05/07/2011

Available for over a year

Mobile devices and communications have spread and rapidly expanded globally but what is it like to live in this connected world? How have mobile phones shaped our behaviour and how do these different behaviours reveal social and cultural differences across the world? Dr Massimiliano Mollona, a social anthropologist from Goldsmiths, London University and telecoms software company, Amdocs, conducted a major global study looking at how we behave with our mobile phones, looking at 4,700 users in 14 countries around the world. As he tells Click, mobile phone users can be broadly classified as one of three global avatars: cyborgs, centaurs or space cowboys. Of the sounds you encounter every day, some noises are more deliberately placed than others. Unbeknown to many of us, designers and engineers work hard creating artificial or enhanced noises to generate atmosphere, make us feel more secure or simply to make their products more saleable. On this week's Click we hear a selection of some real and fake sounds, and ask Trevor Cox, professor of Acoustic Engineering at the University of Salford, to explain how they are made and why we need them. You will probably be using your phone to make life more convenient or save time. A new application where you can run water into your bath and get the temperature right, all by remote control, might just do that. Or will it? Controlled by a smartphone and tablet PC application, it was being showcased at CEDIA, one of the big events on the UK's home automation calendar. Plugging the whole idea was Fredy Vasilev of the firm Unique Automation.