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The Phone Stacking Game: Let’s Make This A Thing

admin — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 07:00:07 +0000

So it’s Saturday night and you’re out with friend. Are they the inconsiderate jerk who can’t stop checking their smartphone? Or is that you? Either way, here’s one way to make dinner a little more interesting. I’ve seen/heard this described as both “The Phone Stacking Game” and “Don’t Be a Dick During Meals”. It’s been mentioned on a couple of blogs , but a quick straw poll of my friends suggests that it hasn’t become widespread yet, at least on the West Coast. Which is a shame, because it’s perfect for folks in tech. Here’s how it works: At the beginning of the meal, everyone puts their phone face down at the center of the table. As time goes on, you’ll hear various calls, texts, and emails, but you can’t pick up your phone. If you’re the first one to give in to temptation, you’re buying dinner for everyone else. If no one picks up, then everyone pays for themselves. You can explain the game in a few different ways. Most obviously, it could be a protest against the incessant, unthinking use of cell phones during social gatherings. Or maybe it’s a game that acknowledges the new reality and tests your willpower accordingly. Personally, I like to think of it as a free market exercise. After all, people love to say, “Sorry, but I have to take this.” Do you have to answer it? Really? Is it that important to you? Great, then you can pay. No matter what the explanation, it could make for a tense meal. And I look forward to defeating MG Siegler . [ image via Kempt ]

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The Phone Stacking Game: Let’s Make This A Thing

Pew: More Than Half Of Adults Used Cell Phones In Stores For Purchasing Decisions During The Holidays

admin — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:14:58 +0000

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project is releasing a new study today that provides further evidence of the growing trend of consumers using mobile phones in stores for purchasing decisions. Pew says that more than half of adult cell phone owners used their cell phones while they were in a store to seek help with purchasing decisions this past holiday shopping season. According to the report, 38% of cell owners used their phone to call a friend while they were in a store for advice about a purchase they were considering making And 24% of cell owners used their phone to look up reviews of a product online while they were in a store, with 25% of adult cell owners using their phones to look up the price of a product online while they were in a store, to see if they could get a better price somewhere else. One third (33%) used their phone specifically for online information while inside a physical store—either product reviews or pricing information. In fact, one in five “mobile price matchers” ultimately made their most recent purchase from an online store, rather than a physical location. This is interesting considering Amazon’s move over the holidays to offer discounts to consumers on any product purchased via its price comparison mobile app. This was a huge blow to physical retailers, who called the move unfair. Pew reports that cell owners ages 18-49 are significantly more likely to use their phones for online product reviews than are cell owners ages 50 and older. Cell owners ages 65 and older are especially unlikely to use their phones to look up information in stores—just 4% did so this holiday season. In terms of other demographics, urban and suburban cell owners are roughly twice as likely as rural cell owners to have recently used their phone to look up online reviews of a product they found in a physical store. Unsurprisingly, online price matching and looking up online reviews frequently go hand in hand. Overall, of the 33% of cell owners who used their phone recently in a store to look up either product reviews or prices online, roughly half (representing 17% of all cell owners) used their phones to engage in both of these activities. When asked what happened on the most recent occasion where they used their phone to look up the price online of a product they found in a store, mobile price matchers point to a range of outcomes: 37% decided to not purchase the product at all, 35% purchased the product at that store, 19% purchased the product online and 8% purchased the product at another store. While we’ve been witnessing the fact that mobile is becoming a significant part of the in-store and online shopping experience, the Pew report’s data only emphasizes this trend. And although consumers tend to shop at increased levels during the holiday season, there’s no doubt that mobile is going to be an important engagement platform for both online and brick and mortar retailers throughout the year.

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Pew: More Than Half Of Adults Used Cell Phones In Stores For Purchasing Decisions During The Holidays

Chart: Android Is Catching Up To iOS In Mobile Video Views

ACMAir — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:31:47 +0000

With 250 million Android devices out there, growing by more than 700,000 activations a day, a lot of mobile video is watched on Android cell phones and tablets. It is not quite as much yet as on Apple iOS devices but it is catching up fast. A year ago in January, 2011, Apple dominated mobile video views, with iOS devices accounting for 87 percent of all mobile views, according to data from video encoding and short-url service Vid.ly . Android had a scant 5 percent. By December, 2011, Android’s share of mobile video watching grew to 32 percent, while Apple’s shrank to 52 percent. Vid.ly is a service run by Encoding.com, which launched a year ago. The data is only from its service, but is from a large enough sample (more than 1 million video views a month for each platform) that it should be representative.

