Smartphone apps track users even when shut down - Business - The Boston Globe

Time for increased transparency in Android apps

"Zhang and fellow researcher Fuming Shih, a computer science doctoral candidate, found that some popular apps for phones running Google Inc.’s Android operating system are continually collecting information without informing the phone’s owner.
The popular game Angry Birds uses the phone’s GPS and Wi-Fi wireless networking features to track the owner’s location, even when he’s not playing the game, for example. Another game, Bowman, collects information from the phone’s Internet browser, including what websites the owner has been visiting. And WhatsApp, a popular text-messaging program, scans the user’s address book when it is seemingly idle."

Smartphone apps track users even when shut down - Business - The Boston Globe

Difference engine: Lost in cyberspace | The Economist

Check the link below for more details on Brewster Kahle's latest endeavor

"Open Library, by contrast, is essentially an editable catalogue. The organisation works with various libraries around the world to catalogue their book collections and scan in various texts. So far it has amassed details of over 20m titles and scanned in the contents of some 1.7m books that are in the public domain, and therefore free to download. If a book is still in copyright, it can be checked out as a digital loan for a couple of weeks—rather like a book from a bricks-and-mortar library."

Difference engine: Lost in cyberspace | The Economist

It's Becoming Clear That No One Actually Read Facebook's IPO Prospectus Or Mark Zuckerberg's Letter To Shareholders - Business Insider

Check the link below for a timely Facebook investor reality check

"Again, Mark Zuckerberg set up the entire structure of the company so he wouldn't be forced to make dumb short-term decisions by whining public-market shareholders.
And he TOLD them that he wasn't going to make those decisions.
They just didn't listen."

It's Becoming Clear That No One Actually Read Facebook's IPO Prospectus Or Mark Zuckerberg's Letter To Shareholders - Business Insider

Amazon Files Patent for Dual Screen Tablet - The Digital Reader

Hmm…

“While Apple, Asus, Lenovo, et al, are looking at designing the best single screen tablet, Amazon has been thinking outside the box. Today they received a new patent for a dual screen tablet.”

Check the full post for some speculation.  The abstract from the patent application:

“An electronic device including two or more display elements can provide enhanced functionality with improved rates of power consumption. A user can cause information that does not change rapidly to be provided or moved to a relatively static display element, such as an electronic ink display, which enables that information to be displayed for a period of time with little additional power consumption. Similarly, content (e.g., video) that changes rapidly can be displayed on a relatively dynamic display element, such as and LCD or OLED display. Each display can be touch sensitive, such that a user can move content between the displays by pressing on, or making a motion in contact with, at least one of the displays. Various modes can be activated which cause certain types of content to be displayed on the dynamic and/or static display element.”

Amazon Files Patent for Dual Screen Tablet - The Digital Reader

Stephen Wolfram Blog : Wolfram|Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

Free and deep personal social analytics from Wolfram|Alpha

“And today I’m excited to announce that we’ve developed a first round of capabilities in Wolfram|Alpha to let anyone do personal analytics with Facebook data. Wolfram|Alpha knows about all kinds of knowledge domains; now it can know about you, and apply its powers of analysis to give you all sorts of personal analytics. And this is just the beginning; over the months to come, particularly as we see about how people use this, we’ll be adding more and more capabilities.

It’s pretty straightforward to get your personal analytics report: all you have to do is type “facebook report” into the standard Wolfram|Alpha website.”

A couple excerpts from my personal Facebook report:

Stephen Wolfram Blog : Wolfram|Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

Exclusive: Amazon teams with Nokia, snubs Google for maps - sources - Yahoo! Finance

Some Kindle++ rumors and speculation

"Cooperating with Nokia may help Amazon develop integrated, or "native," mapping functionality for the Kindle Fire without relying on Google Maps. Nokia is one of the world's largest mapping companies, through its 2007 acquisition of Navteq.
Apple took a similar step earlier this year, when it dropped Google Maps in favor of its own mapping features for its next mobile operating system, known as iOS 6. As part of the switch, Apple signed a global licensing deal with TomTom NV, another leading mapping company, for its map content and related information.
In July, Amazon agreed to buy mapping startup UpNext, which specializes in detailed 3D maps of cities and some sporting stadiums."

