An interesting read from nebusiness on HTLM 5 - the fifth revision of the HTLM standard, a language for structuring and presenting content for the Web - as an alternative to apps.
Apps are everywhere. Companies everywhere are pushing them - Android apps, iPhone apps, apps for this, apps for that.
The world has gone app mad. But, very quietly, there’s a growing idea, a rumbling, that maybe apps aren’t the future, maybe they’re a stop-off, maybe they’re just a milestone on the way to the future.
News stories appear weekly about companies searching for alternatives to avoid 30% revenue loss to the app stores. Developers are also increasingly fed up with app stores bouncing their apps and the limitations of the available technologies.
The Financial Times has recently ditched its app and gone in another direction. The question is, why? And will the world cease to spin on its axis if we reject the app model? The answer, surprisingly, is no – and the reason lies in the power of a new technology called HTML5.
Mobile phones could hold the key to people giving up smoking after a program involving sending motivational and supportive text messages to smokers doubled quit rates at six months. Cellular News reports.
The study examined the long-term effects of specially-designed text messages by testing the levels of cotinine (a chemical found in tobacco) found in participants' saliva after they reported they had stopped smoking for six months.
A total of 5,800 smokers were randomly allocated to the txt2stop programme or a control group. The txt2stop group received five text messages a day for the first five weeks and then three per week for the next 26 weeks with a personalised system which also allowed people to receive instant messages at times of need by texting the word 'crave' or 'Lapse'.
I've heard of a man who faced up to five years in prison after using a coffee shop's unsecured Wi-Fi to check his e-mail from his car - though I'm not sure he was actually convicted. But this is a first.
The Washington Post reports that a police have brought charges against a homeless man in Maine who helped himself to an outdoor electrical outlet to charge a pair of cellphones.
Fawster was charged last weekend with theft of services, as well as - not so good - carrying a concealed weapon after the officer found a folding knife tucked underneath his shirt.
A teenage girl in China has offered up her virginity in exchange for an iPhone 4, Chinese news site Biznewschina reports via BGR.
The young girl recently took to Weibo, a Chinese microblogging service similar to Twitter, to seek out someone willing to buy her an Apple iPhone 4 in exchange for sex.
The girl posted a photo of herself on the website alongside some personal information, and offered to sell her virginity to anyone who buys her the new Apple smartphone.
Earlier this year, a Chinese boy sold his kidney for 22,000 yuan ($3,400) on the black market in order to purchase an iPad 2.
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While this group is diverse, we think Twitter and #TfN can be a kind of common ground—and we know Twitter is a tool all journalists can use to find sources faster, tell stories better, and build a bigger audience for their work.
Yesterday Google launched a field trial (by invitation only) social network called the Google+ project . One of the features of The Google+project allows for group text messaging.
In their own words:
Texting is great, but not when you’re trying to get six different people to decide on a movie. Huddle turns all those different conversations into one simple group chat, so everyone gets on the same page all at once.
And arstechnica's feature story entitled Inside Google+:
Google formally makes its pitch to become a major force in social networking with the unveiling of Google+ to a limited public beta. Some may wonder whether Google+ is just another questionable social effort by a company that has had a lousy track record in that space to date. But Google+ is not a typical release. It is a result of a lengthy and urgent effort involving almost all of the company's products. Hundreds of engineers were involved in the effort. It has been a key focus for new CEO Larry Page. And they aren't calling it a Facebook killer—but a better Google.
Andy Rubin, a vice president for engineering at Google who leads the company’s Google Android platform, said in a Twitter message Tuesday that the company was now activating over 500,000 Android devices each day.
In March, market research firm Nielsen found that Android had become the most popular operating system among smartphone users in the United States, pulling ahead of the Apple iOS platform.
The shift away from landlines continues, as 24.9 percent of all American adults now live in homes with wireless-only voice connections. Among younger adults aged 25 to 29, the numbers are twice as high; more than half have only a cell phone.
According to The Herald Sun, in the Philippines, teenagers think it's "cool" to send mobile phone text messages in regional languages that show signs of endangerment, such as Kapampangan.
Technology, long considered a threat to regional languages, now is being seen as a way to keep young people from forsaking their native tongues for dominant languages.
