Weird, Odd and Strange Mobility Series: Lonely Clusters, Bumping Dinner, Fountains and Penguins

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You are lucky enough to have stumbled upon the first article in, I am sure, a long running series on strange and weird mobility news, information and other oddities.  Sorry.

Now for the weird, odd and strange:
  1. Scientists on Possession Island (1,000 KM off the coast of the Antarctic) have found that Penguins monitored with embedded RFID chips live longer than Penguins with leg bands.  Banded Penguins have a 16 percent lower survival rate, travel slower, have less babies, take longer to feed.
  2. Early tanks in WWI used pigeons to communicate their locations, logistics, inventories, status and pizza orders. 
  3. Just heard on a ScienceNow podcast - Meet and greet social gatherings don't work for lonely people. Lonely people tend to cluster together, and lonely people that cluster together just make each other lonelier.   Try Facebooking.
  4. Heard this quote from a person not licensed to practice medicine this morning, "IT is impotent in the face of mobility." 
  5. Read about a new mobile application that let's people share the cost of a restaurant dinner by "Bumping" money from one mobile device to another.
  6. SAP co-CEOs advice to politicians, "Business and political leaders should champion and enable further growth of mobile technology...there are 4.6 billion mobile telephones on the planet, and even the poor buy them."
  7. Have you read about the bathroom scales that will wirelessly tweet your weight.
  8. Forrester Research prediction - 2011 is the Year of the "Dumb" Smartphone User
  9. More Forrester Research predictions - Technologies like QR codes and augmented reality will prompt users to hold up their phones to interact with the world around them.
  10. Never walk while texting.  Woman falls into Mall fountain while texting.
  11. A 68 year old man punched a 15 year old boy on a Southwest Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Boise, Idaho, in December because the teen wouldn't turn off his cell phone
If you come across weird, odd or strange articles on mobility and mobile applications please submit them to me for inclusion.  My apologies again.

Whitepapers of Note:

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

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