NotePage SMS, Paging and Messaging Blogs

Pope Benedict will text message thousands of young Catholics on their mobile phones during World Youth Day in Sydney in July, hoping going digital will help him connect better with a younger audience.

The Pope will text daily messages of inspiration and hope during the six-day Sydney event while digital prayer walls will be erected at event sites and the church will set up a Catholic social networking Web site akin to a Catholic Facebook.

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Clearwire and Sprint Nextel will combine their wireless broadband units to create a $14.55 billion communications company.


The new company, to be named Clearwire, will receive a $3.2 billion investment from Intel Corp., Google Inc., Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Bright House Networks. The investment is based on a target price of $20 per Clearwire share and will give the companies a 22 percent stake in the new venture.

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As more advanced wireless devices are put into use, the nations 40-year-old 911 emergency system is becoming increasingly antiquated and unable to function properly for users of the new devices, according to the 911 Industry Alliance.


Jeff Robertson, executive director of the industry group, said in an interview Wednesday that the issue is reaching crisis proportions. The problem is that consumer technology has surpassed the 911 technology, he said. Ninety-five percent of 911 call centers are analog. Emergency data gets stripped out.

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In another step in the worldwide march of Apple iPhone, the top mobile phone operator in Latin America said Wednesday that it has inked a deal to bring the multimedia gadget to more than a dozen countries starting later this year.


America Movil SAB, controlled by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, said it plans to bring the iPhone to all of its Latin American operations but did not offer any more details about the arrangement, including whether it would be the exclusive iPhone provider in the targeted countries.

Computers that boot instantly to the exact place where you left off and mobile devices that do not need recharging for weeks. These are only some of the possibilities resulting from Hewlett-Packard research that proves the existence of what the company described as the fourth fundamental circuit element in electrical engineering.

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Thinking of throwing out your old cell phone? Think again. Maybe you should mine it first for gold, silver, copper and a host of other metals embedded in the electronics -- many of which are enjoying near-record prices.


It is called urban mining, scavenging through the scrap metal in old electronic products in search of such gems as iridium and gold, and it is a growth industry around the world as metal prices skyrocket.

Privately held digital entertainment provider CinemaNow said on Tuesday that U.S. consumers would be able to use their cell phones to view movie trailers and order full-length movies to watch on their home television or computer through its mobile website.


The service, offered on Web-capable phones at http://mobile.cinemanow.com, would let U.S. consumers immediately buy or rent a movie from their mobile phone.

Kennebec Countys emergency-alert system operates a little differently than the newly-approved FCC program.

The county system, called PageGate, enables county crisis-management officials to send emergency messages via text message, pager, e-mail and fax, but only to first responders, school administrators and municipality officials. Several hundred key numbers are stored in the PageGate system.

PageGate has been used since January 2007 to alert emergency agencies and officials when there has been severe weather or flooding. Developed with a federal grant from the Department of Homeland Security, it will continue to be used, no matter how the FCC plan will be deployed through cellular providers across Maine.

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The world has never been more connected, but in some corners, its developing a real hang-up over the ubiquitous cell phone.

Taking a cue from Frances national railway, which offers phone-free zen zones on high-speed trains, Austrias second-largest city this week began ordering public transit commuters to keep their phones on silent mode.

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Amazon TextBuyIt, which launched late Tuesday, lets people text the name of a product, its description or its UPC or ISBN to 262966 (that is Amazon on the keypad) from anywhere their cell phones work — including from inside physical stores.

If Amazon stocks matching items, the service returns two results at a time. Shoppers can immediately buy one of the first two the selections by texting back the number 1  or 2 or they can ask for more by texting the letter M.

Bell Canada on Tuesday began delivering full episodes of The Sopranos to its mobile phone subscribers as part of an agreement with HBO.

As befits a new dictator seeking to win some popularity, Raul Castro is lifting ownership restrictions for ordinary Cubans on mobile phones, computers, DVD players, even toasters.

These however do not come free. Each of Castros offerings to buy goods comes with a state-set price most Cubans have no realistic prospect of affording.

Chinese authorities said Monday they are investigating complaints that millions of cell phone users were spammed with unwanted text messages from advertisers.


The uproar over what China's media has dubbed Text-message Gate has drawn apologies from a major advertiser and the country's biggest mobile phone carrier, China Mobile. The commercial text messages were sent to more than 200 million mobile phone users through two companies — China Mobile and its smaller rival, China Unicom.

