New Google Docs App for Android

The new "Google Docs" app for Android allows users to filter and search for their content across any Google account, then jump straight into editing docs using the online mobile editors. The app also allows users to easily share items with contacts on their phones, right from within the app.

The Docs app also allows users to upload content from their phones and open documents directly from Gmail. Users can add a widget to their home screens for easy access to three core tasks: jumping to your starred documents, taking a photo to upload, or creating a new document with one tap.
Using the app and the phone’s camera, users can turn photos with text into editable Google documents. Just create a new "Document from Photo" or select the camera icon from the widget, and a converted document will appear in the user's documents list shortly after the user snaps the picture.

One immediate use case: all those conference attendees who snap photos of slides during presentations now can turn the pictures into text documents for later sharing.

Users can also convert photos already stored on your phone by sharing them with the Google Docs app.

Introducing the new Google Docs app for Android

CenturyLink Buys Savvis

CenturyLink is acquiring Savvis, allowing creation of a business unit that will operate 48 data centers located in North America, Europe, and Asia with more than 1.9 million square feet of gross floor space; a national 207,000 route mile fiber network, a 190,000 mile global access network; and a customer list that includes a majority of the Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies.

That is a dramatically different customer profile from the legacy rural telecom operations that have been a staple for CenturyLink, and might provide more evidence that CenturyLink plans a future that is quite different from its past. The acquisition of Qwest brought CenturyLink a handful of larger metro markets and the Qwest national and global operations as well.

Some might have questioned the fit between CenturyLink's legacy customer base and the arguably-different profile of the Qwest enterprise and metro markets customer bases. But the Savvis buy indicates that CenturyLink plans to grow beyond its historic rural carrier emphasis to reposition at least part of the company's operations in non-traditional markets and customer spaces.

"With the addition of Savvis, CenturyLink will achieve global scale as a managed hosting and colocation provider and will accelerate its ability to deliver quality managed hosting and cloud capabilities to its business customers," the company says.

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Cable Ops Want Adaptive Streaming

New mobile and untethered device support is a key reason those capabilities are important.

How Do You Take on Paypal?

PayPal has a mobile app. Venmo thinks it has an app that works better for peer-to-peer payments. And Paypal expects its mobile payment app to be used for $2 billion worth of purchases in 2011.

You might not think that making a payment app "social" will be enough to carve out new space in mobile payments, but Venmo expects to try. First of all, Venmo will make it easy for users to review their history of payments. Second, Venmo will allow users to share the history with other people.

When you go to pay someone in Venmo's app, it automatically assumes that you want to share your payments (the what, not the how much) with the world on its site and your Facebook account. The social aspects of Venmo are its major differences from PayPal.

In some ways, its an analogy to "check in."

Venmo: Fighting the good fight against the online payment giants

Verizon Wireless Starts Mobile Vending Machine Payments Business

Verizon Wireless and USA Technologies are teaming up to enable mobile payments at vending machines nationwide. Some will consider this application a form of machine-to-machine communications or the "Internet of things."

Others will say it is more a way for Verizon Wireless to insert itself into the mobile payments value chain. Either way, the deal is a sign that both M2M mobile revenues and mobile payments are viewed as a practical, achievable new revenue stream for some mobile service providers.

Verizon Wireless aims to corner mobile payments industry

Apple Hints That It Will Release Turn-By-Turn Navigation On The iPhone

"Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years," the company says. See http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/04/27location_qa.html.

That suggests Apple is building its own turn-by-turn navigation system and service. That presumably will have some implications for the navigation service offered by Garmin, for example, representing about $10 billion in annual revenue.

Apple also would level the playing field with Android devices and Google Maps, whose turn-by-turn navigation application, available for free use on some Android devices and mobile networks, has proven a significant draw for some users.

Apple Hints That It Will Release Turn-By-Turn Navigation On The iPhone

Google Makes Google Apps Easier for Small Business to Buy

Google has created what it calls the "Flexible Plan," a new $5 per user per month pricing option which requires no contractual commitment, designed to be easier for small businesses to buy and use.

With this plan, businesses can add or remove users as necessary and will automatically be billed for the proper amount, Google says. The current pricing option of $50 per user per year with a one-year commitment, will become the "Annual Plan."

Google also is eliminating upfront payments for new customers to make it easier for them to manage their cash flow. Whether they choose the Flexible or Annual Plan, customers will pay at the end of each month. Google also will offer direct debit in the United States, United Kingdom, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Spain to make payment even easier.

