Crossing the street while talking on a cell phone seems a commonplace activity in this day and age, but new research suggests it is not as easy for the elderly to do as it is for young adults. The University of Illinois has released a new study, which indicates that older people find it difficult to keep their attention on both of the tasks at hand.
Alcoa has joined the Basel Action Network (BAN), the environmental company which is dedicated to promoting the recycling of electronics, including old cell phones. Alcoa has already been recognized as a leader in environmental sustainability, being on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the last nine years in a row. It has signed up for Basel Action Network’s e-Stewards Enterprise, which helps companies to responsibly recycle their electronic waste, including used cell phones.
Sometime within the next few months, Google is planning to run a field test on near-field communication (NFC) technology, the technology that turns your cell phone into a debit card.
Just the one company, Hoosiers, donated over fifteen thousand used cell phones to the Verizon Wireless HopeLine program over the course of 2010. The HopeLine program, which was established in order to help survivors of domestic violence in Indiana in the United States, both reuses the old cell phones by giving them to the victims and also recycles them in order to give cash to non profit organizations that try to prevent and raise awareness of domestic violence, in addition to local shelters.
A prison escapee may have used a smuggled cell phone to arrange his hasty exit from the establishment, according to investigators. Twenty seven year old, David Puckett, who was serving a thirty-year prison sentence for the aggravated assault on a public servant in Lavaca County in the United States, used the smuggled cell phone to contact Omaha woman Mattice Mayo to arrange for a speedy exit once he had fled Stiles Unit.
The EU has set new targets for the recycling of e-waste, but at least one recycling company believes they are still just not good enough. At the moment, the EU Environment Council has set collection quotas of four kilograms of electrical and electronic waste, including old cell phones, per person, but is now looking to change those quotas to a percentage of how much electrical equipment is sold instead.
A Newton lawyer has come up with a novel way to try to get the younger generation to not use their cell phones while they are operating a motor vehicle in what could be described as a good old-fashioned bribe. Lawyer Corey Walker and his wife Beth have come up with a scheme to effectively pay young drivers to not use cell phones while they are driving.
If there is one person who is unimpressed with modern cell phones, particularly “smart-phones”, it’s Free Software movement founder, Richard Stallman. Stallman, who also created the GNU operating system, believes smart-phones are a threat to the freedom of users and has no intention of getting one himself.
Residents of Cheshire are being encouraged to recycle electrical products, including old cell phones, in a bid to cut down on the number of such items ending up in landfills. The newspaper, The Middlewich Guardian, says that the Cheshire West and Chester Council is running a new scheme under the name of ‘Don’t Bin It, Bring It’.
I read an article this morning in the Dallas Morning News about how few of us lock our cell phones or protect it with security software and that is really not very smart.
