Archive for September, 2009

“Help a Friend” Facebook Scam Exposed!

Monday, September 14th, 2009

facebook-logoIf you’re on Facebook (and who isn’t these days?), then you may want to keep an eye out for a clever new scheme that’s taking advantage many trusting users.

Apparently the newest scamming trend involves a hacker finding someone with a lot of friends. “This person seems popular,” they might say to themselves as they tick-tack-click into your account. Once they have access to your account, the hacker will send out a distress message to all of your friends—something like, “Help! My car broke down in South America and now I’m stranded!” This will usually lead to multiple friends sending “you” the money to get you out of that South American pickle.

So, if you get a message from a friend that sounds a little sketchy, it’d be best to get them on the phone before breaking out your checkbook.

What’s Next for Our Mobile Devices? – UPDATE!!

Friday, September 11th, 2009

what's next?Just when we start making a few wisecracks about crazy future phones, something comes along and puts us in our place. MARS or “mobile augmented reality systems” might just blow your mind.

On MARS, you simply point your cell phone camera at the physical environment and you will see an overlay of information (images and/or text) describing what the camera is seeing — information on buildings, businesses, as well as the location of bus stops, ATMs, places of interest, you name it.

Click here to read more about the magical and wonderful things MARS can do.

What’s Next for Our Mobile Devices?

Friday, September 11th, 2009

iPhone Does it All! Or DOES it?!After reading an interesting article on Adage.com about a man, his iPhone, a birthday party and the future of mobile devices…

The iPhone is clearly resetting consumer expectations about the role, functionality and integration of devices, and other brands are moving in a similar direction. At the end of the day, we need to understand where the puck is moving. – Pete Blackshaw Adage.com

…we got to thinking: what future mobile device capabilities would we like to see?

  • An application that does our laundry.
  • A phone that does the talking for you. This would come in really handy when friends call for a late-night complaining session.
  • Cooking capabilities. Think about it—what if your phone could whip up a delicious plate of chicken cacciatore for you!?

In all seriousness, we’d love to have a forward function for text messaging. That’s probably more reasonable.