TelTech Systems is offering mobile telephone users the power to unmask callers who block their numbers or names from being displayed. caller-id
The US-based firm launched a TrapCall service this month with an online posting thanking its development team and declaring “Get ready for the site to go ballistic.”
To use the service, people register mobile telephone numbers at a TrapCall.com website without having to download software to devices.
Calls from unidentified sources can then be bounced to TelTech computers, which reveal points of origin.
Mobile telephone users can then decide whether to accept the calls.
“All the while the caller hears a normal ring tone, oblivious to the fact that you know exactly who they are,” TrapCall maintains at its website.
A basic version of TrapCall is available for free. Premium versions of the service can record mobile telephone calls, transcribe voice messages into text messages, and reveal names and addresses of callers along with their telephone numbers.
Premium versions are available for monthly fees of 10 dollars or 25 dollars.
TelTech has for several years provided a controversial “SpoofCard” service that puts bogus identification information on calls and enables callers to alter the sounds of their voices.
“You have the ability to change your voice to a male or female,” the company says at its SpoofCard website.
“If you do choose to change your voice, the person whom you call will hear your transformed voice in real-time.”
“Object Remix,” is the work of this designer dude Bob Turek. His work is said to challenge our perceptions, our expectations in fact, of an object’s traditional purpose. Um, yeah…I’d say he nailed that one. Here, Turek builds a stereo amplifier within the body of a fiberglass female mannequin, creating what he describes as a “radically new user interface.”
Cobra Electronics unveiled this Cobra XRS 9960G radar and laser detector in Las Vegas this week. The cool gadget detect red light cameras and speed cameras.
The Chicago company does this by maintaining a database of intersections known to have red-light cameras and stretches of road with speeding cameras. The database currently has more than 5,000 intersections, speed camera locations and popular speed traps. But it’s being updated twice a day by Cobra employees who are tasked with finding and verifying new locations by calling various cities, police departments and local businesses near major intersections. Due out in the spring, the detectors are priced from $389 to $439, depending on the model. http://www.techotic.com/
Cell phones and TVs converging with the Internet? That’s so 2008. The next big tech trend may be the marriage of computer technology to your car or truck.
This spring, Ford will offer a dashboard computing system on its full-size pickups and E-series vans.
This month, Hyundai is launching a system that warns motorists when they drift out of the lane they’re traveling in. Another manufacturer has developed pedestrian-detection software that works with heat-seeking cameras to alert drivers when someone is in their path.
In March, Ford will release a fully functional, dashboard computer — complete with keyboard — geared to contractors and other business folks who want to access the Web, review documents and log inventory while on the go. In the spring, AT&T will launch an in-car entertainment service with 22 satellite TV channels.
Industry executives hope the new technological bells and whistles will put some sizzle back into stagnant vehicle sales.
“Consumers want a vehicle that’s always on and always connected,” said Kieran O’Sullivan, vice president at Continental Automotive Systems, which supplies parts and technology to automakers. In the near future, he said, “consumers and carmakers will be able to customize the [dashboard] instrument panel to their individual tastes the same way that people customize their mobile phones.”
Will Apple approve the greatest application ever to come out for the iPhone? iBoobs, an app that allows you to wobble some beautiful breasts just by moving it, supposedly has been rejected by Apple on the grounds of “objectionable content”.
What do you get when you drop Bob Marley, Beetlejuice, Coldplay, Kanye West, Woody Allen, Jay-Z, Tony Soprano, Muhammad Ali, Madonna and The Temptations into a digital blender? You get the veritable “samplopera” that is DVJ / video remix artists Eclectic Method’s first official full-length video mixtape, Lock Up Your Videos. Like Radiohead’s In Rainbows and Girl Talk’s Feed The Animals, LUYV is now available as a “pay what you want” download, making this the first official downloadable release from Eclectic Method. Fans can donate what they want to receive a digital package including an MP4 video mixtape, MP3 audio mixtape and artwork.
We figured that instead of making you comb the internets trying to hunt down the latest information on the BlackBerry Storm, we’d compile a nice recap of sorts. Some of it is new exclusive information, and some of it is just other things that have been floating around. Let’s get into it…
We’ve heard that Vodafone UK has absolutely no intention of selling the Storm to BES users until 2009. We’re not exactly clear on this (since the two Vodafone Storms we have were converted to a business BES account after purchase), but we believe it means that there will be no direct-to-business sales of the handset. Not that you couldn’t as an individual purchase one and simply add a BES plan and convert it to a business account. We’re told that the reason of the hold-up is that Vodafone is worried the device, with the on-going hardware and software issues, isn’t up to snuff for their corporate users.
Wow talk about your high tech gangsta shit! Italian police discovered a .22 caliber cellphone gun during a raid on a Camorra (Naples Mafia) compound.
Fully loaded, the gun’s capable of firing four shots in quick succession through the antenna using buttons on the keypad as the trigger. Officers also seized bullet proof vests, drugs, ammunition and thousands of pounds in cash.
Google Mobile is an all-in-one package combining Google’s excellent mobile apps (Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Sync) with links to Google’s mobile-optimized web services (search, Picasa, Reader, Docs, Google Notebook, etc.).
A 19-year-old hacker who published provocative photos of teen queen Miley Cyrus earlier this year was raided by the FBI Monday morning in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
The hacker, Josh Holly, repeatedly bragged online about breaking into the Disney star’s e-mail account and stealing her photos. He also gave interviews to bloggers and others and boasted that authorities would never find him because he moved so often. [Last month, Holly contacted Threat Level seeking to have an article written about him here.]
But this morning the FBI did find him and, after talking with him for more than an hour about his exploits, served him with a search warrant and a list of items to be seized (which was posted at the hacking site digitalgangster.com after Holly showed it to a friend).
When agents finally left his apartment after conducting an extensive search, they had three computers and Holly’s phone, among other things. Hours after the raid, Holly phoned Threat Level from his sister’s phone to report what had occurred. He hasn’t been arrested or charged with a crime yet.
BY TeV ’95
For those of you unaffected by this rescission, I encourage you to look like a total idiot and splurge on this $20,000 laptop by Bentley. And guess what? It doesnt’ even do anything thing special! But you will feel like a baller!
Saw it first on Format Mag
Out here in Cali one time is cracking down on the new hands free cell phone law, hence this new invention.
Inventor Cary Sperry has an answer for California drivers who can no longer make or take calls now that its illegal to use a hand-held cellphone while driving.
When I heard the news, I thought: ˜Gas is expensive, Bluetooth is expensive, lots of folks have to do business on the phone while theyre sitting in traffic what would I do if I had a job? Sperry told reporters, who gathered outside the storage space currently serving as home to his unnamed start-up company, as well as him and his seventeen cats.
Sperrys patent-pending innovation features jaw-strap technology that turns your existing cellphone into a hands-free device simply by taping it to your head.
I created this not so much to help my fellow man as to hopefully make a shitload of money for me, Sperry told reporters.
