The Droid you've been waiting for (I love saying that)

A few good Droid reviews. It sounds like this *is* the Droid we've been waiting for -- all the features you want, on a network that might actually work (although it remains to be seen whether Verizon's network can really withstand a true smartphone that keeps people online virtually continuously like the iPhone). Told DH to pick one up pronto!! He's still using his LG Dare - a dumbphone trying to act like a smartphone.

Best review so far, because the reviewer is a long-time iphone user and not an apple fan-boy: http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/10/30/smartphone-showdown-iphone-3gs-vs-motorola-droid/

Other good reviews:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/30/more-on-the-droid-thoughts-from-the-rest-of-engadget/ :

At the end of the day, realities of the US wireless industry are as likely to decide whether you're getting a DROID as anything else. For Verizon -- historically known for one of the worst smartphone selections of any carrier in North America -- the DROID instantly vaults to the top of the heap, so if you're on Big Red or you want to be, the phone may very well be a no-brainer.

http://cellphoneforums.net/cell-phone-reviews/t304605-motorola-droid-review.html

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2354951,00.asp
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NYT: Family Fights Odds, Retrieving Child from China

Http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=480868&single=1&f=22

In the end, it took an extraordinary international effort, including months of legal and diplomatic advocacy, criminal investigation and Internet sleuthing, to locate the child - who was found on Sunday, abandoned in an orphanage many miles from Beijing - and bring her safely home to New York. She and her mother arrived at Kennedy International Airport on Thursday night, amid balloons and tears.

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NYT: New (and Improved) Models From BB, Mot, HTC

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=479310&f=24&p=1

Alternatives to the iphone: Mot Cliq, HTC Hero, BB Storm2

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The iPhone juggernaut

even more amazing of course - the iphone juggernaut, these 2 slides tell the story:





read more at: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/21/how-the-iphone-is-blowing-everyone-else-away-in-charts/
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Droid vs iPhone vs...RAZR?

http://gigaom.com/2009/10/28/forget-the-iphone-can-droid-top-the-razr/

Can today’s Droid phone top the world’s most ubiquitous mobile gadget (>100M Motorola RAZR's) on its path to crush the iPhone? Can it even get close to the (34M) iPhone(s)?

cellphone statistics are just astounding. the industry ships ~1 billion cell phones per year.

IDC data

Vendor	Q1 2009 units shipped*	Q1 2008 units shipped*	Q1 2009 market share	Q1 2008 market share
Nokia	93.2	115.5	38.1%	39.7%
Samsung	45.9	46.3	18.8%	15.9%
LG Electronics	22.6	24.4	9.2%	8.4%
Motorola	14.7	27.4	6%	9.4%
Sony Ericsson	14.5	22.3	5.9%	7.7%
Others	53.9	44.9	22%	18.9%
Total	244.8	290.8	100%	100%

*Units shipped in millions
Source: IDC, April 2009
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augmented reality

Augmented Reality was not meant to hit the iPhone 3GS until at least the release of iPhone OS 3.1. Augmented reality uses your iPhone’s camera, GPS, and compass to show virtual items in the real world. Put your camera in front of a restaurant and it will come up with info, or use it to find nearby Twitter users. The potential is endless.

yelp can do it, so can urbanspoon. and wikipedia. you've got to see the pictures in the articles. or better yet, watch the wikitude video at the bottom of this article.

this is really cool, except i have an ipod touch and not an iphone, so i'm missing the GPS and camera...

NYT: Is It Safe to Post Children's Pictures on the Web

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=476442&f=24&p=4

The possibility always exists that pedophiles are lifting such pictures, Professor Finkelhor says, but it is not something he has encountered. And, he said, it's unlikely for a discomfiting reason: actual child pornography is so readily available that pedophiles aren't likely to waste time cruising social networks looking for less explicit material.

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NYT: Safety Nets for the Rich

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=473518&f=28&sub=Columnist&p=2

"Enough! Goldman Sachs is thriving while the combined rates of unemployment and underemployment are creeping toward a mind-boggling 20 percent. Two-thirds of all the income gains from the years 2002 to 2007 - two-thirds! - went to the top 1 percent of Americans.

We cannot continue transferring the nation's wealth to those at the apex of the economic pyramid - which is what we have been doing for the past three decades or so - while hoping that someday, maybe, the benefits of that transfer will trickle down in the form of steady employment and improved living standards for the many millions of families struggling to make it from day to day.

That money is never going to trickle down. It's a fairy tale. We're crazy to continue believing it."

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NYT: After New Ads, iDoubts Grow About Verizon iPhone

Could it be the iPhone is NOT coming to Verizon?

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article;jsessionid=1CC1802220D011BCA753FE6F00F3B01A.w5?a=472322&f=24
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Difference between H1N1 and regular flu becoming clearer

Deaths in children from H1N1 have already claimed twice the typical number of victims for an entire flu season. A WHO symposium addressing the management of pandemic influenza confirms the ability of the new H1N1 virus to directly cause severe pneumonia. In severe cases, patients can progress to respiratory failure within 24 hours. 30% of these cases are complicated by secondary bacterial infections, some of which are antibiotic resistant. “Prompt treatment with the antiviral drugs, oseltamivir or zanamivir, reduces the severity of illness and improves the chances of survival. These findings strengthen previous WHO recommendations for early treatment with these drugs for patients who meet treatment criteria, even in the absence of a positive confirmatory test.”

