Smart Mobs Highlights

I just realized how behind the United States was and currently is with regards to the cell phone and the additional services that mobile to mobile provides.

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, written by Howard Rheingold, who travels world wide to discover who has the latest and greatest technologically advanced communication equipment.

Did you know that...

• "The proliferation of tiny pockets in shirts and pants" is highly noticeable in Japan in order for keitai (mobile telephone) users to store their device.
  


• "In Japan, it is no longer taboo to show up late: "Today's taboo...is to forget you keitai (mobile telephone) or let your battery die.""
  


• "In Japan, young people are beginning to turn away from sites and applications that are officially endorsed by mobile operators and going underground... independent site Zavn.net has gained a sizeable audience and offline momentum with no promotion. The stories of Zavn.net are written in punchy, card-size chapters that are intended to be read on a cell phone."
  


• "Upon examining the reason for its success, it was discovered that only this particular model offered the symbol of a heart. Just the addition of a heart made a tremendous difference in sales."-DoCoMo, Japanese mobile telephone giant, introduces symbolic characters in text messages.
  


• "Finland leads the world in both Internet connections and mobile phones per capita."
  


• "...May 2001, the term "swarming" was frequently used by the people I met in Helsinki to describe the cybernegotiated public flocking behavior of texting adolescents."
  


• "The first text message was sent in December 1992 in the United Kingdom. By mid-2001, tens of billions of messages were being exchanged worldwide each month. By 2002, 100 billion text messages were being sent on the world's GSM networks each month."
  


• "Like data on the Internet, text messages are sent in electronic bursts of data, "packets," that find their own way through the network via "routers" that read the addresses on the packets and forward them."
  


• "Finland might be the world's foremost laboratory for mobile society, but it far from the only one in the Nordic countries. Stockholm, with more mobile phones per person than any city in the world..."
  


• "Before 2001, texting had become widespread in the Philippines, with up to 50 million messages exchanged each day. A 2001 San Francisco Chronicle story quoted a Philippines telecommunications company source: "Some Filipino teenagers can do it blindfolded. I can't do that-but I can text while driving.""
  


• "I took note when "373 million text messages were sent over the Orange Network (U.K. and France) in January 2001." I was not surprised to discover that one-fifth of the Italian population owned mobile phones, although I was slightly startled to learn that more than one person in right has a mobile phone in Botswana.""
  


• "Afghans in Pakistan were horrified by the ease with which young Moslem boys and girls, who would never have been allowed to be alone together, can now participate in virtual social relationships via mobile phone."
  


• "...adolescents, those ages fourteen to twenty, are often the early adopters of mobile communications and are among the first whose identities, families, and communications begin to change."

Photo: katapu.net