As a work at home blogger I am kind of spoiled in that I only have to walk one room to the next in the morning in order to go to work and the coffee pot is always full but not everyone has that luxury when it comes to their work. While telecommuting is a growing phenomena in the work place it is still relegated to more forward thinking and smaller companies.

Employees at UK mobile operator O2 are going to be able to experience the ability to work from home, all 12,000 of them ans the company closes the doors to its 200,000 square foot headquarters in Slough for one day. For that day employees will be able to work from home, or some other suitable location (read coffee shop) as O2 tries to see how well the idea works out on a large scale.

While this is also a part of a larger plan by the company to reduce its carbon footprint and make its business more sustainable it is also, as pointed out by Paul Sawers at The Next Web, a way to see if these types of ‘flexible’ working arrangements will help the company make it through the upcoming Olympic Games set to hit England later this year.

However, it seems that it actually has at least one eye on the Olympic Games this year, with travel disruption a likely by-product of the swarm of tourists that will descend upon the city this summer. It’s thought that as many as one third of the UK’s businesses will encourage staff to work flexibly this summer, and O2 plans to share its findings from today’s pilot with other organisations in the build up to the sporting extravaganza this year.

It will be interesting to see just how well the experiment works out and if this is something that a large company would look at implementing on such a big scale even after the Olympics have come and gone.

The biggest flexible working initiative of its kind says UK’s O2 is a post from: The Inquisitr

Ubuntu, one of the World’s most popular Linux distributions, is going mobile with smartphones, tablets, televisions, and even cars. When most people think of Linux, they think of an uber geeky crowd which is true to an extent, but a wide range of people use it, Millions Worldwide.

The OS has grown in popularity over the years and with more streamlined interfaces and solid alternative programs, users can get a good experience for the price of $0 aside from time and effort involved. Recently, they switched to the Unity interface which is touch-friendly and one of the changes in eventually adapting to mobile platforms wherever they may be.

Via ZDNet UK:

“Especially in mobile, there’s a lot of OSes [from various parties] that have come and gone very quickly. But they are platforms that were created specifically for a purpose, whether it was for a particular company’s hardware or for a particular reason. They are not established platforms.”

“We have that heritage, we have that user base, we have the developers, and we have the experience of building and maintaining a platform. For the last four-and-a-half years, we’ve had an active engagement dealing with [hardware] manufacturers. We have relationships with the top five PC OEMs, from laptops and the mobile perspective, as well as servers.”

Linux is in everything from what powers your web hosting to your smartphone. Yes, even your smartphone has traces of Linux. It’s a very secure, very customizable operating system and with that said, you’ll see it in all sorts of devices.

Have you ever used Ubuntu? Like/dislike?

Ubuntu Going Mobile, Expected To Arrive In 2014 is a post from: The Inquisitr

O2, a leading provider of mobiles phones and broadband in the UK, accidentally revealed mobile phone numbers on websites that their customers accessed. This was a rather big flaw and definitely not good for all the customers who surf and browse the web on their phones.

The flaw was found by Lewis Peckover, a web systems administrator during an experiment. He showed that the company was sharing customer’s phone numbers with websites that were displayed as plain text in their header information.

With this happening, website owners could have had the ability to take their phone numbers and then spam them through text messages or telemarketing.

Via Telegraph:

“O2 admitted that the problem began on January 10th and said it was the “unintended effect” of some routine maintenance that the network carried out earlier this month. They said the issue was fixed this afternoon. In a statement, the company said: “We investigated, identified and fixed it this afternoon. We would like to apologise for the concern we have caused.” The company added: “The only information websites had access to is your mobile number, which could not have been linked to any other identifying information we have about customers.”

So, the company knew about the problem, just not the extent of the problem. Or did they and just not worry about fixing it? Either way, the flaw is fixed and customers don’t have to worry about their mobile phone numbers being taken and used to spam them.

Do you think O2 should issue an individual apology to customers?

O2 Accidentally Revealed Customer Phone Numbers Online is a post from: The Inquisitr

Millions of people have access to both 3G and 4G on their smartphones and devices. 3G is good and can get the job done, but faster speeds are always wanted for obvious reasons.

