SMS NEWS
Text messaging leads people to be more deceitful when compared to other modes of communication, according to Sauder School of Business researchers at the University of British Columbia. Andrew Riley reports.
Their study compares the level of deceit people are prepared to use in a variety of media, from text messages to face-to-face interactions.
“People are communicating using a growing range of methods, from Twitter to Skype,” says Sauder Assoc. Prof. Ronald Cenfetelli, a co-author on the paper. “As new platforms of communication come online, it’s important to know the risks that may be involved.”
"Our results confirm that the more anonymous the technology allows a person to be in a communications exchange, the more likely they are to become morally lax,” says Sauder Prof. Karl Aquino, also one of the co-authors.
The study involved 170 students performing mock stock transactions in one of four ways: face-to-face, or by video, audio or text chatting. Researchers promised cash awards of up to $50 to increase participants’ involvement in the role play. “Brokers” were promised increased cash rewards for more stock sales, while “buyers” were told their cash reward would depend on the yet-to-be-determined value of the stock.
The brokers were given inside knowledge that the stock was rigged to lose half of its value. Buyers were only informed of this fact after the mock sales transaction and were asked to report whether the brokers had employed deceit to sell their stock.
The authors then analyzed which forms of communication led to more deception. They found that buyers who received information via text messages were 95 per cent more likely to report deception than if they had interacted via video, 31 per cent more likely to report deception when compared to face-to-face, and 18 per cent more likely if the interaction was via audio chat.
Their results suggest that communicating by video heightened the brokers’ awareness of being scrutinized, which suppressed their impulse to use dishonest sales tactics – the so-called “spotlight” effect.
“With this in mind, people shopping online using websites like eBay should consider asking sellers to talk over Skype to ensure they are getting information in the most trustworthy way possible,” says Cenfetelli, who studies human-computer interaction in Sauder’s Management Information Systems division.
The study also reveals that people deceived by “leaner” media, such as text messages are more angered than those misled by “richer” media, such as video chat.
The lesson for business, says Cenfetelli, is that video conferencing or in-person interactions may be preferable to text-based communication if the company is concerned about how customers may react to the given information.
For further information contact
Andrew Riley
Manager, Public and Media Relations Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia
E-mail: Andrew Riley
The “teardown” graphic below, based on data from iSuppli, a market-research firm, shows who makes what inside the iPhone, and how much the various bits cost. Samsung turns out to be a particularly important supplier. The Economist via @Jan Chipchase
U.S. companies might soon be required to publish where they get their rare metals for all those electronics consumers buy. And activists hope that it will be one small step toward resolving long running conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. npr reports.
Readmore.
Related articles on "blood minerals" blogged by textually over the years.
Mali has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. There are roughly 111 deaths for every 1000 live births in the country and the under-5 mortality rate is 191 out of every 1000 children. The need for early detection of diseases and stronger local health structures led to the creation of Pesinet, a non-profit that uses mobile technology to provide regular health checkups and affordable health insurance for young children in Mali's capital, Bamako. Mobileactive.org reports.
Enrolled children are tested weekly for symptoms of illness such as fever, cough, diarrhea, low weight, or vomiting by community health workers who enter data from each visit into a custom-designed Java application on their phone. The data is sent via GPRS to an online database. Doctors at local community health centers monitor the patient data for sudden changes in health. If changes occur, the community health workers receive an alert on their phones and then go back, in turn, to alert the family that the doctor needs to give the child a checkup.
Read full article.
A leading researcher says digital technologies are about to make health care more effective. But is so much data really beneficial? MIT Technology Review via @jranck.
In cardiologist Eric Topol's vision, medicine is on the verge of an overhaul akin to the one that digital technology has brought to everything from how we communicate to how we locate a pizza parlor. Until now, he writes in his upcoming book The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care, the "ossified" and "sclerotic" nature of medicine has left health "largely unaffected, insulated, and almost compartmentalized from [the] digital revolution." But that, he argues, is about to change.
Read full article.
A major milestone has been hit according to TomiAhonen Consulting, the primary use of our mobile device worldwide is no longer voice calls, but text messaging.
The countries are all in the 'Industrialized World' and are Australia, France, Germany, Italy, the UK and the USA. They found SMS usage levels from a low of 64% in the USA to a high of 86% in Australia. They also found voice calls ranging from a low of 68% in Italy to a high of 80% in Germany. The population-weighed average of the six countries gives an average SMS usage level of 71.52% for SMS, vs 71.48% for voice calls.
