Banks Rush to Fix Security Flaws in Mobile Apps

Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America Corp. and USAA are issuing updates to some of their wireless banking applications to fix security flaws. Some of the applications store usernames, passwords and financial information as "clear text," the Wall Street Journal reports.

The problem only points out the greater need for security and privacy protection as software ecosystems become more complex.

Banks Rush to Fix Security Flaws in Wireless Apps - WSJ.com (subscription required)

US News & World Report Goes Digital Only

U.S. News & World Report is going digital-only in 2011. Its last regular print issue will be published in December 2010.

Going forward, the magazine's non-subscription print offerings will be for newsstand sale and targeted distribution. That includes the college and grad guides, as well as hospital and personal finance guides. The magazine also says it will publish four other newsstand special editions, focusing on history, religion and some of the other subjects that have been a success for us in the past.

Poynter Online - Romenesko

Clearwire Issues "Going Concern" Warning

As required by law, Clearwire has filed an "on-going concern" statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"Our ability to continue to operate our business is substantially dependent on our ability to raise additional capital in the near term," the SEC filing (10Q) says.  "Our expected continued losses from operations and the uncertainty about our ability to obtain sufficient additional capital raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern."

The filing notes that during the first nine months of fiscal 2010, Clearwire incurred $1.55 billion of net losses. The company consumed $840.8 million of cash in operating activities and spent $1.96 billion for capital expenditures.

"As of September 30, 2010, we had available cash and short-term investments of approximately $1.38 billion," Clearwire said. "Based on our current projections, we do not expect our available cash and short-term investments to be sufficient to cover our estimated liquidity needs for the next twelve months."

That's why Clearwire has been out looking for debt, equity or spectrum sales for financing. "Without additional financing sources, we forecast that our cash and short-term investments would be depleted as early as the middle of 2011."

"Thus, we will be required to raise additional capital in the near-term in order to continue operations. Further, we also need to raise substantial additional capital over the long-term to fully implement our business plans," the filing says.

read the whole filing here

Take Viewing Breaks When Watching 3D Sports, ESPN Says

Researchers at ESPN have been testing user reaction to three-dimensional sports programming. While some viewers in an ESPN lab study experienced eye strain and headaches while watching the soccer World Cup in 3D, the adverse effects were reduced after viewers took breaks, ESPN says.

"We think that breaks are a good thing for 3D viewing," says Duane Varan, executive director of the Disney Media and Advertising Lab.

Most adverse effects are reported on the first day that a viewer watches 3D programming, and are reduced in subsequent days as viewers get more accustomed to it.

Light Reading Cable - Video - 3DTV Eye Strain? Take a Break, ESPN Says

U.S. International Calling Estimated at Nearly $24 Billion

About 25 percent of U.S adults make international calls, and of those who spend money to make such calls, the average spend is approximately $34 every month, according to Harris Interactive.

With an estimated 235 million U.S. adults, this works out to roughly 58.8 million Americans spending nearly $1.98 billion on international calls outside of the U.S. monthly and $23.8 billion annually.

For adults who make international calls, the majority do so using a landline (51 percent), either a traditional landline service provider (42 percent) or a VoIP service such as Vonage (12 percent). Another 44 percent make international phone calls using their mobile phones.

About 25 percent of those who make international phone calls do so using their computer through software based services like Skype, while 20 percent use calling cards.

New Harris Interactive Survey Projects 58.8 Million Americans Now Calling Abroad and Spending $23.8 Billion Annually - FierceVoIP

BroadCloud Simplifies Hosted UC and IP Telephony

It sometimes is difficult to keep clear the distinctions between hosted and "cloud-based" services, but for BroadSoft, the difference between "BroadWorks" and BroadCloud" is the difference between a service provider hosting the app servers in their own network and having BroadSoft host the apps "in the cloud."

As you might imagine, there is a key difference in terms of how fast a customer can get a branded service up and running, the degree of resilience and the amount of integration work that might have to be done to get a BroadWorks solution up and running.

