tekgoblin writes "Apple has just released iOS 4.3 for download from iTunes. The update from Apple includes enhancements to Apple Airplay, Safari, iPad side switch, and the Personal hotspot feature for the iPhone 4. I personally welcome the feature to make the 'mute button' on the iPad back into the screen orientation lock."

theodp writes "A report from Bloomberg notes it ain't easy, or cheap, to outbid Google. Microsoft has reportedly agreed to pay Nokia more than $1 billion to 'promote and develop' Windows Phone devices under the agreement between the companies. Bloomberg says the agreement for the payment was 'part of a campaign by Microsoft to keep Nokia from choosing Google's Android operating system.'"

An anonymous reader points out a study by the National Sleep Foundation which looked at the relationship between sleep habits and the use of electronic communications tech in the hour before bedtime. Dr. Michael Grasidar of Flinders University said, "My research compares how technologies that are ‘passively received' such as TVs and music versus those with ‘interactive' properties like video games, cell phones and the Internet may affect the brain differently. The hypothesis is that the latter devices are more alerting and disrupt the sleep-onset process." The study found that people who frequently send text messages or use their laptops before bed were less likely to report getting a good night's sleep (PDF) than people who don't. "While these technologies are commonplace, it is clear that we have a lot more to learn about the appropriate use and design of this technology to complement good sleep habits," said the NSF's David Cloud.

An anonymous reader writes "Apple's iPad competitors are still spec-obsessed, and Apple's next-gen iPad coupled with the same price point is forcing Samsung to rethink its tablet strategy and pricing methodology altogether. The South Korean Yonhap News Agency relays a quote from Lee Don-joo, executive VP of Samsung's mobile division, about Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Tab 10.1 compared to the new iPad. 'We will have to improve the parts that are inadequate,' Don-joo said. 'Apple made it very thin.' Features aside, Samsung also finds itself in a bind price-wise. The upcoming Galaxy Tab model, complete with a 10.1-inch screen and Android 3.0, was initially going to be priced higher than the current 7-inch Galaxy Tab. Apple's iPad 2, however, is forcing Samsung to 'think that over.'"

An anonymous reader writes "What right to privacy do school pupils have on their mobile phones? UK education officials are considering ways to clamp down on cyber-bullying and classroom disruption by allowing teachers to search and delete content from student handsets if it is deemed unsuitable. However, questions remain whether such a move would give teachers too much power and infringe on student rights."

AndyAndyAndyAndy writes "Fortune had an interesting article recently about wireless providers and their exorbitant profit margins for SMS handling, especially when looking at modern data plans. 'Under the cell phone industry's peculiar pricing system, downloading data to your smartphone is amazingly cheap — unless the data in question happens to be a text message. In that case the price of a download jumps roughly 50,000-fold, from just a few pennies per megabyte of data to a whopping $1000 or so per megabyte.' A young little application called Beluga caught the attention of Facebook, which purchased the company a Thursday. The app aims to bring messaging under the umbrella of data plans, and features group messaging, picture and video messaging, and integration with other apps. The author argues that, if successful, Beluga (or whatever Facebook ends up calling it) could potentially be the Skype/Vonage or Netflix-type competitor to the old-school cellular carriers and their steep pricing plans."

daria42 writes "It looks like Apple's hyped iPad tablet may find a functional use beyond the early technology adopter set. In Australia, a Melbourne University college recently completed a trial where a limited number of students were given an iPad to aid in their studies. The outcome? The college has now recommended every student be given one of the Apple devices, following in the footsteps of the University of Adelaide, which is handing out iPads to every first year science student. Sure beats lugging around the old textbooks!"

Hugh Pickens writes writes "The Google Mobile Team has announced that in addition to removing the 21 malicious applications from Android Market that were downloaded 50,000 times, suspending the associated developer accounts, and contacting law enforcement about the attacks, they are remotely removing the malicious applications from affected devices. 'We are pushing an Android Market security update to all affected devices that undoes the exploits to prevent the attacker(s) from accessing any more information from affected devices,' wrote the team on their blog. 'For affected devices, we believe that the only information the attacker(s) were able to gather was device-specific (IMEI/IMSI, unique codes which are used to identify mobile devices, and the version of Android running on your device).' Google's actions come after numerous complaints in tech publications. "Does Google really want its Android Market to gain the reputation of being a cesspool of malware? 'Certainly not,' wrote Nicholas Deleon in TechCrunch. 'But then part of the allure of the Android Market is that it's open; you don't have to play by Google's rules, per se, to get on there like you do with Apple's App Store.'"

GrumpyBagpuss writes "We all know that the internet is supposed to route around damage, but currently eastern Libya is off the net because all their connectivity goes through Tripoli. How difficult would it to be to reconnect eastern Libya via a microwave link to Crete? It's less than 200km away, on the Libyan end there are mountains up to 850m and on Crete they're higher than 2000m. People have achieved distances of over 300km with simple WiFi equipment, but would it be possible to increase the bandwidth to handle a whole, or at least half a country? How would you connect the link at both ends? What other problems would there be? How many Pringles cans would we need?"

