July 2008 - Posts
For those that use Google Maps Mobile, version update to 2.2.0.16.
Download Google Maps for mobile to your phone, and never carry a paper map again. Google Maps on your phone makes it easy to:
- Determine your current location with or without GPS
- Get driving and transit directions
- Get phone numbers and addresses for local businesses
New! Transit directions on your phone
google.com/gmm
(use the address on your mobile phone, not your desktop/laptop)
Features
My Location (beta). My Location shows your current location on the map, usually within 1,000 meters, so that you can find out where you are even without GPS. Google Maps for mobile also supports built-in GPS, or can link to a Bluetooth GPS sensor to more accurately pinpoint a user's location. My Location works by recognizing information broadcast from mobile towers near you.
Watch a video to learn more about how My Location works.
Map and satellite views. Google Maps for mobile gives you both map and satellite views of the area you're looking at, using an interface that feels just like it does on the desktop. Scroll in a direction to see more of the map, or zoom in and out using shortcut keys.
Business listings. Google's local search engine allows you to search for businesses by name (e.g. "Starbucks"), or by type (e.g. "coffee"). View store hours and ratings, and then dial the business you're interested in with a single click. Thanks to My Location, it's easy to find nearby businesses without even having to enter your current location.
Driving directions. It's easy to get turn-by-turn driving directions. Thanks to the My Location feature, you don't even have to enter your starting point.
Transit New!. Check bus and subway schedules, determine what transfers you need to make, and plan adventures in more than 50 cities around the world.
Transit functionality is now available for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, S60, and other Java-enabled phones.
Watch a video to see how to get transit directions using Google Maps for mobile.
Traffic. Highways on Google Maps are colored green, yellow or red, based on real-time traffic data.
Favorites. Bookmark your favorite places so that you can easily return to them on the map.
Enterprise installation. IT managers can install Google Maps for mobile on corporate BlackBerry phones through BlackBerry Enterprise Server - learn more.
Watch for it if you have the 800w (why wasn’t it there to begin with…).
So I decided to take the plunge and install Adobe 9. While I’m installing, the install pauses and gives me this screen:
Um…excuse me Adobe…but the application you’re telling me to close is the application used to download your dang program. Who wrote this?
What’s next for Sprint users? Sprint Nextel has plans to sell approximately 3,300 towers to cell phone tower operator TowerCo for an estimated $670 million in cash, and then lease them back. It’s also reported that TowerCo will build the new 4G WiMax network with Clearwire (CTIA should be a real hoot with Sprint Nextel and Clearwire giving keynotes).
What will Sprint do with $670 million in cash? Pay down some debt.
Analysts of course are saying it’s no big deal because it’s standard industry practice. Verizon and AT&T do it to right?
The fall show is almost upon us…a little over a month away and I’ll be heading out to San Francisco. The keynote speakers were just announced. Strangely, I’m not sure at all what kind of a lineup they gave us for day 1. Yahoo? T-Mobile USA? Sprint Nextel? Anyone following the mobile wireless world will know what I’m talking about. Perhaps we’ll learn what NOT to do…
As you may or may not know, Windows Live Mobile (wl.windowsmobile.com) was updated, but this is very strange. They have removed Windows Live Messenger, one of the primary reasons I loaded the app to begin with.
(Windows Live Hotmail, Contacts and Spaces)
This software does not include Windows Live Messenger. Please inquire with your mobile operator about Messenger access.
So let me get this straight. Wireless carriers carry that much weight with Microsoft that they can pull Messenger from the mobile suite and tell us to go contact our carriers, which by the way the carriers will do but give you a pretty lame version that utilizes SMS text instead and charge you for the messages. Does Messenger really generate that much traffic on wireless networks that they had to pull it? Do carriers really need that much additional control over users? Why else would they do that? This makes no sense and I for one will not be upgrading to the new release. I’ll stay right where I am to have the full suite of Windows Live services on my phone.
We all know what July 11 is, the date iPhone 3G is released. AT&T is helping customers get iReady…
Of course, it only makes sense right? When everyone leaves what do you do?
Yahoo has announced a significant reorganisation after the failure of a Microsoft takeover bid and a subsequent flood of executive departures.
The Silicon Valley company said it was centralising consumer product development in a new division, creating a US region and forming an “insights strategy team”. All three would report to Sue Decker, Yahoo president.
