How to Track Mobile Phones
March 18, 2010
So, you wish to track your mobile phone. You’ve either lost the big-ticket gadget and hope to get it back or are looking to keep track of the whereabouts of your kids for their safety. Or perhaps you’re a boss who likes to keep an eye on your precious employee working in a remote location all by herself? Whatever the reason, here we show you how exactly you can do that.
Method – 1:
‘Prevention is better than cure’ – Boy, do we love quoting proverbs or what! Well, there cannot be a more perfect juncture than this to quote this oft-repeated saying. If you’ve invested quite a lot of your hard earned money in an expensive mobile phone that you intend to hold steady at least for the next five years, it definitely is advisable that you take all measures to trace it back if it does get lost.
As it is with everything in life these days, the internet is the place to begin your tracking expedition. Mobile phone tracking services can be found in abundance in the internet. Such services require you to download a software in to your mobile phone for a small fee. The anti-theft software will let you lock your mobile phone in case it’s lost or stolen. Some software will also notify you if someone tends to remove the SIM card.
Method – 2:
If lost, your mobile phone can be tracked easily using GPS. If you do not wish to use a tracking software, you can install a tiny GPS chip in to the mobile phone you wish to track. The person’s whereabouts can be easily monitored using a software that can be downloaded in to your PC and can also be viewed on online maps.
Method – 3:
You’ve not installed any tracking software, nor have you inserted a GPS chip in your mobile phone which unfortunately, is lost. Now what do you do? Don’t panic. First and foremost, contact your service provider. They can track your phone within minutes using GPS technology if it’s being used with the same SIM card.
Method – 4:
If there’s anything new on the block, you see Google standing there before you can say geez. So, its no surprise that Google has an application for tracking mobile phones. ‘Google Latitude’ is the application in question that makes tracking down the location of a mobile phone as easy as it can get. Downloading the application in to your mobile phone is very easy. All you got to do is visit google.com/latitude and fill in a few fields.
Once the application is up and running in your mobile phone, all you got to do is add as many friends as you wish along with their email addresses. Thus, you can track the location of your friends no matter where they are. The advantage of this application is that, it does not require GPS to be present in your mobile phone. You can also view the location of your friends in your PC. So, in case you’ve lost your phone, quickly log on to the internet or grab hold of your friend’s phone to locate it.
Here are some useful mobile tracking service providers:
Wherify
uLocate
FollowUs
Mobile Locate
Loc8mobile
Google Latitude
Phone Guardian
Further Reading:
How To Trace a Mobile Phone Location with Google Latitude
Mobile Phone Tracking - Wikipedia
How to Unlock Mobile Phones
March 17, 2010
When you first purchase a mobile phone, the particular network operator you bought it on locks it so that you can use it on no other network but theirs, for obvious reasons. Unlocking the mobile phone is pretty simple for, you have all the resources you would need in the world wide web. Unlocking a mobile phone is totally legal and its no surprise that mobile phone companies are not so keen to trumpet this fact! Here are some simple methods using which you can unlock a mobile phone is a jiffy.
Method – 1:
The simplest way to unlock your mobile phone is to call up your network operator and request for an unlock code. The code will be provided to you for free, using which you can unlock your phone with no apparent effort. This method mostly works, but if it doesn’t, don’t panic. There are other ways as well.
Method – 2:
You can find a code in the internet for unlocking your mobile phone for free or for a little fee, in case your network operator does not furnish any. For this, you will need to provide certain details such as:
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The handset’s brand
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Model number
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Network you bought it on
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IMEI number – This can be found by simply typing *#06# in to your mobile phone.
Then, do a Google search to find out the list of websites that provide unlocking codes for your particular model. Such websites are aplenty, so you wouldn’t have any trouble finding one. Once you have gotten hold of the suitable code, (this will be a mix of numbers, special characters and digits. For example, #pw+5746232089+1#) replace the sim card with that of your preferred network and type in the code carefully. The alphabets in the unlock code cannot be typed using the regular text keys. For this, you can make use of the ‘*’ key. Pressing it three times will produce the alphabet ‘p’ while pressing it four times will produce ‘w’.
