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- Is nothing sacred?
The British will answer their cellphone just about anywhere, according to a study conducted by Dial-a-Phone. While most respondents generally agreed that phones should be switched to silent at movies or the theater, nearly half of men admitted to talking on the phone while using the bathroom and about 43 percent of women said they have answered their phone during sex. Nearly 70 percent of men said they would answer their phone during a first date, compared with only 42 percent of women who would. Sixty-nine percent said they would not turn off their phone during a meeting. Nearly all of the study’s respondents drew the line at answering their phone during a funeral, with just 5 percent saying they would do so. - In China, a man returned a mobile phone he stole from a woman after she sent numerous text messages to the phone. The thief stole the woman’s handbag, which included her phone, bank cards and cash. The woman sent 21 messages to the phone, telling the thief he could keep the money but imploring him to return her other belongings. Eventually the thief returned all of the woman’s belongings, including her phone and her cash, along with a note apologizing for his actions.
- Finnish author Hannu Luntiala has written a 332-page novel whose narrative consists completely of mobile-phone text messages. The novel, “The Last Messages,” is a story about an information-technology executive who keeps in touch with his family and friends via text message while traveling throughout Europe and India. The roughly 1,000 text messages that make up the novel include grammatical errors and abbreviations commonly found in SMS messages.
- The European Commission has selected a program called the “Mobile Autonomous Reactive Information System for Urgency Situations,” or Marius, which aims to keep communications systems running during emergencies. The technology uses a helicopter equipped with a mini-mobile network that will allow rescue teams to continue using short message service communications even in areas where the land mobile network is not working.