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/notes/h1n1_clinical_features_20091016/en/index.html

Participants who have managed such cases agreed that the clinical picture in severe cases is strikingly different from the disease pattern seen during epidemics of seasonal influenza. While people with certain underlying medical conditions, including pregnancy, are known to be at increased risk, many severe cases occur in previously healthy young people. In these patients, predisposing factors that increase the risk of severe illness are not presently understood, though research is under way.

In severe cases, patients generally begin to deteriorate around 3 to 5 days after symptom onset. Deterioration is rapid, with many patients progressing to respiratory failure within 24 hours, requiring immediate admission to an intensive care unit. Upon admission, most patients need immediate respiratory support with mechanical ventilation.

Participants agreed that the risk of severe or fatal illness is highest in three groups: pregnant women, especially during the third trimester of pregnancy, children younger than 2 years of age, and people with chronic lung disease, including asthma. Neurological disorders can increase the risk of severe disease in children.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MED_SWINE_FLU?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-10-17-12-07-17

Eighty-six children have died of swine flu in the U.S. since it burst on the scene last spring - 43 of those deaths reported in September and early October alone, said Schuchat.

That's a startling number because in some past winters, the CDC has counted 40 or 50 child deaths for the entire flu season, she said, and no one knows how long this swine flu outbreak will last.

NYT: Darkness on the Edge of Monotowns

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=469650&f=28&sub=Contributor&p=4

According to the World Bank, this year the number of Russians below the poverty level has grown by 7.5 million to 24.6 million, or 17 percent of the population. An additional 21 percent, or almost 30 million, have incomes less than 50 percent over the poverty level. Together, that's 4 out of 10 Russians. The Federation of Independent Trade Unions predicts that up to 400,000 more Russians may become unemployed in the next three months, while the World Bank projects that the unemployment rate there will reach as high as 13 percent by the end of the year.

There may, in fact, be nothing that can be done to prevent these ticking time bombs from exploding. And as the Iranian protests recently proved, in an age of cellphone cameras and the Internet, one demonstration in one monotown could ignite a wave of nationwide protests that Russia's news media could not cover up, its riot police could not properly contain and its government may not be able to survive.

Certainly, this crisis sends a message of utmost urgency to a country still groggy from the oil-boom intoxication of the past eight years: go back to the decentralization and democratization reforms of the 1990s and early 2000s - or face the political, economic and social calamity of the monotowns on a national scale.

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NYT: Disney Plans Extensive Overhaul of Retail Stores

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=455478&f=23

The company followed his advice, working for the last year on a full-scale, fully stocked store inside an unmarked warehouse in Glendale, Calif. The prototype was crucial to shaping an overall philosophy, Mr. Fielding said, noting that he discovered the shops needed more "Pixar-esque winks and nods." To that end, one sales area is now labeled "WWTD: What Would Tinker Bell Do?"

Disney will adopt Apple touches like mobile checkout (employees will carry miniature receipt printers in their aprons) and the emphasis on community (Disney's theater idea is an extension of Apple's lecture spaces). The focus on interactivity - parents will be able to book a Disney Cruise on touch-screen kiosks while their children play - reflects an Apple hallmark. Employees can use iPhones to control those high-tech trees.

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Zakaria: Nobel rewards Obama's 'big, bold gambit' - CNN.com

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/10/09/zakaria.obama.nobel/index.html

Zakaria: It may not influence the far right, but it may make clear for many other undecided Americans what President Obama hopes to achieve. Obama's outreach to the world is an experiment: He wants to demonstrate at home that engagement does not make America weak.

For decades, it's been thought deadly for an American politician to be seen as seeking international cooperation. Denouncing, demeaning and insulting other countries was a cheap and easy way to seem strong. In the battle of images, tough and stupid always seemed to win.

President Obama is gambling that America is now mature enough to understand that machismo is not foreign policy, and that grandstanding on the global stage just won't succeed. In a new world, with other countries more powerful and confident, America's success -- its security, its prosperity -- depends on working with others. It's a big, bold gambit.

The Nobel committee wanted to encourage this sentiment. I hope Americans will see that and encourage the path President Obama is taking

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NYT: In Rural Africa, a Fertile Market for Mobile Phones

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/science/06uganda.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Africa has the fastest-growing mobile phone market worldwide. Entrepreneurs and development organizations are eagerly seizing the opportunity presented by such growth. They are creating mobile phone applications for profitable and nonprofit ventures across the continent. Millions of Africans, for example, now use their mobile phones to transfer money, turn on water wells, learn soccer game scores and buy and sell goods.

NYT: Woman's Shattered Life Shows Ground Beef Inspection Flaws

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html

NYT: A Wi-Fi Alternative When the Network Gets Clogged

I need MiFi! For both my at&t blackberry and for my ipod touch!

