New Zealand-wide, councils have offered cell phone and credit card payment methods for parking metres for a year or so now, offering a convenient alternative to carrying coins in our streamlined, electronically structured world.

Is paying for parking via your cell phone account much used avenue for inner city parking payment in New Zealand? Or perhaps, do the transaction fees associated (50c and upwards) put Kiwis off?

Major banks in Mexico have just partnered with telecommunications corporations to launch a mobile charge service, a technological advancement tipped to go worldwide over the next year. Cell phone users are able to link their mobile phone accounts to their bank accounts, and pay for everyday things such as taxi fares and meals at restaurants, via text message.

This service is initially targeted at technophile teens, and has seen significant success already in the birth country of much of today’s technological gadgetry: Japan. Will New Zealand teens soon be able to spend their pocket money as easily as they would sending a 4-second SMS to their best friend?

If you’re one of the many who have been waiting impatiently for mobile Internet to take off, you’ll be excited by the news that (after much investment and talk) wireless broadband Internet services are finally coming of age.

Combining the Internet with mobile technology can now deliver a high speed - and high quality – wireless Internet service. This technology lets you browse the internet on your mobile, with the same ease and speed at which you’d surf the Web from your PC at home. Check your emails, download songs and ringtones, play online games, read news online…

The question is: Who will make the most of this opportunity in the global market? Which giant (take your pick from Google, Microsoft, Apple and Nokia) will be dominant? And will there soon be fierce competition in the New Zealand market?

The Gphone – a phone built on a Google open software platform – will allow the Internet heavyweight to extend the power of its online advertising into the mobile realm. Mobile phone giant, Nokia, is expected to introduce mobile Internet services for ‘entertainment on the run’ – from music and video sharing to gaming. Yahoo is pushing to refine its mobile search technology and team up with a telco operator.

Mobile Internet technology was top of the agenda at the Mobile World Congress, held in Barcelona this week, where Telstra Australia emerged as a downunder forward-thinking telecommunications company. Faced with dropping market share and flat revenue, Telstra’s focus has shifted to mobile broadband capabilities. Download speeds of 21 Mbps (megabits per second) are planned for later this year, with faster 42 Mbps speeds from 2009.

And while there are currently few mobile phone devices on the market that can support the new technology, launching the A$1.1 billion Next G wireless high speed Internet service places them at the cutting edge – this is a gamble that will surely pay off. Look to Telecom and other New Zealand providers to take similar steps forward in the sphere of mobile phone technology this year.

Image from Flickr.

How fast are your thumbs? Not to harp back to the good old days, but it wasn’t so long ago that kids used thumbs mainly for grabbing things they weren’t allowed to touch, pinching other kids and picking up food with their hands at the dinner table.

Kids today are increasingly dexterous with their digits – hours spent playing games on Playstations and Xboxes, feeding tamagochis and texting on mobile phones has brought new thumb strength to the younger generation.

Now a Dunedin teen has proved he’s the best at txt in the world. I’ve already proclaimed my love for the Guinness Book of Records, so I’m over the moon that we’ve made it with this latest record. Or should I say ovr th mn?

Seventeen-year-old Elliot Nicholls broke the world record in Dunedin, texting a 160-character message blindfolded and finishing in just 51 seconds on his second attempt and 45 seconds on his fourth try. Both times were slick enough to beat the standing record, set by an Italian at one minute 23 seconds. Elliot fitted practice around his studies, learning off-by-heart the phrase: “the razor toothed piranhas of the genera serrasal musand pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. in reality they rarely attack a human.”

Ah, I love quirky things.

So, what are you waiting for? Get txting on your NZ mobile phone!