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Chart: Android Is Catching Up To iOS In Mobile Video Views

Early Facebook App Causes Is Being Reborn As A Polished Web Site For Good

user — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 06:27:41 +0000

Causes launched with the Facebook Platform back in 2007 as a way to help friends more easily campaign for the social causes of their choice. The app benefited from getting in early on the platform, being the only one in its category (other developers were building poking apps or games at the time), and from having a tight relationship with Facebook via cofounder Sean Parker. The product, though, has lost some momentum over the years — at least until a multi-part revamp that the company is in the middle of pushing through. Most strikingly, the Facebook canvas app no longer exists. Instead, as of this past fall, everything is now on Causes.com . But, consider this a preview of sorts. The company is planning to roll out major new features in the coming months, with a full launch planned for mid-March. “When [Facebook's] platform launched in 2007, we made a bet that for Causes to get above the sheep-throwing and zombie-killing noise, we needed to look like an app that was made by Facebook, as natural to use as their Photos or Events apps,” product vice president Chris Chan tells me. ”This was the right call then.” Even so, he explains, the product got too focused on viral growth and not enough on overall quality. “As the years have progressed the web has gotten a lot more social, and it makes more sense to have our own brand and site. We can still be ‘on’ Facebook in the sense that we plug into News Feed and fan pages, but having our own brand gives us full, top to bottom control over the product experience, something that we think is critical for building the best tool possible for organizers to create campaigns for social change.” The site today still relies on Facebook as much as ever, but as an Open Graph app developer (as it announced last week) If you’re signed in to Facebook, you can sign in to Causes with the click of a button, and easily do things like invite all of your Facebook friends, or just the ones who have installed Causes at some point in the past. And because it’s an Open Graph app developer, the company is now able to share your activity back to your Timeline and your friends’ Tickers, in addition to the news feed, notifications, etc. The more dramatic changes have been in what else the site offers. Chan has been leading an overhaul that for the last six months has focused on the user experience, cutting underperforming features, introducing usability testing and other unglamorous but crucial aspects of product development. The design has been streamlined from the clunky-feeling app to focus on the key aspects of Causes today. A big rotating image shows major Causes across the top of the site, with recent activity by your Facebook friends underneath. The search bar, along with links to your profile and to finding or starting a Cause are located across the top navigation bar. To their right, you’ll find an image of yourself (your Facebook photo) as well as the amount of money you’ve raised and the number of actions you’ve taken. Below on the right-hand side, you’ll see a link to your profile, your friends’ new Causes, and the Causes raising the most money on the site. The focus, meanwhile, has shifted more to quality awareness-building, away from the promise of fundraising (which has to date not always yielded the funds that many users had hoped for). If you create a new Cause now, you’ll also see some of its newer features added in, like pledges, petitions and polls — and, if you’re a nonprofit, you’ll see that the organizing tools that it had originally launched separately have also been integrated. While the site is still full of purely altruistic causes, like Village Enterprises’ funding campaign to help support entrepreneurs in developing countries, Causes itself is also available for corporate clients who want to get in on the doing good thing. You know, the companies with lots of fancy-sounding efforts about Corporate Social Responsibility, that often produce less than clear results. Take AT&T, for example. The perennial under-performer in customer telecom satisfaction ratings has a few credible uses of Causes going on. One is a quiz that builds awareness around wasted cell phones — answer it and the company will donate $2 to The Nature Conservancy. Another use is a pledge not to text while driving , where the company promises to donate $2 to “educate drivers” for every action. Evolving along with Facebook’s platform has brought Causes from being a lightweight app to a socially-powered web site. On the business side, the company is now monetizing through the corporate clients, as well as ads. As a product, it is also maturing as the web wakes up to the true power of online activism. The past year has been full of examples showing how online campaigns can force governments, corporations and other powerful entities to change their decisions, most recently with online activism helping to convince congresspeople to delay SOPA and PIPA, two controversial anti-piracy bills. Causes traffic, which has fallen after the viral early years of the platform, has already been on the rise in recent months due to the changes the company has been pushing out. As it continues to add features and refine how web users engage with it, Causes is particularly well-placed to be a go-to tool for a new era of internet activism.

