iPhone 5C for the global market

Cheap smartphones is what the global marketplace wants -- is this what Apple will give them?

The iPhone 5C Isn’t For The US; It’s The iPhone For The Rest Of The World | TechCrunch: "U.S. carriers are the exception, not the rule. AT&T, Verizon and Sprint won’t bill you less if you bring your own phone. It used to be the same for Canada but is slowly changing. But in Europe, you can choose between a standard subsidized plan and a much cheaper SIM-only plan. For example, in France, you get unlimited talk, text and data (with a speed reduction after 3GB) for $25 per month (€19.90). The only downside is that you have to pay full price for your phone."

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Data, Backups, Drives, Cloud

Backup? Use at least 1 cloud service and 1 flash drive, but it doesn't last forever --

Tech Q&A: How long will a backup drive keep working? - Technology - MiamiHerald.com: "Flash drives, which don't have moving parts, can wear out as a result of the flow of electricity through them, reportedly after 100,000 writing or erasing actions. Some experts believe this can take more than 20 years of regular use. Flash drives can also lose their data by sitting idle for about 10 years, because the tiny electrical charges that represent data eventually dissipate. But don't put too much stock in those long lifetimes. Remember that lower-capacity flash drives are inexpensive devices, and they are not immune to manufacturing flaws. Despite the reliability of backup drives, I always advise people to keep multiple copies of irreplaceable data, such as photographs. In addition to storing data on a backup drive, you may want to copy it to a second drive or to one of the free online storage services, such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft's SkyDrive."

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$80 Firefox OS smartphones to be sold on EBay

First Firefox OS smartphones to be sold on EBay - latimes.com: "Smartphone maker ZTE said it will sell Mozilla's first Firefox OS smartphone on EBay to U.S. customers but did not say when it would be available for sale. The ZTE Open, which went on sale last month in Spain, Venezuela and Colombia, will be sold for $79.99. The device comes unlocked and will be able to work with all cellular networks, according to the Chinese phone maker."

ZTE's Firefox OS Smartphone Will Sell For $80 - Hardware -: "Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE plans to begin selling its own Firefox OS phone through online auction website eBay in the U.S. and in the U.K. The ZTE Open, running Mozilla's open-source Firefox OS, will be available in one color, orange, and will list for $80 in the U.S. and 60 pounds in the U.K. No release date has been specified but the company says it will begin taking orders on Friday. The ZTE Open is presently available in Colombia, Spain and Venezuela through Spanish mobile operator Telefonica. But the ZTE phones offered through eBay won't be affiliated with a specific mobile operator. Deutsche Telecom recently began offering Alcatel's Firefox OS-based One Touch Fire handset in Poland and plans to expand availability to Germany, Greece and Hungary shortly."

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Android, BlackBerry, Nokia

Pride precedeth a fall --

BlackBerry - and Nokia's - Fundamental Failing | stratēchery by Ben Thompson: " . . . . In fact, the strategic superiority of the Android option for RIM and Nokia was even then so obvious that I suspect their core failing was not so much strategic as it was all-too-human: pride. Owning an ecosystem seems much more important than owning services or supply chains, even if building said ecosystem completely devalues what you’re actually good at (this tweet captures the waste perfectly)."

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T-Mobile Shock Jock, John Legere

T-Mobile's John Legere: The most dangerous man in wireless | Mobile - CNET News: "In 2000, near the end of the dot-com boom, he headed to Asia Global Crossing, the Asian arm of a company that built a fiber-optic infrastructure to carry data across great distances, including oceans. A year later, he took over as CEO of parent Global Crossing, and ushered it from bankruptcy to recovery before selling it to Level 3 Communications in 2011 in a deal worth $3 billion. "He was much more staid and conservative there, so it was something of a shock to see the 'new John' at T-Mobile," said Jan Dawson, an analyst at Ovum.. . ."

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Using your smartphone less and less every day?

This may be a new trend--declining smartphone usage--

Why I'm using my smartphone less and less every day | ZDNet: "When smartphones first appeared I happily did everything with mine. Surfing the web on the phone was a heady experience, along with lots of other activities. Then something changed, at least for me. . . ." (read more at link above)

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Color designer smartphone or a rugged device?

Forget color designer smartphones, I want a rugged device | ZDNet: "Customize your own Moto X? A Lumia 920 in your choice of fab plastic? Or perhaps a new iPhone 5C? Meh. I need something that can withstand the rigors of daily business and travel without putting an ugly, bulky case on it. . . ." (read more at link above)

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Motorola Moto X Customization

Motorola’s Moto X - Interface Innovation with a Learning Curve --

Review: Motorola’s Moto X | MIT Technology Review: "It’s really in the customization and purchase experience that you can actually see the influence of Google on Motorola. It’s all driven by data, from customer research and focus-groups to real-time feedback on inventory availability. Since the original Nexus was launched, Google’s been trying to find a way to change the experience of buying smartphones, and Moto Maker gets us closer."