BroadCloud will include BroadSoft’s current SaaS products, PacketSmart and Casabi, as well as new unified communications services including instant messaging and presence; "BroadCloud Video," a high-definition, always-on, meet-me videoconferencing service, "BroadCloud Web Collaboration," a suite of web-based collaboration options, including screen sharing, a document library, chat, audio and video support and whiteboarding.

BroadCloud PacketSmart is a network assessment and monitoring service, while BroadCloud Casabi enables the delivery of group SMS, personalized content and tools that help keep families organized.

US Smartphone Penetration Leads Europe

It is common for observers to decry some way in which the United States lags other regions by some measure of Internet, broadband or wireless adoption. Sometimes that is accurate, but only for a time. In other areas, the U.S. adoption rate exceeds that of other regions. Smartphone devices and applications and Internet apps provide examples.

"It’s strange that the US, which was light years behind Europe, which itself was light years behind Japan, is now the hotbed of change where this innovation originates," an opinion piece in the Register argues.

US smartphones – Once you’ve had Android there’s no going back

Both "Open" and "Closed" Information Models Work on Web

Two fundamentally different models have competed in Web-based information markets.

In one model, an information provider formats the presentation of information, selling advertising space to another party. These sites want search engines to find them. This model involves little gatekeeping of the user. Much of the open commercial Web operates this way.

In the other model, an information provider sells passwords to users. The passwords either allow unlimited access to a wide range of material, or they allow the vendor to track usage and require incremental payments roughly proportional to the material delivered and received. The passwords are a form of gatekeeping, and these sites generally do not allow search to threaten that gatekeeping ability.

The recent testing of "paywalls" for newspaper content will shift some content from an "open" to a "gatekeeper" mode. Will it work? It likely depends on the uniqueness of the content, and whether users can find reasonable substitutes elsewhere on the open Web.

Both ad-supported and "paywall" models can work, but the latter really does require uniqueness, one might argue. The Wall Street Journal has been behind a paywall all along, and has been the salient example of a gated approach that seems to work.

Gateway economics Virulent Word of Mouse

Study Suggests 20% Would Cut Broadband Access Cord and Go Mobile

About 20 percent of fixed broadband access users surveyed by Nokia Siemens Networks in France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom want to "cut the cord" and buy mobile broadband service instead, the Nokia Siemens Networks "Mobile Broadband Study 2010" has found.

More than half of mobile broadband users say they are interested in high-speed mobile broadband or LTE and half of respondents report they already use mobile broadband, mostly on their phones.

Study shows spending on mobile broadband up 40% year on year | Nokia Siemens Networks

Google Instant for Mobile

How Smartphone Users See Themselves, How Others See Them

I'm not sure this cartoon is right up there with the classic "if operating systems were airlines," but it's funny.

For many of you, the "operating systems as airlines" references won't make sense. You weren't born when they were used.

For some of you, the depiction of airlines will make perfect sense. Read it here:  http://webaugur.com/bibliotheca/field_stock/os-airlines.html

What Does "4G" Mean, Now that ITU Has Defined it Out of Existence?

The International Telecommunications Union has settled on a definition of "fourth generation" networks that requires 100 Mbps in a mobile deployment and 1 Gbps in a fixed deployment. None of the actual 4G networks now in operation or planned are actually going to run that fast. So now users have to decide whether standards are set in the marketplace or by standards bodies.

Xbox LIVE Gold Members Watch 1 Hour a Day of Streaming Video

About 42 percent of Xbox LIVE Gold members in the US are watching an average of an hour of television and movies on their Xbox, every single day.

1 Billion Entertainment Hours spent on Xbox LIVE every month

Two Hours a Day of HDTV Per User Will Require 548 Times More Access Bandwidth

Akamai President David Kenny says that in five years the average user will consume two hours a day of high-definition video. To accommodate this insatiable demand, the Internet will need to increase capacity 548 times from where it is today.

That could have all sorts of implications. People might have to pay much-higher fees for bandwidth. People might refuse to pay, and limit their consumption of HD video. People might decide linear delivery and on-demand consumption (store and forward) actually provides high value at reasonable cost, and wind up watching most of their HD video on linear services that have digital video recorder features.