China Investigates Text Messaging Spam

The Federal Communications Commission auction for the 700-MHz wireless spectrum is over, and the winners are known. One obvious winner is the FCC itself, which exceeded its initial estimate of $10 billion with a $19.59 billion total.

Saddam Hussein deemed Iraqis could live without modern technology such as mobile phones and the Internet. Now that his regime has been swept away, they are finding they just can not get enough of it.

Nokia opened on Monday its online music store in Germany, the second such store for the worlds largest cell phone maker, which plans to open the stores in nine more countries by mid-2008.

The massacre at Virginia Tech last year sent colleges nationwide scrambling to improve how they get alerts to students during crises on campus. One solution: Text messages sent to cell phones.


But while hundreds of campuses have adopted text alerts, most students are not embracing the system — even in an age when they consider their mobile phones indispensable.

Students Slow to Adopt Text Alerts

A proposed consumer rights bill for mobile telephone service drew mixed reviews during a hearing in Congress Wednesday, with detractors saying the legislation would place too much regulation on a competitive industry.


The draft legislation, floated by Representative Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, calls for the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to make rules requiring mobile carriers to offer unsubsidized handsets to customers, to offer service with no early termination fees and to detail charges such as termination fees.

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The battle for smartphone supremacy is about intensify after Apple Inc. said last week that developers will learn the details needed to create third-party software for its iPhone.

Apples move is viewed by analysts as a way to bolster sales of the massively popular smartphone, which have been declining lately. But its mention yesterday of additional enterprise features may have serious implications for Research In Motion BlackBerry devices.

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ATT Inc , the biggest U.S. mobile service, said on Tuesday it would offer unlimited mobile phone calls for a flat rate of $99.99 a month, hours after Verizon Wireless announced a similar plan.

Shipments of cell phones compatible with Japans mobile digital TV service have surged to more than 20 million units in fewer than two years since launch, according to industry data released last Wednesday.

T-Mobile announced on last Tuesday that it will soon begin using Yahoo as its preferred mobile search provider in Europe, ending the operators existing relationship with Google for mobile search.

Research In Motion, maker of the popular BlackBerry smartphone, said last Tuesday it was trying to locate the cause of a service disruption that left subscribers with only intermittent access to e-mail and other data services for three hours.


Service problems started about 3:30 p.m. EST on Monday, and lasted until about 6:30 p.m. EST, RIM said in an e-mailed statement. BlackBerry subscribers, most of whom are business people, did not lose any messages during the interruption, and voice communications were not affected.

Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia said on Tuesday it had reached an agreement with Google to incorporate the Google search engine in its handsets.

There is no doubt that on Valentines Day the text messages sent will contain anecdotal notes of affection. We even had a customer inquiry about scheduling love notes to be sent every hour on February 14th!

The most established names in telecoms, Internet and media gathered in Barcelona Monday for the Mobile World Congress, one of the worlds biggest events for the mobile phone industry.


Attention at the trade show, which runs until Thursday, is likely to focus on how to encourage users in developed countries to use their phones for more than simply making calls.

We recycle our soda cans and our newspapers, so why do not we recycle our cell phones?


U.S. consumers who bought new mobile phones recycled the old ones in the fourth quarter of 2007 at double the rate of the third quarter, a market research firm said Tuesday. But the overall number of recyclers remained low at less than one in 10.

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Widgets, or small Web applications that supply useful information direct to the desktop, could soon be appearing on your cell phone screen.

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For the next 24 hours NotePager Pro standalone software to send text messages to pagers and cell phones is featured on the Software Deal of the Day website. NotePager Pro is 50% off for only 24 hours.

This is VERY cool software discounted 45% for only 24 hours. Macro Scheduler is windows automation and scripting solutions that enhance productivity and automate processes.

Create scripts and record macros to automate and control your Windows applications, automate software processes and assign tasks to schedules, desktop shortcuts or hotkeys. Perform complex tasks with a single mouse click, or schedule your computer to perform tasks while you are away.

The powerful Macro Recorder makes it easy to create macros even if you have no programming experience. If you can do it, Macro Scheduler can automate it.