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Safety, Security, Smartphones

The Five Stages of Losing a Smartphone
http://www.ctia.org/consumer_info/index.cfm/AID/12084

Smartphone authorities urge users to be proactive against theft
The State
Many apps for smartphones allow users to track, locate or erase the information on their smartphone if it has been stolen or lost. A list of security apps based on device type can be found here: http://www.ctia.org/ consumer_info/safety /index.cfm/AID ...

How to keep your smartphone safe
Boston Globe
A smartphone can contain a lot of information that its owner would rather keep private. But 39 percent of more than 100 million American adult smartphone owners fail to take even minimal security measures, such as using a screen-lock, backing up data, ...

Are smartphone makers going for style over substance?
UPI.com
Motorola unveiled its first flagship smartphone since being acquired by Google, and facing fierce competition from Samsung and Apple, it appears it's decided to market its Moto X on looks, not brains. Hoping to get some traction in a market dominated ...

'Smartphones no child's play'
Times of India
WASHINGTON: Parents, note! Better keep your smartphone away from the reach of your young ones. Playing with smartphones can impede brain development in toddlers, experts have warned. According to new research, 25% of children aged two and ...

Fastest smartphones around
San Francisco Chronicle
... features can quickly overwhelm and confuse. The cost: $100 to $650. The bottom line: Its laundry list of features require time and effort to truly master, but the Galaxy S4 is the top choice for anyone looking for a big-screen, do-everything ...

Android Smartphones Captures 80% Global Market Share For Q2 2013
The Droid Guy
There's no stopping the popularity of Google's Android operating system. A report which was recently released by research and consulting firm Strategy Analytics shows that Android smartphones accounted for 80 percent of smartphone sales worldwide for ...

Smartphones Used by 56% of Canadians
VOCM
With smartphone ownership on the rise in Canada, an increase in addiction to mobile devices is also prevalent, according to a new study by Google. VOCM 's Erin Eaton reports. About one third of Canadians would rather give up their television than part ...

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Hayward could get high-speed fiber-optic network

Hayward could get high-speed fiber-optic network - SiliconValley.com: "Lightning-fast Internet connections could be coming to local businesses, using a private-public model that created Lit San Leandro, a fiber-optic network that encircles that city. The same company that created the high-speed network in San Leandro wants to expand into its neighbor to the south as High-Speed Hayward, which would utilize existing underground city conduit to house an 18-mile loop of cable. Businesses could tap into the network, receiving and sending data over the Internet in a fraction of the time it takes with broadband, said Lit San Leandro CEO Jim Morrison. "Fiber optic is much, much faster," he said. In exchange for Hayward allowing the cable to be run through its conduit, the city would have access to 10 percent, or 30 strands of the network, Morrison said. "It would effectively be theirs," he said. Thirty fiber strands could carry several thousand times more data than what is used at City Hall, according to a staff report. . . ."

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GPS jamming

GPS jamming: Out of sight | The Economist: "EVERY day for up to ten minutes near the London Stock Exchange, someone blocks signals from the global positioning system (GPS) network of satellites. Navigation systems in cars stop working and timestamps on trades made in financial institutions can be affected. The incidents are not a cyber-attack by a foreign power, though. The most likely culprit, according to Charles Curry, whose firm Chronos Technology covertly monitors such events, is a delivery driver dodging his bosses’ attempts to track him. . . . . (read more at link above)

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Google Global Cache and Content Delivery

The internet optimized--

Peering & Content Delivery - Overview – Google Peering & Content Delivery: " . . . Original content is hosted within Google data centers. The content is replicated to multiple data centers for redundancy and more efficient serving to our end users. We then distribute this content across our network and closer to users, using the Google backbone network. Google Global Cache (GGC) represents the final tier of Google’s content delivery platform, and is closest to users. With GGC, network operators and Internet Service Providers deploy a small number of Google servers inside their network to serve popular Google content, including YouTube. Google's traffic management system directs users to the node that will provide the best performance for the user. GGC can be located anywhere in an operator's network to maximize savings in backbone and transit bandwidth. Targeted deployment can reduce the number of route-miles traveled on an operator's network to serve Google traffic, further increasing cost savings for the operator. While cache hit rates vary based on the unique consumption patterns of end users on each operator's network, typically between 70-90% of Google cacheable traffic can be served from GGC. . . ."

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Google Serves 25 Percent of North American Internet Traffic

Google doesn't really market or promote its backbone infrastructure--but it is obviously becoming a competitive advantage--

Google Serves 25 Percent of North American Internet Traffic | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com: " . . . Google has added thousands of servers — called Google Global Cache servers — to ISPs around the world. These servers store the most popular content from Google’s network — a YouTube video that’s going viral right now or apps from the Android marketplace, for example — then serve it directly from the ISP’s data center, rather than streaming it all the way from Google’s data center. These servers were in a handful of North American ISPs three years ago. Today, they’re in 80 percent of them, Labovitiz says. . . ."

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