In another example, the "cool" factor is helping to resuscitate Chulym, a nearly moribund Turkic language that's spoken by a dozen or so people in a pocket of remote Central Siberia.
YouTube and Facebook, as well as internet radio and mobile phone texting, are helping minority language groups stave off death.
The app is available for the iPhone and iPad. CareLink Mobile Application enables clinicians to access cardiac device diagnostic information and patient data directly from their mobile devices.
... Medtronic’s CareLink Network aims to provide clinicians with the same level of information that they gather during an in-person visit with patients who have Pacemakers, Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillators (ICDs) and Implantable Cardiac Monitors (ICMs).
First it was chatting, then texts. Now apps are distracting young drivers, with more than a third of college students at a US university saying they use them while behind the wheel. Stuff reports.
New research from the University of Alabama shows that even drivers who have reported previous accidents involving mobile phone applications can't resist using them while driving.
''It's astounding, scary. Very little of this is urgent business. It's socializing and entertainment,'' said David Schwebel, the director of the UAB Youth Safety Lab who supervised the study.
That's certainly the hope of London-based company Fring, which today launched an iPad group video-chat app. The service allows users to chat simultaneously with four friends, over Wi-Fi or 3G, and see friends on other devices including the iPhone and Android-based smartphones.
Following a tomiahonen tweet on Jibun Bank, the worlds first full bank that only exists on mobile, I wanted to find out more about it. I came across this article from the Financial Services Club. It dates back to 2009, so the figures are not up to date, but the principal is the same.
Jibun Bank is a Japanese bank which translates into ‘my bank’ in English.
Why is Jibun Bank an innovation?
Because it is designed purely and simply for mobile telephone access.
Jibun Bank was launched in July 2008 by the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (BTMU) and KDDI, the Japanese telecommunications carrier.
The difference with Jibun Bank is that it is intended for mobile access only, and only has a shell website to back it up.
The aim instead is that, through KDDI’s mobile telephone stores and BTMU’s branches, you get full service access via 24*7 telephony.
The 24-hour bank is also designed for mobile phone subscribers of KDDI's au service, allowing au users to pay for goods and services they purchase with their mobile handsets and making money transfers between au subscribers as easy as just entering the receiver's telephone number and the amount of money to be transferred into the handset.
Meanwhile, to deposit or withdraw cash, customers can use BTMU’s ATMs or those of Seven Bank and the Japan Post Bank.
China had about 714,000 3G mobile phone towers by the end of May this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said on Monday via English Xinhuanet. The number of Chinese 3G users had topped 73.76 million by the end of May.
Juveniles caught sending sexually explicit photographs via their cell phones would not face criminal prosecution but rather intense education on the ramifications under a bill approved on Monday by the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee. Newsroom Jersey reports.
The measure (A-1561) was approved 78-0 by the Assembly in March. It now moves to the full Senate for final legislative approval.
Prosecutors in several states have even charged teenagers with criminal offenses, including distribution of child pornography.
“Teens need to understand the ramifications of their actions, but they shouldn’t necessarily be treated as criminals,” Assemblywoman Pamela Lampitt (D-Camden), a co-sponsor, said. “We need to create a path that places education and forgiveness before arrest and prosecution. Young people – especially teen girls – need to understand that sending inappropriate pictures is not only potentially illegal, but can leave an indelible mark on them socially and educationally.”
Nokia has started shipping mobile phones in India that are preloaded with its banking application, in a bid to popularize mobile banking in the country. PC World reports.
India is the first market where Nokia is preloading the Mobile Money client on its phones, a company spokeswoman said on Monday.
Nokia has already teamed up with Union Bank of India, and Yes Bank, and rolled out a mobile banking service based on the https://www.obopay.com/consumer/welcome.shtml mobile payment platform, on a revenue-sharing basis.
The company is preloading the banking application on all phones, including entry-level devices that lack an Internet connection. The user interface for the application is SMS, but the device's data transport can be SMS, GPRS or Wi-Fi, Nokia said.
According to PhysOrg.com,
managers of German chemicals company Evonik have begun keeping their mobile phones in biscuit tins during meetings in order to guard against industrial espionage.
Experts have told us that mobile phones are being eavesdropped on more and more, even when they are switched off," Alexandra Boy, spokeswoman for Essen-based speciality chemicals maker Evonik, told AFP.
