The mobile phone, this easy, wireless device without which no one could live anymore, allows us to use the Internet as well as a desktop. But the best part is that it’s wireless and has free features. This is why almost 50 % of today’s Internet connections are from mobile devices and also why 200 million people use
their Facebook account via their mobile phone.

Experts said that the web adoption is growing 8 times faster and that in 3 years the sales of electronic devices will be in a larger range mobiles than desktops.

The fact is that this direction of development is unstoppable and, on the other hand, it is a very environment- and human-friendly solution. You will no longer need to stand the noise of the ventilators, or to be tied To a fixed place. You will reach all the websites you need anywhere you want. Especially for this, WordPress created several mobile plugins, which make the sites good looking, even for your 960 x 640 Pixel iPhone display.

Source: drivingtraffic.com

Now we’re on the brink of the next big shift.”

http://www.google.com/wallet/vision.html

It happened yesterday, the announcement of Google Wallet and Google Offers, but the spoiler arrived a day before yesterday from Google’s partner on this much expected mobile payments method.

“ViVOtech near field communication (NFC) software and systems enable rich mobile commerce solutions for in-store payment, loyalty, marketing, and merchandising.” This is what they write on their site. And they partnered with Google for this innovative next leap in electronic mobile payment systems.



It only takes you identify the right symbols at the checkout where you can tap your phone to pay with Citi, Master or the Gcard, a Google Prepaid Card. In the short and hasslefree tapping process, some vendors will make their check-in offers to your phone, along with other automated loyalty discounts loading to your smart phone, so you’re better off without leaflets, paper coupons or similar marketing stuff. A Google Wallet PIN, along with few extra security tokens will make your transactions as safe as reasonably possible.

From San Francisco, New York and Portland, where this new mobile payment technology is introduced this summer, the wave will arrive to your neck of the woods. Because for Google Wallet, the field trials began yesterday and it will be official out this summer. As expected, it will be using NFC technology. By 2014, 50 percent of smartphones will have NFC built into them, that’s 150 million devices.

Now the good news: the new Kindle 3G with Special Offers sports a longer battery life and a brighter screen, for better reading in sunlight, yet the greatest hit is that it offers you 3G connectivity, along with Wi-Fi, for free, no anual contracts, no monthly fees! Sounds great, eh? Guess that’s why you gotta allow those ads. For the budget, it makes sense.

From its product page:

Introducing the Lowest Price 3G E-Reader – Kindle 3G with Special Offers for Only $164

Same features as latest-generation Kindle 3G – free 3G wireless, Pearl E Ink display, up to two months of battery life and more – plus sponsored screensavers and money-saving special offers

SEATTLE—May 24, 2011—(NASDAQ: AMZN)—Last month, Amazon.com introduced Kindle with Special Offers, a new member of the Kindle family that gives customers access to money-saving special offers. Just five weeks later, Kindle with Special Offers became the bestselling member of the Kindle family in the U.S. Today, Amazon announced that it is now making special offers available for Kindle 3G. Kindle 3G with Special Offers is available starting today for only $164 and ships immediately. At just $164, Kindle 3G with Special Offers is the lowest price of any 3G e-reader, and includes the latest Pearl electronic ink display. Learn more about the entire Kindle family, including the $114 Kindle with Special Offers and the new $164 Kindle 3G with Special Offers, at www.amazon.com/kindle3G.

“Kindle is the bestselling e-reader in the world. It’s been just six weeks since we introduced the new $114 Kindle with Special Offers, and already customers have made it the bestselling member of the Kindle family,” said Jay Marine, Director, Amazon Kindle. “In response to customer requests, we’re now making these money-saving special offers available for Kindle 3G. You will get all the features readers love about Kindle 3G – free 3G wireless, global wireless access, Pearl electronic ink display that’s easy to read even in bright sunlight, access to over 950,000 ‘Buy Once, Read Everywhere’ Kindle books – all for just $164 – the lowest price for any 3G e-reader.”

Special offers that will be available in the coming weeks include:
· $10 for a $20 Amazon.com Gift Card – customers loved this offer, so we’re making it available again in time for Father’s Day
· Save up to $500 off Amazon’s already low prices on HDTVs with a unique 20% discount on 200 HDTVs from brands including Sony, Panasonic, LG, and VIZIO
· $1 for a Kindle book, choose from thousands of books including Water for Elephants and the Hunger Games trilogy
· Spend $10 on Kindle books and get a free $10 Amazon.com Gift Card

Kindle 3G with Special Offers includes all the same features that helped make the third-generation Kindle the #1 bestselling product in the history of Amazon.com:

Free 3G wireless , no annual contracts, no monthly fees
Global 3G coverage means books in under 60 seconds in over 100 countries and territories
Paper-like Pearl electronic ink display, no glare even in bright sunlight
Lightweight 8.7 ounce body for hours of comfortable reading with one hand
Up to two months of battery life with wireless off eliminates battery anxiety
Kindle Store with over 950,000 books – largest selection of the most popular books
Seamless integration with free “Buy Once, Read Everywhere” Kindle apps for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry and Windows Phone

Kindle 3G with Special Offers is available for immediate shipment to customers in the U.S. at www.amazon.com/kindle3G.