Application providers or service providers might come up with new ways of alleviating the bandwidth necessary to consume on-demand video. Advertising might wind up being a lot more important than it is today. Or all of the above, and other steps, might have to be taken.

Digital Primetime Arrives Just in Time to Crush the Net

Elections Have Consequences: Net Neutrality Might be One of Them

Elections have clear consequences, where it comes to the telecommunications industry, because of the foundational role of regulations in shaping the business. So it probably is noteworthy that 95 Congressional and Senate candidates who signed a pledge supporting "network neutrality" lost their races on Nov. 2, 2010.

The pledge, circulated by a group called the "Progressive Change Campaign Committee," was signed by all 95 candidates, and all 95 lost their races.

Net neutrality gets election night shellacking

4% Use Check-In Services

About four percent of online adults use a service such as Foursquare or Gowalla that allows them to share their location with friends and to find others who are nearby, according to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life project. On any given day, one percent of Internet users are using these services.

In a May 2010 survey, five percent of adult Internet users said they had used such a site.

Some seven percent of adults who go online with their mobile phone use a location-based service, the report suggests. About eight percent of online adults ages 18 to 29 use location-based services, significantly more than online adults in any other age group.

24% Provide Mobile Social Network Updates

Mobile status updating services have grown in popularity over the past few years, from six percent of online adults saying they had used such a service in August 2008 to 24 percent in September 2010.

Related internet activities | Pew Internet & American Life Project

Facebook "Single Sign On" Deepens Mobile Integration

 Facebook's new "Single Sign On" capability means smartphone owners can sign up once on Facebook and then use those credentials on the device for any other application that supports the "single sign on" feature.

This works on any Android phone or any iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch device that supports multitasking (most iOS4 devices).

The Facebook Blog

Time Warner May Consider Longer Delay for Netflix, Redbox

Time Warner may consider extending the 28-day additional release window delay for new release movies. In recent days, Time Warner has allowed rental services such as Netflix Inc. and Coinstar Inc.’s Redbox kiosks to receive its DVDs 28 days earlier than content can be streamed to online viewers.

Time Warner apparently sees evidence that the 28-day delay has the expected effect: it pushes users to other modes of consumption, such as buying a DVD, which is probably the key upside for the studio. And that has Time Warner taking a look at the merits of a longer release window for streaming access.

“So far the 28-day window has clearly been a success versus no delay,” Time Warner Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bewkes says. “The question of whether we ought to go longer is very much under scrutiny. It may well be a good idea."

All of this is important for video distributors as the release window--the amount of time lapsing between the end of theatrical exhibition and first availability through other channels--largely determines the volume of buys or rentals and the prices at which views cost. Delaying online viewing appears to have the effect of increasing DVD sales.

Time Warner May Consider Longer Delay for Netflix, Redbox - BusinessWeek

Windows Phone 7 Seems to be a Top App Developer Platform

Among publishers and developers, iPhone, Android, iPad, RIM and Windows Mobile were the
top five mobile application platforms of choice in 2010, according to Millennial Media. The Android, iPad, Windows Mobile, and Symbian platforms saw the most growth from 2009. The iPhone and RIM platforms saw year-over-year decreases.

Windows Phone 7 is tied for second place with iPad as the platform that will be added to most publishers’ and developers’ plates in the coming year. At 29 percent interest, Android is challenging the Apple iPhone as the top development platform.

Of those advertisers and marketers developing applications, the entertainment vertical is the most-active sponsor of new mobile apps, followed by technology, media, retail and consumer packaged good verticals.

Only 6.7 percent of developers use an internal sales force, as you might guess. Instead, developers sell using app networks, and rely on advertising networks to generate revenue.

The results were generated by surveys of  600 digital and mobile industry professionals in November
2009 and August 2010. In 2010, 41 percent of survey respondents classified themselves as an agency advertiser or marketer, 30 percent as an application developer, and 29 percent as a publisher.

read more here