The buzz at Pivot25, a conference for mobile-phone software developers and investors held this June, is all about the future of money. Ben Lyon, the 24-year-old business-development VP of Kopo Kopo, wants $250,000 to produce his app for shops to process payments made by text message. Paul Okwalinga, 28, describes his money app — called M-Shop, it allows you to buy travel tickets and takeout via mobile phone — as "not reinventing the wheel but pimping it." Kamal Budhabhatti, 35, ...

Jenny has not returned my calls in roughly a year. She has, however, sent me a poinsettia, poked me and placed a gift beneath my Christmas tree. She's done all this virtually, courtesy of Facebook, the social-networking site on which users create profiles, gather "friends" and join common-interest groups, not to mention send digital gifts. Although Jenny has three children, ages 4 to 14, and rarely finds time for visits, phone calls or even e-mail, the full-time ...

Jack White works in an office. Until the White Stripes' formal dissolution in February, White was the singer, guitarist and songwriter for one of the biggest rock bands in the world. Now he sits at a desk. White, 35, owns and operates Third Man Records, a music store, concert venue and record label in Nashville. He spends his days clicking away at a Mac desktop and talking on a landline phone with too many buttons. This particular Saturday, though, White ...

If you're one of those annoying motorists with his hand cupped to his ear yakking away on a cell phone — and you know who you are — better be careful where you're driving. This month, California and Washington State joined Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and the District of Columbia in enacting laws prohibiting driving while talking on a handheld cell phone. Motorists who want to gab on the phone in those states are required to use ...

First it was drinking. Then it was cell phones. Now text-messaging is the latest behind-the-wheel activity lawmakers are trying to curb. "All of my friends do it," says Sonalie Patel, 17, who lives in Elk Grove Village, Ill., and admits that she too occasionally sends texts despite a ban on cell phone use for drivers under 19 and adults with learners permits. "It's like an epidemic." Indeed, a Nationwide Insurance survey found that 18% of cell phone owners text ...

Roughly 270 million Americans do it several times a day: talk on a cell phone. Seems harmless. But when you make and re­ceive calls, your cell phone emits low levels of radio-frequency radiation — a fact that has fueled heated and ongoing scientific debate on the health risks of mobile-phone use. On Sept. 9, the Environmental Working Group , a public-health advocacy, released a lengthy review of past research linking long-term or frequent cell-phone use with increased rates ...

Nokia's Stephen Elop certainly has a way with words. In February, in what might have been the most brutally honest corporate memo in decades, the recently installed CEO compared his company to an oil worker trapped on a burning drilling rig, facing a terrible choice. "He was surrounded by flames," Elop wrote. "Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform's edge. When he looked down ... all he could see were ...

Fears of a bloody birth for the world's newest country, South Sudan, are becoming ever more real after weeks of battles between its autonomous government and their opponents. Hundreds have died in fighting between South Sudan authorities and rebel militias. Now five rebel groups in four of the country's ten states appear to have united under one name, the Southern Sudan Democratic Movement, and one commander, George Athor. "There is a need for the world to know ...

Just after 2:46 p.m. on Friday, March 11, an earthquake warning buzzed on the cell phone belonging to Professor Kensuke Watanabe. He knew it was time for everyone in his class to bolt under their desks. The university building in Sendai, the biggest city hit by the quake and subsequent tsunami, began to shake violently. But Watanabe and his students, with that small warning, were able to use the sturdy desks as protection against falling objects. ...

After months of talking about Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft is announcing on Tuesday that the first crop of phones to carry the Windows Phone brand are ready to hit the market. A host of new phones running the new operating system are expected to debut between now and the holidays, with many being announced later on Tuesday. AT&T has already announced two Windows Mobile 6.5-based phones -- the Pure and the HTC Tilt 2. In all, Microsoft has said ...