So far, I have:

TwitterBuster: MacBeth. Witches are right. If you murder someone, you’ll feel jolly guilty, wash your hands and the goodies will triumph.

and

TweetBuster: Blink by Malcolm Gladwell “Snap judgments are sometimes surprisingly accurate”.

Give it a go on Twitter or leave a comment here.

Happy Friday.

BT to Allow Local Authorities to “Adopt” a Payphone:

The UK’s dominant land-line operator, BT is to allow local authorities to “adopt” a payphone box in situations where the company would normally want to remove it due to lack of use. The iconic red payphone boxes have fallen out of favour thanks to the growth of mobile phones, but in many areas people want to keep them for cosmetic reasons – or as an emergency back up for mobile phones.

Local councils will be offered the chance to pay an annual fee of £500 (US$1,000) to keep a payphone in use – or about half to keep just the structure in place for cosmetic purposes. In some areas, payphone boxes are listed and cannot be removed without planning permission being granted by the council.

For just £500 per year, you too can help save payphones!

This one shows Martin Cooper, widely regarded as the Father of the Mobile. The photo was taken back in 1983, although the mobile looks much smaller and sleeker than I remember them being in those days.

It’s not a new idea though as the first working prototype was deployed in 1922 in Chicago, as a radio telephone used by the police. I had no idea that Sting was that old.

Story via Alfie’s Blog, Father of the pioneering Moblog UK.

Indeed, it’s true. I never would have been able to document the crazy tattooed guy I saw a few years back without my cameraphone, regardless of the quality. Fast-forward to this afternoon, when I found myself without either a standalone camera, or a cameraphone, as I’d run out on a quick errand and left my trusty N82 at home.

One of my favorite email forwards from my early working career was “the ghetto hands-free kit” — a picture of a dude with an old handset attached to his head via rubber band. I saw an older fellow at the grocery store just now with a slightly updated (and slightly more expensive) version: a pair of Bose noise-cancelling headphones with a clamshell handset tucked underneath. He was happily walking amongst the produce, chatting away with his hands in his pockets. Just to reiterate: the Boses were, as far as I could tell, not plugged in to anything (certainly not the phone), rather just switched on to “cancel” the ambient noise.

Once I realized what the hell he had going, my first thought was, of course, the need to share the image with you, our beloved readers. I reached into my pocket… to find only a half-used stick of lip balm and my grocery list. To steal a phrase from MH pal Ewan at SMS Text News, arse. Total arse.

So I’m left to try and recreate the image for you — except I don’t have any Bose noise-cancelling headphones or clamshell handsets. So these only Sony cans and a Helio slider, plus your imagining me as an white-haired dude in a baseball cap, will have to do.

Moral of the story? Hm. Well, first, the very least you could do is pick up a Bluetooth hands-free, they’re quite reasonable these days. Second, I guess, is that it doesn’t matter if you’re a separatista or a convergionist when you’re forgetful.

Someone tell him, will you?

http://www.cellular-news.com/story/29766.php?source=rss – cellular-news

The local government which manages the main roads leading to Vodafone’s international headquarters campus in Newbury, UK has been criticized after it refused to remove the dead body of a badger which is distressing motorists driving to work each morning.

The more you know…

Earlier, I was typing an SMS about the band The Verve coming to town. “Verve” wasn’t in the dictionary, which was a little surprising, but the choices it gave me were “teste,” “veste” and “verte.” Teste, sure, that’s a word, but I’m pretty positive it’s one I’d never use in a text. “Veste” and “verte,” as far as I can tell, aren’t English words. (I don’t generally write messages in other languages, but I can see how predictive text might get even more irritating for people who do.)

Obviously this isn’t a big deal, but it’s slightly annoying to type out a word using predictive text, only for the phone to not recognize it and suggest some non-word instead, at which point you’ve got to triple-tap your original word to add it to the dictionary. Say I want to tell a friend to meet me at Caesar’s Palace here in Vegas. I go to type “Caesar” and it gives me “Bearar”. Bearar doesn’t appear to be a word in English, nor the root of one — so why’s it in the predictive text dictionary at all?

Like I said, not a big deal, and it’s as amusing as it is annoying to see the bizarre non-words it tosses up. What are some of your favorites?

Update Ricky Cadden from Symbian-Guru pointed out this hilarious video on the topic:

As I sit here applying a new layer of Reynolds tin foil to my international hat of conspiracy, its been proven that Apple tracks iPhone usage and tracks IEMI numbers of all their iPhones worldwide. Hidden in the code of the “Stocks” and “Weather” widgets is a string that sends the IMEI of your phone to a specialized URL that Apple collects.

[snip]

This let[s] Apple knows which app you are using when connecting with your iPhone. Obviously, they know the IP address you were using, the stocks companies you are interested [in], and so they can track down their customers all around the world. This also proves that there are probably other apps that do the same. Weather.app is also acting the same way. (Offset 13AE0)

[snip]

Obviously “Weather” is kinda benign, but Apple knowing your Stock habits, isn’t that a little personal? What’s next, they read your email too? Now who thinks I’m crazy?

Gee, and all this time I thought they were the most benevolent guys around, what with their support of closed environments, their focus on stuff other than profits and so on. Now they can track what cities’ weather I want to know, and what stock prices I’m interested in. EVIL! EEEEEEVIIILLLLLL!

Update: Take off your tinfoil beanies, everybody — apparently it was a false alarm.

UTR describes the event as such: “You’ll see a collection of companies in areas such as mobile content/video; social networking; voice services; marketing and advertising services; and a host of enabling technologies. From the industry experts and pundits to the company presentations and demos, you will learn about the future of mobility – its challenges and opportunities from consumer adoption to monetization of services.”

And the presenting companies are: Boopsie | Buzzwire | Dial Directions | eZee, inc. | FoneMine | Frengo | Heysan! | Hovr | IceBreaker, Inc. | Imthere | Kadoink | Lypp | Mobile Distillery | mobio | Mocapay | mPortico | QuickMobile | RemoTV, Inc. | Utterz | TagText | Talkster | Tilefile Limited | Transpera | Tricast Media, Inc | Trutap Limited | Vlingo | Vollee | Xosphere | Yap | yoMedia | ZenZui | Zoove