EcoATM, the company that runs kiosks which allow consumers to dump their old cell phones and other electronics in order for them to be recycled, is expanding its operations. The company has just received almost fourteen and a half million dollars from Coinstar and Claremont Creek Ventures via a Series A funding round for start up companies and intends to start setting up its kiosks in gas stations and supermarkets. The kiosks use artificial intelligence, electronics diagnostics and machine vision to identify the old cell phone or other electrical item being offered for recycle, wipe any personal information they may still contain and then offer the recycler compensation in the form of either cash, a coupon, a gift card or a donation to a charity.

Sunnking Electronics and eScrap Recycling, a recycling company based in Brockport which deals with old cell phones and other out of date electronics, have teamed up with the charity known as Foodlink in a bid to help them continue to feed the needy in the county of Rochester and other surrounding areas.

The end might be in sight for mammoth cell phone masts causing a blot on the landscape. Those in the cell phone industry are looking into the possibility of creating much smaller antennae, which could be placed outside buildings, on lamp posts, or even carried by hand. As well as cutting out the unsightly blots on the landscape, the small solution could even put an end to slow data speeds and those ‘dead spot’ areas where cell phone transmissions break up.

Bullies who use cell phones or social media sites to target their victims will be the feeling the pinch themselves if the Georgia House Democrats have anything to do with it. Yesterday the party introduced the second of three legislative packages intended to provide an alternative to those of the GOP. This one, the Educational Opportunities package, includes an Act that allows parents to take leave in order from work in order to attend important school functions or to look after members of their family, an Act to repeal the taxpayer funded credit that is giving fifty million US dollars to private schools even though public schools remain chronically underfunded – and one, known as the End Cyber Bullying Act, which specifically targets those that use social media and cell phones to bully and intimidate their victims.

For most of us, our cell phones are a whole lot more than just something we make a call from. We use them as alarm clocks, as portable GPS, as our MP3 player, as a Twitter device, as a way to surf or update our Facebook page, as an e-reader or document editor – the list goes on. Because of this, and the constantly improving cell phone technology, Americans change cell phones a lot.

Smuggled cell phones inside prisons are becoming an epidemic in the United States, particularly in California where eleven thousand cell phones were seized from prisoners last year. Cell phones have been used to arrange attacks and extortions, and while cell phone jammers have been touted as a solution, they have the less than useful side effect of also jamming official emergency communications.

Cell phones are becoming essential items for catching criminals due to their own carelessness. Last week a man accused of killing his wife had the charge against him upgraded to first degree murder after it was found that in the process of committing the crime, he had accidentally sent a voicemail message to his wife’s cell phone which recorded the entire incident. Now a burglar has been arrested by police after accidentally dropping his old cell phone at the scene of the crime.

Nokia has stunned the cell phone industry by teaming up with Microsoft, agreeing to switch its current smart-phone software in favor of Windows Phone 7. The move was greeted with shock and dismay by many, resulting in Nokia’s stock falling by fourteen percent on Friday, but Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, who took over the company in September in what was seen as a way of “shaking things up” for the firm, has made no apologies for the decision, noting that Nokia is set to earn billions of dollars from Microsoft in return for using their cell phone software system. “This is something I don’t think was completely explained,” Elop says in response to some of the criticisms of the decision.