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Helping small businesses start and manage Google Apps for Business

High Teen Computer Use Might Have a Downside

A study of Canadian teenagers by epidemiology PhD candidate Valerie Carson has found that high computer use was associated with approximately 50 per cent increased engagement with "smoking, drunkenness, non-use of seatbelts, cannabis and illicit drug use, and unprotected sex." High television use was also associated with a modestly increased engagement in these activities.

The study might suggest that "seeing people engaged in a behavior is a way of learning that behavior," says Carson. "Since adolescents are exposed to considerable screen time – over 4.5 hours on average each day – they're constantly seeing images of behaviours they can then potentially adopt."

Teens who spend time online not dorks after all – study • The Register

Smart Phones $80 to $100, Globally, in 2012?

James Bruce, lead mobile strategist at ARM, says smart phones now are getting so affordable, at the low end, that they will push feature phones to the side. Vendors are already showing U.S. carriers smart phones at $70 per unit.

Bruce believes this will translate to low-end smartphones with price tags of $80 to $100 in 2012, for consumers worldwide.

Light Reading Mobile - 4G/LTE

How Will Comcast Compete, in the Future?

Sky to Build Own U.K. Broadband Access Network?

Sky, the U.K. ISP, has become the first major U.K. ISP to sign up for a duct-and-pole-sharing trial with BT. Typically, agreements of that sort are necessary when a service provider is getting ready to build a new network, so one must assume Sky is getting ready to build a facilities-based fixed network.

ISPs in the United Kingdom also have the ability to buy wholesale services from Openreach, rather than investing in their own access facilities. So the strategic choices for U.K. ISPs are the typical "build versus buy" alternatives. If it builds its own access network, Sky will have more control over its own pricing and packaging, as it will not be limited, cost-wise, by the built-in wholesale cost of its inputs.

If Sky wants to under-price BT retail products, for example, it can more easily do so if it fully controls price inputs on its owned infrastructure. Likewise, if Sky wants to create new packages that are differentiated from BT's, or those of wholesale customers using the BT wholesale access products, Sky can more easily do so on its owned infrastructure.

BT also signed up business internet service provider Call Flow for a three-month trial to test out the system and assess "real costs" connected with ISPs deploying their own broadband network using BT's wholesale "Openreach" infrastructure.

Sky in surprise duct-and-pole-sharing trial with BT

"Average" U.S. Broadband Speed 5.1 Mbps

The overall average (presumably the arithmetic "mean,") broadband access speed for the United States as a whole in the fourth quarter of 2010 was 5.1 Mbps, according to Akamai.  Consistent with the prior three quarters, the "average" connection speed was exceeded by 21 states and the District of Columbia.

Across the whole country, 43 states and the District of Columbia saw average connection speeds increase year-over-year, with growth rates ranging from a significant 44 percent increase in Montana to a scant 0.7 percent increase in New York. For the seven states that saw average connection speeds decline year-over-year, the losses were fairly modest, ranging from a drop of 0.2 percent in Pennsylvania to a drop of 8.5 percent in Mississippi, Akamai says.

The overall average peak connection speed calculated by Akamai for the United States as a whole for the fourth
quarter was just over 20 Mbps. This was once again met or exceeded by 21 states and the District of Columbia.

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Nearly 100 Million HH Online By 2016

An estimated 99.4 million U.S. households will be online by the end of 2016, of which 97.9 million will have broadband services, according to a new forecast from Interpublic Group's Magna Global.

As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2010, about 84.7 million homes, or 71.5% of the total, were online, while 90 percent of these homes accessed the Web using broadband services.

Magna now predicts that 61.9 million U.S. homes, or 50 percent of the total, will subscribe to DVR services by the end of 2016, which would be up from 39.2 million (33.5 percent) at the end of last year.

By 2016, Magna expects that video On demand, including all over-the-top services, will reach 70.1 million households, or about 57 percent of all TV-viewing households.

MediaPost Publications Nearly 100 Million HH Online By '16, Mobile Ads To Grow 60%

Google Releases Smartphone Data

How Do Users Find Content?

While search still represents 41 percent of the sources leading users to content, social apps are gaining, and now represent about 11 percent of sources, according to a new study by Outbrain.

Of six content verticals examined, stories in the news, entertainment and lifestyle categories are the most likely to receive traffic from social sources.

Traffic coming from social media sources has the highest tendency to bounce, or result in very-brief stays on a site.

Readers who go from one content site to another, moving from one content site to another, are most likely to be engaged in what they’re reading, presumably because they are already in content consumption mode.

Facebook delivers a more diverse audience than Twitter, Outbrain suggests.

Outbrain Study Gives Insight Into Content Discovery Trends