For example, Verizon’s 4G LTE offers speeds of up to 12mbps down and 5 mbps up. On the other hand, T-Mobile’s 4G network can give customers speeds of up to 27mbps down. While these speeds are great, a new technology looks to take that to the next level.

Via The Australian:

“A United Nations telecom meeting has approved the next generation of mobile technology, which experts say will make devices 500 times faster than 3G smartphones and eliminate the wait time between the tap of a finger and the appearance of a Web page.”

“The technology will be used immediately for planning changes to equipment but it could take two years to show up on consumers smartphone, tablets and other devices because of the time it takes to get to production, International Telecommunication Union spokesman Sanjay Acharya said Thursday.”

Did they just say 500 times faster than 3G? With speeds like that, mobile networks could one day replace the need for an ISP. Oh, wait…several gigabyte data caps so nevermind.

“The IMT-Advanced system uses radio-frequency spectrum much more efficiently, and devices built with it will need less bandwidth to access the Internet, stream videos and transfer data. That means those devices could deliver blazing fast messages, video chats and even high-definition TV.”

Very exciting technology and with more powerful devices already on the market, by the time we would be able to have access to it (which will be a long time away), we could actually take full advantage of the speeds.

How would you use an insanely fast connection on your smartphone or device?

UN Approves New Mobile Technology That Leaves 4G In The Dust is a post from: The Inquisitr

Good news and bad news, AT&T customers. First, the bad: AT&T informed users today of an “organized and systematic” attempt to collect account information from AT&T customers. The good: AT&T managed to notice the attempts in time to shut it down.

“We recently detected an organized and systematic attempt to obtain information on a number of AT&T customer accounts, including yours,” AT&T said in an e-mail to customers. “We do not believe that the perpetrators of this attack obtained access to your online account or any of the information contained in that account.”

In an email to Bloomberg, AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said that the hackers used “auto scripts” in an attempt to find links between AT&T telephone numbers and online accounts. Siegel went on to say that only about 1% of the company’s customers were targeted in the attack.

Siegel went on to stress that, as far as AT&T is able to tell, no account data was compromised. “No accounts were breached and our investigation is ongoing to determine the source or intent of the attempt to gather this information,” he said.

Source: Bloomberg

[Image]

AT&T informs users of “organized” hacking attempt is a post from: The Inquisitr

Angry Birds aside the mobile app market is often touted as being the next big money maker for developers and since all we hear is how people are getting all these apps on their mobile phones and tablets it is pretty easy to fall for the hype.

Then reality sets in and we find out things aren’t necessarily as rosy as they would have you believe and this is evidenced by a new study from the Pew Internet and American Life group which found out that less than half of the people who download these apps end up paying for them.

Pew surveyed some 2,260 adults over the age of 18 between July and August, of which 916 were conducted over cell phones and found that only 16 percent of those who downloaded apps ended up paying for them.

One interesting fact the Pew survey did find was that tablet users were more likely to pay for downloaded apps in contrast to cell phone users.

As for what they paid the breakdown came out at 52 percent paid $5 or less for an app and 17 percent were willing to pay more than $20 for an app.

via CNET Crave

Apps aren’t the big money maker everyone would have you think they are is a post from: The Inquisitr

Pedestrian navigation and mobile transit services HopStop, has been awarded the patent by the Unites States Patent and Trademark Office for its location-based service that provides door-to-door mass transit and walking directions.

U.S. Patent No. 7,957,871, “Methods and Apparatuses for Navigation in Urban Environments,” discloses the innovative technology and methodology used in HopStop’s dynamic transit routing engine that combines disparate transit data, street-level mapping data and user-generated input to provide optimal multi-modal directions and travel options for web and mobile users.  

Joe Meyer, CEO of HopStop, in stressing the importance of the awarded patent, said:

“Mapping and navigation on smartphones present an ideal user experience upon which to layer compelling, popular and valuable local services to consumers and advertisers alike. This patent further accelerates HopStop’s leadership role in the industry, and allows us to take greater advantage of the huge market opportunity presented by local search and mobile services.”

