Technology titans Nokia and Microsoft are combining forces to make smart phones that might challenge rivals like Apple and Google and revive their own fortunes in a market they have struggled to keep up with, the Associated Press reports. Nokia Corp., the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, said Friday it plans to use Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone software as the main platform for its smart phones in an effort to pull market share away from Apple’s iPhone and Android, Google’s software for phones and tablets. The move marks a major strategy shift for Nokia, which has previously equipped devices with its own software. Analysts said the deal was a bigger win for Microsoft than Nokia, whose CEO Stephen Elop in a leaked memo this week compared his company to a burning oil platform with “more than one explosion … fueling a blazing fire around us.”
…Read MorePodcast Series: Innovations in Education
Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.
Year of the smart phone on college campuses?
An international market research firm predicts a 55-percent jump in smart-phone sales this year—a projection that could lead to an unprecedented increase in internet-enabled phone use during colleges’ 2010-11 academic year.
The mobile device market analysis, released Sept. 7 by International Data Corp. (IDC), is welcome news to researchers who have predicted a jump in smart-phone use for educational purposes, because college-aged men and women are among the likeliest to use the technology.
There will be about 270 million smart phones—such as the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry—shipped during 2010, a major jump from the 173 million sold in 2009, according to IDC’s projections.…Read More
Technology has changed how news is reported — and read
In a media-saturated world, everyone with a smart phone can be a fan and a critic, a citizen blogger and an amateur reporter, reports the Detroit News—and looking at the coverage when Michigan State men’s basketball coach Tom Izzo was considering leaving the school provides a stark example. In mid-May 2000, the news shocked Spartan fans still reveling in a national championship: Izzo was mulling a job with the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks that would bring him millions more in annual salary than he could make in East Lansing. As fans fretted, the media cranked into action, but it was limited to the mainstream newspapers and a few fan blogs and message boards writing on what was a three-day story. What a difference a decade makes. Over the nine days that Izzo considered a move to the Cleveland Cavaliers this year, thousands of news stories, web stories, sidebars, updates, columns, and blogs landed on a vastly different media landscape. But that was just a fraction of the blizzard of reports that ultimately drew the ire of MSU administrators: Talk radio went wall-to-wall with Izzo speculation, and Twitter and Facebook were employed to propel even the tiniest detail—true or not—into must-have news. “We did have a lot of tweets that turned into facts and rumors that turned into stories,” said MSU President Lou Anna Simon last week, moments after a press conference at which Izzo announced his decision to be a “Spartan for life.” “I just kind of regret that it happened.” Big news is something that you no longer just read: You can also shape and share it. Simon is right, the media world has changed—and the Izzo saga shows it’s going to mean changes for everyone, from news sources, to reporters, even the consumer…
…Read MoreSmart phones under growing threat from hackers
Smart phones are under a growing menace from cyber-criminals seeking to hack into web-connected handsets, but the mobile industry has contained the threat so far, AFP reports. Software security firms warned at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that increasingly popular smart phones could face an explosion of virus attacks in the coming years. “Tomorrow we could see a worm on phones [that] would go around the world in five minutes,” said Mikko Hyppoenen, chief research officer at F-Secure, which makes anti-virus software for mobile phones. Security companies, mobile operators, and makers of operating systems so far have found solutions to limit the attacks and delay an onslaught of spam and viruses. “It won’t work forever; eventually we will see the first global outbreak. But we have been able to delay it by more than five years, at least,” he said. The first mobile virus appeared six years ago, and so far F-Secure has detected only 430 mobile worms, compared with millions of computer viruses. Much like the first computer hackers of two decades ago, the people attacking mobile phones have been doing it as a hobby, Hyppoenen said. “It seems that on any new platform, … the first viruses are done by hobbyists just to show off, and then later, more professional money-making criminals move in,” he said…
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