Now, have you tried to see how your website looks on your Droid smart phone, or on an iPhone? Sure, it can’t display exactly as it does on your laptop or desktop, iPad or any decent tablet brand. Design optimization for mobile devices, like smart phones, is an aspect and there’s one more, no less important than your website’s design. This is the search engine optimization specially crafted for the phone with Android or the iPhone with iOS — in short your SEO for mobile devices.

Watch this movie with tips on the matter. Think global and act local!

But there’s a seemingly serious gap between the processor powering the iPad and the new A5 processor which “reveals something quite different – an unprecedented leap in mobile games-playing power that could conceivably herald the arrival of a new home games console. This is a hardware design that is about so much more than just a revised form factor and a bunch of cameras. With iPad 2, Apple is laying the groundwork for the future of its gaming business.”

Under normal circumstances, aka. what a gamer is used to, the tablet, as a device, won’t replace the game console any time soon. Fair enough. Yet from a market perspective, there’s a majority of lite gamers, or casual gamers, out there, killing their time in waiting rooms or escaping the sound of commuting trains. And these people are a dominant market mass, not to be treated lightly.

The essential step has been achieved since the iPad 2 comes equipped with potent hardware, suitable to run a host of popular games. The juice is there so the developers can write new games, or rewrite old ones, for the iPad 2.

How to produce controls, like physical buttons, stick, mouse, similar to the gaming console? Not necessarily to approach this aspect with the “been there done that” concept. After all, it’s not what Apple did. How about docking the iPad to something groovy on the table, hooked to power, video and audio, put all needed controllers under bluetooth so you can travel and play the games you want, without the need of docking the iPad.

This might be the post-Wii mobile gaming console, by Apple, which console, the iPad, is at the same time a pretty good web browser, with Facebook, Gmail, Gmaps, a media player, etc. Clearly more capable than a Wii, and more versatile, the gaming tablet of the morrow.

Number one, “DroidWall – Android Firewall is a front-end application for the powerful iptables Linux firewall. It allows you to restrict which applications are permitted to access your data networks (2G/3G and/or Wi-Fi).  This is the perfect solution if you don’t have an unlimited data plan, or just wants to see your battery lasting longer.”

And number two is as well a “free software, dubbed WhisperMonitor, is a dynamic firewall and real-time connection monitor designed to restrict how sometimes-unruly Android apps handle user data. It monitors all outbound connection attempts by applications and the operating system, and asks users to permit or block any URLs and port numbers that are accessed. The software also allows users to set firewall rules for individual applications, and provides a connection history for installed software.”

The major problem with both mobile security apps above relates rather to user experience. It is not a point and click operation but requires some initial thinking before whitelisting, or blacklisting, an application’s access to the network, 2G/3G and/or Wi-Fi. The user is called to take decisions capable to make or break the functionality, by allowing or disallowing connectivity, of the Droid. The downside of it is a less frantic user experience traded for more control and stability. Again, old news, like anything security related.

“Your friends are equally important
Your friends are arranged into discrete groups
You can manage hundreds of friends
Friendship is reciprocal and equal”

The reality:

“British developer Tom Hume recently went to hear a talk by the anthropologist Robin Dunbar — who famously posited that most humans can only handle around 150 social relationships — discuss his views on our ultramodern ways of staying in touch.”

So then is all this social networking a hoax? Yes and no. Yes, it’s a hoax when you’re an individual believing that you can friend with your neighbors, or former classmates, in an equal manner like with anyone on planet Earth; real life works a bit differently than virtual communications; even if you manage to win some excellent friendships from other continents, this doesn’t mean “anyone, anywhere.”

And no, there’s no hoax hidden in the ads of social networking when you take it one step further, to the marketing arena. You own a business, or work for a web business, and naturally you have to promote services and products, for the business. At this point, social media turns from weird to wonderful. You don’t need expensive local teams nor expensive TV ads to extend the reach of your product or service. Besides brilliant ideas, that come for free, you will be good with Facebook and Twitter flanking your business blogs and web stores.

“The asymmetrical and casual nature of social networks is allowing humans to engage in what Robin Dunbar has termed “social grooming” with increasingly larger groups — without investing increasingly larger amounts of time. The value of these communications improvements is so great that going forward, I expect significant increases in human and capital investments in this space.”

http://gigaom.com/2009/08/23/dunbars-number-and-the-future-of-communications/

Thinking global and acting local, this should be the best recipe for a successful business on the social web.