Exclusive: Amazon teams with Nokia, snubs Google for maps - sources - Yahoo! Finance

Google Gets Some Rare Good News in China - Businessweek

Interesting times for Google in China

"Now, with the help of a recent acquisition, Google has managed to carve out a market niche where it’s the mainland leader: ads aimed at mobile phones. Mobile-search advertising goes beyond generating ads related to searches and automatically sends ads to users playing games, viewing videos, or using other apps on their smartphones and tablet computers. Google’s AdMob unit, which it bought for $750 million in 2010, says it has more than 10,000 registered developers in China and that its servers now get 7.9 billion requests a month to show ads to mobile-app users in the country."

Google Gets Some Rare Good News in China - Businessweek

FinSpy Software Is Tracking Political Dissidents - NYTimes.com

George Orwell would have been impressed

"The software has been identified as FinSpy, one of the more elusive spyware tools sold in the growing market of off-the-shelf computer surveillance technologies that give governments a sophisticated plug-in monitoring operation. Research now links it to servers in more than a dozen countries, including Turkmenistan, Brunei and Bahrain, although no government acknowledges using the software for surveillance purposes.
The market for such technologies has grown to $5 billion a year from “nothing 10 years ago,” said Jerry Lucas, president of TeleStrategies, the company behind ISS World, an annual surveillance show where law enforcement agents view the latest computer spyware."

FinSpy Software Is Tracking Political Dissidents - NYTimes.com

Could Apple and Google Be Headed for Detente Instead of Nuclear War? - By Ina Fried and John Paczkowski - Mobile - AllThingsD

The long-term losers in this context include the competitors that don't have $Bs to invest in acquiring patent portfolios to facilitate favorable cross-licensing agreements (and potentially consumers, if the platform oligopolists don't stay focused on customer priorities)

"With the Apple-Samsung trial having raised the stakes in the mobile patent wars, it appears that the two major combatants are at least willing to talk about how the hostilities might end.
As first reported by Reuters earlier today, the chief executives of both companies recently met to at least broach the subject. "

Could Apple and Google Be Headed for Detente Instead of Nuclear War? - By Ina Fried and John Paczkowski - Mobile - AllThingsD

Settlement may mean lower e-book prices - Business - The Boston Globe

Undo(book publisher pricing collusion)

"The $69 million deal to settle charges that publishers conspired to fix prices of electronic books could mean that digital volumes sold by Amazon.com and other online retailers will become much less costly for consumers.
The settlement sets the stage for retailers, rather than publishers, to determine prices for many e-books, and for the cost to consumers to drop as much as 30 percent."

Settlement may mean lower e-book prices - Business - The Boston Globe

Amazon Media Room: Kindle Fire [...] Now Sold Out

Big Kindle news from Amazon expected next week; on a related note, the Kindle Touch is listed as "Currently unavailable" on Amazon's site

"Less than one year ago, Amazon introduced Kindle Fire—combining 15 years of innovation into a single, fully-integrated, end-to-end service for customers. Kindle Fire quickly became the most successful product launch in the history of Amazon.com, earning over 10,000 5-star customer reviews, and is the #1 best-selling product across the millions of items available on Amazon since its introduction 48 weeks ago. Today, Amazon announced that Kindle Fire is sold out, and that in just nine months, Kindle Fire has captured 22% of tablet sales in the U.S.
“We’re grateful to the millions of customers who have made Kindle Fire the most successful product launch in the history of Amazon,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “This has been a big year for digital products on Amazon—all of the top 10 sellers on Amazon.com since Kindle Fire launched just less than a year ago are digital products. Kindle Fire is sold out, but we have an exciting roadmap ahead—we will continue to offer our customers the best hardware, the best prices, the best customer service, the best cross-platform interoperability, and the best content ecosystem.”"

Amazon Media Room: Press Releases

Google Reportedly Looking to Unload Motorola Set-Top Box Unit - John Paczkowski - News - AllThingsD

tbd if there will ever be new Motorola Mobility hardware from Google, beyond reference design devices

"The process is still in the very early stages, but sources familiar with it say Google is hoping Motorola’s home business will command a price of $2 billion.
That’s about half what Motorola was asking for it when it attempted to sell the division in 2009. Light Reading first reported Google’s interest in Barclays as banker on August 6."

Google Reportedly Looking to Unload Motorola Set-Top Box Unit - John Paczkowski - News - AllThingsD

Hands On With the Samsung Galaxy Note II | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

Check the article link for details on the new 5.55" "phablet" Note II

"The original Galaxy Note was a beautifully crafted, powerful device that initially struck us as simply too large for general use as a phone. It turns out that's just fine with over 10 million people to date, in a world where voice calls are quickly losing their luster in favor of messaging and social networks, and where having a huge, roomy screen pays dividends in productivity throughout the day."

