Recommended Reads on the Mobile Beat This Week

A roundup of some of the most interesting stories about mobile technology from other sites, collected by Rachel Metz, MIT Technology Review’s senior editor for mobile.

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December 18, 2015

Your iPhone Is Ruining Your Posture, and Your Mood
This New York Times story explains something some of you may have already noticed: smartphones can be bad for your posture. But the author also argues that beyond screwing up your neck, such slouching may also be harmful to your memory and feelings.

Exclusive: Target in Initial Development of Own Mobile Wallet: Sources
An interesting story from Reuters cites unnamed sources as saying that Target is considering rolling out its own mobile wallet, possibly as soon as early next year. Doing so would put it in direct competition with existing mobile wallet software like Apple Pay and Android Pay.

How to “Adopt” the Poop Emoji
A piece in the Atlantic explains the Unicode Consortium’s plan to let people donate to “adopt” emoji and Unicode characters for prices ranging from $100 to $5,000; the money will go toward the group’s efforts to support a larger number of languages.

Thanks to Google, Your Phone Now Doubles as a Lightsaber
This story from TechCrunch rounds out the week with a little Star Wars fun. Google released a game called Lightsaber Escape to coincide with the release of the movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens; you can play the game through Google’s Chrome desktop browser on a computer and use your smartphone as a controller (the phone acts as a lightsaber that you can wave around to fight Stormtroopers).