The Telegraph reports that British children are given their first mobile phone around 8 years old. Doug Aamoth with CrunchGear makes a good point that the survey conducted was in an affluent area, which could slant the results, but nonetheless it’s worth noting that children are actively using mobile phones a great deal more than in previous years. Who are these kids calling? Mainly their parents, although the survey highlights that having a cell phone is more about having cool ringtones and games among friends, rather than serving as a solid communicating platform.
On another note, Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety [...]

The Stanford University Center for Computer Research, who have given us the wonderful and very future forward Stanford Laptop Orchestra have organized another unusual tech-musical group called the MoPhO, or Mobile Phone Orchestra. Members of the group create “meta-instruments” out of mobile phones using the unique hardware built into mobile devices (keypads, accelerometers touchscreens and microphones) as the interface to control music. Though almost unclassifiable, MoPhO’s compositions are versatile, existing in a haunting and beautiful stylistic mix of ambient, noise and chiptune. We’ve seen many great examples of music making on phones before, but perhaps never in such a refined, [...]