As a matter of disclosure, the writer is addicted to HopStop, or should we say, dependent on HopStop in navigating New York and Boston.

HopStop Wins Patent for Transit Routing and Pedestrian Navigation is a post from: The Inquisitr

Consumers place an average value of $37,438 on their “digital assets” across multiple digital devices, yet more than a third lack protection. In the US, people valued their assets at nearly $55,000, according to research firm MSI International after surveying more than 3,000 consumers in 10 countries.

It should be noted here that digital devices here refers not to computers but to other Internet-enabled devices like unprotected smartphones and tablets. In fact, 25 percent of consumer Internet users now own at least five devices per household, with 60 percent owning at least three.

Despite the high financial and emotional value of their assets stored in various places, 32 percent of the consumers who don’t use security protection on all of their devices still don’t think they need it.

Gary Davis, director of consumer product marketing at McAfee, stressed the need to secure all fronts:

“Consumers recognize the value of their digital assets. While they are more likely to secure their PCs, they often neglect protection for their other Internet-enabled devices. It’s like installing an expensive home security alarm on the front door, but leaving the windows and back door wide open. It just takes one open window to allow a virus, hacker, or identity thief to wipe out all the digital assets on any given device, having their personal and financial info compromised as a result.”

Is your smartphone and tablet secured? Do you even care securing it? Remember, the emotional value of your digital assets far outweigh its cost.

Study Reveals Average Internet User Has Underprotected Digital Assets Worth $37,000 is a post from: The Inquisitr

The European mobile advertising market will become a billion dollar industry faster than previously projected. A new whitepaper released by adsmobi, a mobile media buying platform, revealed that the collective mobile ad market across UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and France by 2014 will be worth over $1.03 billion.

Based on the data of research company mobileSQUARED, the mobile ad networks delivering the largest number of ads on a monthly basis across the big five markets are InMobi, adsmobi and YOC.

mobileSQUARED Chief Analyst Nick Lane has this to say about the new projections:

“The European mobile advertising space is now demonstrating the strong growth that has been projected for a number of years. Companies like adsmobi, that are helping to drive the sector are primed for the good times.”

In 2008, Jupiter Research already projected that the European mobile advertising market will hit $1.93 billion by 2012 given that mobile users in the region will regularly access the mobile web because of cheaper handsets, better networks and cheaper data plans.

The adsmobi projection is conservative based on the 2008 projections of Jupiter Research and we expect the European mobile advertising market to hit more than a billion or two by 2014.

European Mobile Ad Market to Hit $1 Billion by 2014 (It Will Be More Than That) is a post from: The Inquisitr

I realize that just about everyone and their brother is proclaiming how mobile computing, whether through our smartphones, laptops, or tablets is changing our world except there are two problems with that idyllic belief – the carriers and the joke we refer to as battery life.

There’s no need to go into the first choke hold on mobile growth but the second – battery life – is the one that more than anything else will dictate how persuasive mobile computing becomes. While we have been seeing some radical improvements in the length of time you can use a battery between recharges has been improving but that is because smartphone, laptop, and tablet manufacturers have been trying their damnedest to eek out every millisecond from a system that has changed very little in comparison to the rest of the technology that relies on them.

Thankfully we aren’t stuck with the battery companies being the ones researching new battery technology as evidenced by a research team at the University of Leeds that have invented a jelly battery that is not only cheaper than existing battery options but also lighter, safer, and more importantly – more powerful.

The Leeds-based researchers are promising that their jelly batteries are as safe as polymer batteries, perform like liquid-filled batteries, but are 10 to 20% the price of either.

The secret to their success lies in blending a rubber-like polymer with a conductive, liquid electrolyte into a thin, flexible film of gel that sits between the battery electrodes.

“The polymer gel looks like a solid film, but it actually contains about 70% liquid electrolyte,” explained the study’s lead author, Professor Ian Ward from the University of Leeds.

via BBC

One of side benefits of this new battery technology is that it can also be formed into shapes and can be exceedingly thin without losing any of its power output, which could have an interesting effect on over designing of things like smartphones and tablets at some point in the future.