... So, its time to celebrate. The mobile PHONE is dead, long live Mobile! Not only is the primary need of a mobile today for most people SMS text messaging, rather than voice calls, but now, as of December 2011, in terms of total mobile users worldwide, that transition has also now happened.
Read full article to understand how this happened.
On December 19th America’s International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled on one of the most closely watched of the many patent battles being fought over mobile phones. The Economist reports.
The offending handsets may not longer be imported into the United States after April 19th next year. Not only is the ruling plainly unwelcome for HTC, but it illustrates how important an American trade agency has become as an arbiter of disputes that, at first blush, have little to do with international trade.
HTC sells around 40% of its smartphones in North America, nearly all of them using Android. A ban on some of its Android phones is thus a blow, although it or Google may find a way of working around the patent.
... Apple’s victory is only the latest episode in a fierce war in which just about everyone you can think of seems to be suing just about everyone else for patent infringement.
Read full article.
Numbers that illustrate just how eventful a year it was. By PaidContent.
-- 324 million: The number of smartphones sold worldwide through three quarters of 2011 (according to Gartner), and feel free to tack on another 120 million or so to account for the fourth quarter. That’s a 63 percent increase compared to the same period in 2010.
-- 194 percent: The growth in Android smartphones worldwide from the third quarter of 2010 to the same period this year.
-- 33.62 billion: The market value shed by Research in Motion during 2011.
Read full article.
Apple's new commercial shows Santa asking Siri for directions to children’s houses, checking the weather in various U.S cities and mining his messages for his ‘Naughty and Nice List’. [via thenextweb]
The Taliban on Sunday seized and set on fire around 300 cellular phones and over a dozen computers from tribesmen in Wana, headquarters of South Waziristan.
[via The News Pakistan]
RT @AYM. Very cool. How to embed tweets in your blog. mediabistro.com/galleycat/how-…
— Emily Turrettini (@textually) December 18, 2011
India has 850 million mobile phone subscribers and 100m internet users. See more startling stats from India. Traki.in via @mobileactive and http://twitter.com/#!/mobileactive.
Mobile health platforms are fast emerging in Kenya, where one startup's newly launched mobile health platform is attracting nearly 1,000 downloads daily, and the dominant telecom, Safaricom, has forged a partnership that will give its 18 million subscribers access to doctors. MIT Technology Review reports via @jranck.
The new app, called MedAfrica—available for smart phones and less powerful feature phones—is the product of Shimba Technologies, a Nairobi-based company founded by two locally educated entrepreneurs, Stephen Kyalo and Kezia Muoki, with $100,000 in seed money from a European VC.
MedAfrica is platform that provides a suite of health services (health widgets) such as symptom checkers, first-aid information, doctor & hospital directories as well as relevant alert services.
Read more.
Text-messaging might be an effective way for health care providers to help young adults reduce heavy drinking, according to a study funded by a research grant by the Emergency Medicine Foundation. The findings will be published in the March 2012 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research and are now available online.
"Each day in the U.S., more than 50,000 adults ages 18 to 24 visit hospital emergency departments and more than a third of them report current alcohol abuse or dependence. If not addressed, hazardous or binge drinking can lead to high rates of avoidable injuries and death.
Read full press release.
Spotted on Bits, a memorial Steve Jobs iPhone case by Chinese manufacturer Micgadget. Not for sale yet but you can sign up by e-mail to be notified when it's available.
Mobile phones have taken a leap in technology in the past few years. One of the simplest features on a mobile phone everyone loves to customize is the ringtone. Today, you can make your own at no cost. So why is the industry still booming?
This infographic by musicproductionshools.net illustrates the ringtone industry. Click here to enlarge.
Created by: Music Production Schools
Teenagers with itchy typing fingers are shooting out text messages more than any other demographic in the United States, and as a result they’re talking on the phone a lot less, too, according to a survey by Nielsen, the media research firm. Bits reports.
As a result, voice use has declined the most among teenagers, from an average of 685 minutes to 572 minutes per month, Nielsen said.
Read full article.
India’s Indian cell phone subscribers, of which there are 900 million accounts, have a monthly average revenue per user of $3. So to avoid paying for a call or a text message, they practice the “missed call” ecosystem, using the “ring once, hang up” to signal to someone on the receiving end that they want to communicate with them.
Missed calls are being incorporated into mobile apps and services as a standard type of messaging like a text or an answered call itself.
Read full article.
Journalists no longer have to make an application to tweet, text or email from courts in England and Wales following guidance issued by the lord chief justice, Lord Judge. The Guardian reports.
Read more.
Deaf people in the Democratic Republic of Congo say a ban on texting threatens their lives because they no longer receive warnings of violence.
