Tech

It’s hard to look back and imagine what we did before we had cell phones! If you were out and about, and needed to call someone quickly - you would find yourself driving around looking for a pay phone to use and hoping you had change in your pocket to make the call. My how technology has changed over the years; not only are cell phones an everyday must for most people, but there are hundreds of cell phone models and service packages to choose from.

My son is thirteen he has been nagging me for over a year to get him a cell phone. My first reaction was "No!" I can’t afford to have another cell phone bill and what happens if he runs up the bill and it goes over his minutes? Well, of course I would then be stuck paying for it since he isn’t of the age to work yet. While he persisted and kept explaining why he just had to have his cell phone I finally started to do some research to find out if there were any packages that would suit our needs and that’s when I found out about prepaid cell phone plans and now I am hooked and he’s a happy teenager!

In the eyes of a teenage girl cellular phones are the best invention since boys. My daughter has had a cell phone for awhile now but it wasy a prepaid one. That was getting too costly considering she ran through minutes at an astounding rate. The day she received her unlimited flip phone she was estatic. I don’t think she would have been any happier if she had been presented with a brand new car.

She giggled and squealed with excitement. The pink face plate with kittens on it absolutely delighted her. I calculated her enthusiasm to be a bit ridiculous but cell phones seem to have an almost intoxicating effect on young girls. After plenty of gushing gratitude, my joyful daughter seemed to float on various ring tones the rest of the day. In record time all of her friends had the new phone number and the dialing sequence began - and it hasn’t stopped since.

These cellular providers certainly have it made. Do you have any idea how many adolescent and teenage girls there are in the world - not to mention the other various cell phone users out there? Just like teen girls, cell phones come in a variety of shapes and sizes. You find them everywhere - in shirt pockets, on belt loops, in cars, at the mall, etc.

Until recently, when you thought of ringtones, you usually thought of hip-hop ringtones. This is not surprising given the genre’s wide acceptance of ringtones and cell phones and such smash chart crashers as 50-Cent ringtones, Snoop Dogg ringtones, and Lil Kim ringtones.

But ringtone operators are now starting to see the value in Latin ringtones, especially in the urban Hispanic market-one often referred to as "hurban" by marketers. While the market for Latin ringtones is exploding in Mexico, Central America, and South America, major Latin acts have failed to reach the coveted Billboard Ringtone Charts?yet.

Latin ringtones may be the lone remaining untapped pot of gold for ringtone sellers. "The Ketchup Song, by Las Ketchup was on our top ten list about three years ago," said Bob Bentz, director of marketing at Ringingphone.com. "Then, there’s the traditional cross-over ringtones like Ricky Martin’s Livin’ La Vida Loca and Los Del Rio’s Macarena that are consistent sellers. We have good sellers with Juan Gabriel ringtones, Selena ringtones, and Marc Anthony ringtones, but, for the most part, our business is still mainly about rap ringtones and hip-hop ringtones. But, we like the opportunities in the Hispanic market and continue to expand our offerings."

Okay, so we all know that you can change the ringtone on your mobile phone by purchasing a ringtone online. In fact, there are an endless number of web sites that will sell you a ringtone or wallpaper (prices vary from $.99 to $2.99 and in most cases will put the charge on your cell phone bill). One thing I have found however is that although I can choose from hundreds of ringtone web sites, most of them are selling the same array of ringtones. So, in my quest to make my mobile phone, and hence, my ringtone unique, I have found myself limited to the same assortment of 100 or so [decent] ringtones.

Take a random tween, age 8-12, place them in front of a rotary phone and observe at the blank stare of bewilderment. Yes, gone are the days of the landline, pushed aside by the next wave of technological advancement. Mobile phones are fast displacing landlines in many homes; accompanying this movement is the fact kids regularly use and know how to use these cell phones. The mobility of cell phones means you can be anywhere and have the necessity, or should I say the convenience, of a phone.