Can we have a peanut butter and jelly battery please, but hold the peanut butter. is a post from: The Inquisitr

Normally we just have a good hot cup of coffee to start our Monday mornings but today Google decided we needed a little extra and let the world know that it was now also in the smartphone handset business after buying Motorola Mobility for the tidy sum of $12.5 billion.

Now that your tired eyes have snapped open read that again – $12.5 billion. or rather $40 per share, which makes it the largest tech deal to date.

The reason behind the purchase, or at least a major component is Motorola’s collection of mobile patents and Google’s ongoing patent problems with Android as pointed out in Larry Page’s post announcing the deal

We recently explained how companies including Microsoft and Apple are banding together in anti-competitive patent attacks on Android. The U.S. Department of Justice had to intervene in the results of one recent patent auction to “protect competition and innovation in the open source software community” and it is currently looking into the results of the Nortel auction. Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.

Of course the news is playing well on Google’s new social network Google+ with many “OMG how great is Google” and “take that Apple and Microsoft” type of comments.

And from another thread of gushiness

Good luck with the purchase Google but somehow I don’t think this is going to be the answer to all of the Android patent problems you are facing.

How’s this for a Monday morning face smacker – Google buys Motorola for $12.5 Billion is a post from: The Inquisitr

When it comes to things like viruses, trojans, and other forms of malware Windows has always been the biggest bulls-eye in the computing world. Both Mac and Linux have claimed that because of the way that they are coded it is next to impossible for those platforms to become infected.

Of course anyone with half a brain would be able to also point out that the whole point of malware was to infect the broadest number of computing devices as possible and that up until recently neither Mac OS X nor Linux had a big enough platform footprint to make them worthwhile targets.

That of course has changed with the proliferation of smartphones and other mobile computing devices. We are already see, as both the Mac and iOS powered devices increase their marketshare, that contrary to pontificating Apple fanbois blatherings these two Apple platforms are now in the sights of malware creators.

This only left Linux, which like Mac OS is just another off-shoot of the UNIX platform, as the virgin territory for malware writers, that was until Android, which is based off of Linux, came along.

Android powered mobile devices have taken a commanding lead in sales and don’t look to be slowing down anytime soon and it is because of this popularity that Android users will start finding themselves as a great big target for malware infections.

A prime example of this happening is the latest report that according to Lookout Security there are between 30,000 and 120,000 Android users infected with a brand new variation of the already in the wild called Droid Dream.

This new variation, thought to be written by the same developers, is called Droid Dream Lite and is known to have infected over 50 applications, which Google has apparently removed from the Android Marketplace.

While the name of the malware might seem to be “harmless” it is in fact even more dangerous that its fore-bearers, as outlined by Sara Perez at ReadWriteWeb:

Droid Dream Light is a stripped down version of the original DroidDream, says Lookout. Its malicious components are invoked upon the receipt of a “android.intent.action.PHONE_STATE intent” – for example, an incoming phone call. That means that this variant is not dependent on the manual launch of the malicious application in order to trigger it into action. Instead, explains Lookout via blog post:

The broadcast receiver immediately launches the <package>.lightdd.CoreService which contacts remote servers and supplies the IMEI, IMSI, Model, SDK Version and information about installed packages.  It appears that the DDLight is also capable of downloading and prompting installation of new packages, though unlike its predecessors it is not capable of doing so without user intervention.

In other words, despite the malware’s designation of “Light,” in some ways it’s actually more malicious as it requires no user actions to take place in order for it to launch.

As much as some Apple and Android fanbois might want to bury their heads in the sand the fact is that the Windows only party is over. Malware authors now have more targets to aim for and those targets will only get bigger as Apple and Android products continue to surge ahead in sales.

The battleground of malware no longer just Windows as Android users get hit is a post from: The Inquisitr

In a recent study by Ipsos in the U.S. between December 10, 2010 and January 5, 2011 they found that 75% of the 2,000 adults that took part in the survey felt that mobile manners have worsened since the last study was done in 2009.