Okian Warrior writes "A man in Weare, New Hampshire was charged with felony wiretapping for recording the police during a traffic stop — based on a cell phone call he made as an officer approached his vehicle. From the article: Police considered it wiretapping because the call was being recorded by a voice mail service without the officer's consent."

An anonymous reader writes "Japanese researchers unveiled yesterday a pocket-size telepresence robot called Elfoid. The device, which looks like a little ghost, transmits voice and motion over a 3G network to convey a person's 'presence' to a remote location. It's a creation of Hiroshi Ishiguro, a professor at Osaka University who is known for his lifelike teleoperated androids. The Elfoid has a limited range of motion, but its creators are planning to equip it with mini-actuators so it can imitate the movements of the person on the other end of the line. With vaguely formed features, the device is designed to be a surrogate of people of any age or gender."

Norsefire writes "After teasing it last year, HP's Phil McKinney has announced the 'Metal Watch', the device that will act as the aggregation point of your HP/WebOS devices. McKinney claims that it will unify your Pre, Touchpad, Notebook, Desktop, and, bizarrely, your printer."

silverpig writes "Cisco has released a whitepaper on mobile data usage which has some interesting data in it. The top 1% of users consume 20% of the bandwidth, but that share is down from 30% previously. 'Regular' users are catching up as they watch more video. High-bandwidth users of today will be relatively average users by 2015, so network operators should look to those users for insight in designing their future networks."

GMGruman writes "The Motorola Atrix 4G got a lot of attention at CES because of its ability to dock to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and run the full desktop Firefox browser in addition to its Android apps. Now that it is shipping, I took the Atrix 4G and its Multimedia Dock and related peripherals out this week for a test-drive to see if delivers on this 'post-PC' promise. The verdict: It's a good first half-step toward mobile devices being your primary computer. The end of the Windows hegemony is in sight."

MojoKid writes "Google's Nexus S smartphone has a lot of interesting features, but the one that attracts the most attention is the fact that it ships with the latest version of the Android smartphone operating system, version 2.3. Otherwise known as Gingerbread, this OS is said to be the fastest version of Android yet. In addition to Gingerbread, the Nexus S touts a 4-inch Super AMOLED display, a 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird processor, and 16GB of internal memory. Its network performance numbers turned out to be relatively impressive as well."

cylonlover writes "For decades, chipmakers strove to develop the fastest and most powerful chips possible and damn the amount of electricity needed to power them, but these days raw grunt isn't the only consideration. As more and more devices go mobile and these devices become more and more powerful, chipmakers must also take the energy efficiency into account. Harvard graduate student Wonyoung Kim has developed and demonstrated an on-chip, multi-core voltage regulator (MCVR) that he says could allow the creation of 'smarter' smartphones, slimmer laptops and more energy efficient data centers by more closely matching the power supply to the demand of the chip."

Hugh Pickens writes "Computerworld reports that a rogue Android app is hijacking smartphones and running up big texting bills to premium rate numbers before the owner knows it. Chinese hackers grabbed a copy of Steamy Windows, a free program, added a backdoor Trojan horse to the app's code, then placed the reworked app on unsanctioned third-party "app stores" where unsuspecting or careless Android smartphones find it, download it and install it."

An anonymous reader writes "The H has a damning piece on Nokia's open source smart phone projects, Maemo and MeeGo, and why they failed. 'They did dumb stuff like re-writing the whole networking stack, duplicating as they went. So instead of re-using NetworkManager and improving it, and getting to market fast – they re-wrote, got something that still doesn't work well, failed to push Linux forward, and failed. Repeat that for every technology pick and you get the idea,' said Andrew Wafaa. 'The N900 was a great product. Immediately [after] it was launched it was announced that it was a dead product, ISV-wise. They announced a Qt re-write/project re-set. Then they merged Maemo into MeeGo, giving another project re-set. Then, when they were coming up to release in September 2010, there was another project reset to switch to a different Qt technology (even the Qt groups in-fight in Nokia). In consequence they have no shipping product.' At the same time, 'both Nokia and Intel were working on separate handset UIs using Qt, the former proprietary, the latter open-source. A better worked example of squandering your leadership role and wrestling yourself to the ground is hard to see. Nokia deserve their trial by fire – and I hope the people who truly screwed up the amazing Linux opportunity that was the N900 get shut down in the process.'"

lukehopewell1 writes "Australia's Defence Signal Directorate (DSD) is testing the national security capability of Apple's iOS mobile operating system for use on federal networks that transmit national security data. If the operating system is certified as secure, Australian Defence Force personnel, government aides as well as ministers and senators at all levels could see iPads deployed as standard."

wiredmikey writes "Reports of Multiple Variants of Android Virus 'Hong Tou Tou' are showing up, which has mainly been working its way onto smartphones via alternative app marketplaces. Today, we saw reports of a new variant of spyware "Spy.Felxispy" targeting Symbian devices, identified by the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre of China. More than a dozen variants of the spyware have emerged since the first was spotted, and the latest has affected 150,000+ devices. Once installed, the spyware will turn on the Conference Call feature of the device without users' awareness. When users are making phone calls, the spyware automatically adds itself to the call to monitor the conversation."