The program is being called a “digital wallet,” which is interesting given the availability of debit and credit card options in almost every single purchase point.

Banks, tech companies and cell phone providers are lining up to become the first to develop the technology, with designs on transforming how consumers pay for things in North America. The technology has existed for years in Japan, but America has been a little slow on the uptake.

The technology essentially allows users to install chips into their smart phones that emit radio signals over short distances. Users then “bump” their cell phones with point of purchase locations and bank account data is collected to enable the purchase to be made. Sound like a potential for disaster? That’s because it probably is.

Of course, the big goal behind this is that of “contactless payment.” Visa and the other companies involved are hoping that users will take to the idea of simply “waving” their phones near products they want to purchase. Apparently the use of a simple card is too complicated.

With identity theft continually on the rise, this project should be raising a lot of alarm bells and red flags. Imagine the opportunity for wireless robbery should this technology really take off. There is so much potential for disaster here that I’m having a hard time getting excited about the possibilities. And nevermind the potential for lost jobs and the continued move towards a completely impersonal society.

Imagine stores filled with quiet drones simply waving their phones in front of products they want to purchase. No more cashiers, no more check-outs. Sound like a utopia? Hardly.

“Sometimes with texting, people will be confused about what it really means,” says Tong Song, who is studying at Gallaudet University, a school for the deaf in Washington, D.C., and participating in the summer pilot test. “With the MobileASL, phone people can see each other eye to eye, face to face, and really have better understanding.”

MobileASL’s study team features 11 students and is the first team to examine how deaf and hearing-impaired people can use mobile video phones. The plan is to employ a much larger field study in the winter.

The engineers are currently at work on optimizing video signals for sign language, a task that should involve the increasing of the quality of facial images and hand images to reduce the data transfer rate. They are also working on reducing the amount of battery power used by these sorts of phones, employing motion sensors to take part in the task.

Many phones already do use a form of video conferencing. The problem is that broadband companies currently block the conferencing from their networks and offer high prices because of the heavy bandwidth used. The goal for the MobileASL team is to have the phones reduce the amount of bandwidth used.

“We want to deliver affordable, reliable ASL on as many devices as possible,” University of Washington professor Eve Riskin says. “It’s a question of equal access to mobile communication technology.”

It’s been a few weeks since MobileSyrup.com revealed an internal screenshot from Telus that mentioned the mystical HTC Triumph. Nobody seemed too sure about just what the Triumph was supposed to be, but it looks as though the device does indeed exist. For a lot of people, the first time they’d even heard of this Android-powered device was with the Telus internal screenshot.

Now before you all start going crazy, it looks from the pictures available on MobileSyrup.com is a rebranded version of the HTC Desire.

According to Android Community, this device features “Android 2.1, HTC’s Sense User Interface (UI), 3.7-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, and the 1GHz Snapdragon processor.”

It should be released by Telus at some point between July and August and is a pretty nice phone for Telus to add to its arsenal. Telus has already featured the HTC Hero, the Motorola Backflip and the Motorola Milestone, so this HTC Triumph will make up the space left behind when those Android-powered units head out over the horizon.

There’s nothing with respect to pricing out there just yet, but we can probably expect some news soon with the release coming up in the not too distant future.

According to Wired, the site “identified (Brian J.) Hogan as the finder of the prototype by following clues on social network sites, and then confirmed his identity with a source involved in the iPhone find.”

Hogan has not been charged with any crime by California police, but he has lawyered up and his attorney has stated that the young man is more than willing to cooperate with the authorities.

California state laws states that it is considered theft if an individual “finds lost property under circumstances that give him knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner” and yet appropriates the property for his own use “without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him.”

San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe told Wired that Hogan was indeed being looked at as a suspect in a theft, although he wasn’t sure if any crime had actually been committed. One has to assume that that decision will ultimately rest on whether or not Apple decides to press charges.

Hogan’s attorney stated that the phone was inoperable “the entire time Brian had it.” One of Hogan’s friends offered to call Apple Care to try to return the phone, but those efforts “failed.” According to reports, Hogan then tried to offer the phone to various journalists. Wired.com admits to having received a email offering access to the iPhone, but noted that the email did not come from Hogan.

The owners of the bar in which the phone was lost said that Hogan didn’t tell anyone who worked at the bar about the lost phone. They also said that Gray Powell, the Apple engineer who lost the phone, returned to the bar “several times” looking for the property.