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=444050&f=24&p=3

I found JiWire's free Wi-Fi Finder iPhone app particularly useful. The software sniffs out your location and offers a list of nearby hot spots, free and paid. If you're a customer of one of the big Wi-Fi networks, like iPass, Boingo or AT&T, the app will tell you where to find those.

AT&T says its free Wi-Fi initiative isn't a response to a recent avalanche of complaints from iPhone users that they cannot connect via 3G. Still, Jeff Bradley, the company's senior vice president of devices, said that if more AT&T users shifted to Wi-Fi, the performance of the 3G network should improve.

also, "Wi-Fi to Go, No Cafe Needed"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/technology/personaltech/07pogue.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

The Novatel MiFi 2200, available from Verizon starting in mid-May ($100 with two-year contract, after rebate). It’s a little wisp of a thing, like a triple-thick credit card. It has one power button, one status light and a swappable battery that looks like the one in a cellphone. When you turn on your MiFi and wait 30 seconds, it provides a personal, portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot.

The MiFi gets its Internet signal the same way those cellular modems do — in this case, from Verizon’s excellent 3G (high-speed) cellular data network. If you just want to do e-mail and the Web, you pay $40 a month for the service (250 megabytes of data transfer, 10 cents a megabyte above that). If you watch videos and shuttle a lot of big files, opt for the $60 plan (5 gigabytes). And if you don’t travel incessantly, the best deal may be the one-day pass: $15 for 24 hours, only when you need it. In that case, the MiFi itself costs $270.

NYT: The Holy Grail of the Unconscious

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20jung-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

[Jung] later would compare this period of his life — this “confrontation with the unconscious,” as he called it — to a mescaline experiment. He described his visions as coming in an “incessant stream.” He likened them to rocks falling on his head, to thunderstorms, to molten lava. “I often had to cling to the table,” he recalled, “so as not to fall apart.”

Had he been a psychiatric patient, Jung might well have been told he had a nervous disorder and encouraged to ignore the circus going on in his head. But as a psychiatrist, and one with a decidedly maverick streak, he tried instead to tear down the wall between his rational self and his psyche. For about six years, Jung worked to prevent his conscious mind from blocking out what his unconscious mind wanted to show him. Between appointments with patients, after dinner with his wife and children, whenever there was a spare hour or two, Jung sat in a book-lined office on the second floor of his home and actually induced hallucinations — what he called “active imaginations.” “In order to grasp the fantasies which were stirring in me ‘underground,’ ” Jung wrote later in his book “Memories, Dreams, Reflections,” “I knew that I had to let myself plummet down into them.” He found himself in a liminal place, as full of creative abundance as it was of potential ruin, believing it to be the same borderlands traveled by both lunatics and great artists.

Jung recorded it all. First taking notes in a series of small, black journals, he then expounded upon and analyzed his fantasies, writing in a regal, prophetic tone in the big red-leather book. The book detailed an unabashedly psychedelic voyage through his own mind, a vaguely Homeric progression of encounters with strange people taking place in a curious, shifting dreamscape. Writing in German, he filled 205 oversize pages with elaborate calligraphy and with richly hued, staggeringly detailed paintings.

NYT: iPhones Overload AT&T's Network

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=427739&f=24&p=3

(I have noticed this on my blackberry as well.)

"It's almost worthless to try and get on 3G during peak times in those cities," Mr. Munster said, referring to the 3G network. "When too many users get in the area, the call drops." The problems seem particularly pronounced in New York and San Francisco, where Mr. Munster estimates AT&T's network shoulders as much as 20 percent of all the iPhone users in the United States.

AT&T might be in the spotlight now, analysts say, but other carriers will face similar problems as they sell more smartphones, laptop cards and eventually tablets that encourage high data usage.

Globally, mobile data traffic is expected to double every year through 2013, according to Cisco Systems, which makes network gear. "Whether an iPhone, a Storm or a Gphone, the world is changing." Mr. Munster said. "We're just starting to scratch the surface of these issues that AT&T is facing."

In preparation for the next wave of smartphones and data demands, all the carriers are rushing to introduce the next-generation of wireless networks, called 4G.

Analysts expect that in a year or so, AT&T's network will have improved significantly...

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NYT: In Silicon Valley, the Jobs Picture has changed

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article;jsessionid=AC111CE8775C9C83084580B680E4CED8.w5?a=428643&f=24
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FSJ: I'm really thinking maybe I shouldn't have yelled at that Chinese guy so much

article here: http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2009/07/im-really-thinking-maybe-i-shouldnt.html

We all know that there's no fucking way in the world we should have microwave ovens and refrigerators and TV sets and everything else at the prices we're paying for them. There's no way we get all this stuff and everything is done fair and square and everyone gets treated right. No way. And don't be confused -- what we're talking about here is our way of life. Our standard of living. You want to "fix things in China," well, it's gonna cost you. Because everything you own, it's all done on the backs of millions of poor people whose lives are so awful you can't even begin to imagine them, people who will do anything to get a life that is a tiny bit better than the shitty one they were born into, people who get exploited and treated like shit and, in the worst of all cases, pay with their lives.

You know that, and I know that. Okay? Let's just be honest here. Just for a fucking minute, let's all be honest.