Mobile phone use is surging among U.S. adults, and most handset owners are using the devices to share information about their whereabouts, according to a new study from Pew Research Center.

The percentage of adults who own mobile phones now matches the percentage who own computers, says Pew in a study released today. And more than 80 percent of them say they use voice calls to share their location. That may be good news for startups such as Foursquare, which is a mobile application that lets users display their location to friends, because it shows people want convenient ways to coordinate meet-ups.

Some 45 percent of mobile phone users call to check in, or to check someone's location daily, according to the survey of 2,252 U.S. adults conducted in April and May. The activity is only second to calling to just say hello and chat, done by 48 percent of the respondents daily.

The study also discovered that U.S. mobile phone users like to keep their handsets close by at night. Two-thirds of American adults sleep with their phone right on or next to their bed. Heavy texters are more likely to sleep next to their phone, and the numbers of those users are on the rise. An average user sends and receives 10 texts a day, up from five text messages just eight months ago, the study found. Some 72 percent of adults 18 and over with cell phones send and receive text messages, up from 58 percent surveyed in December of 2007.

Last year I wrote this profile of Fusion-io, a startup whose data storage technology so impressed our readers, that they voted it the top up-and-coming innovative company in an online poll that's also known for having Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak on board as its chief scientist. Its been interesting to check in on the company's progress since then.

Its latest news came, from Dell Inc., which said it will offer Fusion-io's so-called ioDrives as a build-to-order option on three lines of its servers. This would mark the third company to offer Fusion-io's technology on its servers, the other two being Hewlett-Packard CO. and IBM Corp.

Fusion-io's technology uses flash memory, essentially the same chips used to store music in an MP3 player, to replace the power-hogging hard drives in high performance storage gear. These Storage Area Networks, or SANS, are widely used by large businesses for financial databases. The key problem with hard-drive based SANS is that you have to buy storage for a lot more data than you actually have, which pushes up not only the cost, but the amount of power required to operate it, which adds an extra layer of cost.

I talked with Rick White, Fusion-io's chief marketing officer yesterday and he said it's not uncommon for Fusion-io customers to replace between seven to 10 hard-drive based servers with one one server with an ioDrive added in. That can mean a lot savings.

Dell's relationship with Fusion-io goes back a few years. It was an early investor in the company, and had been offering ioDrive-enabled servers only occasionally when customers requested them. "In terms of numbers it was a niche product for us," said Paul Prince, CTO of Dell's Enterprise Product Goup. Steadily demand for ioDrives grew, so much so that Dell decided to re-cast its relationship with Fusion-io, and make the ioDrive an official build-to-order option on its R710, R810 and m610x servers. "We view this as a natural evolution of the partnership, Prince said.

Aside from investments from Dell, New Enterprise Ventures and Sumitomo Ventures, Fusino-io was also notable last year for a $48 million round of funding announced in April of 2009 from LightSpeed Venture Partners. I said it once and I'll say it again: It's a company worth watching.

The North American handset market has just gotten more crowded. On July 28, INQ Mobile, owned by Hong Kong-based carrier Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., said it will start selling its INQ Chat 3G phone through Telus and Koodo Mobile, both based in Canada.

The device will boast a Qwerty keyboard, pile all messages into one inbox, and feature a fast browser and social apps such as Facebook. Telus hasn't disclosed pricing. Koodo expects to sell the phone for about $50, according to INQ.

At this price, INQ should compete with low-end handsets from Research In Motion and Samsung, said INQ CEO Frank Meehan. "We are going into RIM's heartland," he said in an interview. "We are coming in with a device that's really aggressively priced, and with bells and whistles."

For INQ, the U.S might be next. The company is in discussions with U.S. wireless carriers, and hopes to introduce a smartphone in this market in 2011, Meehan said. He didn't disclose which carriers he is talking to. INQ is within months of unveiling a smartphone based on Android operating system developed by a consortium of companies lead by Google.

With Canada under its belt, INQ will be selling its phones in 12 countries, including the U.K. and India.

One of the biggest trends in the world of video games is microtransactions, which give content providers the ability to sell virtual goods such as clothing and car modifications for anything from a few cents to a few dollars.
New York-based Live Gamer appears to be gaining more traction in this market by handling many of the technical aspects of such transactions. The company announced today a deal to power Electronic Arts' virtual goods platform. Live Gamer announced earlier this month that it also had signed up game publishers THQ and RealNetworks. Through its partners, it now supports over 83 million users in 23 countries. FInancial terms of the deals were not disclosed.
Traditional game companies have largely sat on the sidelines while watching the rapid rise of social gaming companies such as Zynga, which lets people play for free and then buy virtual goods in a game with real money. EA in November purchased social gaming company Playfish for $275 million in cash and $25 million in equity. EA will pay another $100 million if Playfish meets targets at the end of 2011.
Researcher DFC Intelligence projects the U.S. and European market for virtual items in free-to-play games will grow to more than $3 billion by 2015 from $800 million in 2009. Companies are moving to quickly get into this market by outsourcing the technical aspects of adopting a virtual economy, such as the ability to create and sell the merchandise and track the trading of the virtual goods. Live Gamer lets game companies integrate their service into an in-house e-commerce platform, or work through its own system.

