(Photo: Tumblr)

One foolproof way to avoid getting your phone jacked by a roving band of hoodlum teenagers? Have a really shitty phone.

News.com.au reports that a group of teen robbers approached a man in a Sydney park and demanded he hand over his cell phone. When they saw that it wasn't a smartphone, but more like one of those flip phones your Dad still carries around attached to his belt, the pretentious tweens were all screw that. They let him keep the damn thing.

Although the victim held on to his outdated device, the robbers reportedly stole his sunglasses and sent him to the hospital for injuries to his face. Ugh, youths.

(Photo: Mike Luckovich/Frugal Cafe)

Do you enjoy rolling the window down while driving to catch the breeze in your hair? Hooking your iPhone up to the car stereo so you can enjoy the complex musical stylings of 2 Chainz? What about prioritizing sending a text message over other people's safety?

If so, you're in luck: the "designated texter" campaign, launched in Florida, could help you send your undoubtedly very important text and not accidentally kill anybody in a car accident. It's a win/win!

The Orlando Sentinel reports that the Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority has launched an initiative that aims to keep kids from texting while driving. But instead of training them to take a break from their phones for seriously 10 minutes that's how far away the mall is c'mon, or just flat out banning texting while driving altogether, the authority has announced the "designated texter" campaign, which encourages the person in the passenger's seat to field and respond to any texts that flash on the driver's screen.

Of course, if you don't want your passenger seeing all your sexts, this is not the campaign for you.

Florida is one of only a few states that still hasn't banned texting while driving, so the Expressway Authority is hoping this move could begin to instigate change at a state-wide level. Let's just hope this doesn't turn into another Florida Man situation.

In yr phone, sendin you the wrong location. (Photo: Biz Journal)

As anyone who has used a map app recently will tell you, GPS location is still a pretty imperfect science. Sadly, we don't think that will be any comfort to Wayne Dobson, a 59-year-old Las Vegas man who has fallen victim to a glitch with Sprint Wireless's GPS technology. The problem has dispatched scores of people who lost their cell phones to his front door demanding he give them their phones back.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that Sprint can track the location of a lost or stolen cell phone within 50 to 300 meters and send that information to law enforcement. But a glitch with Sprint is pinpointing Mr. Dobson's house as the epicenter of tons of stolen phones, even though he's had nothing to do with them. To make matters worse, when police triangulate 911 calls made from cell phones near his home, the glitch frequently makes it seem as if the call came from Mr. Dobson's house.

"Lucky me, huh," he told the Review-Journal, sounding kiiiind of like Eeyore. "I couldn't be the multimillion-dollar winner. No. I'd rather have that problem."

Mr. Dobson has resorted to putting a sign outside his house that reads, "NO LOST CELL PHONES!!" Dude doesn't have your phone, okay?

This is the kind of thing that would be really novel at first--an interesting story to tell your friends over dinner, perhaps--but get old realllly quickly. Mr. Dobson has resorted to sleeping by his door so he can shoo away angry people in search of their phones at all hours of the night.

Sprint says it is investigating the glitch, so it should be fixed in the next 10-20 years.

Manhattanites cluster around free wifi. (Iam Lamb)

Late Monday night, you probably saw friends south of Flatiron fall off the grid and not resurface until answering your panicked text messages Tuesday morning from somewhere uptown.

That's because, thanks to Sandy, cell service downtown is--not to put too fine a point on it--totally fucked. You might be getting patches of service, but it's likely an exercise in massive frustration. Don't hold your breath on it getting fixed right away, either, says the FCC.

During a conference call yesterday, CNET reports, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski revealed that 25 percent of the nation's cell sites were out of commission, in a 10-state swath from Virginia to Massachusetts. They're underwater, or out of power, or just plain busted. Most of the outages are concentrated in the areas where the storm damage was worst. That's as of 10 a.m. yesterday morning.

Mr. Genachowski also added that:

"And our assumption is that communications outages could get worse before they get better, particularly for mobile networks, because of the flooding and loss of power."

So even if you've got service now, that doesn't mean you can count on keeping it. That's because many of the cell sites in affected areas that still work are now running on backup power, and the timeline for restoration of electricity isn't looking promising, either. Lower Manhattan, for example, might go for four days without power, long enough to exhaust battery power.

Landline outages were reportedly less extensive, though we can't help but wonder if that's because hardly anyone south of 14th has a landline any more.

Hope you don't get cancer, CEO guy. (flickr.com/perspective)

Italy's Supreme Court has issued a ruling that could have a ripple effect for cellphone manufacturers all over the world by declaring a "causal link" between an Italian businessman's non-cancerous tumor and his daily cellphone usage.

The businessman, Innocente Marcolini, said he used his cellphone as much as six hours a day for work. Now his face his paralyzed on one side.