The message ‘Phone restriction off’ will then be displayed, indicating that you have successfully unlocked your phone. If it doesn’t, you have four more trials left, but be very careful, for five wrong attempts could get your phone hard locked.
Method – 3:
If the above two methods do not seem to work, you still have another option, which again is possible using the internet. Using a downloadable code and an unlocking clip that can be purchased online for as low as £4, you can unlock your mobile phone effortlessly. This method however, requires some technical know-how, so do it yourself only if you’ve had previous experience with technical stuff.
A note of caution:
The above unlocking methods can only be used on GSM phones. Please do not attempt them on CDMA or TDMA mobile phones.
Here are some websites that provide mobile phone unlocking services:
How do Mobile Phones work?
March 15, 2010
The Beginning:
On a typical sunny morning in New York on April 3, 1973, a petite young man called up his friend who happened to work at a research and development organisation. It appeared to be an ordinary phone call, the only difference was that, it was covered by a swarm of reporters. This dear readers was the first ever phone call made using a phone that was mobile - a mobile phone. It was Motorola’s Dr. Martin Cooper who made the first call using a mobile phone to Bell Labs head of research Dr. Joel S. Engel from the streets of New York city. The mobile phone has come a really long way since that sunlit morning.
A few decades back, did any of us even dream of a single gadget that has everything in it but the kitchen sink? Mobile phones – how much they’ve changed the way we see life..Have you ever wondered how our voices fly through our mobile phone to reach even the tiniest crevice on earth? How do mobile phones actually work? Well, it’s not all that a big deal, we assure you. Here it goes.
After Alexander Graham Bell first invented the telephone in 1876, it was only a matter of time for it to wed wireless communication that lifted its head first in the 1880s. A mobile phone as we know it does not have any wires whatsoever sticking out form it. So how does it carry our voices? Mobile phones convert the voice signals they receive in to radio frequency waves that can travel through air at the speed of light.
How can you turn a voice signal into radio waves?
The most important changeover that has to take place for our voice to travel in air is the conversion of our voice to radio waves. And this takes place with the help of the tiny microphone that’s present inside the handset. When we say, “Hello” into our mobile phone, for example, the modulations of the sound is converted into corresponding electrical signals that mimic the same pattern. With the help of a microchip present inside the handset, the information in this signal further undergoes a conversion which is then transmitted from the antenna of the mobile phone.
The Mobile Radio:
A mobile phone functions like a two-way radio that consists of a transmitter to beam out signals and a receiver to receive the incoming signals. This radio cannot work without a base station. It can even be said that without base stations, mobiles phones are as good as toys. A base station is basically a radio receiver or transmitter that acts as a bridge between two mobile phones in conversation. The minute a mobile phone is switched on, it gets connected to its nearest base station.
How does the signal travel?
So, when Sam who is on Vodafone talks to Lizzy through his mobile phone who is on T-Mobile, his call first reaches the nearest base station in the form of radio waves. The base station then transfers the radio waves to a digital telephone exchange which is then sent to the main telephone network. The waves are now routed to Lizzy’s mobile phone, which is again done through a base station. However, were Sam and Lizzy on the same network, the signal travels simply from the base station closest to Sams’s, then over to the one closest to Lizzzy’s and then to her handset itself.
The Cell Concept:
Since it was told that a mobile phone houses a transmitter and a receiver, the necessity of base stations is bound to be questioned. Can’t our handsets communicate by simply transmitting and receiving signals directly without an intermediate bridge? Certainly. But they would weigh hundreds of pounds and we would need to hire a separate cab just to transport our mobile phones! This is why we need base stations – to make mobile phones ‘mobile’.
In a city as vast as London, millions of people would wish to use their mobile phones at the same instance. Wouldn’t the Brobdingnagian assortment of radio waves scramble together and go bust, making it impossible for us to make calls? This is why a city is divided into several ‘cells’, each of which has a base station at its centre. Cells are generally about 26 square kilometers in size and are regarded to be hexagons that are part of a huge hexagonal grid.
What happens when we walk and talk?
