So your phone already… keeps you connected to your boss 24/7… lets your friends bother you in the middle of a date by texting… alarm when you were right in the middle of that great dream…

And soon it will have a whole new way to micromanage your life for you thanks to researchers at the University of Washington. Now, your cell phone will be able to point it out when you gain a few extra pounds.

Oh, and they will also let you know when you are not being green enough.

Well, maybe I am exaggerating a bit, they are just two applications for your cell phone that are designed to help you manage your life.

Researchers at the University of Washington and Intel have created two new cell phone applications, dubbed UbiFit and UbiGreen, to automatically track workouts and green transportation. The programs display motivational pictures on the phone’s background screen that change the more the user works out or uses eco-friendly means of transportation.

UbiFit and UbiGreen are part of a larger project at the UW to use mobile computing in everyday activities and long-term goals such as fitness, said project leader James Landay, UW computer science and engineering associate professor. “You can’t get fit in a short period of time in one place,” he said. “It happens long-term, in many different places and ways.”

How does it work, you want to know?

The device includes an accelerometer to sense the user’s movement. The programs could run on phones with built-in accelerometers, such as the iPhone and the new Android G1, with no need for external equipment, Landay said. UbiGreen also relies on changing cell phone tower signals to determine whether a person is taking a trip. The sensing device determines what the user is doing based on how it gets jiggled around, Landay said — the localized motion at your waist will be different if you’re walking, jogging, or sitting in a car. The sensing device sends signals three times per second via Bluetooth to the cell phone, where the application averages these rapid signals and translates them into, for example, a 20-minute jog or a drive to work.

How do you know when you have reached your goals? Well each program has a unique way to display your progress.

UbiFit displays an empty lawn at the beginning of the week, and flowers grow as the user works out during the week. Different kinds of workouts yield different colored flowers. Users set weekly workout goals and are rewarded with a butterfly when the goal is met.

UbiGreen displays a tree on the cell phone’s background that grows leaves, flowers, then fruit as the user makes green choices. Icons light up when a choice saves money, incorporates exercise, or allows the user to multi-task. A green bar and number also display how many pounds of carbon dioxide each trip saves compared to a car ride.

“The last 30 years of personal computing has been in support of people sitting at their desks,” Landay said, “but the next wave will be these little computers that are with us all the time and have an understanding of our context in the physical world.”

When we think about mind blowing speed, lets be honest, we tend not to think about electricity. Maybe because of all of the propaganda out there about electric cars, or maybe because electricity conjures up so many other images first, like the lights that go on at home or giant bolts of lightning, which by the way are actually pretty fast. So, it probably should not be a shocker (OK I promise no more puns) that electricity just helped to break a new world speed record.

In order to drive these rotary applications directly, efficiently and in a controlled fashion, there must be electrical drive systems with the appropriate rpm and engine power. Up to now, industrially-deployed motors have normally reached 250,000 revolutions per minute. Now, however, researchers from ETH Zurich’s Department of Power Electronics have developed a drive system in cooperation with its industrial partners that can achieve over 1,000,000 rpm.

Of course, this speed record was set in a lab, not on a track and it’s more to do with revoltions than it is with MPH, but still, you may at some point find it driving down the street next to you, or even in the sky above you. In future it can be expected that the drill used in material processing will become even faster and the compressor used for vehicles and airplanes even more compact.

Of course, you may end us seeing it used to make the technology in the palm of your hand too. Based upon the results of this research, Christof Zwyssig and Martin Bartholet, also a post-graduate in the same department, founded the spin-off company, Celeroton, in August 2008. It will make the lab partners industrially viable with a view to providing ultra-high revolution electrical drive systems for different branches of industry and areas of application. Celeroton is set to become a supplier for manufacturers of, for example, fast-spinning drill or milling machines.

The trend towards increasingly smaller cell phones and other electrical appliances means that increasingly smaller holes have to be drilled for the elec-tronics. This is only possible using a drive system that boasts a high rotational speed. “In my view, a spin-off company is the most direct way of transferring research results to industry. Our findings will rapidly be converted into concrete applications and products,” explains Johann Kolar, Head of the Department of Power Electronics.

Now you are wondering how big this thing that it can drill tiny holes in the cell phones of the future. The new drive system, which generates an output of 100 watts, is barely bigger than a matchbox.

As for construction, the recipie goes a little something like this, The rotor construction has a titanium shell that is able to withstand extreme centrifugal forces and the ball bearings are optimized for extremely high speeds. Ultra-thin copper wire is used for the windings which are inserted in a cylinder made of special iron previously unused for machines. In addition, the machine is fed by electronics specifically designed for such engine speeds.

Currently out, as a free public download is the java development environment for Blackberry phones.  The download, currently in its public BETA, will enable any developer to make new programs for Blackberry Storm, Blackberry Bold and Blackberry Pearl Flip smartphones, as well as desktop simulators for the Blackberry Storm, Blackberry Bold and Blackberry Pearl Flip smartphones that accelerate mobile application testing.

These tools are known as the Blackberry JDE v.4.7 for short.  New API’s available with Blackberry JDE v4.7 that enables developers to take advantage of the new features of the Blackberry Storm smartphone.

Some of the features that you may see based on these tools include:

• Touch-screen support-receive input from taps, slides and other gestures.
• Orientation and rotation support-support portrait and landscape orientations and re-draw the screen when rotated.
• Camera and Media Integration- Build camera and video recording capabilities into a custom application.
• Set Homescreen Background Image- set the background image on a smartphone’s home screen

What does Blackberry think about that?  “The latest versions of the Blackberry Java Development Environment present developers with opportunities to create innovative, mobile-savvy applications that take advantage of the robust feature sets of the Blackberry Storm, Blackberry Bold and Blackberry Pearl Flip smartphones,”

said Alan Brenner, Senior Vice President, Blackberry platforms at Research in Motion.  “Each new Blackberry smartphone presents an opportunity for mobile developers to create new applications or extend their innovations with the latest advances in mobile technology and application development.”