After hours Toolkit

Rupert Goodwins' Diary

A week in the life of Rupert Goodwins ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 17 Oct 2003 15:25 BST

Thursday 16/10/2003
Sales of Kevlar-lined trousers are in decline, as Kyocera announces that it doesn't have a problem with detonating mobile phones after all. Nokia's still scratching its head over a couple of reports that its mobiles are prone to demonstrate the famous "exploding wireless market" cliché with some emphasis.

It's going to become more of a problem. Battery engineers are constantly trying to store more power in ever smaller spaces, with the result that a cell can now contain more than enough ergs to spectacularly disintegrate if mishandled. Laptop power sources can easily hold fifty or sixty watt-hours, which is more than enough to take out a passing child if dissipated rapidly: sure, they have lots of safety features but now and again something goes wrong. Fuel cells may not be much better, as they tend to slosh around with nicely flammable liquids. Even the wonderful wind-up generator in Trevor Bayliss' radios has a tightly coiled steel spring capable of slicing through the odd finger if unleashed, and I've managed to slice a thumb on the shattered glass from a broken solar cell. Nothing is safe!

Not that such things are always accidental. In 1996, the Israeli security service is widely supposed to have disposed of a Palestinian bomb-maker by rigging a mobile with a small pack of explosives. Just trigger the thing by sending the right text message and you can pick off your enemies at will: that's what I call a ring tone. Rather worryingly, the head of the security service at the time, one Ya'akov Peri, later became the head of the Israeli cellphone company Cellcom. If he calls, I'm out...