House Bill Would Require Cellphone Owners Be Notified of Tracking Software

The move follows the uproar last year over software from Carrier IQ that collected various information about cellphone usage.
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News Byte

More Than 50 Percent of U.S. Adults Used Cellphone for Holiday Shopping

A new report from Pew Research Center says that more than 50 percent of U.S. adult cellphone owners surveyed used their devices for shopping purposes while they were in a store this past holiday season. Some 38 percent of cellphone owners called a friend for purchasing advice; 24 percent looked up online product reviews; and 25 percent used their phones to try to find better deals elsewhere or online. In early January, IBM Research reported that mobile shopping in December 2011 doubled from the same holiday shopping period the year before.

What Happens, Rarely, if You Leave Cellphone on at a Classical Concert (Video)

A violinist, interrupted by a cellphone ringing in a familiar Nokia tone, decides to play along, literally.
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A Loss for Apple in Motorola Suit

Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. welcomed a ruling from the U.S. International Trade Commission that denied patent-infringement allegations raised by Apple Inc.

Mahler, Interrupted

I apologize. Usually, when there’s a disturbance like this, it is best to ignore it, because addressing it is sometimes worse than the disturbance itself. But this was so egregious that I could not allow it.

– New York Philharmonic conductor Alan Gilbert to the audience at Tuesday night’s Lincoln Center performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, after he had put down his baton and stopped the orchestra because of an iPhone ringing front row center »

There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!

Camcorders and MP3 players go splat!
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A Gift to Developers: A Quarter of a Billion Apps Downloaded on Christmas

A record number of applications were downloaded on Dec. 25, making it a very “appy” Christmas for at least some mobile developers.
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Most Cellular Networks Worldwide Vulnerable to Attack, Researcher Says

By failing to encrypt network commands, carriers are leaving text messages and phone calls vulnerable to interception, a German researcher told AllThingsD.
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Don’t Browse and Drive

Our study of iPod distraction found that selecting a song on an iPod can degrade performance almost twice as much as dialing a cell phone. Even more surprisingly, selecting a song can degrade performance twice as much as watching a video on the iPod.

– Researcher Dario Salvucci, whose work focuses on multitasking and interruption, including driver distraction

Samsung’s Won-Pyo Hong on the Mobile Phone Wars: The Full AsiaD Interview (Video)

South Korea’s Samsung is a key player in the global mobile war between and among Apple, Google, Nokia and others. Here’s its smartphone general.
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iPad as Cellphone?