“Sony once again announced its Android tablets this week, joining pretty much every major PC maker in announcing — but not actually shipping — Android tablets based on the Google Android “Honeycomb” 3.0 OS. The same week, yet another investor analyst reported that sales of the first Honeycomb tablet, the respectable Motorola Mobility Xoom, may have sold as few as 25,000 units. (Motorola Mobility says it shipped 250,000, but that means how many it sent to stores, not how many they sold.) Compare this number to 2.5 million sold in a shorter period for the iPad 2, which Apple could not make enough of and, thus, sold fewer than expected. One particularly vulturish investment analyst even suggested Motorola start suing other Android makers over patents to make money, rather than rely on the sales of Android tablets themselves.”

http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobile-technology/the-android-conundrum-why-tablets-tank-smartphones-surge-165

Why is the iPad (and the iPad 2) the winning product on the mobile tablet computing scene, now?

Because iPads are different devices, they are not a big version of a smartphone, nor are they a keyboardless laptop. You would use an iPad for tasks other than those commonly performed by smartphones and laptops.

Because an Android tablet is more like a keyboardless notebook and the tech savvy users will prefer a real laptop to perform their computing tasks instead.

Because the most excellent apps for gaming and entertaining are running only on iOS, so on the iPad, and this makes it sexy to all the people, even to those without “computing needs.” The iPad tablet is more of an entertainment gadget. Let not mention the cool factor that everyone and his grandma has to sport an iPad. The geeky Google guys are still a minority when it’s about investing in an expensive device that’s not intricate at all. Fandroids want to be more in control of their data and operations, and they know how (or at least get the picture). Apple fanboys want to be on top of the trend, and they don’t care so much about who tracks them, how and why.

And this assertion brings us to another point: is this all about a war between Apple and Google? Maybe, if you’re a market analyst. But if you think technical, then you notice that the iPhone and Android smartphones address distinct markets, different mindsets. The Droid phone can replace the old mobile, and does this on a large-scale. It’s a natural necessity to replace old phones with new ones, and the new ones, at hand, doing the job, run on Android. While the iPhone is tagged, like anything Apple, more with the “I want it!” than with the “I have to…” tag. This is why Droid smartphones surge and threaten iPhones at the moment, while the iPad is comfortably far ahead of the Android tablets. The iPad is a toy for everyone with fingers while an Android tablet will muscle too much of the brain to bother with it. And this social factor marks the market. This may reverse only once Google will come up with a dead simple to use interface, similar to that of the iPad, with support and upgrades for years and keep (or even lower) the already affordable prices. Because when the buyer has to choose from two almost identical products, then the price calls the game.

“Good news for Android users who hate paying for stuff: according to new numbers from Netherlands-based mobile analytics group Distimo, there are now more free apps available for Google’s mobile OS than the iPhone, at 134,342 to 121,845. There are a few things to consider here: first, when one adds free iPad-only apps, the total number of gratis iOS apps increases to a more competitive 132,239. (…) between Android’s rapid growth and what the report terms iOS’s relative stagnation, Distimo expects Google to take the top spot in five months’ time, outnumbering iPhone and iPad apps combined — a rough scenario for Cupertino to stomach, no doubt, but at least the company will still have Windows Phone to kick around a while longer.”

Read the rest here:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/28/shocker-free-android-apps-outnumber-free-iphone-apps/

But you live today, your smart mobile phone is capable of browsing the web. It is allowing you the comfort of mobile banking. The smart phone can be your mobile wallet in the case your device has Near Field Communication embedded in it. Yes, you can wave your mobile device at Starbucks and consider the bill paid. More and more retailers adopt this pay-by-phone new technology.

Only problem is that every comfort brings a hidden risk along. Because less than honorable people will always take advantage to turn any new technology against you. Imagine that you lose a smart phone loaded with essential data about your banking transactions, or whatever sensitive data you may store and transfer with your mobile device.

What you can do to protect yourself, simple advices to keep your smart phone safe:

1. Lock your smart phone with a password. Make your password at least twelve characters long, use alpha-numerical and special signs. Yes, hard to remember. Then try a delightful funny phrase that’s hard to forget. A verse or a tune, replace some letters with numb3rs, spaces with dashes or underscores, all caps, etc.

2. Change your password monthly according to a well thought algorithm in your mind.

3. Look out for remote wipe-out services, like MobileMe for the iPhone. This kind of service will automatically erase all data from your smartphone in the case you claim it lost or stolen.

And even if you’re diligent enough not to lose your smartphone, a good idea would be to backup your data and then erase non essential stuff from your phone.

Remember, there’s no silver bullet. But most of the time, taking good care of your smart phone, the way you certainly do with your laptop or wallet, or credit cards, key chain, etc. is always the best defense against data theft, avoiding financial troubles or ruin.