An Intel researcher, Genevieve Bell, said of the results of the study, which was again sponsored by Intel, that it’s no surprise that people are still struggling with how to integrate all these new devices into their lives.

The study also found that:

• U.S. adults see an average of five mobile “offenses,” including the use of mobile devices while driving or talking loudly on a mobile phone in public, every day.
• One in five adults admit to checking a mobile device before getting out of bed in the morning.
• Of the 91% of respondents who reported seeing offenses, 56% saw car drivers using a mobile device, 48% saw people using one in a restroom, 32% saw them used in movie theaters and 9% saw the devices used by people on a honeymoon.
• Nearly 25% of U.S. adults say they have seen a person use a laptop computer while driving.

via PC World

New study says mobile users are ruder than ever is a post from: The Inquisitr

I have reservations about the long term usability of the whole apps thing that we are seeing advancing like a tsunami in our increasing mobile oriented world whereas people like Robert Scoble suggest that without a solid apps ecosystem companies, like Microsoft and its Windows Phone 7, are bound to fail.

Well thanks to the folks at Flowtown we have a new infographic showing us how important apps have become to this point.

What do you think?

via Windows Observer

Apps to rule the world [Infographic] is a post from: The Inquisitr

One of the more interesting rumors boiling just under the surface has to do with Nokia, and their gradual loss of marketshare to companies like Apple and Google’s Android. Stephen Elop, Nokia’s non-Finnish CEO and formerly a division president at Microsoft, has made it clear that for Nokia to survive it must start looking outside of the company.

I have written and talked about this many times over at my home blog which concentrates on Microsoft. the prompting of this has been the talk that Nokia might be considering some form of partnership with Microsoft and that would involve the use of Windows Phone 7 OS as the new Nokia handset OS.

Well it appears that in the lead up to Elop’s big announcement ahead of Capital Markets Day and the Mobile World Congress an internal company memo to all of Nokia’s employees has been leaked.

Courtesy of Engadget here is the full text of that email:

Hello there,

There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform’s edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a “burning platform,” and he needed to make a choice.

He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times – his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a “burning platform” caused a radical change in his behaviour.

We too, are standing on a “burning platform,” and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.

Over the past few months, I’ve shared with you what I’ve heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I’m going to share what I’ve learned and what I have come to believe.

I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.

And, we have more than one explosion – we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.

For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.

In 2008, Apple’s market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.

And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry’s innovation to its core.

Let’s not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally – taking share from us in emerging markets.

While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.

At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, “the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.” They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.

And the truly perplexing aspect is that we’re not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we’ve lost market share, we’ve lost mind share and we’ve lost time.

On Tuesday, Standard & Poor’s informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody’s took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.

Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It’s also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.

How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?

This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven’t been delivering innovation fast enough. We’re not collaborating internally.

Nokia, our platform is burning.

We are working on a path forward — a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.

The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.

Stephen.

Nokia’s CEO memo to the troops leaked is a post from: The Inquisitr

Did you hear?

The January 2011 issue of Consumer Reports is out and boy did they ever give the old smackdown to AT&T rating the company as the worst U.S. wireless company around. As you can see from the above graphic about the only thing that didn’t put AT&T in the gutter right across the board was its texting but coming in second last in that category isn’t really saying much.

Quick to try and get ahead of the report AT&T spokespeople have been e-mailing the following piece of spin-doctoring:

We take this seriously and we continually look for new ways to improve the customer experience. The fact is wireless customers have choices and a record number of them chose AT&T in the third quarter, significantly more than our competitors. Hard data from independent drive tests confirms AT&T has the nation’s fastest mobile broadband network with our nearest competitor 20 percent slower on average nationwide and our largest competitor 60 percent slower on average nationwide.  And, our dropped call rate is within 1/10 of a percent – the equivalent of just one call in a thousand – of the industry leader.

via 9 To 5 Mac

The other really sad thing that comes out in the graphic is that as bad as AT&T might be none of the other main wireless carriers are much better. Yet it is these companies that are constantly looking for more ways to increase their profit margins at the cost of customer satisfaction; and yet we continue giving them our money.

