With smart phones becoming a very crucial and important part of daily lives, one finds it really hard to go anywhere without one. The amount of convenience that such as small device can provide is hard to match. With a typical smart phone, a person is able to make and receive calls and messages, check and send email, browse the internet, listen to music, watch videos and even have a guided map service.

Of course, when travelling to distant locations, being without the smart phone is something that most people would not want to do. But preparing your Samsung Wave 2 or SE XPERIA X8 for a journey is also as important as preparing one’s own things, here is a quick list of things to do before taking your phone out for a trip.

First off, make backups of your data. Phones often carry several GB of important or personal data. From videos recorded to important documents, these files should first be backed up to a computer. There is no telling what may happen to the phone during a trip and data loss is something worth worrying about.

On the light side, move your content to the computer so that the phone will have space for new images and videos that you can take on the trip.

Research the locations’ power standards. Some places use a standard voltage, some have higher. As a rule, never stick your phone into a wall outlet unless you are certain that the voltage will match. Failing to do so could potentially damage your phone.

Also, it is important to check with your carrier. Some networks will charge exorbitant roaming fees. This is a great reason to consider getting a global SIM card if you find one available. It would also be good to inform your friends and family that you will be gone (and that they should not contact your phone) –the last thing any traveler needs is to find a large phone bill upon coming back.

Martha Lane Fox has one big task ahead of her, teaching the digitally unconnected masses about the internet. It’s a big deal, because the internet can actually help people save more than anything else. It also opens up plenty of opportunities for growth, education and most importantly, employment.

It is easy to appreciate a few heart-tugging tales of senior citizens finding their re-connections to the world thanks to the internet. But the real success stories are in being able to teach the people who need the internet to live. Of course, the concept of internet access in every house is a pretty tough sell to make, instead, the real focus is in bringing internet access to the public.

Libraries and other public locations such as government buildings, job centers and even the local post office are being considered as prime locations for computer hubs that people can use.

There are already plenty of volunteers who are willing to give their time in order to reach out and teach others about how to use the internet, how to make their own email address and of course how to use the computer, mouse, keyboard and all (or in some cases, how to fiddle around with a smart phone).

The transition is expected to be slow, but this is not ideal. Technology is not waiting for anyone, and society as a whole is still not an exception. The big shift from traditional to digital will happen soon and people have to learn a lot faster.

While it may seem harsh, there is plenty of reasons to go digital. First off, digital correspondence is significantly better than using paper. According to some reports, the government alone stands to save millions if they stop using papers. The same applies to companies and even to individuals (though at much lesser and harder to notice scales).

When we refer to history, we often take it as a way of looking back at human society and how we have evolved throughout the years. Most museums often give us a good point of study as they hold key objects that have existed during specific eras and provide us with a glimpse of how things and life was at that time.

Now, imagine if by simply pointing a mobile phone at the barcode on that park bench, you get to catch a detailed list of all the people who have been sitting there and getting to know the things that they did (or perhaps that was not such as good example but anyway). This is the new study being undertaken by the University College London as it launches the Tales of Things program where in various objects from the Oxfam shop are barcode-d and sent to various owners.

Each item owner will be adding new data to the barcode and as such, information about various events, images and other associated data will be attached to the device –like a digital diary or blog.

It is interesting and amusing for most people, but for some specialists, the information that can be gathered and analyzed would be priceless. For many who study behavioral sciences and psychology, these bits of data that can be found are not only telling of the objects themselves, but also of the people that have held them throughout. This will allow us to understand our society better.

Of course, the technology is still new and yet to be fully implemented. Thanks to mobile phone technology however, getting this running is a simple matter of developing the 2D barcode extensively and creating an app that would allow users to instantly scan the barcode to read existing data and possibly, adding new ones.