Last week, Motorola laid a bit of a bombshell on the cell phone world. The company announced it was considering a structural realignment to rejuvenate its mobile device business. Though the company had a huge hit with its ultrathin Razr V3 in late 2004, Moto has been struggling to regain solid footing over the last couple years.

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German anger over plans by Nokia to close a plant escalated on Friday, with the finance minister accusing the cellphone maker of caravan capitalism and others vowing to replace their Nokia phones.


Nokia, the worlds top cellphone maker, said earlier this week it would close the plant in the western city of Bochum because it was not competitive and move production to Romania.

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With the proliferation of mobile devices and their extensive use, past studies on health risks related to cell phone radiation need to be re-examined, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which this week asked the National Research Council to identify further research that shows the effects of long-term exposure to these devices.

Cellular Health Risks

Sprint Nextel Corp.s stock plunged Friday after the wireless carrier said it will cut 4,000 jobs and close 125 retail locations in response to a steep drop in its customer base.

Sprint shares plummeted nearly 25 percent, prompting analysts to forecast even more cuts in the coming months as the nations third-largest wireless carrier struggles to compete with AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless.

The green computing trend is in full force, driven by the need to cut costs on energy on one hand and the need to get rid of old machinery on the other.


As old mobile devices begin to pile up inside companies, they will need a place to get rid of phones just like they do with PCs. One company aims to make it easy, safe and profitable to recycle those old cell phones.

It does not matter what kinds of devices companies are trying to recycle, ReCellular will recycle them.

Flowfinity Wireless, a provider of mobile enterprise productivity applications, on Thursday rolled out a tool for BlackBerry smartphones that adds GPS-location information to every transaction and tells where the data originated from.

Al-Qaida video messages of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri can now be downloaded to cell phones, the terror network announces as part of its attempts to extend its influence.

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Motorola Inc, which has recently lost cell phone market share, is introducing a mobile device for playing live television to expand its reach in portable consumer electronics.

Motorola said on Thursday that its DH01 device, to be showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show  in Las Vegas this week, will also play on-demand video clips and programs saved on digital video recorders.

Drivers talking on cell phones are probably making your commute even longer, concludes a new study.


Motorists yakking away, even with handsfree devices, crawl about 2 mph slower on commuter-clogged roads than people not on the phone, and they just do not keep up with the flow of traffic, said study author David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah.

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Just when you have gotten to the point where you can type on your BlackBerry upside down in the dark, they are thinking about changing the keyboard.

A patent application filed on behalf of Research in Motion was recently revealed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and it describes an angular keyboard where the keys are set at a 45-degree angle to the base of the unit.

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2007 ushered in some new releases. Including a major overhaul to PageGate. The long awaited PageGate v5 launched with a big splash mid-summer. We also expanded our support offerings offering priority support to customers who rely on PageGate for the daily operations. In addition to enhancing our software and support offerings NotePage, Inc. expanded its educational offerings by adding a knowledgebase to the website.

As we look ahead to 2008 we have a number of plans on to enhance the NotePage product line. Stay tuned and Happy New Year!

All of the entertainment options that are hot on the PC—social networking, web video, user-generated content—are downright torrid on the smallest of screens, the cell phone. New research from Deloitte & Touche finds that 47 percent of 25-41 year olds use their cell phones for entertainment, a massive surge from the 29 percent who said they did so only eight short months ago. And where the eyeballs go, there go both the ad dollars and the aspirations of many businessmen.

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Nokia has again pushed back the launch of its gaming service N-gage due to delays in software testing, a spokesman said on Thursday, in the latest blow to the Internet services ambitions of the worlds top cellphone maker. The gaming service, together with a music shop and mapping services, is one of the cornerstones of Nokias drive into mobile Internet services under its new Ovi brand.

Most parents who bought cell phones for their children this Christmas are doing so for safety reasons, according to a new survey.


An online poll of 339 parents found that 78 percent were considering getting a cell phone for their children so they could be in contact with them in case of an emergency.

Cell Phones are for Safety

A class action lawsuit was filed this week against the city of Chicago by an attorney claiming that arrests of drivers talking on their cell phones made by the citys police officers were illegal.


The lawsuit states that Chicago police officers have been arresting and ticketing thousands of drivers violating the citys cell phone ban, which was imposed almost two years ago. Drivers are typically fined $75 if caught talking on their cell phones or up to $200 if they are involved in an accident.

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