Now that we know that all of us are part of a huge hexagonal maze, it’s a wonder how this maze handles several millions of calls without making a face, huh? Well, when it’s so well-equipped, handling our calls is bound to be a walk in the park. In a gigantic city, all of the base stations function like a family holding hands, passing on the signals from one to the other.
When Sam is driving along the busy streets of London, all the while talking through his mobile phone, he doesn’t know that there’s a group of base stations ably passing on his signal from one to the other. There’s no stress what so ever, on any base station, for a signal generally need not travel farther than it’s neighbour. More the number of cells, more is the number of calls that can be made. Though a particular cell hosts only one base station, additional antennas are installed in densely populated areas to handle more calls.
Further Reading:
How Mobile Phone Networks Work
How Cell Phones Work - Howstuffworks
Mobile Phones: Just How Do They Work? - Keep Talking
How do mobile phones work? - The Vodafone website
Bosses can now spy on employees using their mobile phones
March 12, 2010
With technology moving way too fast for us to keep up with, it indeed is pretty scary as to what heights it will take us in the future. Imagine how it would be if our every move, every breath could be tracked by our employer from some far off place. Why, soon even our walk to the restroom and the nod of our head could be recorded by a computer system and transmitted to our prying boss! All thanks to the brainboxes of Japan’s KDDI, all of this and more is possible using the very gadget we cannot live without – our mobile phone!
KDDI Corporation, one of Japan’s largest telecommunications operators has come up with this ingenious, or shall we say intruding mobile phone that has the ability to track the user’s every move. The device can pick up even the tiniest of movements apart from activities like walking, cleaning and climbing the stairs. It can detect abnormal behaviour by comparing it with a set of common movements that can be stored in a server.
According to the Japanese telecommunications operator, the aim of the system is to provide managers an efficient method to evaluate the performance of their employees while they are not in office and thereby facilitate the efficient working of employees. The company is apparently looking to sell the system to employment agencies and managers.
Some experts believe that the system is a crucial innovation, which when applied to fields such as telemedicine could initiate a giant step for mankind. But of course, there are some who are of the opinion that such systems could pose a threat to an individual’s right to privacy.
Human rights lawyer Kazuo Hizumi says that KDDI’s technology in treating human beings like machines. Well, one can definitely argue either ways. But we can’t shut our eyes to innovation in any form, can we? We might as well think of ways to implement it for the good.
Mobile Phones with lip-reading facility in the making
March 9, 2010
You’re in this crowded bus in the peak hours of a Monday morning. You sit by a cosy window seat mulling over the key issues to be raised at the day’s meeting. Ah! This is the life. Just when you begin to nod off into the most delicious of naps, you hear this kid next to you scream. Startled, you turn toward the direction with concern. “Catch him right there! Yes! That fool. Hold on bro I’ll be there in a minute! Do you know…” The annoying little rascal is shouting away into his mobile phone. Peeved big time, you suddenly realise that you’re surrounded by voices.
A mumbling little old lady, an arguing young man in crisp formals, a wooing teenager and a dozen of other ghost voices buzzing overhead. All of them connected to another world through their mobile phones. Will it be ever possible to escape these floating voices? Yes, very soon, it could be possible for you to carry out silent conversations through your mobile phones.
By simply moving your lips, the devices will be able to trace the words by measuring the electrical signals produced due to the movement of the speech muscles. Thus, you can carry out a conversation using your mobile phone by simply moving your lips! The prototype of this technology was launched at Cebit (Centre of Office and Information technology), the world’s largest computer expo that was held in Hanover, Germany.
The prototype is based on electromyography, a technique that is used for recording and evaluating the electrical activity produced by the skeletal muscles. Still in the development stage, the device at present requires about nine electrodes to be placed on the face of the user. It can record a person’s speech, even if it’s inaudible and regenerate a synthesised version of it later on.
In an interview with BBC News, Professor Tanja Shultz from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology said, “I was taking the train and the person sitting next to me was constantly chatting and I thought ‘I need to change this’” Though not ready for the mass market, the professor said that it could be further developed and incorporated into mobile handsets in the future.