AT&T gets slapped around by Consumer Reports is a post from: The Inquisitr

If this is your first time at The Inquisitr, let me give you a quick tour.

The Inquisitr covers tech news, with a particular fondness for gadgets and mobile phones. We also cover general technology, celebrity news (well, you’ve got to get your gossip from somewhere ), some American sport, and odd and funny stories.

Although we are based in Melbourne, we have a team in five countries picking what we hope is a good read every day, 365 days a year. We’re read by 1.5 million people every month, who read 7 million pages on the site.

Most of all we love what we do, and we hope you’ll like it as well.

About Me (Duncan Riley)

I’ve been writing online and developing web properties for over eight years, mostly around technology. I must confess that I’m a gadget fiend who likes things that connect to the internet: like the internet enabled robotic vacuum cleaner in my apartment, and my internet enabled alarm clock.

Mobile has been a huge part of my life, and has changed the way we both do business, and spend our leisure time. The choices have never been richer, nor has the cost been more affordable.

You can follow me on Twitter at @duncanriley, or follow The Inquisitr at @theinquisitr. We’re also on Facebook at facebook.com/theinquisitr

Here’s some of our recent coverage in the mobile space:

3D-Enabled Android Powered Phones Coming To Japan

Nokia Admits To “Major Power Flaw” In Some N8 Handsets, N7 Also Possibly Affected

PlayStation Phone Leaked With Prototype Photo

HTC Wildfire Three Weeks Later: A Phone I Want To Love But Can’t

HTC Desire HD Video Tour

Welcome Today Tonight Viewers is a post from: The Inquisitr

For the most part I don’t get this fascination with augmented reality. It seems more like messing up my reality with pointless information and lots of ads.

However this little gem of a game for the iPhone could actually make the whole nonsense sort of fun.

The game is called: Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner and it pits you against a slew of Star Wars Tie Fighters using your city as the backdrop to the game.

Now even I would have to admit that this is kinda cool.

via DVICE

What stands between your city and hordes of Tie Fighters? Your iPhone. is a post from: The Inquisitr

While Verizon customers were counting the pennies that were owed to them by Verizon in light of the FCC investigation into the company’s billing practices that saw their customers complaining of bill shock the company was also waiting with baited breath for the other FCC shoe to drop.

Well that shoe dropped today with the announcement that Verizon would be coughing up an addition $25 million to satisfy a fine from the FCC.

“Mystery solved: today’s settlement with Verizon Wireless is about making things right and putting consumers back in the driver’s seat,” said FCC enforcement chief Michele Ellison today. “Today’s settlement requires Verizon Wireless to make meaningful business reforms, prevent future overcharges, and provide consumers clear, easy-to-understand information about their choices. I am gratified by the cooperation of the Verizon Wireless team in the face of these issues, and pleased they are taking the high road.”

via Ars Technica

Record fine of $25 million paid to FCC by Verizon is a post from: The Inquisitr

Do you know where those fingers that are touching your favorite mobile gadget have been?

Well according to a new study by Timothy Julian, a Stanford University doctoral student, and some British researchers our fancy mobile devices we love to show-off could harbor 18  times more bacteria than a flush handle in a typical men’s washroom.

According to Julian’s study, published online in July by the Journal of Applied Microbiology, the risks of transmitting pathogens from glass surfaces to a person’s skin are relatively high.

“If you put virus on a surface, like an iPhone, about 30 percent of it will get on your fingertips,” Julian said. In turn, “a fair amount of it may go from your fingers to your eyes, mouth or nose,” the most likely routes of infection.

Of course, no one can be sure how many people have gotten sick from sharing touch-screen electronics. But the devices add to the growing list of so-called fomites – frequently handled objects – that can spread pathogens such as the flu virus.

Hmm, one might want to reconsider the idea of using a phone condom after all.

Mobile devices are the newest health scare is a post from: The Inquisitr