Tiscali: Get paid to recycle

Voting in Estonia: Talk of the 2008 US election is abuzz with stories about how the internet has changed political campaigning. Yet, quiet, small, Estonia is leading the global technopolitical charge. Even Lithuania is booking a seat on the e-voting (online voting) train. In Estonia mobile phones act as both a convenient vote delivery platform, but also a personal identity confirmation, ushering in a new era of m-voting.

• Recycle your old mobile phone for cash

Koreans Love to Text Message: Korean teenagers between 15 and 19 years of age send over 20,000 text messages a year. That is about 60 texts per day. Whatever was wrong with talking to each other?

16% of British kids have been bullied by text message. It seems technology makes targeting people with mailicious messages easier. What a sad misuse of enabling technology.

2% of mobile owners had their phones stolen last year, or a theft every three minutes. The Metropolitan Police claim that these thefts account for 1/3 of all street robberies in London.

The first mass market Mobile Phone Came Out in 1983: It was called the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, the DynaTAC stoiod for: Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage.

• Recycle your old mobile phone for cash

Mobile Phone or torch? Lost power? Sneaking back into bed? Apparently two-thirds of mobile phone users use the backlight as a flashlight. Is this a testament to human ingenuity or a symptom of poor eyesight? Who knows.

The average British mobile bill is £20 a month.

• Earn cash by recycling your old mobile phone

Mobile Phones Help Stop Nuclear Terrorism: Researchers at Purdue University, Indiana (USA), are working to allow network of properly set up mobile phones to track the presence of radioactive material using solid-state radiation sensors.

Targets for terrorist attacks increasingly tend to be major urban centres. The logic is that since most people have mobile phones, this system could help collectively find out where the problem lies. It is now possible to locate a person using a mobile phone down to a range of a few metres, anywhere on the globe.

• Recycle your old mobile phone for cash

Used for National Disaster Response: Mobiles are more useful during an emergency than just for calling loved ones. Other countries have adopted systems whereby phone companies automatically warn citizens of emergencies/disasters - free of charge. Finland, in 2005, adopted such a system, as did Japan.

Top Fiction Written on Mobile Phones: Turning the Japanese publishing industry on its head, this trend is thriving and making significant money for aspiring writers. Authors tend to be young Japanese women sharing fictionalised aspects of their lives. Five of the top ten works of fiction in Japan in 2007 were written on mobile phones.

Could your best friend make you money? Recycling old mobile phones can earn you money as well as help the environment. Find out how much you could earn with Tiscali Recycles.

Sanjit Chudha