DATING WITHOUT DANGER
Going out on a blind date? Telling someone about your plans will help to protect you, but you may not want to share all your secrets. So how can you be discreet and play safe? Your mobile can now solve the problem. A new system called SafetyText () allows owners of GSM mobiles to send a delayed text message to a friend or relation. Users can text them with full details of where they are going, and who they are meeting, but delay delivery of the message by up to 24 hours so they can cancel it if all goes well. If something goes wrong, the message won鈥檛 be cancelled, and its arrival will sound the alarm. The idea came from Tim Blackman, whose daughter Lucie was abducted and murdered in Japan in 2000.
The messages cost around 50p each on top of normal message charges. So far registration is available only for UK mobiles, but the system will work in any country where these phones work.
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SOLAR-POWERED SPEEDSTER
The world鈥檚 fastest solar-power car is being put through its paces in Scandinavia while researchers monitor its performance. The Nuna II is powered by gallium-arsenide solar cells, the same as those used in the SMART-1 lunar mission. The car set a world record in the Australian World Solar Challenge last year when it travelled 3010 kilometres from Darwin to Adelaide at an average speed of 97 kilometres per hour. The Scandinavian tour will help researchers improve the car鈥檚 performance.
STOPPED IN THEIR TRACKS
For some blind people, it was a giant step backwards when spoken-word recordings switched from cassette to CD. Switch a cassette recorder off and the tape stops right there, ready to start playing again from where it left off. But CD players go back to the beginning. The British Wireless for the Blind Fund has spent two years and 拢1 million to help the UK company Roberts Radio develop Symphony, a combined radio, cassette recorder and CD player that remembers exactly where you had got to. Symphony keeps track of the digital code that all CDs use to display their running time. It stores the code in its memory so that it starts at the right point when it is switched back on. Anyone registered blind or partially sighted can get the players on free permanent loan; others can buy one from the BWBF for 拢140.
