A recent study has shown that people with left-brain dominance tend to use their phones to talk and listen with their right ear. The dominant side of your brain is where your speech and language centre resides. 95% of people are left-brain dominant, and those people tend to be right-handed, and the opposite is also true for people who are right-brain dominant. In the study it was found that 70% of those surveyed (700 online surveys) held their mobile phone up to the ear that was on the same side as their dominant hand.

Why would this be of any significance you might ask? Apparently, in the case of patients about to undergo risky brain surgery, this information could help doctors to quickly and safely locate and protect their main language centre. There is what’s known in medical terms as a ‘Wada’ test that can determine this, but “The Wada test is…….invasive and risky,” the Study author, Dr. Michael Seidman says, “But by looking at how a person uses their cellphone, which side they listen in to, you can get shorthand insight into brain dominance. It’s not a foolproof guarantee, but I would say it’s a pretty reliable and safe way of going about it.”

Another aspect of this study could also help in determining if there is an association between mobile phone usage and cancer. Doctors are still unable to determine if there is an association, it is, as yet, too early to say. But if it was found that there were greater incidences of cancer in right-brain, head and neck than there is currently, it might indicate a connection.

The jury is still out on this one. But for those who like to play it safe though, check out the tawdon.com app.

If you like to have the odd sup of alcohol and to be able to drive home afterwards without the fear of being stopped and asked to blow into a bag, there’s an App for that (surprise, surprise). Well not quite an App, more of a plug-in with an App. Alcohoot is a devise with a high grade sensor that plugs into the audio jack of your Android or iOS phone. When you blow into it the App reads the result of the sensor and lets you know if you are within the limit. Not only that, the App has added features that give you the kind of information you need when out on the town, such as the nearest takeaway and taxi rank. It is designed to be more attractive than other such devices on the market, and more accurate. The developers are looking for backers, and hope to start shipping in September of this year (for US market anyway). If you are interested in investing, you can for as little as $75, log on to www.alcohoot.com.

mashable.com

What’s in a name? That’s all very well if you don’t have to introduce yourself as ‘Facebook’ or ‘Hashtag’ everywhere you go. Not only is social media and the internet becoming the preferred mode of human interaction, but there are now parents naming their children after such technologies. Little Facebook Ibrahim will grow up in Egypt and she will learn how her name was given to her to commemorate the part that the website played in rallying people for the protests on Tahrir Square during the #Jan25 revolution.

Hashtag Jameson was born last November. It is not clear if this is a twitter hoax or if it is for real but it was the topic of much tweeting and blogging last year. And let’s face it, would you be surprised?

Then there is the couple Lior and Vardit Adler from Israel who named their precious one ‘Like’ after the Facebook moniker just because they ‘liked’ the meaning behind it.

Right now, in Sweden there is a little 8-year old boy named Oliver Google Kai, no doubt getting a really hard time from his schoolmates. Walid Elias Kai, who markets search engines, and his wife Carol named their new born Google because of Walid’s admiration for all Google services.

Other names that unfortunate children have been called after the popularity of our tech world are, @, yes, ‘At’ which sounds like ‘love him’ in Chinese apparently. ‘Siri’, which in fairness was a name, but has increased in popularity since Apple chose it as the name for their personal assistant. Then there is Vista Avalon Simser, now nearly six years of age named after Microsoft’s operating system. For a long explanation of how that came about you can get the low-down here.

What other people might we be introduced to in the future….Flickr? LinkedIn? Hotmail? Snapdragon?

Google’s April Fool’s Day joke ‘Google Nose’ caught some people out today and if I hadn’t read about it beforehand I think I would have fallen for it too. Google put a lot of effort and money into their April Fool’s Day jokes. They produce high quality video interviews with ‘experts’ in their field who explain the technology and give rational reasons for their invention. A few years ago I fell for their ‘Gmail Motion’ skit. It showed how people could email by turning physical gestures into ‘actionable commands’. The promotional video is hilarious to watch now and they must have had some fun putting it together. But today such technology is in existence. The Leapunit, launched last year, and due on the market this year, is a new USB device that detects hand gestures to within an accuracy of 0.01 millimeters. Its ‘interaction space’ is 8-cubic-feet allowing you to sit back and surf without having to hunch over your keyboard and mouse.Google’s April Fool’s Day jokes may actually become predictors of future technologies in reality. They do, after all, have the inside track.  I look forward to the day that I will be able to smell the recipe I google on my computer before deciding to cook it. Happy April Fool’s Day!

