Toxicology ratings of smartphones – how toxic is your phone?

Here is a quality piece from iFixit that performs a chemical analysis on 36 smartphones. Which ones are the cleanest? High technology feels so clean—no coal or steam or mess, just cool aluminum, sleek plastics, and polished glass. But that clean surface hides an interior that is far messier and more toxic…researchers took apart 36 …

The post-PC era: smartphones and tablets use (much) less energy than laptop and desktop PCs

The smartphone revolution is spreading to every corner of the globe and, in 2011, an astounding 450 million smartphones were shipped. But what is the environmental cost of all these phones? A piece from OPower looked into this and found some surprising facts. The first is that the iPhone 5 only uses $0.41/year of energy, …

Buy in bulk and save – AT&T and Verizon offer big savings through family plans

It finally happened, the telecom’s have given up their silly (and greedy) attempts to charge us through the roof for voice and text messages. All you have to do is switch over to their new family plans. It’s the new buy in bulk Costco business model. A few weeks ago, Verizon released their Share Everything …

Smartphone owners love shopping with apps – use them on average 17x month

From the Nielsen Wire: …Nearly half of American smartphone owners (47%) used shopping apps in June 2012, according to Nielsen.  Overall, 45 million smartphone owners used apps in the Shopping/Commerce category, accessing shopping apps 17 times on average during June 2012.     More analysis: eBay, Amazon, and Groupon dominate with 60% of all uniques. …

Romney campaign release ‘Mitt’s VP’ smartphone app – instantaneous alerts for VP choice

Mitt Romney’s campaign announced Tuesday that supporters can sign up to be the first to learn of the presumptive Republican nominee’s vice presidential choice by downloading a new smartphone app. “The first official way to learn the name of the Republican vice presidential candidate is by using our new ‘Mitt’s VP’ app,” said Romney digital …

Ikea adds smartphone apps and augmented reality to its newest catalog

Ikea prints 211 million copies of its product catalog every year. That’s more than 20 times the population of Sweden, the home of the build-it-yourself furniture empire. These are impressive numbers for a print catalog in a digital world, but Ikea is now changing with the times with a head-first dive into augmented reality. “A …

R&D spending by the big three in smartphones – Nokia, Google, Apple

A fascinating graphic and the article it is pulled from.     Nokia led the wireless revolution in the 1990s and set its sights on ushering the world into the era of smartphones. Now that the smartphone era has arrived, the company is racing to roll out competitive products as its stock price collapses and …

New stadium rules for NFL games – free wifi, unlimited noise, more instant replay

Professional football, America’s most popular and profitable sport, is preparing to tackle a glaring weakness: Stadiums are increasingly empty. As part of sweeping changes designed to give teams more flexibility to fill their seats, the National Football League is watering down its controversial TV “blackout” rule. And this season, for the first time, fans in …

Apple Adds Gay and Lesbian Couple Icons to iOS 6

The new version of Apple’s iPhone operating system comes with new emojis, the popular emoticons that are often used in texting and email, especially by young kids and nerdy adults like me. Two of these new pictograms represent gay and lesbian couples for the first time. The icons are placed next to the previous relationship-related emojis …