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Pratap Ravindran

Pune , Sept. 5

PEOPLE have pet peeves about cell phones, the two most common being that their use invariably proves more expensive than they thought it would and that they are disruptive when used - always by others, of course - in an inappropriate place and time.

Help is at hand. A consortium of the world's top consumer electronics firms, mobile networks and broadcasters are funding the development of cell phones that will manage the way you spend your money.

The consortium, Mobile VCE comprising Nokia, Sony, Vodafone and the BBC, have commissioned a team led by a software engineer, Mr Nick Jennings, at the University of Southampton in the UK to developing software agents which will run on 3G phones and monitor how you use your mobile — and learn to anticipate your actions. Once they get a hang of your preferences, the artificial agents will figure out for themselves what they think you need.

The software will, for instance, work out when you have a trip coming up - the agents are triggered either by a diary event or a definite pattern of behaviour - and then ask if you want it to check the availability of flights, hotels and so on. Depending on the autonomy you give the programme, it will go ahead and make all the bookings on its own... and pay for them!

You can, of course, set a spending limit.

Actually, the whole thing is not as bizarre as it sounds. Those of you who frequent eBay, for instance, would already have encountered software agents which decide what and when to bid.

As of now, the agents have only been tested on palmtop computers with built-in cell phones.

However, the word is that the full version of the programme will be available in about a year and that it will be downloadable or loaded into 3G phones.

As for those of you who get bugged by people who insist on having loud conversations on their mobiles in the middle of a movie or music concert or whatever, researchers at NTT DoCoMo, the Japanese cell phone makers, are working on lip-reading cell phones.

The researchers have quite a way to go - but, as and when the instrument is ready, all that people will have to do is silently mouth words and the phone will convert them to speech or text.

The DoCoMo prototype works out which words are being said by using a contact sensor near the phone's mouthpiece to catch tiny electrical signals transmitted by the muscles around a user's mouth. The signals are then converted into spoken words by a speech synthesiser, or into text for a text message or email. The company's engineers are still developing the lip-reading software for the project.

Right now, they have a test model which can recognise vowels with what they call an acceptable error rate. They are now working on the recognition of consonants.

In addition to improving cell phone etiquette, the technology will help people who have lost their voice permanently, according to DoCoMo.

This technology should be available in about five years.

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