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Early Facebook App Causes Is Being Reborn As A Polished Web Site For Good

iPad Is The Least Problematic Tablet Says FixYa, The Tech Q&A Site

admin — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:33:25 +0000

FixYa , a product Q&A site, took a look at its own holiday stats to collect some facts about many major cell phones and tablets including iOS and Android devices. The conclusion? iPhone owners tend to be most interested in fixing battery and call quality problems on Android users found a number of screen issues including freezing and problematic interfaces. They also found that the iPad had far fewer support questions than the aggregate number of Android tablets. Obviously the cohort they surveyed isn’t very statistically useful, but they were able to grab quite a few percentages based on page views of various support questions. On the gaming front, users overwhelmingly had the most questions about the Xbox 360 and PS3. Coming in third was the Wii and the DS Lite saw the least activity. Out of all devices, the Xbox 360 saw the most “visits per device” at 188,342 while the iPhone saw 99,000. Oddly, Nokia and Blackberry devices also so a bit of traction as well. Windows itself came in at #4 behind the Wii. The Coby Kryos was the most problematic tablet followed by the Galaxy Tab. These sorts of stats are interesting because they offer a window onto what users are thinking about after unboxing their holiday gadgets and finding them lacking or problematic in some respect.

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iPad Is The Least Problematic Tablet Says FixYa, The Tech Q&A Site

Cálmate: Put Down Your Smartphone To Feel Better

jos — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:23:03 +0000

A study by the British Psychological Society found a link between stress levels and the number of times a person picks up their smartphone to check messages and mails. As an addict, I can completely agree with this finding. In short, the more you do it, the worse you feel. Oddly, the study found that less stress was induced when checking work e-mail rather than other online interactions. The group conducted a survey of 100 Britons in different lines of work. The study found something they called a “helpful-stressful cycle” in which a smart phone is purchased to help manage the workload and then becomes the bane of their existence, inciting compulsive behaviors and stress. Quoth the BPS: “Organizations will not flourish if their employees are stressed, irrespective of the source of stress, so it is in their interest to encourage their employees to switch their phones off; cut the number of work emails sent out of hours, reduce people’s temptation to check their devices,” said psychologist Richard Balding from the University of Worcester, who presented the findings. Anyone with a passing familiarity with the monkey mind will recognize that cell phones, while making us more connected, actually change our brain chemistry and encourage some obsessive behaviors. I, for one, find myself waking up at night to check e-mails that I know are unimportant at best and a distraction at worst. I don’t smoke but I do slide to unlock in the morning before I roll out of bed. What we really need, is a Gmail plug-in that will shut down e-mail for certain period of time during the day – perhaps a three-hour window of freedom during the workday and another evening window that prevents all e-mail from rolling in while eating dinner and enjoying some family conversation. The assumption that everyone is always on and always available is a rude one and this study only points to further proof that our mobile lives are encroaching negatively on our corporeal existence. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to Tweet out a funny cat picture from my Nexus. via BPS

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Cálmate: Put Down Your Smartphone To Feel Better

Fujitsu Japan Rolls Out 2 “Girls-Only” Cell Phones

ACMAir — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:23:33 +0000

Do women need special cell phones? Certain companies, such as Deutsche Telekom or Samsung , seem to think so. Now Fujitsu Japan is ready to roll out [JP] not one but two handsets specifically designed “for girls”, a feature phone and an Android model. The Android phone, the so-called F-03D Girls’, has been developed in cooperation with popular teenage fashion magazine Popteen : It comes with a waterproof body, special lights at the bottom and around the camera (see below), pre-installed (and extra-cute) photo frames, and pre-installed apps specifically designed for a female user base. Technically, the F-03D Girls’ features Android 2.3, a 3.7-inch LCD with 480×800 resolution, 1GB ROM, 512MB RAM, an MSM8255 1.4GHz processor, an 8MP CMOS camera, Wi-Fi IEEE802.11b/g/n, 2.1+EDR Bluetooth, a TV tuner, an e-wallet function, and a microSDHC card slot. The F-06D Girls’ is one of the very few new feature phones that are coming out in Japan. Fujitsu designed the handset with nicola , another teenage fashion magazine: Buyers get an original tote bag, a stylus pen (the phone has a 3.3-inch touch display) to decorate pictures (see above), an 8MP camera, various nicola wallpapers, 39 different photo frames, and a total of 3,010 pre-installed emoji for cuter emails. Like its Android counterpart, the F-06D Girls’ is waterproof. Japanese mobile carrier NTT Docomo plans to start offering both Fujitsu phones on January 20.