Testimony from oncologists and researchers on Mr. Marcolini's behalf might spook even the most hardcore cellphone user:

"They said electromagnetic radiation emitted by mobile and cordless phones can damage cells, making tumours more likely."

One of Mr. Marcolini's experts told a U.K. paper that the court's decision will "open not a road but a motorway to legal actions by victims. We're considering a class action."

Even though the World Health Organization has expressed caution regarding cellphone use, government agencies like Britain's Health Protection Agency are not too concerned, a spokesman telling the Telegraph that the "scientific consensus is that mobile phones do not cause cancer."

We hope that last part is true, because the alternative might see a new rise in Bluetooth headset use, and no one wants that.

Appily ever-after. (Photo: Pair)

If you thought all that texting and thumbkissing was bringing you closer to your S.O., think again. According to a study out of the University of Essex, the mere presence of a cell phone in your general vicinity is enough to serve as an emotional cockblock.

Writes Scientific American:

Thus, interacting in a neutral environment, without a cell phone nearby, seems to help foster closeness, connectedness, interpersonal trust, and perceptions of empathy — the building-blocks of relationships.... The new research suggests that cell phones may serve as a reminder of the wider network to which we could connect, inhibiting our ability to connect with the people right next to us.  Cell phone usage may even reduce our social consciousness.

We like to think that constant digital connectedness can help foster a sense of closeness, but turns out that might not be the case. Just because you're sending heart emoticons over gChat doesn't mean you're really bonding.

Perhaps coupling apps have it all wrong: instead of building an app for couples to use to communicate with each other, perhaps we should be building ones that keep them from communicating with others.

(Photo: Sunset and Fireworks)

Be prepared to have whatever nominal notions of privacy you entertained about your cell phone usage shattered: A report produced by cell phone carriers in response to a congressional inquiry shows an alarming uptick in data requests by law enforcement over the last five years.

The New York Times obtained a copy of the report, stating that this is the first time data about cell surveillance has been collected on this scale, and that carriers are responding to thousands of requests daily.

According to The Times:

The reports also reveal a sometimes uneasy partnership with law enforcement agencies, with the carriers frequently rejecting demands that they considered legally questionable or unjustified.

When the cell phone companies start to look like the good guys, something isn't right.

Even congressmen seem to be taken aback by the frequency with which law enforcement find it okay to go all Orwell on us. “I never expected it to be this massive,” a Democratic congressmen told The Times.

Perhaps it's best to keep your shady dealings to in-person rendezvous from now on.

Mr. Stallman, snacking on foot stuff. (Photo: Phun.no)

Good news if you're Richard Stallman! According to a travel survey conducted by Intel, Americans are so obsessed with keeping their devices tethered to their fast-typing fingers that they're eschewing the comforts and hygiene of modern life just to keep them charged. We call this the "Stallman Quotient": The more you embrace technology over showering, the higher your Stallman Quotient grows. The maximum Stallman Quotient score is 10, otherwise known as "eating something from your foot while being filmed during a lecture."

According to Reuters, 46 percent of people score a high ranking on the Stallman scale, admitting that "they had compromised personal comfort or hygiene to keep the devices charged." Additionally, "More than three-quarters of people questioned thought losing their device would be more stressful than misplacing their wedding ring, and 64 percent said they would sacrifice things such as toiletries to make room in luggage for their laptops or tablets."

Who needs deodorant when you can pass the time playing Angry Birds?

In related news, we're all really gross.

(flickr.com/perspective)

Virgin Atlantic already has in-flight Wifi, sweet personal entertainment systems and the ability to order alcoholic beverages from your seat's TV screen. Now, TechCrunch reports that the company is further boosting its tech offerings by making in-flight cell phone service available for some flights between New York and London.

Writes TechCrunch:

Virgin Atlantic is teaming up with Telenor subsidiary AeroMobile to bring this service to its Airbus 330 planes....International calls will start at $1.29 per minute and go up from there depending on where you are calling. Travelers will be able to make voice calls, send text messages and access data.

Admittedly, our first reaction was, "Cool!" But have you ever been on an Amtrak train without a quiet car? Or worse... a Chinatown bus? People will talk on their phone for hours, and whether or not they're bugging the shit out of you is the least of their worries.

Flying is already an interminable hassle, but with iPods and personal TVs and copious amounts of Tylenol PM, planes are actually pretty quiet. Can you imagine having to endure a 10-hour international flight sitting next to an indefatigable chatty Cathy? We'll all be pulling a Steven Slater and inflating the emergency slide in no time.

Thankfully, regulations make it illegal for cell phones to be used within the U.S., so service will only begin after the plane is 250 miles from U.S. territory. That means that at least for now, domestic travelers are safe from loquacious, phone-obsessed seat mates. As for protection from screaming babies, well--there's always these.