Just a couple of weeks ago, on June 29, it looked like Sony would have to wait a few months to offer the Hulu Plus subscription service through some of its products. Sony announced today that certain PlayStation 3 owners will get access to the $9.99-a-month video-subscription plan immediately.
Here's the catch: Only people in the U.S. who already subscribe to Sony's new $49.99-a-year PlayStation Plus network subscription service will be invited to sign up for Hulu Plus. The PlayStation Network has 50 million registered users but Sony has been trying to increase revenue with a subscription service, which offers select downloads and game trials. A wider rollout to all U.S. PlayStation 3 users will come later.
The service also is available on Apple iPhones, iPads and iPod touch devices, and certain Samsung televisions and Blu-ray players.
Hulu Plus offers viewers more content than they get from a free Web version, which is being limited to only a few recent episodes of shows. Some early testers of Hulu Plus have complained they are still being forced to watch the commercials that subsidize the paid site.

Amazon.com Inc., the world's biggest Internet retailer, doesn't plan to cede ground in its growing digital books business.
To that end, it's adding features to the application that make its digital books available on competing devices -- a move designed to ensure it won't lose sales even as consumers read books on rivals' machines and Apple makes enhancements to its own digital book application.
The Seattle-based company announced that Kindle books on Apple Inc.'s iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch will be able to offer embedded video and audio clips. The move comes just days after Apple added new features to its iBook application for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad devices, including over-the-air syncing of bookmarks and notes, easy PDF viewing and new font choices. The online retailer quickly followed that with another announcement June 28, that it had begun offering its Kindle app in Google Inc.'s Android Market for Android-powered phones such as the Sprint EVO made by HTC and Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S line of phones, which will be carried by all four major U.S. carriers this summer.
Analysts have said dedicated eBook reader devices such as the Kindle could lose ground in coming years to devices like the iPad, which offer full color screens and are capable of doing other tasks, including viewing video.
Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos has said the company plans to release a new, sleeker version of the Kindle, with an upgraded screen, in August. Amazon slashed the price of the Kindle 2 to $189 from $259 on June 21 after retailer Barnes & Noble cut the price of its Nook reader to $199.
Even as Amazon attempts to maintain its hefty market share for dedicated reader devices, the Apple move makes clear that Amazon sees the real threat coming from all manner of devices that can sell books, music and other content that helped make it a household name. Its strategy to make the Kindle application not only available on rival devices such as the iPad but more sophisticated could pay off in the short term as it readies its own color-enabled device. So far, Bezos has been tentative about the color market, and most recently said an LCD-type device is a long ways off because it can't be read well in the sunlight.

Blockbuster is expanding its mobile efforts. On June 23, Verizon Wireless announced that Blockbuster on Demand, an online movie buying and rental service, will become available on the new Motorola Droid X.

Blockbuster on Demand has already been available on T-Mobile's HTC HD2 since March. In late 2009, Blockbuster launched an app allowing iPhone and iPod touch users to rent and buy movies.

Many of the company's competitors are going after mobile phones as well. Apple lets iPhone, iPod and iPad users rent movies from iTunes. Monthly rentals service Netflix has recently released its iPad application. The top-grossing app on iTunes right now comes from yet another competitor, MobiTV, which streams news and sports onto the iPhone.

The influx of rivals ranging from Redbox to Netflix has been one reason behind Blockbuster's recent struggles with its rental stores business. In the first quarter, Blockbuster's revenues slid 15.6% year over year, to $939 million. The company will hold its annual shareholders' meeting on June 24. And the competition is quickly moving from the rental stores, TVs and PCs onto mobile devices.

Skype's low-cost calling service may soon find its way onto a consumer electronic device near you. On June 23, Skype unveiled a feature that makes it easier for developers to weave its communications tools into such devices as picture frames and TVs.

The company rolled out its SkypeKit, which is a set of tools needed to integrate Skype into various devices. Initially, access to SkypeKit will be available by invitation only.

Until now, hardware manufacturers have had to ask Skype whether they can integrate its service into its devices. Skype would provide its approved partners with the software code necessary to build the feature in. Partners Panasonic and Samsung have already integrated Skype into their Web-enabled TV

Now, Skype is opening up this special code to anybody. Any maker of consumer electronics can take this code and integrate it into its gadgets. That should make Skype available on many more devices.

