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I have a question. Can camera phone photos and videos be admissable in court proceedings? Does anyone know of any cases where this has been used?

COSHOCTON, Ohio -- Authorities arrested a man accused of making thousands of harassing and obscene calls to random cell phone numbers in at least eight counties. James R. Hood, 43, was charged with one count of compelling prostitution, or offering money for sex. He posted bond and was released from the Coshocton County jail, the sheriff's office said Wednesday. Hood was arrested earlier this week following a joint investigation by sheriff's deputies in Coshocton and Licking counties. Hood lives in the Licking County town of Granville, about 25 miles east of Columbus. Hood's phone records show he made 2,623 calls...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- AT&T Inc. announced Sunday that it will buy regional-phone company BellSouth Corp. for $67 billion in stock, consummating a long-rumored deal that would create a gigantic communications provider with tentacles extending deep into the phone, wireless, Internet and even pay-TV markets. The acquisition would also give AT&T sole control of Cingular Wireless, the biggest U.S. wireless operator with more than 54 million customers. AT&T owns 60%, with BellSouth controlling the rest. Under the agreement, AT&T (T : AT&T Inc. News , chart, profile, more Last: 27.99-0.29-1.03%4:00pm 03/03/2006Add to portfolioAnalyst Create alert InsiderDiscussFinancials Sponsored by: T27.99, -0.29,...

New paint blocks out cell phone signals ROCHESTER, N.Y., March 1 (UPI) -- A Rochester, N.Y., company has developed paint that can switch between blocking cell phone signals and allowing them through. "You could use this in a concert hall, allowing cell phones to work before the concert and during breaks, but shutting them down during the performance," said Michael Riedlinger, president of NaturalNano. Using nanotechnology, particles of copper are inserted into nanotubes, which are ultra-tiny tubes that occur naturally in halloysite clay mined in Utah. Combined with a radio-filtering device that collects phone signals from outside a shielded space,...

Excerpt - WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 (UPI) -- Three major U.S. telephone companies cooperated with the National Security Agency's wiretapping program without court warrants, USA Today reports. Executives who asked not to be named told the newspaper AT&T, MCI and Sprint granted access to their systems without warrants or court orders, and acted on the basis of oral requests from senior government officials. [snip]

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23, 2005 – At Camp Fallujah, Iraq, today, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld passed a box to the camp's sergeant major. The sergeant major then distributed the contents - handfuls of pre-paid calling cards -- to Marines serving there. Marine Lance Cpl. Nicholas Lutz, Cpl. Byron Smith and Cpl.Justin Glass hold up phone cards they had just received following a town hall meeting with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at Camp Fallujah, Iraq, Dec. 23. The Wal-Mart Corporation sent more than $125,000 worth of pre-paid telephone calling cards along with the secretary. Senior noncommissioned officers have distributed them...

I created the IVR Cheat Sheet to help you quickly get to a human when you are trying to call a company for service. (The term "IVR" stands for Interactive Voice Response, the fancy name for those annoying computers who answer most phones these days.)

Americans may soon be able to use the telephone to vote in local elections, and could someday dial in their decision in national races, the WALL STREET JOURNAL reports on Thursday. The 2002 Help America Vote Act, which was created to simplify the voting process following the debacle in Florida during the 2000 presidential election, helped fund the development of new voting systems.

eBay has agreed to buy the fast-growing Internet start-up Skype in a move to add free Web telephone calls to its online auctions and fuel growth, the companies confirmed Monday. The auctioneer said it plans to pay $1.3 billion in cash and $1.3 billion in stock for the Web communications company. It would make a further payout of up to $1.5 billion by 2008 or 2009 if financial targets are met, giving the deal a total value of up to $4.1 billion, executives of the two companies said. eBay is renowned for an Internet business model linking millions of buyers...

Overview of the USF Program The federal universal service program embodies the national policy goal of affordable telephone service for all Americans. A regulatory "universal service fund" was first established in 1983 to help keep telephone rates affordable in high cost areas of the United States. Between 1983 and 1996, the fund, administered by the FCC, subsidized basic telephone service provided by incumbent local exchange carriers to low income consumers and high-cost areas. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 (1996 Act) greatly expanded the scope of the federal universal service program to include subsidies for new services and new classes of...

