Don't lose your phone

Perp.

According to a new study, if you lose your smart phone, you have a 50/50 chance of getting it back. But chances are much higher – nearly 100 percent – that whoever retrieves it will try to access your private information and apps.

According to a study by Symantec, 96 percent of people who picked up the lost phones tried to access personal or business data on the device. In 45 percent of cases, people tried to access the corporate email client on the device.

Symantec called the study the “Honey Stick Project.” In this case the honey on a stick consisted of 50 smartphones that were intentionally left in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Ottowa, Canada. The phones were deposited in spots that were easy to see, and where it would be plausible for someone to forget them, including food courts and public restrooms.

Each phone also was loaded with programs to track what finders did with the devices, and to send that information to the researchers. Among people who found the phones, 72 percent tried to access photos, 57 percent tried to open a file called “Saved Passwords,” and 43 percent tried to open an app called “Online Banking.” 

Most of the apps on the phones were protected by passwords, but the username and password fields were already filled out, so that users could simply press a button to access them. Well over half of the people who discovered the phones, 66 percent, clicked those buttons to try and start the programs. The fact that the finders had to click a button to access the apps indicates that their attempts were likely intentional.

You should know that if you pick up and try to use my phone it will explode, spewing biotoxins and chemicals that will eat your flesh and make your eyeballs burst.

Your laptop can detect an earthquake

Yikes!

If you drop your laptop computer, a chip built into it will sense the acceleration and protect the delicate moving parts of its hard disk before it hits the ground. Researchers are putting the chip to work detecting earthquakes with a network of volunteer laptops that can map out quakes in far greater detail than traditional seismometers.

I can't determine whether smart phones can be used on this particular network, the Quake-Catcher Network. But I found this one: the iShake Project.

With the Quake-Catcher program, a laptop monitors local activity and only alerts the network for strong new signals. If the network's central server receives a bunch of these all at once, then it is likely that an earthquake is happening. If the server receives a notification from only one laptop, it knows the laptop was shaken by something smaller and more local (like your sister running by, or the door slamming).

You can check all of this out, and sign up, here.

Here come the tablets and smart phones

The research firm IDC predicts that in 2011, computing’s third major technology wave will become mainstream, when computers held in one’s hand — smartphones and tablets — really take over and start putting personal computers in the rearview mirror.

Next year there will be 330 million smartphones sold worldwide and 42 million media tablets. Tablet sales are expected to more than double next year, and to keep climbing.

“The PC-centric era is over,” the IDC report says. Within 18 months, it forecasts, non-PC devices capable of running software applications will outsell PCs. In tablets, IDC adds, Apple’s iPad will remain the leader, but lower-cost tablets will begin making inroads, especially as demand for tablets really takes off in emerging markets.

Mainstream adoption, according to IDC, is when a technology moves well beyond 15 percent or so of the market. In 2011, for example, IDC predicts half of the 2.1 billion people who regularly use the Internet will do so using non-PC devices.

Maybe there shouldn't be an app for that

What they know about you

Smart Money has a rather disturbing article about those apps you download for your smart phone. Consider:

App developers know  all about you and how you use their apps. If, for example, an application you use involves banking, a malicious developer may be privy to your account details, according to John Hering, CEO of Lookout, a mobile-security company. Google, Apple and other vendors also know which apps you bought, which you use and which you have erased from your phone. Developers and the analytics companies they employ access much more detailed data about how you use the app. They can see, for example, how often and for how long you played a game and everything you did in it, says Peter Farago, VP of marketing at analytics firm Flurry.

All this data is invaluable to developers, who use it to improve their apps. They can also use it to build audience profiles in order to help attract ad dollars. Advertisers may be looking for gaming fans, for example, and want to target ads to people who spend lots of time using particular titles—information app developers then share with the middlemen who sell ads. “On the mobile platform, you know exactly who you are targeting ads to so you can target more specifically,” says Rob Terrell, founder of the app developer TouchCentric.

What else can happen to your personal information?

All that data about you tied to your smart phone gets circulated through an ecosystem of companies. Problem is, there are no rules about what they can do with it, other than some regulations about when it can be turned over to the government, says Jared Kaprove, former domestic-surveillance counsel with the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

More troubling, many of these companies—particularly the small ones—lack clear policies for using and storing your data. It can easily be stolen or misplaced, which can happen even at large corporations with good data-security practices. People simply aren’t aware of how their data gets used and how valuable it is, says Kaprove, and “companies prefer that you just don’t think about it.”

Fearing consumer perception of privacy issues—what Farago calls the “Big Brother creep factor”—the industry is trying to be open about its use of data and allows users to opt out of having theirs collected. But that can be a challenge, says Frank Dickson, VP of research at market-research firm In-Stat. “Any time you’re interacting in the public domain, you are going to leave bread crumbs,” he says.

Glad I have a dumb phone.

The best apps for your smart iPhone

The Star Walk app for the iPhone

Some 300,000 apps are available for your iPhone. So you're going to spend a few minutes this afternoon deciding what you need?