Since Microsoft abandoned a $33-a-share bid for the company on May 3, valuing it at $47.5bn, Yahoo’s shares have plunged and top executives have headed for the exit. Jeff Weiner, head of its Network division, Vish Makhijani, general manager of its search business and Qi Lu, leading engineer for its Panama search marketing platform, are among those leaving.
Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, founders of the photo-sharing service Flickr, and Joshua Schachter, founder of another acquisition, Del.icio.us, have also quit.
Brad Garlinghouse, a senior vice-president, who wrote the 2006 “peanut-butter manifesto”, accusing Yahoo of spreading itself too thinly, is reported to be leaving the company later this year.
“Yahoo has had a consistent and continuing loss of not just leading executives but also important thought leaders over the past year or two and it seems that the pace and magnitude of those losses has accelerated significantly in recent weeks,” said Scott Kessler, Internet Software & Services analyst at Standard & Poor’s.
via Financial Times
Verizon Communications has stepped up the pressure on Vodafone to sell out of Verizon Wireless, their mobile joint venture, saying that the second largest US telecoms company intends to be “the hunter” in future industry consolidation.
Ivan Seidenberg, chief executive of Verizon Communications, owner of 55 per cent of Verizon Wireless, told the Financial Times he would like full ownership of the US mobile operator.
It follows almost two years in which both groups have played down the prospect of ownership changes at Verizon Wireless after a failed effort in 2006 by Verizon Communications to buy its UK partner’s 45 per cent stake.
via Financial Times
As I’m reading the news this morning watching the folks gather in line for the iPhone 3G (keep in mind the update is not due until 7/11…would you park for a week just to be one of the first???), I’m once again drawn to the marketing hype that is Apple, and Apple at it’s finest.
Back in June, 2007, Robert Vamosi wrote about the iPhone insecurity. It included, in part,
Which brings us to the iPhone. Again, no one outside of an elite few has actually held an iPhone, yet there's legitimate concern about its security. But Jobs has said that it will be a closed operating system, meaning you cannot write mobile applications for it--directly. The carrot Jobs extended to the WWDC crowd was not a software development kit (SDK) for writing applications (which the developers I spoke to all wanted), but a way to write applets within the Safari browser.
As we have seen, security researchers were able to find fault with Safari 3.0 within days of its beta. Malware today is almost always financially motivated. The crowd that stands in line on June 29 for the 6 p.m. release of the iPhone has at least $500 to spend, more with the two-year contract to AT&T. These early adopters are going to load their iPhone with important contacts--maybe even download songs and movies that have value as well. In the end, the typical iPhone user may have a target on his back.
Even before the Safari announcement, the underlying Mac OS remains vulnerable, although by locking outside vendors to writing code for the iPhone, the overall security risk could be lower than expected. Eric Chen, writing on Symantec's blog site, said back in January 2007 that the iPhone was prone to two types of vulnerability exposure. One, the Mac OS is based on Unix, and Unix has a number of well-known vulnerabilities that could also affect the Mac OS. While the incentive to exploit these exists today (to give Apple a black eye, not to mention wreak havoc on the Apple community), there's much greater financial incentive in waiting to go after the mobile version of Mac OS in July. Second, Chen worries about the rise of nonstandard software on the iPhone. I think that the latter is somewhat removed now that Safari will be the legit platform for ad hoc programmers.
Robert is back with another post, which again includes, in part,
A leading Mac OS X researcher says Apple has not kept the iPhone operating system up to date with patches it has issued for the desktop.
The iPhone runs a stripped-down version of Mac OS 10.5 and automatically checks for security updates. The last update for the phone, 1.1.4, was issued in February.
That means iPhone users are still vulnerable to a flaw discovered by Charlie Miller in March.
And concludes…
Meanwhile, ZDNet's Ryan Naraine points out that there's another upcoming iPhone exploit expected soon from Aviv Raff.
Speculation within the security community is that Apple is currently focused on the 3G version of the iPhone. Upgrades to current iPhones may be pushed out in advance or concurrent with the July 11 release of iPhone 2.0.
Apple does not respond to requests for comment on its software security policies.
