true. Juniper Research says that mobile porn content could generate as much as 14.5 billion dollars US over the next 5 years.

Personally I have a hard enough time seeing why someone would want to watch a TV program on their cell phone. But porn? Do people really need that much help getting horny that they will squint at a tiny cell phone screen to see some boobs? And frankly I hear enough about random people's sex lives in public without them getting more encouragement to blab about it by watching sex vids on the bus or in a mall food court.