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Fujitsu Japan Rolls Out 2 “Girls-Only” Cell Phones

Stop! It’s A Really Bad Time To Buy Most Gadgets!

Administrator — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:10:40 +0000

Did you know that your brain releases dopamine when it processes something new? At least that’s what the Internet told me . Apparently dopamine is key in establishing a craving, which could be why ever-updating sites like blogs or Reddit are so popular. There is always something new. It could also be why some people always crave more gadgets. You’re bored with your Galaxy SII and hope the Galaxy Nexus will satisfy that burning desire, which it probably will ( unless you’re MG ). But don’t do it — at least not now. We’re officially in a holding pattern. It’s a really bad time to buy most consumer electronic products. This happens several times a year. I know there are some tempting post-holiday offers out there. But don’t do it. Wait a few weeks. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. There are big things on tap the first part of 2012. CES officially kicks off next week, but products will start hitting the wire this week. Then, come February, countless Ice Cream Sandwich phones and tablets will likely drop at Mobile World Congress. Apple generally announces something big in both January and February/early March, too. Last year it was the Verizon iPhone, the iPad 2 and a MacBook Pro spec refresh. Seriously, just take a step back, take a deep breath, and wait for the next generation of product. Even Amazon is said to have a new Fire on tap. CES 2012 is set to be a huge show . Intel will have a large showing as nearly every computer company will debut several ultrabooks built on Intel’s latest platform. Expect at least some of these Wintel MacBook Air clones to hit within the next month or so. Most of these models will be built on Intel’s Ivory Bridge platform, which features a more effeicent battery management than the current ultrabooks. Plus, the new models will be less expensive and there will be more to choose from. Next week’s massive trade show will no doubt play host to several Android tablet announcement. These models will feature quad-core CPUs that will run circles around the current tablet processors. Hopefully the new models will also ship with Android 4.0 although, if these do not, expect the models announced at MWC in late February to feature Ice Cream Sandwich. Mobile World Congress has turned into the mobile industry’s CES. It’s massive. Last year Samsung announced the Galaxy S2 at the show. Nvidia took the wraps off of the Tegra 3 platform. LG debuted the Optimus 3D and Optimus Pad . However, the trick with MWC is that many of the phones announced at the European trade show will not hit the states for months. Amazon set the tablet market ablaze with the Kindle Fire. But it’s been said since almost the beginning that there will be two models. It’s doubtful that they will replace or even drop the price on the 7-inch Fire, but there’s a strong possibility that a larger screen model will hit in early 2012. The main exceptions to this rule involve HDTVs. Now is the perfect time to buy an HDTV as long as you’re not interested in the smart TV nonsense (you shouldn’t be). Retailers are looking to offload 2011 models and most stores will have stellar deals as the Super Bowl nears. Keep in mind, in most cases, an HDTV is simply a monitor for a cable or satellite box. Don’t be swayed by a fancy Smart TV demo. If you want Netflix and YouTube on your HDTV, buy a $200 Boxee Box or a $100 Roku. Waiting is hard. Hell, it sucks. But right now there isn’t anything new. Cell phones and tablets are rocking hardware available from the beginning of 2011. The current ultrabooks are pricey and limited compared to models set to hit as early as this week. There will always be something better on the horizon. That’s the problem with this game. However, when you turn around and look at what’s currently available, it’s best to set your sights ahead. There really is something better down the road this time. [image credit: flickr/ thecrazyfilmgirl ]

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Stop! It’s A Really Bad Time To Buy Most Gadgets!

