Phone Services Costing More

Another consequence of the airwaves getting jammed is that the phone bills getting more expensive. It is costing a lot for the phone companies and of course your prices will be going up. One solution is to use internet phones through a different provider instead of a regular phone service. Some things are being done to improve the speed of the networks but the fact remains that it is getting crowded. This problem might be felt more so with people that use their phones for business and communication such as emails and internet fax. It is better for business to use a provider that is designed to help them run their business because they would have features such as call forwarding and toll free numbers. These services will get more people to call and increase business. Though, many internet phone companies offer the service free of charge and you can even use it on Facebook

Privacy Info on Apps

According to a new Federal Trade Commission report, the vast majority of the thousands of mobile apps intended for children offer no privacy information, which makes it hard for parents to make informed decisions about which apps are safe to let their kids use. In July, FTC staff searched Apple's and Google's app marketplaces for the term "kids" and found nearly 12,000 apps. They then randomly selected 200 kids' apps from each store and examined the information provided in the store about each app. They also visited developers' web pages for the apps. According to the FTC, in most cases "staff was unable to determine from the promotion pages whether the apps collected any data at all -- let alone the type of data collected, the purpose of the collection, and who collected or obtained access to the data." Specifically, the promotion pages for Apple apps contained almost no relevant language regarding app data collection or sharing. In the Android market, only three of the app pages examined offered even minimal information beyond the general "permission" statements Google requires. And even those only mentioned that the app provided information to an ad network -- without identifying which information was being collected, by whom, how it was to be used and whether it's shared with other parties.

Personally, after reading any type of privacy statement for a phone service or any type of application, it feels like I understand less about what they were trying to say. One of the changes that need to happen is that the statement needs to be more clear. What do you think?

Government Sticking Nose in Connected Cars

With everything being connected to the internet in one way or another, it has even migrated to cars. This has undoubtedly presented some serious problems to the department of transportation. Personally it seems like having internet phones in cars is somewhat useless. One of the ways that the government is creating guidelines for disabling the features that require people to look at the screen, when the car is moving. There will be other guidelines for the devices that are brought in the car as well as the voice activated features. The well equipped car are already following rules set by the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. The focus has been on getting the driver fast information about where they are going and how they are going to get there. They also want to keep the driver as safe as possible with all the new technology. There was a study done that points to the fact that even hands free calling and talking are a distraction. I would take this information with a grain of salt because the researchers still need to factor in the distractions of talking to the passengers and how much that affects the driving.

Deleted Photos: Not Really

As you may have heard this before, nothing ever gets deleted on the internet and that includes pictures on Facebook that you thought you deleted. The company admitted on Friday that its older systems for storing uploaded content "did not always delete images from content delivery networks in a reasonable period of time even though they were immediately removed from the site," but said it's currently finishing up a newer system that makes the process much quicker. In the meantime, photos that users thought they "deleted" from the social network months or even years ago remain accessible via direct link. This is something to think about before you decide to snap a picture of your friend that you then use a fancy phone service to post of the web. Regret has no place in this world. If you do not want something being dug up by someone in the future, think about what you post.

Kinect for the PC

Can you imagine the possibilities if you could use motion sensors on your PC or laptop? You could browse the Internet by swiping aside windows and tabs. Tablet users already enjoy the sensation of whisking away windows with the flick of a wrist; imagine being able to do the same on a laptop, without touching anything at all. Moreover, users would be able to use multi-touch gestures such as pinch-to-zoom and four-finger flick to quickly and easily navigate websites, without dealing with obnoxious clickpads. British website Electricpig goes a step further, theorizing that one day we'll be able to browse the Web without our hands at all, using eye-tracking software developed for the Kinect. This technology would make everything go much faster. Your could even use internet phone services and connect with people to be able to collaborate on reports and other documents. I am pretty excited to see where it goes and the new ideas that are bound to come with it.