Biscuit tins have a so-called Farraday cage effect, she said, blocking out electromagnetic radiation and therefore preventing people from hacking into mobile phones, not only for calls but also to get hold of emails.
Rumor has it that Facebook is trying to sidestep Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market with a neat technical trick: a Web-based platform for apps. MIT Technology Review reports.
Facebook has yet to confirm the existence of the effort, allegedly code-named "Project Spartan." But if the rumor is true, the effort could threaten Apple and Google's dominance in mobile software, and give a boost to Web applications over native apps, by appealing to Facebook's huge and captive user base and by leveraging the social connections between users.
Facebook already lets developers build apps to run on top of its platform, and they've created thousands of games, utilities, and even business apps. But these are designed for the desktop, not the mobile or tablet platforms that are growing rapidly in popularity.
... "If the rumors are true, it means that Facebook is planning to use Web technologies to create a whole new app ecosystem for iOS-based and other mobile devices," says Ron Perry, chief technology officer at Worklight, a company that provides tools for building mobile applications.
As the New York Times reported last week, the Winklevoss Twins have filed another suit against Facebook. [via npr].
Now, they are pursuing a different legal path, claiming in the Massachusetts court that as the two parties engaged in settlement discussions, Facebook withheld instant messages dating back to 2004 that purportedly show Mr. Zuckerberg plotting to steal the idea the Winklevosses and Mr. Narendra had for a social network.
... The technology news site ZDnet says the suit faces an uphill battle. Courts have already said the twins have to stick to their settlement. Now, ZDnet reports:
Not only do they now have to prove that Facebook violated discovery procedures, but they also still have to persuade the courts to overturn the settlement. That's going to be really difficult given how many times the group has been told to just take the $65 million already.
How do you accurately poll voters in an age when increasing numbers of them own only a cell phone? The Chicago Sun-Times reports.
I worry about this more than anything else — you can have a California number and still be living in Iowa,” said Ann Selzer, the only pollster to predict Barack Obama would win the Iowa Caucuses by 7 percentage points. (He won by eight.)
This will complicate tracking not only the horse-race among Republican presidential candidates trudging through Iowa county fairs this summer, but also will challenge politicians of both parties trying to navigate Illinois’ newly redrawn congressional districts.
... About 40 percent of Hispanic households have no landline — just a cell phone. About a quarter of white families have only a cell phone.
Polling only landlines means you get lots of older, white women. You disproportionately miss young voters and minorities.
Somali pirates are turning to increasingly sophisticated methods such as satellite phones, custom-made GPS systems, and even monitoring the Internet to hunt down targets. The resulting technology isn't just fascinating--it also has a real impact on foreign millitaries who are fighting piracy. Fast Company reports.
In addition to random attacks on cargo and passenger ships, Somali pirates are increasingly relying on the use of GPS systems, satellite phones, and open-source intelligence such as shipping industry blogs in order to figure out the location of ships. Much of the technological infrastructure used by the pirates is allegedly located in the Somalian city of Eyl, which has been described as the “piracy capital of the world.”
The Netherlands has become the first country in Europe to enshrine the concept of network neutrality into national law by banning its mobile telephone operators from blocking or charging consumers extra for using internet-based communications services.
Google's executive chairman and former CEO says as many as one-third of retail stores and restaurants will allow for mobile payments within the next year.
Foursquare, has scored another win--this time with a nationwide deal with American Express. The deal will offer American Express cardholders discounts in some shops and restaurants.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Harvard University classmates and former business partners of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, have decided not to further appeal a settlement in their long-running dispute over the origins of the social-networking site.
On Wednesday the Winklevosses and Mr. Narendra, who founded a company called ConnectU, filed papers with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco saying that after "careful consideration" they wouldn't file a petition to take their battle to the Supreme Court.
An interesting read from 
Apps are everywhere. Companies everywhere are pushing them - Android apps, iPhone apps, apps for this, apps for that.
Mobile phones could hold the key to people giving up smoking after a program involving sending motivational and supportive text messages to smokers doubled quit rates at six months.
According to 
Juveniles caught sending sexually explicit photographs via their cell phones would not face criminal prosecution but rather intense education on the ramifications under a 
Nokia has started shipping mobile phones in India that are preloaded with its banking application, in a bid to popularize mobile banking in the country. 
According to
As the 