Hands On With the Samsung Galaxy Note II | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Bringing Google+ to work

Google+ for business, in "full preview" mode for now

"As part of this trend, we’re witnessing how web-based collaboration and social tools have dramatically changed the way people connect. Whether you’re across the street or across the world, you can hold face-to-face meetings, share updates with colleagues and friends and work on a presentation together in real time. Like Google Apps, we think Google+ can help colleagues collaborate more easily and get things done—and get to know each other along the way.
So today we’re launching an initial set of Google+ features designed specifically for businesses, and we’re excited to move into a full preview mode for Apps customers. During this preview period, organizations that have gone Google will be able to use the business features of Google+ for free through the end of 2013 while we continue to add more features and administrative controls designed for organizations. "

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Bringing Google+ to work

Samsung Announces First Windows Phone 8 Smartphone, Ativ S | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

Not a happy development for Nokia

"Windows Phone 8 is here. Samsung today announced the Ativ S, the world's first Windows Phone 8 smartphone, thus beating even Microsoft's key partner Nokia to the punch.
Unveiled tonight at a "Samsung Unpacked" event at the IFA trade show in Berlin, the Ativ S is part of an entire Ativ Windows 8 product line from Samsung, including two convertible Windows 8 tablets and a Windows RT tablet, the Samsung Ativ Tab."

Samsung Announces First Windows Phone 8 Smartphone, Ativ S | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

Apple Wins Key iPhone Patent Relating to Editing & More - Patently Apple

The recent Apple/Samsung trial was just one chapter in a very long story

"Apple has received another major Granted Patent today relating to iDevices. This particular patent covers methods and graphical user interfaces that generally relates to conducting edits (e.g., cutting, copying, or pasting user-selected content) on such multi-touch displays. Humorously, one of the patent figures noted below that are describing the editing process, is editing a document called "Copycat" wherein the revolutionary iPhone is being described. Hmm, I wonder who Apple was thinking of at the time - (Ha!)."

Apple Wins Key iPhone Patent Relating to Editing & More - Patently Apple

SkyDrive for Android phones now available [SkyDrive blog]

Looks great on my Nexus 7, but no Android Office Web Apps support at this point

"A few weeks ago we announced our intention to release an official SkyDrive app for Android phones. Today we’re excited to announce that the app is now available for download. We want to ensure that you’re able to have your files accessible across the various devices you use—so it’s important that we continue to extend the SkyDrive experience to the devices you use every day. This new app for Android is similar to our mobile apps for Windows Phone and iOS and is a key part of making sure your SkyDrive files are accessible and shareable from all your devices."

SkyDrive for Android phones now available

Should Your Company Just Say "No" To Dropbox? [ReadWriteWeb]

Excerpt from a timely cloud storage/sharing reality check

"But increasing use of these tools in the workplace, even for legitimate business reasons such as collaboration, puts a lot of private information at risk. And companies are starting to notice.
How bad is the situation? According to the Ponemon study, 60% of organizations have employees who frequently or very frequently put confidential files on services like Dropbox without permission. And just about that same percentage (59%) reported that what controls they do have in place were inefffective at managing who has access to sensitive files."

Should Your Company Just Say "No" To Dropbox?

Google Uses Its Home Page to Push Nexus 7 Tablet - NYTimes.com

"I'm feeling plucky" clarification

"Though it is rare, this is not the first time that Google has advertised its products on the valuable ad space of its home page, which 183 million people see every month. It did so for the Nexus S cellphone and the Google Plus social network, for instance, and has used the home page for causes, like directing people to the remembrance of Steven P. Jobs on Apple.com after he died.
For people who use browsers other than Google’s Chrome browser, the company also shows ads for Chrome on the homepage."

Google Uses Its Home Page to Push Nexus 7 Tablet - NYTimes.com

TiVo Stream Gets Viewers Off the Couch - Katherine Boehret - The Digital Solution - AllThingsD

A big advance in a little TiVo box

"For the past week, I’ve been testing a device that solves a lot of my problems: TiVo Stream. The $130 box, available Sept. 6 from TiVo.com and in Best Buy soon after that, streams content from your TiVo to up to four mobile devices in your home at high-definition quality. That lets me watch prerecorded shows while doing other things, like cooking or getting ready for work.
Stream also turns mobile devices into TVs of their own: You can scan the channel guide, select a show and watch it live. It also lets people wirelessly download content to their mobile devices for watching anytime, like on planes or during road trips."

TiVo Stream Gets Viewers Off the Couch - Katherine Boehret - The Digital Solution - AllThingsD