People in the mobile business are calling the latest handset (as they call it in Europe) "the Swiss Army phone," and that all-purpose phone necessarily includes GPS pinpointing of the user's location. Two big stories in this space are Nokia's acquisition of "map and navigational software maker Navteq for $8.1 billion," Nokia's biggest acquisition to date, the New York Times reports, and Google's … [Read more...] about Social mapping gaining momentum
geolocation
Kwame’s mobile social networking
Former Yahoo engineer-designer Kwame Ferreira compares the current mobilizing of social networking to when cavepeople discovered that the fires over which they'd do their social networking could actually be taken from cave to cave with them, as described in the mobileCampLondon blog. Picture fire-enabled social networking on the fly. So these days, we have online social networking, which has gone … [Read more...] about Kwame’s mobile social networking
People-tracking phones
If you'd like to know more about global-positioning-enabled phones, SafeKids.com's Larry Magid surveyed the scene for the New York Times. He looks at the various child-tracking phones and services from Verizon Wireless, Sprint, Disney, and Wherify, as well as social-mapping services by Helio and Loopt that are very cool but not really for kids because they actually map users' physical location … [Read more...] about People-tracking phones
Cellphone safety
There are entertainment “thumb jocks” (videogamers) and then there are the communications ones, including cellphone texters at your house. Teens love texting, I think partly because of the extra privacy this silent form of communication affords them and partly because it can be 24x7 (see “Teen dating abuse”). They also love the growing number of features cellphones have, so they can snap and share … [Read more...] about Cellphone safety
Phone monitoring on steroids
It's a little chilling, but maybe some parents feel they need to go to these lengths to protect their cellphone-using chilling. I can see parents using a product like this openly as a tool for solving a cyberbullying problem that might include calls and text message to a child’s cellphone. It’s called Flexispy, and it’s downloadable monitoring software for cellphones. The Thailand-based company's … [Read more...] about Phone monitoring on steroids