Trayvon Martin's girlfriend, talking to him on the telephone, heard the teenager saying, “get off, get off” in the moments before his cell phone cut off and he was shot dead, according to a recording of the girl's interview with a prosecutor released Friday.

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Final moments call to girlfriend

Before they die, the citizens of Washington, D.C., would like to achieve things both monumental and minuscule. They want to eat delicious food, travel the globe and — naturally — effect political change. They want to see the Earth from the Moon. They want to meet God. Read full article > >

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In D.C., private ‘bucket list’ dreams become public art

Before they die, the citizens of Washington, D.C., would like to achieve things both monumental and minuscule. They want to eat delicious food, travel the globe and — naturally — effect political change. They want to see the Earth from the Moon. They want to meet God. Read full article > >

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In D.C., private ‘bucket list’ dreams become public art

For a government that keeps a tight grip on information, this was a week when it lost control of the narrative. In the diplomatic standoff over blind activist Chen Guangcheng , technology and growing social-media savvy helped spread, drive and at times even muddy a story rife with unexpected twists. Read full article > >

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With Chen Guangcheng news on Twitter, China’s censors lost control

Officials will search an area near a North Carolina bar where a missing Fort Bragg soldier was last seen and last used her cell phone four days ago.

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Search on for missing Fort Bragg soldier

Lawmakers on Wednesday picked apart a controversial deal between Verizon Wireless and the largest cable companies, questioning whether it will impede competition and lead to fewer choices for Internet users. Read full article > >

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Lawmakers fear Verizon Wireless deal with cable firms will limit consumers’ choices

As 6-foot-10, 300-pound Renardo Sidney slumped on Mississippi State’s bench late Thursday night, face in hands during the Bulldogs’ 71-61 loss to Georgia in the SEC tournament first round , it was hard to believe this was the same player who was so celebrated as a high school freshman that he felt he never needed to play scholastic basketball to bolster his reputation or skills. Read full article > >

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Mississippi State’s Renardo Sidney says he’s learned his lesson after life in the fast lane

Cell phone disruptions at concerts are so, well, last month. (And after all, Alan Gilbert’s stopping the New York Philharmonic for a patron’s cell phone alarm was merely the most recent iteration of an ongoing theme.) Even variations on the Nokia ring tone are passe; the violist Lukas Kmit, whose improvised coda on the ubiquitous phrase went all over YouTube in January (see below), was echoing something I heard Nigel Kennedy do at a house party in Switzerland a good twelve years ago, back when that Nokia ring tone was one of the ONLY ring tones. Read full article > >

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Old-fashioned interruption at the NSO

BERLIN — Deutsche Telekom and AT&T vowed Thursday to press ahead with the planned sale of the German company’s T-Mobile USA unit to the U.S. cell phone operator despite concerns raised by American authorities. The two companies said they had withdrawn applications to the Federal Communications Commission regarding the merger and intended to seek its approval again “as soon as practical.” Read full article > >

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AT&T, Deutsche Telekom vow to press ahead with T-Mobile sale after hitting trouble with FCC

The mother of a woman police identified as one of four found dead on waterfront property on New York’s Long Island told CNN a man using the victim’s cell phone made taunting calls and claimed he killed 24-year-old Melissa Barthelemy.

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Mom: N.Y. ‘killer’ made taunting calls

The Russian army has begun training sniffer dogs to use cell phones and video cameras.

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VIDEO: Army dogs use phones and cameras

An alleged sexual assault of a Texas girl involving nearly 20 people was recorded on cell phones, and a video of the alleged incident was circulating among students in her school district, according to court documents obtained Tuesday.

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Affidavit: Sex assault taped, shared