It’s 2012 Already So Where Are All The Jetsons Flying Cars

admin2 — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 02:39:02 +0000

As we enter 2012, shouldn’t we all be traveling around in flying cars by now? That was the prediction in the Jetsons cartoon tv show. The futuristic series, first produced by Hanna-Barbera in 1962, was set in 2062, exactly 50 years from today. 2012 is the halfway point, so we’ve still got some time before we are all driving around in flying cars. But, many other technology advances from the Jetsons are already with us. The Jetsons represented an optimistic view of technology and the future. As Jeffrey Tucker writes , “it was neither utopian nor dystopian” and “technology was the best (but of course it still malfunctions, same as today.)” The Jetsons was created at a time almost technologically unimaginable today. Television was still partly black and white. The Jetsons was the first program to be broadcast by ABC in color . No personal computers, no cell phones, and of course, no Internet. But, let’s see how well some of the Jetsons vision of the future has worked out so far. The flying car : The design of the Jetsons flying car was inspired by a 1954 Ford concept car, the FX-Atmos, notable for its all-glass bubble canopy, dashboard radar screen and jet-plane-like tail fins. We are not quite there, but the car/plane called Transition, made by Terrafugia , made its debut flight 2 years ago . There have been dozens of other flying cars built , but most people have never seen one overhead. While George Jetson actually drove/flew his car, we do have Google’s self driving car . RUDI, George’s “Referential Universal Digital Indexer” work computer : We have Yahoo , “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle” and the digital index that is Google . And we also can ask questions and get answers from Siri . Video Chat : George would see and speak with his boss and family from this screen. We have lots of that including Skype video calls, Google+ Hangouts, Cisco TelePresence and many more. The Televiewer : At home, George could read the news off this screen. In the 1960s, this was a strange concept to actually get information off a screen. Now, it’s the primary way. George Jetsons’ 3 hours a day, 3 days a week workweek : Tim Ferris has already achieved that and more with his popular book, The 4-Hour Workweek . George’s job is pushing buttons : In the original 1960s episodes, George’s work involves pushing buttons, knobs, dials, and switches. More episodes were made in the 1980s, and George’s desk was upgraded to flat buttons and brightly lit consoles. While not quite a console, how many of us push buttons on a keyboard all day? Spacely Space Sprockets : Forbes magazine jokingly valued Spacely Sprockets at $1.3 billion, on their “The 25 Largest Fictional Companies” list. Apple’s market cap is around $376 billion today. Robot Vacuum Cleaner : iRobot’s Roomba vacuum cleaner. Rosey, the household robot : TechCrunch wrote about the ReadyBot in 2008, a robot that picks up toys and empties trash. There’s also a slight resemblance to the Anybots robot. Didi, Judy’s digital diary : Judy’s diary was private, so this analogy isn’t perfect, but now Judy might share information about her life on Facebook . There are also many private diary diary applications. Moving walkways : Moving walkways are pretty common at airports, but not as widespread as they were in the Jetsons world. But, this proposed moving Chinese bus that lets traffic pass underneath seems right at home in that world. Mr. Spacely tells George Jetson “You’re Fired” : No need to explain where we’ve all heard that one before. A big part of future technology that the Jetsons totally missed is emailing and texting. Perhaps by 2062 those forms of communication won’t exist. For more, PhoneTVInternet.com has a list of 10 comparisons between the Jetsons and Modern Technology.

Japan’s Top 3 Mobile Carriers Agree To Support Global NFC Standard

admin2 — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 17:18:52 +0000

Japan, one of the most advanced mobile nations in the world, doesn’t want to be a “ cell phone Galapagos ” anymore, at least when it comes to payments over NFC. Paying with cell phones is already ubiquitous in Japan, but now the country’s top three telcos ( NTT Docomo , KDDI au , and SoftBank Mobile ) are trying to switch from the Nippon-only Osaifu Keitai system to the Type A and Type B NFC standards used globally. The problem for the carriers is that Osaifu Keitai (“Portable Wallet”), which is based on Sony’s FeliCa RFID smart card technology, isn’t compatible to the Type A and B NFC standards. Docomo, KDDI, and SoftBank have set up the so-called Japan Mobile NFC Consortium to coordinate the domestic adoption of those standards with “service suppliers and handset manufacturers”. The background here is that with this move, the carriers are not only streamlining domestic mobile payment services but making it easier for Japanese handset manufacturers like Sharp or Panasonic to sell their devices abroad. In fact, Japanese business daily The Nikkei is reporting that handsets incorporating Type A and B NFC standards from Japanese makers will be released at the end of next year. With over 120 million cell phones in use, Japan is currently the 7th biggest mobile market in the world. Via Engadget

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Japan’s Top 3 Mobile Carriers Agree To Support Global NFC Standard