But there are drawbacks to this move as well. With the release of SkypeKit, Skype is relinquishing some control over the Skype experience. It will be up to hardware makers to make sure Skype users have no problems using the software. Poor implementations could, potentially, affect Skype's brand.

The upside could be substantial, however. The number of Web-connected devices that could, potentially, use Skype, is on the rise. Gearmaker Ericsson recently predicted there will be 50 billion Web-connected devices by 2020. "Our goal is to expand Skype across multiple platforms and empower third-party device makers and desktop software developers to embed Skype into consumer electronics devices and desktop applications," Jonathan Christensen, general manager for platform at Skype says in an e-mail. "This can go as far as the imaginations of our developers."

Though AT&T made headlines when a glitch in its Web site accidentally exposed e-mail addresses of 114,000 iPad owners, such Web-site issues are "common," says McAfee CEO George Kurtz [http://siblog.mcafee.com/cto/i-have-an-ipad%e2%80%a6i-admit-it/].

In fact, the glitch is one of the easier security flaws to fix, Kurtz, who is also an iPad user, wrote in today's blog. "I would guess that this application vulnerability gained so much attention because, after all, it is Apple we are talking about," he wrote. "The hype around Apple products - like the new iPhone and iPad - is amazing. However, the reality is this type of vulnerability isn't really news and happens all day long."

The FBI has started an investigation into the situation, according to Bloomberg[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aZQAK9nEfKB4]. Still, "... this is less about vulnerability with the iPad and more about common problems that we routinely see when performing application security assessments," Kurtz wrote.
-Olga Kharif

There's no link between cell phone use and occurrence of some types of cancer, according to the world's largest study examining the subject that came out on May 17. "An increased risk of brain cancer is not established from the data," Christopher Wild, director of International Agency for Research on Cancer that coordinated the Interphone study, said in a statement.

That doesn't mean that cell-phone use is safe, said Joel Moskowitz, director of Center for Family and Community Health at the University of California, Berkeley. In a May 16 paper, he argued the study and conclusions that have been drawn from it may be "biased." "Based upon... analysis by the Interphone investigators, cell phone use may increase gliomas" -- a type of a brain tumor -- "by 12,000 to 21,000 cases per year in the U.S.," he argues.

The Interphone study indicates that people who've used cell phones for at least 1,640 hours face a 40% higher risk of developing a glioma, which is a type of a brain tumor, he wrote. "... the average user in the U.S. today could fall into this high risk use category after about 13 years of use," Moskowitz said.

The study followed cell-phone users from 13 countries, not including the U.S. It mostly collected data on cell phone usage between years 2000 and 2004, when people didn't use their cell phones as much as they do today. An average study participant talked on the phone for two to 2-1/2 hours a month.

Today, though, the average U.S. cell phone user talks as much in a week, Moskowitz wrote. That said, more people nowadays use Bluetooth and wired headsets. And many users, particularly teens, often text instead of calling their friends.

Workers at Microsoft's corporate headquarters in Redmond, Wash. are being courted by a much smaller software maker. This week, Xobni spent thousands of dollars advertising its email tool - a free add-on for Microsoft Outlook - on shuttle buses, local radio stations, and other attention centers in and around the Redmond campus. The goal: win over a big corporate customer, one employee at a time.

Xobni, a San Francisco-based company that began in the Y Combinator startup incubator in 2006, aspires to be a big name in enterprise software. Since launching an enterprise product for faster and smarter email management in January, it's signed up more than 50 corporate customers, including General Dynamics and the U.S. Army. Xobni recently made its email software compatible with Microsoft Office 2010, which will be released to businesses on May 12. But in Redmond, where Microsoft employees have been using the latest version of the productivity suite for months, the startup is already working hard to win users.

In many ways, Microsoft's workforce presents ripe opportunity for Xobni. The email tool is suited to workers in large organizations, who need to quickly scan through thousands of contacts, messages, appointments, and attachments. It only works for companies using Outlook - at Microsoft, a given. And it doesn't hurt that Xobni has already been used by as many as 15,000 Microsoft employees, or more than 15% of the staff.

Xobni has some of its biggest fans at the top of the Redmond food chain. Bill Gates showed off the product during a developer conference in 2008 and called it "the next generation of social networking." The same year, TechCrunch reported that Xobni walked away from an acquisition offer from Microsoft. Both companies declined to comment on the reports of a negotiation.