You can draw your own conclusions. Keep in mind Apple and others also brags that the iPhone has reinvigorated browsing on the mobile phone. As I’ve mentioned before, the iPhone is the greatest thing to happen to the mobile phone market. Windows Mobile 6 and above however have now implemented Windows Update so that patches can be applied to the phone should vulnerabilities be found. In Apple’s mind, you should have to cradle your mobile device and use iTunes to potentially find your updates. Is that the right answer?
Just a few days after hitting store shelves, Samsung Instinct has become the fastest-selling EVDO handset in Sprint history. Instinct was first available exclusively to current Sprint customers on June 19 breaking records for the initial launch of any Sprint product. Instinct became available to all customers on June 20; sales continued to be brisk with Instinct breaking Sprint's record for the first week of sales for any device.
We had high expectations going into the launch so our initial order to Samsung was the largest for any Sprint EVDO handset to date, said John Garcia, President of Sprint's Wireless Division. The strong early response tells us that wireless customers recognize Instinct as a highly-innovative and convenient touch-screen device combined with the fast speeds available on the largest national mobile broadband network. In the first few days of availability, many Instinct devices were purchased by existing customers upgrading their wireless device - we thank our customers for their endorsement of this device, our Simply Everything pricing plan and our company.
The record pace of Instinct sales has led to temporary shortages of the device at some locations across the United States. Sprint and Samsung are diligently working around the clock to increase inventory in all sales channels. Samsung has increased efforts to deliver new supplies of Instinct on a daily basis and manufacturing plants are operating at full capacity to keep up with the demand.
Windows Mobile Total Access…remains to be seen whether the content will actually get better.
A couple of general comments/rants before the article that appeared on TimesOnLine. One, in general, at least in the corporate world, email on a Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile, or other Smartphone typically mirrors the backend servers of your organization. Whatever filters, spam blocking, etc., you have on the backend will prevent making it to the handheld. So, if you have antivirus or spam blockers on the backend, how in the world will those make it to the handheld? The only risk there will be email that is set up from personal email accounts. By default, attachments are not downloaded, meaning the owner of the handheld has one additional step to get “viruses” on to their handheld. Second, there’s a comment in this article about the cost of “text” versus the cost of “email”. Is it me or does this fall in to the “duh” factor. If I sit at my computer and crank out messages to cell phones (i.e. all wireless carriers have email addresses such as xxxxxxxxxx@txt.att.net), who pays for those messages? Me, or the person receiving the message? Why would the cost be higher to send text, unless of course I’m dumb enough to actually use my own cell phone to send the messages. Do I receive a bill for sending the messages? If not, why in the world is it more expensive to send text messages than it is to send email? Read the info below and decide for yourself. I also notice its companies who sell products to “protect you” that always get quoted about how bad it’s going to get.
The rising popularity of smartphones such as the BlackBerry and the iPhone will make them targets for viruses and spam, security experts believe.
In the past few years the internet has experienced a huge rise in security problems, led by criminal gangs who have used spam and viruses for financial scams. Mobile phones have remained relatively unscathed, but that is set to change as sales of smartphones surge.
In the first three months of this year 32.2 million smartphones were sold - 11 per cent of all handset sales and a 29 per cent increase on the same period last year.
These e-mail and internet-enabled handsets are moving out of the corporate market into consumers' hands, and the recent launch of the 3G iPhone is expected to fuel sales further. Credit Suisse analysts predict that 275 million smartphones will be sold next year, boosting penetration to 19 per cent and making the mobile world attractive to criminals.
Neil Cook, vice-president of technology services for Cloudmark, a messaging security company, estimates that penetration of smartphones needs to reach 20 per cent to 30 per cent before it becomes worthwhile for hackers to spread viruses. Spam is a problem in India and China, and North America and Europe are expected to follow.
Mr Cook said that the rise in spamming and scams boils down to economics. “Spammers are really very good businessmen,” he said. “They see new opportunities and new markets. As new media becomes attractive to spammers, they move in there. They will move anywhere if they can make a return on investment.”
Another attraction for spammers is that mobiles are quickly outgrowing the number of computers. Gartner, the industry analyst, forecasts that there will be four billion mobiles compared with 1.3 billion computers by 2010. Mobile spam is rampant in China, where it is much cheaper to send texts and fewer people have computers, Mr Cook said. Others are more sceptical. Sending 100,000 spam e-mails costs only a few dollars, which is significantly cheaper than texting, Carole Theriault, senior security consultant for Sophos, a computer security company, said.
Go Boingo
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