DvDand Solutions, LLC

Here is a cool invention that turns an ordinary Sony Ericsson cellphone into a mobile medical lab. Professor Aydogan Ozcan of UCLA used off-the-shelf parts costing $50 to produce remarkable images of particles in a small sample of fluid. The amazing thing about this is that the cellphone can be loaded with accompanying algorithm that can then count microparticles in the photo faster than a human can. Alternately, the photos can be sent to a lab using the cellphone which can further analyze the sample and send a text message back with results. This innovation has immediate application in field medicine, disaster recovery efforts, and scores of rural and developing nations where there are fewer hospitals and healthcare is harder to reach.

So, you live in NYC (212 and 646 area codes) and say you have a hankering for Subway sandwiches. What are your options? You could walk, wait, order, pay and then eat or you could just text, wait until your order is ready, walk, skip the line, pick your order and don’t worry with the change. Hmm, the second one looks like a breeze.

Well, Subway thinks so too. So, it has introduced a new service called Subway Now that does exactly that. The only catch is that you have to be in NYC for now and also you have to set up your account and select your favorite sandwiches on their special website before using the text service.  That certainly is the start in the right direction.

[Via IntoMobile]

Citi today announced that it has partnered with Firethorn Holding, LLC, a Qualcomm company to provide a mobile application for its Card holders to access their account information on their cell phones. This rollout is to be on the AT&T and Verizon Wireless networks. The application will allow card holders to check balances in real time, review their transaction history and rewards points on their cell phone via a secured and encrypted connection. You can read the press release from Verizon Wireless here.

Today, using technology airlines have pretty much automated the pre-flight process except for one thing: the boarding pass. As Greg Kumparak at Mobile Crunch says:

I’ve never lost a ticket, yet I consistently fear that I will. It’s just such an abnormal thing in our daily lives – when else are we given something to hang on to for a few hours that is so easy to lose or destroy, yet so significant in the success of our plans? Lose that ticket, and there’s a good chance queues and regulations might just make you miss your flight. Miss your flight, and you’ll be making up for it your entire trip.

Now, airlines have finally solved that issue and in the process saved thousands of trees. Both Continental and American Airlines are piloting programs wherein any cell phone that can receive and view web pages can be used to receive your digital boarding pass which TSA will scan to verify your identity. The Continental program has been in place since December at Boston’s Logan International Airport, Washington’s National Airport, Houston Airport and Newark International Airport. American Airlines is piloting their program at Chicago O’Hare, Los Angeles International and Santa Ana’s John Wayne/Orange County airports starting today. Now, if you are flying these airlines from the airports mentioned, just remember to charge your cellphone and don’t put it through the x-ray machine until your boarding pass has been verified.

So, finally, it is Election Day here in US. After almost two years of campaigning we will see the results tonight. It is a historic election which ever candidate wins. However, it is also a day of reckoning for technology, especially mobile technology. Will we see a lot of technical glitches like the 2000 & 2004 elections? Answer to that is most likely. In fact, even as I write this, there are reports of equipment failure.

We have already seen the power of the web being successfully used by both candidates, perhaps more effectively by Democrat Barack Obama’s campaign. The web has been successful in helping Obama’s campaign avoid public financing and break all fundraising records. It has also helped him build a formidible grass-roots movement. It may even help him govern by allowing him to communicate directly to the public, much like Franklin Roosvelt did with his fire-side, radio talks during Depression. His campaign has also uploaded several YouTube videos which have been watched 92 million times. Acording to TechPresident.com, a website that tracks technology use in presidential campaigns, his Facebook page has 2 million followers and his campaign has managed to get 8 million supporters through various social media sites. Compared to that McCain’s campaign has been relatively tepid in using social media. McCain managed to raise $217 million via the web compared to Obama’s haul of $600 million. McCain has 560,000 followers on Facebook and his YouTube videos have been seen only a third of Obama’s videos.

Earlier in the summer, Obama started organizing his text messaging campaign by asking supporters to sign up for text messages and he promised them that they would be the first to know his VP nominee. In that instant, the supporters were disappointed because traditional news media scooped them and there were some bungling on part of the campaign which resulted in supporters getting the message hours after the VP pick was known. However, it resulted in about 3 million supporters signing up. Since then he has constantly kept in touch with these supporters (I know as I am one of the subscribers), whether it be to remind voters to watch the Democratic convention, or the debates or to take advantage of early voting where possible or to ask for volunteers to make calls for his campaign. Compared to that, McCain does not have a text messaging campaign at all. On Oct 2, Obama campaign unveiled their iPhone applications which among other things helps users find contacts in battleground states that they can then call to ask them to vote for Obama.

Today though is mobile technology’s day to shine. Obama’s campaign can use this to get the vote out. The campaign has already sent out messages to inform the subscribers nationwide of their respective polling hours. I don’t live in a battleground state, so I don’t know for sure, but I would imagine that they would have already sent out several messages to get his supporters to not only vote, but also to encourage others to vote.

We are already hearing huge turnout effort. However, it is too early to get a sense of how effective mobile campaign was for the Obama campaign. I truly believe that today’s election is a watershed moment for mobile technology in USA. A few years back, American Idol got text messaging into the US consciousness. Today’s election will showcase the power of this technology. Today we will see if the technological divide between the two campaigns will set a new course of history or whether it will become a footnote in history.

Self-Promo Alert! Here is an article I wrote for Mobile Marketing in which I talk about the challenges companies face in launching mobile campaigns in this tough economic climate. Justifying the investment is just the first hurdle. If you can successfully get past that, you have to consider other issues which I talk about in the article. So, click on the link to read it and then come back and let me know what your take is.