Craig McCaw to Resign as Clearwire Chairman - WSJ.com

Craig McCaw is leaving the board of Clearwire Corp., resigning his position as chairman of the company he founded. It isn't clear what significance the move might have.

McCaw has not be active at the company for some time, it appears. McCaw's Eagle River Holdings LLC still holds a four-percent stake in the company. But that is no longer very significant. Google owns about three percent. Clearwire owns about 14 percent.

Intel owns about 11 percent. Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Brighthouse own ab out 15 percent between them.

Sprint holding 57 percent ownership, though the terms of its ownership agreement deny it control.

Clearwire's national network plan remains less than fully funded, and the company has enough cash to get it through the year, but obviously additional capital will have to be raised. Some continue to believe that Sprint will ultimately wind up owning the whole company. Most probably have believed all along Clearwire would ultimately be sold, one way or the other.

Whether McCaw's departure means anything special is impossible to determine, at this point. But all three Sprint executives resigned their seats earlier in 2010, a move that most observers thought was an indication of change.

Most executives in the wireless business would agree that one fewer national providers of 4G service would not be a bad thing, given the wireless market's maturation, as well as the existence of no less than five national 4G or 4G-speed networks.

Just about any way one looks at it, the Clearwire-Sprint relationship is complicated and unstable.

http://investors.clearwire.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=198722&p=irol-sec

95% of Twitter Accounts Created Since January 2009

Fully 95 percent of the current Twitter accounts were created after January of 2009, according to an analysis by Sysomos. That is some serious scaling.

The other significant finding is that roughly 22 percent of users produce 90 percent of the tweets.

If you are familiar with the Pareto Principle, that is precisely what one would expect to find.

95% of Twitter Accounts Created Since January 2009

Why Are Twitter Users So Attractive To Marketers?

Marketers like active Tweeters for a couple of obvious reasons. They are heavily brand conscious.

More than 40 percent of those who use Twitter monthly or more frequently agree with that owning the best brand is important to them — twice the number of total U.S. online consumers.

They spend more money, as well. People who tweet monthly or more report that they spent almost $870 online in the past three months, almost $300 more than the average U.S. online consumer.

They post their opinions. Not only are people who tweet monthly or more tweeting about products and services; they are also sharing their opinions much more frequently than the average U.S. consumer, and through a variety of channels.

This in and of itself is reason to invest in additional human resources to respond to tweets directed at your brand. While their reach may not be solely through Twitter, you can be assured that what they say will carry great magnitude as they infiltrate other social networks (both offline and online).

The Data Digest: Why Are Twitter Users So Attractive To Marketers? | Forrester Blogs

Android: SMS Popup

"SMS Popup" for Android is a free app that provides more-prominent text message alerts.

Once installed users are given a series of options of how you can interact with incoming texts. You can select when the notification should appear, whether it should mark incoming texts as read so you don’t have to fiddle with the notification bar, have a delete button appear, reply button, quick reply button where you can set custom pre-typed text messages, and you can even opt to have your text spoken to you aloud thanks to Google’s built in text to speech capabilities.

Here is the download site. I'm not sure whether it is offered through the Android Market. http://code.google.com/p/android-smspopup/

Android: SMS Popup makes interacting with SMS easy

http://lifehacker.com/5719572/sms-popup-makes-quick-preset-sms-replies-easy-on-android

Chinese Bot Attacks Androids

A Trojan Horse app capable of stealing data from infected Android smartphones, and bundled with botnet-style functionality, has appeared in China, The Register reports.

The mobile malware, dubbed "Geinimi", which usually poses as gaming applications, has been uploaded onto third-party Chinese Android app markets. If installed, the malware sends personal data from compromised devices (specifically device identifiers, location information and list of installed applications) to a remote server.

Chinese bot will slurp your Droid • The Register

Has the Internet Moved Pricing Power to the Consumer? (comScore Voices)

"It’s clear that retailers have gone far beyond the use of paid online display advertising to cost-effectively communicate deal pricing information to consumers, while at the same time consumers have now become accustomed to using online tools to root out best prices," says Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman. That statement is hard to argue with, most might agree.

In many ways, the aggressive acceptance and use of these tools by consumers means that they can easily find the most attractive price for any product and, as such, pricing power has surely moved from retailers to consumers, says Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman.

Such observations, including the notion that "brands have lost control to consumers," are catchy, seem to resonate and capture something of the drift of the times. But the statements are not so accurate as statements of fact, one might argue. Consumers do not actually have pricing power, retailers do. Consumers do not define brands, brands do. That is not to say that in nearly every market, brands must deal with more powerful word of mouth than they used to, and that retailers have to respond more actively to price discovery mechanisms that make pricing more transparent than before.

But brands haven't lost control of their brands, or retailers control of their own pricing decisions. Markets simply are more transparent and "liquid" than they used to be, especially regarding pricing and information about alternate retail channels.

Has the Internet Moved Pricing Power to the Consumer?

Google as a Telco?

Google has assembled all the pieces it needs to be a mobile provider like Verizon, AT&T (T, Fortune 500) or Sprint (S, Fortune 500), CNN Money notes. It's an irresistible storyline. But as the story concludes, though Google has the funds and the resources to get it done, it probably would not want to.

On the other hand, having all the piece parts ready to go is a helpful negotiating position when dealing with its mobile service provider partners. "All that's left is the will to do it," the story suggests.

It's an intriguing line of speculation that has only gotten stronger foundations over the past couple of years, as Google has fostered the Android platform, for example.

But the story, with an intriguing headline, concludes with the thought that Google just likes to push at boundaries, sometimes, experimenting with things that might or might not prove fruitful. But as a headline, it works.

Google could compete head-on with Verizon, AT&T