Here are some suggestions from Bob Tedeschi at The New York Times.

GOOGLE (FREE) You can find Google through your mobile browser, but the app is a major time-saver. The voice search function is seamless. Ask it for specific Wikipedia entries, for instance, and it complies. Or just say "Starbucks" and the app uses the phone’s GPS to find the nearest location. A recent update put the "Goggles" service within the app, so you can snap a photo and let Google search for information on that object. And given Google’s emphasis on mobile, the app will continue to improve. 

EVERNOTE (FREE) The company advertises this as a personal digital assistant, and it’s an apt description. Evernote is a traveling notepad that synchronizes with desktop and browser software (also free). Use your iPhone to copy an image, take a photo, record a voice memo or jot down a note, and it appears on your computer (and vice versa). It also recognizes your written text, within limits. The free version stores a fair amount of information, but for $45 a year, you needn’t sweat the data limits.

STAR WALK ($3) Point your phone toward the heavens and this app identifies all you see — constellations, planets, individual stars — in brilliant clarity. If you pivot in another direction, the app follows. It’s an astonishing app that’s great to pull out during dinner parties, beach walks or sleepless nights in bed. You needn’t have a clear view of the sky to experience the starry night.

FIREFOX HOME (FREE) In the same vein as Evernote, Firefox Home is a way to synchronize your desktop and mobile lives. Once you load the app and register, Firefox Home will show your browsing history and bookmarks. If you’re reading an important document online when you leave the office, you can start the app later and pick up where you left off. 


QUICKOFFICE MOBILE SUITE ($5) The next time someone e-mails you a Word, Excel or Powerpoint document, Quickoffice will open it and allow you to make quick edits from your iPhone. (Otherwise, you can open, but not edit, Microsoft Office files.) You can also create documents with the app, but it is far less useful for that purpose. Rather, Quickoffice offers a way to complete small work tasks easily while you are on the move.

REDLASER (FREE) It may not tell you if a clothing item makes you look fat, but otherwise RedLaser is a perfect shopping companion. Scan a bar code and it retrieves product information, including prices at online merchants and local stores (in case you are in the mood to haggle). Or follow a spouse or child around a store, scan what they like and you have an instant gift list. The app’s scans sometimes fail, but more often than not RedLaser works smoothly.

More at the link.

Kiss the remote goodbye

If you lose the thing it may be just as well. You can now control your television set with a smart phone. There is, as they say, an app for that.

TV viewing habits are changing as more Internet and on-demand content — YouTube videos, streaming movies, shopping sites, Facebook photos — flows directly onto big screens. Navigating all of that demands more action from the viewer, including a fair amount of typing, which current remotes cannot handle.

“Everybody realizes that the remote control is the dinosaur of the consumer electronics industry,” said David Mercer, a television analyst at Strategy Analytics, a research and consulting firm. “The cable companies and the TV manufacturers are beginning to realize that they have to start moving away from the traditional, basic remote control.”

There have already been successful attempts to use smartphones as remotes. Sonos, which makes Internet-connected stereos, offers a free iPhone application that replicates every feature of its own $349 touch-screen remote control. Over half of Sonos customers now use the app, which links to the stereo over a Wi-Fi network.

Several television manufacturers, like Mitsubishi and Samsung, are following suit with smartphone remotes, and phone apps are part of both Apple and Google’s TV offerings.

If you lose this remote, you can always call it and make it ring.

How to find your car in a parking lot

"I found it!"

Wandering aimlessly through parking lots is a thing of the past with some new gizmos for smart phones. Wired has the details:

Parking Mate is an all-in-one parking app for the iPhone. You can set a GPS marker for your car's location, use the parking meter timer, take a photo of your car's location, set a schedule for street sweepers in your 'hood, and see all that data at a glance in the "Current Parking Details" function.

Carr Matey is an Android app that not only will tell you where you left your car, but it will fulfill your daily need for things pirate-themed. Want to set a GPS trace? Just mark your "vessel" with the "drop anchor" button, and you'll get step-by-step directions on how to get back before high tide. If you're parked underground or indoors, which can interfere with GPS, the compass feature will guide you to your vehicle. Carrr Matey even has a setting called Harbor Mode, which lets you input the level, letter, color, and space number of your chosen parking space. And, as with Parking Mate, this app includes a meter timer for those left out on the street.

Looking for a space? Google Open Spot (also for Android) can help. Users can mark when they've left a parking space, alerting other users that a space is available. Oh, the kindness of strangers.

Foursquare (all major mobile platforms) is useful for remembering the locations of parking garages around a city center. Check in whenever you park and you'll have a reminder of where to find your car at the end of the night, as well as a searchable list in your history. Bonus: Check in at any one garage more times than anyone else and you'll become the mayor. What's the benefit? Pretty much just bragging rights. But ask the manager of the facility if they have a special deal for Foursquare mayors. They'll probably look at you like you've just escaped from a hospital, but they might swing you a discount.

Use Facebook's mobile website or the latest version of Facebook's mobile app to check in through Places and you'll be able to keep a record of where you've parked in your Facebook news feed.