Many broadband customers will pay new universal service taxes akin to those on their telephone bills if Congress bows to suggestions from rural legislators... The USF currently collects a fixed percentage of revenues from long-distance, wireless, pay phone and telephone companies so that it can pass on subsidies to low-income customers, high-cost areas, and rural health care providers, schools and libraries. Most companies come up with their share, set for this quarter at 10.2 percent, by charging their customers a fee. The USF should continue to be "industry funded," but the base of contributors should be expanded to "all providers...

<p>The most important vote in Congress this session will be coming up soon. The Senate will vote to both abide by the Constitution and require a simple majority to end a filibuster, or to require 60 votes to end a filibuster as liberals desire.</p>

People who feel the need to talk to their near and dear even after they have passed away can now do so quite literally, thanks to a special mobile phone invented by a German who wanted to keep in touch with his late mother. The system, patented by Juergen Broether and on sale since last December, consists of a one-way phone and loudspeaker device that can be buried close to the person's coffin, and will transmit a voice message into the tomb for a period of up to one year. Broether's said that his "telephonic angel" as he has dubbed...

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- A man who shares the name of Arkansas' most famous native son has endured many pranks, but none as scary as this one. Bill Clinton of North Little Rock, who is not related to the former president and Arkansas governor of the same name, was the victim of a dangerous prank late last month when another person used a computer to hack into a caller-ID system and hijack Clinton's home number. After hacking into a computer system in a process called "caller-ID spoofing," the as-yet unidentified caller made several calls to Clinton's home...

09:52 PM CST on Sunday, January 30, 2005 Associated Press There's a fish fry today to celebrate the big news in Mink, La., a hamlet of 15 households: phone service. Gov. Kathleen Blanco plans to call 83-year-old Alma Louise Bolton from Baton Rouge today to celebrate the end of isolation for one of the nation's last areas without regular phone service. Long-distance charge: BellSouth Corp. spent $700,000 – or about $47,000 per phone – to extend about 30 miles of cable through thick forests to Mink, in the Kisatchie National Forest. The rest of the state's phone bills will cover...

SBC Communications, the second-largest regional phone company in the nation, is in talks to buy AT&T for more than $16 billion, according to executives close to the negotiations. A deal, if reached, would be the final chapter in the 120-year history of AT&T, the first technological giant of the modern age and the original model for telecommunications companies worldwide. A deal would be a reunion of sorts, putting back together some of the largest pieces of the Ma Bell telephone monopoly, which was broken up in 1984. The talks, which the executives described as "fluid" and "very, very sensitive"...

The Kerry folks are having a press conference right now via teleconference responding to Bush's speech in NJ this afternoon about terrorism/foreign policy. To join the conference dial 800-471-6718, then enter the passcode: 1016- 4018 On the conference call will be Joe Lockhart (campaign advisor), Susan Rice (kerry fopo advisor), Tad Devine (campaign advisor) and Karen Breitweiser (9/11 widow working with Kerry campaign)

It was my first time to actually call C-Span yesterday, but that's not important. What is is that I want this to be a record somewhere before no one hears or knows about it, a la the Kennedy files or Hoffa's location. A young girl called in to C-Span later on after I had spoken. She was young and idealistic, and said she had just returned from Baghdad, Iraq, having gone over there for a Christian NGO to see what was really going on for herself. She said that all over the hotel where foreign reporters stay in Baghdad a...

Cell phone cameras are useful for the unusual moment that demands a picture, like when a congressional aide pulled one out of a pocket to get a snapshot of Michael Jackson strolling the halls of Congress. Some people, however, are using them for nefarious purposes, such as taking pictures beneath women's skirts and posting them on the Internet. Lawmakers want to make taking such surreptitious photos and other illicit uses of video technology a federal crime punishable by up to a year in jail. "No one should have to go through the embarrassment of being secretly taped by an electronic...

WASHINGTON - More Americans are refusing to participate in telephone polls these days, but carefully conducted surveys still can get accurate samples of public opinion — according to a new poll. The study by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found the percentage of people reached for interviews in a typical five-day Pew survey dropped from 36 percent in 1997 to 27 percent in 2003. Many speculate that changes in technology such as cell phones, answering machines and call blocking are causing the decline in responses. But the Pew survey found the decline was caused more...