Powell and Apple’s counsel also contacted the San Mateo County District Attorney’s last week to report the phone as stolen.

It makes sense that Hogan would regret his actions, especially with the pressure that Apple is likely to apply here. It will be interesting to see just how harsh Apple is in doling out its brand of punishment and what kind of charges it’ll elect to press, if any.

RIM’s annual trade show in Florida Tuesday was the setting for the unveiling of the new O/S and music from the Black Eyed Peas accompanied the big reveal. In an attempt to overtake the criticism of past operating systems, RIM is certainly trying to change the game in hopes of taking on Apple’s sleeker O/S. And some analysts are already saying that they’re getting there.

Mackie Research Capital analyst Nick Agostino said that the new O/S is as easy to use as the iPhone’s.

The new browser apparently uses the same core technology from Apple’s system and should give BlackBerry 6.0 a leg up, but some are saying that RIM’s lack of consumer apps still puts them behind the frontrunner.

“RIM is in danger of their phones becoming things that just do what they do out of the box, as opposed to smartphones that get new features through apps every day,” said PCMag analyst Sascha Segan.

The problem for RIM here is that they need to combat Apple’s “lasting buzz.” Apple has created a consumer base, an absurdly loyal one, and they’ve put in the work at really developing their brand. For BlackBerry products, RIM needs to work harder at generating similar brand loyalty before they can expect to really target Apple-like sales figures.

They’ve already started listing the HTC Snap and Touch Pro2 as “coming soon” on their website and now there’s word that the HTC Triumph and a white Touch Pro2 are on the docket.

The HTC Snap is being advertised as the latest QWERTY smart phone with an “updated slim and stylish form factor.” It runs Windows Mobile 6.1 and Telus mobile email. There’s also a camera, music player, wi-fi capability, Bluetooth, and an expandable memory slot with a capacity for up to 16GB of storage.

The HTC Touch Pro2 is another hot ticket item and should sell nicely for Telus. This phone includes a large tilt ’n’ slide touchscreen and a five-row QWERTY keyboard along with Microsoft ActiveSync running on Windows Mobile 6.1. The touchscreen is high resolution 3.6″ and has an adjustable tilt. The HTC Touch Pro2 also includes a 3.6 megapixel camera with video capture.

Also in the mix is the HTC Triumph. This baby was discovered with one of those so-called inventory leaks. This information comes from the good folks at MobileSyrup.com and they seem to have no idea what the hell the HTC Triumph is. Quite frankly, we have no clue either. There is some preliminary speculation that it’s a Canadian frequency version of the HTC Desire, but not final word has been delivered on that yet.

Even so, it looks like Telus is gearing up for a solid summer in terms of new inventory. These Android phones will help give Telus an edge during the summer sales season, which is going to be significant this year with all of the new entries playing ball.

Gizmodo has posted pictures and video of the new iPhone here.

Gizmodo has opened the new iPhone up and had a look inside, confirming that it is indeed the real deal. While the final release of the product may differ slightly from the model discovered by Gizmodo, it’s clear that there are a few changes worth noting.

For starters, there are a number of camera upgrades. There’s a flash and the regular back-camera has a bigger lens than the iPhone 3GS. There’s also a front-facing video chat camera.

The design is different too, with a flat and shiny rear case. The chassis and sides of the body are aluminum. The screen is slightly smaller than that of the 3GS, although it does seem to boast higher resolution than the previous model. The battery is 16% larger and the phone’s design seems to be more “squared off” than the 3GS.

More details will obviously follow, but Steve Jobs can’t be happy about this gaffe. Leaving one of the hottest tech gadgets in the world behind in a bar before its release is a mega-blunder, to say the least, and one doesn’t have to reach very far to imagine the fallout from this.

The prototype was, as mentioned, left in a bar. It was inside a custom case made to look like a 3GS from the outside. Sneaky buggers.

The main point of developing Windows Phone 7 in the first place was to help stop the bleeding creating by other lesser O/S versions for mobile devices. Microsoft had seen carriers and phones dropping its operating systems left and right, so it was about time to get back to the drawing board to come up with something fresh and simple.

With vendors dropping traditional Windows mobile operating systems in favour of Android operating systems and other contenders, Windows Phone 7 has a lot riding on it.