Cellular service providers and manufacturers would enjoy nothing more than exploiting the vastly untapped tween market. However, is it necessary to provide cell phones to kids age 8-12? What makes it necessary today? Is the simple the notion of having the technology enough reason to equip younger and younger customers with phones? Where do we draw the line when it comes to tweens owning cell phones, and when should we be restricting use? The remainder of this article will discuss the pros and cons of purchasing cell phones for kids. It will discuss the social aspects, health concerns, and cost issues.

Social and Cost Issues:

We are putting cell phone towers in the forests for safety, tourists and Forest Service Workers. Sounds like a good idea alright. They will also help when fighting fires, as they add a net-centric component to the ever-increasing fire fighting technologies to extinguish the big ones. Of course some will complain as they are hiking thru paradise or fly fishing that someone’s phone rings? Yes, but if you get injured, lost or the weather gets you, well then you will be darn happy to see four or five bars on the signal strength won’t you?

Currently the National Park Service is taking solicitations from telecoms to build these cell towers in the parks. Some believe there will be safety concerns while people travel on the meandering wined barely two-lane roads, others see it as a way to get the public to come out and see the great attributes of our national parks and protect people who come to visit. Likewise more eyes and ears and cell phones means safer forests, quicker response times, less deaths and bad public relations.

Get set to be greeted by the Russians, with a grandiose display of a regal past from the Romanov’s to Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. In the form of tall spires, arched bridges, graceful canals, onion domes, icon paintings and wedding-cake skyscrapers; a fusion of Western and Eastern influences can be found everywhere. Backed by a legacy of literary and art greats like: Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin, Rublev, Levitan and Vrubel; Russians are a cultured community who are widely read and attend theatre regularly.

Now connecting with Russia, and making a call to friends and family, is faster and cheaper. However, before placing a call to Russia, find out what the current time is in the city you want to call. As Russia spans an incredible eleven time zones, and Moscow and St. Petersburg are three hours ahead of the Greenwich Mean Time. This implies that it is eight hours later there than it is on the Eastern Coast of the continental US and eleven hours later than the West Coast.

Simple Steps to Call Russia:

* Dial the international access code ? 011.

* Dial Russia’s country code ? 7.

Finding the best cellular phone service deal can seem as frustrating and difficult as shopping for a new car. Nothing can be as vexing as trying to set up a new service plan that you’ll be locked into for two to three years of your life.

There are ways to get around all the headaches and stomach ulcers, though. Just follow these simple tips and just may be able to find the perfect cell phone plan for you.

First, ask around. Probably nine out of ten people that you know–maybe everybody you know!–has a cell phone and a plan. Talking with them about their plans will help you gauge which service plans offer the best deals and which offer the best service.

And don’t worry about people being secretive. Even coworkers, neighbors, and other people who don’t know you so well will be open about their cell phones usually.

If they’re having a hard time with theirs, they’ll want to vent. Or if they love their cell phone, they’ll want to brag about how smart they were in choosing it.

Phone and voice mail systems can be pretty costly, even for companies with a low number phones. Before investing in any type of phone system or voice mail system, you need to estimate how much your company is likely to expand over the next few years and if possible how many phones you may require. Failure to do this could cost you or your company a lot of money in upgrade and restructuring costs further down the road. It is better and cheaper to plan and allow for expansion at an early stage, than wait until it is too late.

Once considered a teenage fad, text messaging popularity in the United States is rising dramatically. According to The Wall Street Journal, 4.7 billion text messages were sent in the USA in December, 2004 compared to 2.1 billion in December, 2003.

In fact, text messaging is entering all aspects of our society, even relationships. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that nine percent of singles have even admitted to breaking up with their significant others via text message. Thirty percent of text users said that they’ve continued an argument by text message; probably part of the same group that ultimately contributed to the break ups.

The applications for text messaging promotions are also increasing just as quickly. Major League Baseball offers a text message service that enables its fans to catch up on the latest news and results of their favorite team. There are also custom cell phone wallpapers of team logos and unique actual game recorded play-by-play ringtones in the professional baseball offering. Live 8, which sponsored the single biggest text messaging promotion in history, garnered 26 million texts last month supporting increased government aid to poor African countries. The opportunities for promoters appear to only be limited by one’s imagination.