Latest in student phone tech: Mososo
But can it clean your dorm room?
The verdict is still out on whether the omnipresent cellphone and the ever-growing list of services it provides is a positive addition to campus life, reports the Christian Science Monitor.
From texting messages to classmates to using Global Positioning Software (GPS) to locate friends and restaraunts, students are using the cellphone to usher in the next big consumer technology shift: Mobile Social Networking Software, or "Mososo" for short (if you can believe it).
Mososo, blends social networking sites like Facebook and the tracking technology of GPS, giving students accessibility to a virtual world like never before. The recent evolution in cellphone technology has its detractors, however.
"These technologies are addictive," says author Michael Bugeja, bemoaning what he calls a growing self-absorption encouraged by social networking. "With a society that is increasingly amusing and distracting itself to death, what's at stake is nothing less than the collective conscience."
There are also concerns about identity theft and pedophilia. To address that concern, Rave Wireless introduced a GPS/MoSoSo-enabled phone, emphasizing the security value of the GPS feature over its potential to deliver underage victims to predators. The new phone offers a cyberescort service linked to campus police. If the student doesn't turn off a timer in the phone, indicating safe arrival at a destination, police are dispatched to a GPS location.
"The GPS escort is probably the best new thing for students I've seen," said Kristen Halverson, a resident adviser at the California State University at Monterey Bay.
The other side of the discussion is that students have a greater access to more people - a democratizing phenomenon, says Rave CEO Roger Desai.
"This is their opportunity to take back the community," says Desai, who says people can now open their phones and find the local taco stand or dry cleaner, often businesses they never knew existed.