Smartphone Stress: Are You a Victim of “Always On” Culture?

You are on holiday but secretly check your work emails the moment you wake up.You get anxious if there’s no Wi-Fi in the hotel or mobile phone signal up the mountain. 【小题1】 And you secretly worry things will go wrong at work if you’re not there. There are the typical signs of “always on” stress induced by smartphone addiction.

Pittsburgh-based developer Kevin Holesh was so worried about how much he was ignoring his family and friends that he developed an app — Moment — to monitor his usage.The app enables users to see how much time they’re spending on the device and set up warnings if self-controlled usage limits are offended. His website explains, “【小题2】 Some time on your phone; some time off it, enjoying your loving family and friends around you.” And some employers are acknowledging that getting the work-life balance right isn’t so easy. They need help.

【小题3】 You are not giving your body time to recover, so you’re always stressed. And the more tired and stressed we get, the more mistakes we make. 【小题4】 The fact that we can stay connected to the workplace wherever we are in the world is feeding deep-rooted insecurities.

We now consume media for more hours than we sleep. 【小题5】 It actually makes it more difficult to make decisions and many are becoming less productive because they’re overwhelmed by it all and feel they can never escape the office.

Best Internet phone calls apps

Voice

You can use it to make free calls to an actual phone number, PC to PC calls, and free PC to phone calls.

What We Like

●Can forward all calls to your existing phone.

●Easily connects with your existing phone contacts.

What We Don’t Like

●Requires an existing phone number to call landlines and other numbers.

●Limits calling time.

WhatsApp

You cannot use it to make free calls to phones that don’t have the app installed, nor to landlines.

What We Like

●Calls work with any user no matter where they’re located.

●Helps you find users from your existing phone contacts.

●Works on a wide variety of devices, including the web.

What We Don’t Like

●Requires a real phone number to sign up.

●It’s unable to call non-users like landline phones.

Google Duo

You can make audio calls only or you can use it for free video calling.

What We Like

●Calls are 100% free with other users.

●The app helps find existing users from your contact list.

What We Don’t Like

●Doesn’t support sending texts like most similar apps do.

●Works with other users only, so you can’t call a landline or other numbers.

Viber

PC to PC and app to app free Internet phone calls are available with Viber, so lots of devices are supported.

What We Like

●All calls and texts are free with other users.

●Works on desktop and mobile devices.

What We Don’t Like

●A real phone number isn’t free.

Look and listen, and that concert poster just might be singing. Engineers have designed antennas（天线）that can turn everyday objects, from posters to clothing, into radio stations. Anyone walking or driving by can tune in and hear what’s on. The devices use radio waves, but they don’t generate their own. They hijack（劫持）the same waves that carry music and news to your smartphone.

Vikram Iyer co-led the project with Anran Wang, a graduate student in computer science and engineering. The two got the idea for their invention by paving attention to what was already around them. “It's the ideal way to minimize the power consumption for any kind of communication,” notes Iyer. Their research had focused on new types of wireless communications that won’t require much energy. They wanted something that would work outdoors in a city. Then they realized the air is already filled with wireless communications in the form of radio stations.

Radio waves carry energy at the speed of light from tall transmission towers to radios in cars, phones and homes. These waves of the antennas take in existing radio waves and change them slightly. Those changes add new sound information. The changed waves are then sent back out into the world where people can listen in. So the device only needs enough power to change the waves, not to generate them.

The scientists tested their device with a poster. It advertised a Seattle concert by Simply Three. People standing almost 4 meters away from the poster could use FM receivers on smartphones to listen to all songs of the band's music. Those in cars as far as 18 meters away could use car radios to pick up some parts of the songs.

The technology could even extend to clothes. Iyer, Wang and their team turned the shirt into an antenna. It let the shirt talk to the wearer’s smartphone. If a sensor in the shirt tracked a person’s heart rate during exercise, for instance, the antenna could transmit those data to the wearer’s phone.