The first thing about Windows Phone 7 that appears to be getting the most attention is its user interface. Windows Phone 7 is designed for the touch screen, so a simple, sleek interface becomes a necessity. Early reviews are saying Phone 7 nailed it, with “live tiles” that help users navigate the system easily.

According to reports and reviews, there are “hubs” that can be navigated with these tiles. The hubs generate content from a host of user-friendly sources and help lead to the customization of your phone or mobile device. There are six hub categories: people, pictures, games, music + video, marketplace, and office.

Music, games and search functions are also racking up brownie points from the critics. Music and video is run with a full-version Zune player complete with video and FM radio. Games come with Xbox Live games capability and the search function uses Bing, of course, and allows users to search from just about any application on the phone.

Windows Phone 7 certainly sounds like an impressive O/S for mobile devices. It remains to be seen whether it can help Microsoft regain some credibility, however, and the actual sales of the O/S will be one of the biggest deciding factors in the product’s success. But things are looking good so far, that’s for sure, and the critical response could be an indication as to a comeback for Microsoft in the mobile sector.

The phone features a 2.4 inch (240×320, 65k color) TFT touchscreen and a QWERTY keyboard along with A-GPS, Wi-Fi, FM radio and Bluetooth. The phone doesn’t lack MicroSD compatibility, but the MicroSD card isn’t included with the purchase price of the phone so consumers will have to grab one on their own.

The Aspen features a 3.2 megapixel camera and 4x digital zoom, making it a pretty standard phone all things considered. The fact that this phone doesn’t feature an 9 megapixel camera is a bit surprising, especially considering industry standards these days.

There is a 3.5mm headphone jack and a stereo speaker included with the Aspen, however, which does make for a somewhat impressive audio setup. Overall, however, it’s hard to shake the notion that SE’s latest offering is little more than an average phone that doesn’t try to do much above and beyond the call of duty.

And perhaps that’s the problem for Sony Ericsson. We’ve already reported about the company lagging behind other industry power players like Apple and phones like the Aspen aren’t going to turn many heads, especially if they include subpar cameras and equipment setups.

Software is where Sony Ericsson hopes to make up for the lackluster design. It’s a pretty loaded phone in terms of goodies, I suppose, with access to the PlayNow store and a host of the usual applications included. There’s also a PDF reader and Microsoft mobile.

Even so, the phone still smacks of all things average. The appearance of Windows Mobile is going to be enough to turn some people off and SE’s experimenting with other operating systems isn’t endearing them to the cause of consistency. With Sony Ericsson already puttering around with Android and Symbian, one has to wonder what the customer base thinks of so much shifting.

So will the Aspen make a dent in sales for Sony Ericsson? It’s doubtful. Hardware-wise the phone just isn’t up to snuff and the software package, while impressive, doesn’t really put the phone above the norm. It’s just another ho-hum entry for Sony Ericsson and represents a further disappointment in a company that once seemed promising in the world of mobile devices.

The press conference to announce the phone will take place at the Googleplex, which is in Santa Clara in California state.

The Nexus One, by HTC, is designed by Google and will be sold without any sort of subsidy by a wireless partner. Google’s going-it-alone here is probably representative of just how significant they think their brand name is and, truth be told, they’re probably right. The Nexus One won’t really need a boost from a wireless partner to get off of the ground and Google’ll probably be able to dictate most of its business plan to those companies it wants to work with.

Google has said on its blog that some employees are already using the Android-based smartphone, which has got to be exciting for those tech junkies.

The press conference to announce the Nexus One will take about three hours. While we here at Cell Phone Numbers Don’t Lie have yet to receive our invitation, we will be camping out by the mailbox day and night until it arrives…(should be any minute now).

We do know that Google’s Nexus One will be sold by Google over the internet and that any troubleshooting and support will be handled directly by the company and the cell phone maker HTC. The handset will cost $179.99, with a 2-year T-Mobile contract for $79.99 per month.

Google’s refusal to use a third party to handle any tech support or other stuff is probably part of the reason that the price seems so reasonable. The cost of an unlocked Nexus One clocks in at $529.99, which isn’t actually such a bad price when one considers how much comparable market products are going for.

We’ll have more details on Google’s Nexus One as they become available, so keep it locked here for all the fun.