Kwikset’s SmartKey has been lacking in intelligence for quite awhile, but at long last, the outfit has finally added a pivotal feature here at CEDIA: true remote locking and unlocking. The new remote access control solution is being dubbed SmartCode with Home Connect — an unnecessarily lengthy way of explaining how the company’s keyless locks [...]

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Several Democratic senators are proposing new legislation that would require states to ban drivers from sending text messages and emails while operating moving vehicles. If states don’t comply with the federal mandate, they face losing up to 25% of their federal highway funds. If the legislation is passed, the transportation secretary would have six months [...]

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A blog post written up by The Huffington Post from Sonoma State University college professor and ecotherapist Shepherd Bliss, reports on a pediatrician who was shocked to see a three-year-old using a cell phone.
“The three-year-old just walked right past me, talking into a cell phone,” the Santa Rosa, CA, pediatrician said. “I was amused at [...]

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Tens of thousands of mobile users in Bangladesh’s flood and cyclone-prone areas will now receive advance warning of an impending natural disaster through an alert on their cell phones, reports Reuters.
“… Bangladesh, with a population of around 162 million, has more than 46 million mobile phone subscribers.Syed Ashraf, communications specialist for the country’s Disaster Management [...]

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Good news for those who simply must be able to use their mobiles on a plan … Orange and Vodafone have agreed to allow it. Previously only O2 and T-Mobile had allowed their networks to be used by customers on planes with Orange and Vodafone having been worried over ‘bill shock’. With costs as high [...]

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eBay launches an official PayPal app that allows you to send money to your friends and family using your existing PayPal account.
In their own words: It’s fast, easy and secure. Just pick an amount and a contact, and we will take care of the rest. You can choose from 16 different currencies and can [...]

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Samsung Korea just announced their new SPH-W7100, a new handset dedicated to kids and adults who want to feel safe wherever they go.
The SPH-W7100 is like many Japanese phones for kids, like the SCH-X850 introduced by Samsung in 2004.

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Bill Gates’ charitable foundation has pledged $12.5m (£8.6m) to help the world’s poor access banking services. The BBC reports.
“Working in conjunction with the mobile phone industry, the foundation aims to help provide a basic service that local banks are unable or unwilling to give. It is thought that more than a billion people worldwide do [...]

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A new login security program called PINoptic replaces the basic login procedure using a plain keypad with a login screen that offers numbers and images. The phone owner sets up a password using the images and at each login the images are randomly associated with different numbers.
For a hacker to get your password from looking [...]

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The New York City Police Department is exploring ways in which it could disrupt communication between terrorists by jamming cell phone signals if an attack were to happen. They would hope to shut down communication in a limited area, such as a zone at or near an attack site, while still allowing citizens the ability [...]

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The minute news broke of the terrorist attacks on Mumbai, India, social media sites like Twitter were inundated with a huge volume of messages. CNN reports.
With more than 6 million members worldwide, an estimated 80 messages, or “tweets,” were being sent to Twitter.com via SMS every five seconds, providing eyewitness accounts and updates.Many Twitter users [...]

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A study commissioned by IMS Inc, the makers of the hands free iLane device, has found that 32% of Americans and 23% of Canadians surveyed claim that it is important to their balance between work and home life to be able to access text messages, phones, and email while driving. Pressure from the boss is [...]

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Sprint announced a new mobile banking application that will allow customers to perform a wide variety of banking actions directly from their mobile phones. MyMoneyManager is a free download that allows customers to view account balances, view account transactions, pay bills, transfer money and search for nearby ATM and branch locations. Right now, BB&T, Citibank, [...]

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New technology allowing customers of UK banks to manage their accounts through their mobile phone is being introduced, reports the BBC.”Lloyds TSB will next month be the first to allow customers to transfer funds between accounts within the same bank via their mobile.
The software already exists which would allow people to make payments to other [...]

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The concept of mobile banking isn’t new. It has been available in many parts of the world for several years now. You can access your bank account, transfer funds, pay your bills, all with the magic of your mobile phone in hand.
Yet some people still prefer to do it the old fashioned way: by going [...]

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