FastCompany RSS

phone

NANOTECH   |  Comment

Chatting May Soon Charge Your Cell Phone, While Making Public Calls Even More Annoying

The electrical energy from the vibrations caused by a human voice can be harvested--and one day could be used to charge your cell phone. The catch? For this to work well, you have to shout. READ»

IFIVE   |  Comment

iFive: Twitter's Growth, YouTube Gets "Channels," iPad Delays RIM PlayBook, Apple Orders Huge Data Store, Facebook Phone Arrives

Welcome to Thursday. Or, what we like to call: "There's a lot of news, so you better read i5 to catch up fast," day. READ»

WANTED   |  Comment

Wanted: Free High-Fidelity Phone Calls for Life [Review]

With Ooma's ever-improving system, house phones are about to be cool again.READ»

WINDOWS 7   |  Comment

Windows 7 Apps Are Just Like iPhone's (In a Good Way)

Standardized hardware and great support may beckon to developers to Windows 7 Phone despite its belated arrival.READ»

PHONE   |  Comment

Smartphones to the Rescue in Burundi

The UN World Food Programme's latest experiment is with smartphones as data collectors.READ»

Is Facebook Building a Phone? Possibly, But It Won't Be the "Facebook Phone"

This weekend, TechCrunch published a rumor that Facebook is secretly working on a new smartphone platform--the "Facebook Phone." After a somewhat cagey response from Facebook, we can make a guess at what this all means.READ»

INDIA   |  Comment

With Pen and Paper Emails, HP Labs Aims to Bridge India's Digital Divide

New HP software will enable millions of low-income Indians with mobile phones to send emails with just a snap. READ»

Google Voice Now Available to Everyone (in the U.S.)

Google Voice, a sort of phone management system, has been out for over a year, amassing over a million users, but until today, it was only available through invite.READ»

BROWSER   |  Comment

Taking Microsoft Office Online

How is Microsoft going to keep people from leaving Microsoft Office and moving to, say, Google Docs and Spreadsheets or Zoho? Well, Chris Capossela, Senior Vice President of Information Worker Group at Microsoft, tells me how ...READ»

The Google Phone Is Coming to Change the Game

[Update: Could the Google phone be a data only, VoIP-driven device, rather than a standard phone? TechCrunch has a source that thinks so, and suggests that AT&T is already bidding to provide data services. (If you can't beat 'em, ...READ»

APPS   |  Comment

Blackberry and Palm Apps Getting Better, but Not Fast Enough

Even as Apple celebrates the release of its 100,000th app--and that cash machine it calls the app store--Palm and RIM are running fast to catch up, and woo developers to their platforms. Earlier this week, Palm introduced a Web-based ...READ»

ANDROID   |  Comment

Android 2.1 Already Lurking Around the Web

While the smartphone world is just coming down from its Android 2.0 high, Google is apparently already testing Android 2.1. Android fanboy site AndroidAndMe has reported that its analytics show 23 visits from Android 2.1 devices ...READ»

CLOUD   |  Comment

Phone-Cloud Lets You Ditch Office Landlines

For many office workers, landlines are a redundant nuisance: one more voicemail account to check, one more thing to ring during a clandestine nap. But most office buildings wreak havoc on cell reception. New intra-office phone ...READ»

GOOGLE   |  Comment

Google Voice Slapfight: AT&T, Sex Chats, and Some Hot FCC Action

Google's public policy blog admits that Google Voice blocks certain numbers. AT&T says this would be illegal were Google treated like any other telecom. But Google claims that if it doesn't engage in blocking, its service will ...READ»

Nokia Says You May Not Need Nerd Glasses After All

Last month I lambasted Nokia's mixed reality concept video for showing a future-woman using a pair of ludicrous augmented reality glasses. As it turns out, Nokia's researchers aren't sold on them either. "If the assumption is that ...READ»

MOTOROLA   |  Comment

Undead Tech: the Wrist-Mounted Cell Phone

Glamour shots of this concept cell-phone wristwatch have been bouncing between design blogs, and Samsung announced recently that it would release a real-life analog in Europe by the fourth quarter of this year. But the wrist-mounted ...READ»

WIFI   |  Comment

Silent Movie Theaters, Courtesy of Anti-Wireless Paint

Clever, mischief-minded researchers in Japan have developed an interior paint that blocks wireless signals. Made with aluminum-iron oxide, the paint resonates at the same frequency as many household devices like routers and cell ...READ»

VOIP   |  Comment

Ooma: The Wonderful, Oddly-Named Phone for Google Voice

There are a few major reasons why we all don't have VOIP phones: monthly subscription fees are a big one, as is cost of equipment. But Ooma may change all of that, while adding icing to the cake, with full native Google Voice support. ...READ»

What Ever Happened to HP's Augmented Reality Game?

Dig through YouTube's sands, and you'll find this: An HP concept video from 2007 about an augmented reality game called Roku's Revenge. (No, not that Roku.) It looks like fun. A lot of fun. So what ever happened to it? It was ...READ»