The next time you get a garbled text from a friend or family member, don’t be too quick to rant on about their poor use of the English language or about how texting will be the ruination of written communication. The nonsensical text message could point to a more serious issue at hand. Doctors at the Henry Ford Medical Centre have written up a report on the case of a 40 year old man who was suffering from a stroke……..the only warning sign?……garbled texting. Medical examinations detected no other symptoms. He was able to read and to write and speak without any problem, the only issue was when he was typing a text. To learn more, doctors gave him a smartphone and instructed him to type, “The doctor needs a new Blackberry.” The patient typed instead, “Tjhe Doctor nddds a new bb.” When he was shown the text and asked to identify any mistakes, the man saw nothing wrong. These results helped diagnose an acute ischemic stroke. They also confirmed the most interesting case to date of dystextia—one in which muddled text messages were the sole manifestation of a patient’s stroke.

Dr. Lawrence Wechsler, chairman of the Department of Neurology at the University of Pittsburgh, said, “I think this is a reflection of a specific problem with language, and it may be that in our modern world, texting is going to be a very sensitive measure of this particular language abnormality—one that tips us off to the fact that there is a disorder of language and symptom of stroke.”

Dystextia is yet another good reason to turn off autocorrect on your mobile.

Ireland’s patron saint was well and truly celebrated this weekend both internationally and intergallactically! A rendition of ‘Danny Boy’ recorded in space can be accessed on soundcloud.com. The singer is Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield, currently on the job at the International Space Station, Orbit (what a cool address!). He and his fellow astronauts have been orbiting since December and are due to come back down to Earth in May. Chris also posted on Twitter, pictures of counties around Ireland from space for all to see. And with the day that was in it, he wore all green and began St. Patrick’s Day with ‘cupla focal gaeilge’ (a couple of words of Irish), ‘Maidin Mhaith’ (Good Morning). You can join the 545,670 followers that Chris already has on Twitter or watch videos of him in space at www.space.com. His last post yesterday on St. Patrick’s Day was a picture of Dublin, “St. Patrick’s Day Finale: Dublin, with her port standing out clearly to photographers in Earth orbit.”

Chris is a talented guitarist and has made history by being the first to record an original song in space. In a unique way, he has also performed with the Chieftains when they performed in Houston, Texas, in February, via a pre-recording. Watch this ‘space’ for more info!

Would anything surprise us about the extremes of the Taliban? Their religious regime compel women to cover themselves from head to toe and do not allow them to work or be educated, they ban dancing, clapping during sports events, hanging pictures on the wall and enforce these regulations with violence. We shouldn’t be surprised therefore at the news that according to the Bangkok Post sixty shopkeepers in the northwestern city of Peshawar in Pakistan have threatened shop owners selling ringtones, video clips, and mobile phone accessories. The shop owners were forced to close down their businesses because of threats received by mail from the Taliban. The letters told them to “stop this shameless business and if you do not stop it yourself then we will make an example of you and your market.” One letter read “Do not compel us to send a bomber….Stop this shameless business in one week and burn the shameful stuff. Just sell mobile phones, batteries and chargers.” The market in question immediately closed down the shops, and police have been asked to increase security at the market.  The Taliban repel anything that smacks of the ‘evils’ of Western civilization. Our cozy relationship with our phones which we personalise to the max, is one such symbol of ‘westernisation’. Mind you, there are some mobile phone ringtones I wouldn’t mind being banned.

There is nothing worse than finding yourself separated from your luggage and far away from home. With over 3000 items of luggage lost every hour of every day around the world, this is not an unusual phenomenon for the modern traveller. Systems such as i-Trak and Tracemeluggagetracker use RFID and bar code technology as solutions to this problem. There is also the Garmin GPS tracking device, the PTU 10. But this can work out expensive. A new device soon to come on to the US market called Trakdot uses a different technology. It puts a radio transceiver on your bags that tells you where your luggage is by text. It costs less than GPS trackers and the company claim that it is more secure than the RFID tags and bar codes. It also uses less battery power than GPS so you can locate your bags before the battery dies! How it works is that it sends out a text to give you an idea of its general vicinity, within 30 feet, by seeing which mobile tower it is near. The Trakdot costs $50 with an activation fee of $9 and an annual fee of $13. It is due to be available from April 2013.