There are an estimated 1.4 million deaf people in DR Congo, which is recovering from years of conflict.
Read full article.
On Wall Street according to Gawker, hedge funds are increasingly turning to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube trends to place social media driven bets in the "tens of billions of dollars," according to a company that sells them data.
There is actually a credible if unproven mechanism for how this might work: Twitter delivers the first word of Osama bin Laden's death, a trader makes an early and/or after-hours long bet on the overall stock market, which promptly spikes. Or, a Twitter rumor drives Latvians to pull money out of Swedish banks (true story!), which a trader already shorted when the rumor started trending.
Read more.
By the end of 2011, 6.05 million US households will depend on a wireless or mobile platform (including 3G or 4G) as their only means of accessing the internet, according to research just published by the Strategy Analytics Service Provider Strategies program.
This represents 6.9% of total US broadband connections -- and a 430,000 net increase over 2010 levels.
[via Cellular News]
Developed with the Arab uprising and the Occupy Movement in mind, the Protest4 app has, not surprisingly at all, seen a huge volume of activity in Egypt, among other countries. TheNextWeb reported in November via @aym.
Protest4 users have come up with creative ways to use the app – most notably in Egypt with about 2,000 users participating in an online discussion campaigning for the release of Egyptian blogger and activist, Alaa Abd El-Fattah who has spent over 2 weeks in prison.
In Pakistan, 15,000 Imran Khan supporters are using the app, while 1,000 anti-Berlusconi activists took to the app calling for the former Italian Prime Minister’s resignation. About 800 users have joined the free West Papua movement, calling for its secession from Indonesia.
It also saw a spike in worldwide activity when the New York Police Department cracked down on the Occupy Movement in Zuccotti Park with global messages of support coming in for the protesters from all over the world.
Read full article.
Related: apps for activists and related articles:
-- Inhuman Microphone app lets protesters spread the word
-- Wall Street Protests Use Go App to Coordinate Anonymously
-- Occupy Wall Street inspires the 'I'm getting arrested' app
-- Wall Street protesters use social media app Vibe to communicate anonymously
-- Twitter buys Whisper Systems Which Creates Privacy Tools for Activists
The Social Change Impact Report: Global Survey was commissioned by Walden University and conducted online by Harris Interactive in September 2011. The Global Survey includes the perspectives of more than 12,000 adults in Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Japan, Mexico, Spain and the United States and describes their perceptions on the importance of social change, the top issues in their country and the future of social change. TechJournal reports via @mobileactive.
... Texting to engage in social change is particularly common in India (38% of 18–25-year-olds).
According to digital measurement firm eMarketer, the time consumers spend on mobile devices has surpasses that of print media for the first time ever, following research in 2010 that pegged the two neck and neck at 50 percent each. Mobile Marketing Watch reports via @grigs.
Time on the internet was 2 hours and 47 minutes (an increase of 12 minutes from 2010), but TV still dominates with an average of 4 hours and 34 minutes.
Read more.
The Carrier IQ story just won’t go away. ZDNet reports.
Read more.
Google is reportedly feverishly working on its own version of the voice-activated, natural-language assistant, code-named Majel (Gene Roddenberry's wife—the voice of many Star Trek computers.).
[via Gizmodo]
The National Transportation Safety Board said on Tuesday that it had voted to recommend the ban on the use of mobile devices by drivers, citing what it said were the risks of distracted driving. The New York Times reports.
[via The New York Times]
With mobile telephone access reaching over five billion of the world’s population, the United Nations educational agency today announced the launch of an initiative to harness the technology and bring mobile phone use into the classroom. [via The UN News Room]
... Initiatives promoting mobile learning have already been spearheaded across a wide range of countries – including Mozambique, Pakistan, South Africa, Niger, Kenya, and Mongolia – where policies have already provided access to distance education in far-flung communities and improved literacy among girls and women.
According to recent data, 90 per cent of the world’s population now has access to mobile networks, prompting growing enthusiasm for the potential of mobile devices to improve education access and quality.
Read full press release.
An electronics mall in Tien Giang Province (Vietnam) has created a Christmas tree using used cell phones to send an environmental message, reports Phapluat via tuoitrenews.vn.
Tran Hoang Quan, director of Westcom Electronics Mall, said the tree reflected the reality that Vietnam was fast becoming a huge electronic wasteland.
According to a study, Vietnamese are using more than 110 million cell phones and dumping more than 50 million of them a year.
This equals to 400 tons of electronic waste.
The tree will be auctioned off after being displayed and all proceeds will go to a local charity organization, Quan said.
Copyright © 2010 JobsDiary.com |