Apple’s shiny new iPad 2 will hit shelves this coming Friday and the old model, only 11 months old at this point, will be replaced by tens of thousands of users. Instead of stuffing it into a junk drawer with those unused cell phones or tossing it in the garbage, consider the alternatives. Macworld ‘s Lex Friedman has laid out some of your options, including giving it away (to your wife or to charity), selling it (through Craigslist, eBay or one of several buyback services) and finding a new life for it. Of course, just because you’re camping out in front of your favorite Apple Store so that you can be first in line to buy an iPad 2, you don’t need to part ways with your original iPad at all. With a minimal amount of effort, you can turn that iPad into a more singularly-focused technology device. If you’re an avid reader, that old iPad could become a dedicated e-reading device once you get your hands on an iPad 2. For instance, why turn to Amazon’s Kindle if you can convert that older iPad into a dedicated e-reader? Just equip that old iPad with the reading app of your choice–whether it’s the Kindle app , Apple’s iBooks , or any of the other iPad e-reading apps available for download–and clear out your e-mail settings, games, and any push notifications to make the reading environment as distraction-free as possible. Other options include propping up your iPad with the lock screen’s built-in photo screensaver to make a fancy (if pricey) digital photo frame. Alternatively, use an app like iRule to turn your iPad into an oversized, hard-to-lose universal remote control. With an app like TouchPad , you can create a virtual Magic Trackpad of sorts. And you could even enlist your old iPad as an external monitor, using  Air Display . Read the full story at Macworld .

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What To Do With Your Old iPad 1

The Flaming Lips are known for odd musical experiments. They once released a four-CD album that required four separate players to experience. Then there were the boombox experiments that accompanied it. Now, just in time for Valentine’s Day, they’ve released a 12-part smartphone symphony on YouTube called ” Two Blobs Fucking .” When I watched the instructional video, it felt like a challenge I had to try. And I knew that Harriett Beecher Stowe and the other founding editors would be proud if we could harness The Atlantic ‘s forces for this important performance. So I grabbed as many associate editors and interns as I could and we headed to our library. You can see the results of the experiment in the video above. (And here’s an easy-bake version of the task , though where I come from, we call that cheating.) But you learn a few things trying to get 12 different phones to play YouTube clips at precisely the same moment. Here’s what I took from it: Getting more than three or four phones to sync is basically impossible. Trying to get all of the phones to preload the YouTube clip over the air before they go to sleep or otherwise lose that caching is impossible. Perhaps if we’d all had the exact same phone running on WiFi we could do it. The setup took more than 20 minutes and we had a few people helping out with the process. There is something to be said for increasing the human-side of interoperability. We’re at a moment where there is a profusion of operating systems and versions of operating systems. We don’t need every mobile OS to be identical, but when someone sticks a new smartphone in my hands, I have the expectation that — like a car — I’ll be able to make the thing work with what I know about how cell phones are supposed to work. When a phone doesn’t respond to my learned skillset, it’s intensely frustrating.  Accessing YouTube from lower-end smartphones is brutal. I’m sure I’d get used to it, but you do get what you pay for with these things. The user interfaces are bad, particularly if you’re trying to execute second-level functions (like, say, rewinding a clip and pausing it at the beginning).

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3 Tech Lessons From Playing The Flaming Lips’ Smartphone Symphony

The cheap wireless plans seemed too good to be true. MetroPCS’ offer of a 4G connection based on a technology called LTE, the same technology that AT&T and Verizon are both planning on using as they upgrade their networks over the next few years, for only $40 or $50 a month? How could that be possible? Slate’s Farhad Manjoo picked up MetroPCS’ Samsung Craft to find out. It was too good to be true, he discovered, naming the phone the worst he’s ever used. I’ve been using the Samsung Craft, MetroPCS’ first and only 4G phone, for a couple weeks now. It’s a nightmare. I’d call it the worst cell phone I’ve ever used, but to do so would woefully undersell the sadists who’ve unleashed this little gadget of horrors upon an unsuspecting public. Everything about this phone seems designed not just to frustrate users but to get us to swear off ever using any phone again. Yes, the Craft is so terrible that I’ve started to spin conspiracy theories around its release. Specifically, I wonder whether MetroPCS is trying to get us all bummed out about the possibilities of 4G so that it can forgo any major improvements in its network. After all, if this is what 4G is like, maybe we should all stop whining and stick with what we’ve got now. To take just one example of what makes the Craft truly dreadful, let me tell you about its Web browser. Do you ever feel nostalgic for the early 2000s, when phones offered “Web access” that always seemed to mangle whatever site you visited? If so, you’re in luck, because that’s just how it is on the Craft! The phone’s browser lacks most of the technologies that go into modern sites. It won’t do Javascript, for example, so the full versions of sites like Google Maps don’t work. It won’t play video from most sites, either. And because most Web sites recognize that you’re coming from a super-dumb phone, they serve up low-fi versions of their pages, meaning you’ll see text and low-res graphics on most of the Web’s major destinations. Read the full story at Slate .

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MetroPCS’ Samsung Craft Is the Worst Cell Phone on Earth