Dave Drach, the managing director of Microsoft's emerging business team says he "couldn't live without" the email program. When Microsoft began requiring all employees to use a test version of Office 2010 last year, Drach and other Xobni addicts found their access to the add-on cut off - a glitch in the programming code for Outlook 2010 rendered it incompatible. A few persisted and found a workaround, but Xobni lost the vast majority of users from what was its largest pool of individual customers from a single company.

On April 14, Spring Design will start shipping Alex, yet another new e-reader to compete with current market leader, Amazon’s Kindle line. Alex offers access to more than 1 million books and allows for Web browsing and even using e-mail. Unlike the Kindle, it can also access and run apps. Unlike the Kindle, it has a full-color touch screen. Unlike the Kindle, it allows users to store content on a removable SD card.

Cupertino, Calif.-based Spring Design may be a start-up, but it has some formidable backers. Co-founder Albert Teng was a general manager at chipmaker Intel. Co-founder Jack Yuan previously co-founded storage maker SanDisk. Its partners include search giant Google and software maker Adobe. Because Alex can read digital books published in so-called ePub format, users will be able to download books from Google Books, which offers free public-domain older books and magazines.

Alex is entering a market crowded with offerings from giants, such as Amazon, Sony and Barnes & Noble. Apple’s iPad tablet, and other upcoming tablets and netbook computers could compete head-to-head with e-readers as well.

Alex is yet another device adding to the pressure for Amazon to innovate, and to add more features to the Kindle, which is increasingly beginning to look less capable than rival offerings.

The effort to let any Web service run over wireless networks may be dead.

On April 6, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the Federal Communications Commission couldn’t tell the U.S.’s largest cable company, Comcast, not to interfere with certain types of traffic. This in effect reverses the FCC’s 2008 ruling, which allowed Web services like Web-calling provider Skype to run over most wired networks, and to grow and prosper faster.

Ever since, Skype and other services have lobbied the FCC to impose similar, so-called net neutrality rules on wireless networks of carriers such as Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility. The agency’s chairman, Julius Genachowski, has said he’d like to extend net neutrality rules onto wireless networks.

Now, however, Genachowski's ability to go ahead with the reforms may be severely crippled. While the FCC could appeal the court’s decision, that could be a drawn-out process. And it’s likely to halt any new net neutrality rulemaking and proceedings. That’s bad news for Skype, as well as a myriad of other Web services that depend on being able to run over various carriers’ networks to grow. These companies will have to work with the carriers to gain access to their networks via business negotiations – as Skype has already done with Verizon Wireless.

Go to Google.com, and you’ll see that Google has just renamed itself Topeka, after Topeka, K.S. Yes, it’s an April Fool’s joke. But it indicates that Google has noted the city’s efforts to attract its notice and to be considered for the Google Fiber project, which will bring ultra-fast broadband to a lucky city or several in the coming months.

On March 26, Google announced in a blog post that more than 600 communities have applied to be part of Google Fiber. Google has promised to pick at least one city by year-end. And Topeka, K.S., has been one of the most active and inventive in trying to persuade Google to come to its town. The city even jokingly renamed itself Google, K.S., for the month of March. Now Google is returning the favor. “Early last month the mayor of Topeka, Kansas stunned the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google,” CEO Eric Schmidt wrote in an April 1 blog. “We’ve been wondering ever since how best to honor that moving gesture,” Google said in an April 1 blog. “Today we are pleased to announce that as of 1AM (Central Daylight Time) April 1st, Google has officially changed our name to Topeka. We didn’t reach this decision lightly; after all, we had a fair amount of brand equity tied up in our old name.”

“Our new product names will take some getting used to,” Schmidt wrote. “For instance, we’ll have to assure users of Topeka News and Topeka Maps that these services will continue to offer news and local information from across the globe.” He noted that the renaming will have no bearing on which community Google chooses for its Google Fiber project.

Developers’ interest in Microsoft’s Windows Phone software for smartphone has risen sharply, since the Redmond giant introduced a new version of the mobile operating system on Feb. 15, according to new survey data from Appcelerator, which offers tools that help programmers create apps.

Between January and March, developers' interest in creating games, calendars and other applications for Windows Phone has nearly tripled from 13% to 34%, according to Appcelerator’s survey of more than 1,000 developers that was released on March 31. Another major gainer: the BlackBerry, which has seen a doubling of developer interest in the same period, to 43%.

Google’s Android was another big gainer. In March, 81% of developers were interested in developing apps for Android-based phones such as Motorola Droid, up from 68% in January. That means that there’s nearly as much interest in creating apps for Android now as for the iPhone: Some 87% of developers say they are very interested in creating apps for the Apple device, according to Appcelerator.

Who is losing developers' interest? Palm and current smartphone operating system market leader, Symbian. Only 16% of developers are interested in creating apps for the Symbian software. Developers' interest in the iPad also dropped from 90% in January to 80% in March.