A GRAVE JOKE ON UNDERTAKERS — Some malicious wag at Providence, R.I. has been playing a grave practical joke on the undertakers there, by summoning them over the telephone to bring freezers, candlesticks and coffin for persons alleged to be dead. In each case the denouement was highly farcical, and the reputed corpses are now hunting in a lively manner for that telephonist.
Paul Collins uncovers
the birth of the prank call.
[more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole
on Nov 6, 2011 -
28 comments
Jan Chipchase is employeed by Nokia in the "corporate anthropology" field, but he considers it "design research," as he's not an anthropologist by training. His work covers researching
how people modify their phones in China, India, Ghana, and elsewhere, adding features or extending battery life. He also tracks how
cellphones are associated with personal identity and how they are playing roles far from urban and suburban centers. In some locations, cell phone numbers are written above doorways for identification, when there is no official map or organization for streets. He also blogs about his experiences, and his most recent post, he covers the rise of "
Super Fakes."
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Sep 3, 2009 -
16 comments
Nokia has announced the
n900 running the
maemo Linux based
operating system will be released in October. The phone has similar specifications to the
iphone, but with a keyboard and considerably higher resolution display
(800x480). In addition the OS is an open platform with free GPL development
tools. More from
The Guardian and
CNET.
posted by sien
on Aug 27, 2009 -
83 comments
Matthew Weigman, a fat, blind kid, started phone
swatting when he was 15. Three years later, he was sentenced to 11 years in prison. His exploits include trying to initiate phone sex with Lindsey Lohan, sending swat teams to people's homes and gathering confidential information from Verizon and AT&T.
[more inside]
posted by kylej
on Aug 24, 2009 -
61 comments
The Smoking Gun turns the table on a group of pranksters allegedly responsible for terrorizing strangers over the phone:
Outing An Online Outlaw describes how the group leader used skype, an unprotected wifi connection and his mothers bedroom to engage in what TSG calls "an orgy of criminal activity."
posted by krautland
on Aug 4, 2009 -
65 comments
Google introduces phone service. At the moment, the service is restricted but it should be publicly available within
weeks.
List of features and how they work
here. Click on "Place calls" to see how basic calls would work. Highlights include free phone calls within the U.S. and reportedly lower-than-Skype rates for international calls.
posted by storybored
on Mar 13, 2009 -
93 comments
Did you happen to see those "
making-popcorn-pop-with-a-cellphone" clips that showed up at the end of last month on the toobs? Well,
WIRED wrote about it, and a kajillion copycat clips showed up in about the time it'd take to, you know, make some popcorn. Turns out it was a viral, natch, as a cursory search will reveal. But just today a clip appeared that
explains how the actual stunt was pulled off. Well, anyway, as you've probably guessed by now, this is all just an excuse to link to
Popcorn. Yep,
Popcorn.
[more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Jun 20, 2008 -
42 comments
Obama supporter shocked to see herself in Hillary ad. "Especially because she's a fierce supporter of Barack Obama." "But the young girl starring in the ad will actually be voting age next month and says she's no fan of Hillary Clinton." The footage is another example of the risks of using stock film or images to convey an advertising message. The footage comes from
Getty Footage Stock. FYI that footage prices out at around $ 2,500 for national advertising usage. {
via}
posted by doug3505
on Mar 10, 2008 -
125 comments
to gather information about Americans' phone records --
... the NSA had approached the company (Qwest) about participating in a warrantless surveillance program to gather information about Americans' phone records.
...Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts. ... -- The Administration's crimes and illegal spying on all of us and Quest's punishment for not going along with their plans.
posted by amberglow
on Oct 13, 2007 -
76 comments
For four months, the Kuykendalls, the Prices and the McKays say they’ve been harassed and threatened by mysterious cell phone stalkers who track their every move and occasionally lurk by their homes late at night, screaming and banging on walls.
Police can’t seem to stop them. The late-night visitors vanish before officers arrive. The families say investigators have a hard time believing the stalkers can control cell phones without touching them and suspect an elaborate hoax. Complaints to their phone companies do no good – the families say they’ve been told what the stalkers are doing
is impossible.
posted by daninnj
on Jun 29, 2007 -
99 comments
Future Phone: Call a number in Iowa, give them the international number you want to call, talk for free - well, at American long-distance rates anyway. No headphones required.
posted by trinarian
on Oct 20, 2006 -
23 comments
Dead Ringers: the Science Museum asks us the question "should we upgrade our mobile phone?" "
No" and "
no" say the Times and the Observer, but we still do: on average every 18 months. What's the problem? Well it isn't just the lead, arsenic, beryllium and
brominated fire-retardant cases (pollutants all) disappearing into our land fills (which are not covered by the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive [
WEEE] in Europe). Coltan also goes into our phones. It occurs mainly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and as such our demand for upgrades has been
contributing to a war (despite mobile phone companies' claims to the contrary, coltan is not regulated like timber). If we must upgrade, we can at least
recycle or hack our
old phones.
posted by nthdegx
on Aug 7, 2006 -
49 comments
Use the badly named
Tglo to call any phone in the USA for free, and to SMS anyone in the world (maybe) for free.
posted by riotgrrl69
on Aug 6, 2006 -
18 comments
Yes, it's another Snakes on a Plane promo but this one is different: it's fucking awesome. Drop in your friends name (hopefully it's semi-normal and they have it in the db), then fill out some info about your friend, then have it place a call to them. Watch friend freak out when Samuel L. Jackson calls them up and knows all sorts of shit about them. Trust me, it totally freaked me out when someone did it to me today.
posted by mathowie
on Aug 2, 2006 -
114 comments
