Universal Phone Chargers may exist in my lifetime!

CNET reports that by 2012:

All the major handset makers, including, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson, have agreed to use the Micro-USB technology as the common universal charging interface

Also from the article:

All in all, it’s huge win for the planet and for me–the consumer. It’s such a no-brainer. It makes you wonder why no one thought of this sooner.

I believe this is because the companies could make tons of money by selling us a new $30 charger everytime we found ourselves away from home with no way to charge our phones.

Now if there was only a green way to get rid of my excess of old phone chargers.  Any ideas?

Universal cell phone chargers coming soon (via CNET)

 

Google to Launch Service to Track Friends: Google Latitude

Google must be getting tired of just tracking your searches and your emails and you calendar and you bookmarks and you documents and your….  anyway now they’re also tracking your friends, in real time!  It uses your phone’s GPS or cell phone tower triangulation to track your every step and store it indefinitely on Google’s massive servers for further market research.

I might want to upgrade my phone, because Sony Ericssons and Apple iPhones are still only marked as “coming soon”.  Here’s a list of support phones that I copied and pasted from Google’s site:

• Android-powered devices, such as the T-Mobile G1
• iPhone and iPod touch devices (coming soon)
• most color BlackBerry devices
• most Windows Mobile 5.0+ devices
• most Symbian S60 devices (Nokia smartphones)
• many Java-enabled (J2ME) mobile phones, such as Sony Ericsson devices (coming soon)

Google Latitude (via Google.com)
Google Launches Latitude To Track Friends On Mobile Maps (via washingtonpost.com)

I have a song in mind for this post, but I can seem to find a link to it, and god forbid I upload copyrighted music, so here’s an iTunes link to it:

The Pietasters – Ocean 

Just on a note, this is the second song I’ ve linked called Ocean, and I am aware of other songs about stalking and Latitude, but this is the one I picked for this post.  Enjoy!

 

High Pitched Cell Phone Ring

Has anyone heard about these ring tones that adults cannot hear?

They say that after about age 20.. your hearing starts to go away around the high end.

I’m almost 25, and I have some hearing loss due to too many loud concerts and blasting my stereo in my car. I try to wear earplugs at concerts, and I think it has helped me a lot.. but I still have some hearing loss.

In any case, I found that most of these rings are just a simple sine wave between 16kHz and 20kHz. The tone sounds similar to a TV (or any CRT Monitor) that has been turned on and isn’t displaying a picture. I realize that some people cannot hear this noise, while I can still hear it at my great age.

My hearing seems to go up to about 16.25kHz.. which isn’t so good.. but oh well, I’ll survive, I’m sure it’s better than the people who go to concerts with me and don’t wear earplugs.. I’d hope?

Also, there is a server next to me, with god-only-knows-what making the most god awful high pitched noise next to me. I’ve never noticed it before today, but it is loud and annoying.

Anyway, using my favorite audio editting program for windows (Goldwave), I’ve created some mp3s for you to sample to test your own hearing!

As I said before I can go up to about 16.25kHz, I can hear 16.5kHz and can barely hear 16.75kHz… But I have to really strain..

These files are encoded as Layer-3 ACM MP3 at 44.1kHz, 128kbps, mono (unless otherwise noted), and you are probably listening to them with your computer speakers; so don’t expect this to be a very accurate test of hearing, this is just for fun!

If your phone supports MP3 ringtones, then you can download any of these straight to your phone! Just enter the URL into your phone, and they should install! (Unless you’re on Verizon, which likes to cripple their phones… but I could write for weeks about the problems with each mobile phone company… My Friend Elli has suggested mobile17.com for getting free ringtones on most mobile carriers, but I have not personally tested this site.)

NOTE: UNFORTUNATELY MY WEB SERVER WENT DOWN, AND THESE FILES ARE NO LONGER AVAILABLE

Pure Sine Waves

• 15kHz
• 15.5kHz
• 16kHz
• 16.25kHz
• 16.5kHz
• 16.75kHz
• 17kHz
• 17.5kHz

Sweep Sine Wave

• 16kHz-17kHz
• 17kHz-18kHz
• 18kHz-19kHz
• 19kHz-20kHz
• 20kHz-21kHz

Other

• This has a pure 16kHz sine wave on the left, and a sweep from 15.5kHz to 16.5kHz on the right.