Qualcomm's Quad Snapdragon S4 Pro Tablet Now Available to Developers

Nvidia may have been first to the quadcore game, but Qualcomm is ready to bring on the competition.

On Tuesday morning in San Francisco, Qualcomm introduced the press to its latest Snapdragon processor running on a developer tablet. The Snapdragon S4 Pro is Qualcomm's direct contender to Nvidia's quadcore Tegra 3 processor. Built by BSquare, this tablet (also known as a Mobile Development Platform, or MDP) is available today from BSquare's website for $1300.

We first saw the Snapdragon S4 Pro processor in February at Mobile World Congress, but this is the first time we've seen it on a working, non-prototype device. The S4 has four asynchronous CPU cores running up to 1.5GHz each. The platform also features the new Adreno 320 GPU (graphics processing unit), which Qualcomm claims is two times faster than the Adreno 225 GPU found on previous Snapdragon platforms.

The Adreno 320 brings richer graphics rendering, including more dynamic lighting and shading effects. We saw some side-by-side screenshots of a game running on the Adreno 225 versus the 320, and, as you can see from the example photo, the difference in graphics is very apparent:

Because the S4 is quadcore, it can support multithreaded applications, or applications that run multiple processes at once. This is a huge deal for games--phones that can support simultaneous processes allow for fluid, snappy games with high-quality graphics.

One intriguing feature of the Adreno 320 is that it supports the ability to take a picture first and focus in on a subject later. Sound familiar? Essentially, Qualcomm's platform has the API and driver support to do light-field photography, the technology seen on the Lytro camera.

Perhaps as a nod to its competitor Nvidia's Tegra 3 fifth core, Qualcomm said that there was no need for an "extra" core to conserve battery life. According to Qualcomm, the S4 Pro is designed to have all-day battery life.

The developer tablet has a 10.1-inch WXGA multi-touch display with a 13-megapixel back-facing camera with a flash. It runs Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), though Qualcomm was showing a tablet running Android 4.1 (Jellybean).

Google Glass Horror Stories From Your Privacy-Free Future

Google's stylish augmented reality glasses may extend the company's powerful reach from the digital world into the real world, with some alarming implications.

Call me paranoid, but I think Google Glass is scary.

Sergey Brin's live demonstration of Google Glass at the Google I/O Conference last month clearly showed that wearable, always-on, Web-connected computing technology is here now, and that it works. It's coming from one of the wealthiest companies in the world, a company that might become a lot wealthier if Google Glassaccomplishes in the physical realm what the Web browser has done for Google in the digital realm.

Let me explain. Google has amassed immense power by cataloging and analyzing the Internet, as well as selling ads there. They are masters of that universe. Like many other tech companies, however, Google isn’t satisfied with such a confined sphere of influence. Google has been searching for ways to treat things in the real world the way it treats things in the digital domain, by numbering, locating, mapping, cataloging, and analyzing them. Google became the giant it is today by making stuff on the Web searchable. Does the company see its second golden age in making things in the real world searchable?

Some companies have tried to affix QR codes to objects, placing a digital marker on real-world things and thereby giving those objects representation in cyberspace. QR codes have seen limited success, but that technology is just a cheap parlor trick next to the powerful Web-enabling technology that is Google Glass.

Always-On Augmented Reality

Google Glass resembles a sleek pair of reading glasses, except the narrow lens sits slightly above one eye. Basically a tiny see-through computer monitor, the lens can overlay data and images atop the user's field of vision, delivering incoming messages, video, maps, or anything else that can transmit wirelessly from a Web server. Google Glass also incorporates a miniaturized smartphone equipped with cameras, a microphone, a Web browser, and speech-recognition capabilities.

For instance, reacting to a spoken location-search command from the user, the glasses might overlay directions to that specific place, and show identification labels over landmarks along the way. The potential is even wilder--the glasses might display directions on how to react in a medical emergency, complete with CPR demonstration videos and a real-time video chat with a physician.

Such intelligence flowing into the glasses for the wearer’s benefit is good; it’s the information that might flow out of the glasses that worries me. Since Google Glass is connected to the Internet via a fast wireless connection, it could easily report what the wearer is seeing, hearing, and doing in real time.

On the Web, Google has become extremely proficient in tracking users' movements through cookies, and then employing massive analytics to predict people's likes, interests, and likelihood to buy. Could Google use Glass as a platform to track and analyze our movements in the real world?

A Marketer’s Dream--and a Consumer's Nightmare?

What’s to prevent Google from tracking the movements of our eyeballs to discover the things that catch our attention? When I walk out of my apartment building, for example, a car might pass by that turns my head; I might glance at it in spite of myself. Could the Google Glass technology form a heat map showing the things my eyes rested on? Perhaps someday the technology will be able to measure how fast and how far I turned my head to look at something, and then develop a likelihood-to-buy score based on that. Call it the Whiplash Index.

Capturing that kind of data is the stuff of fantasy for marketers, a simple and direct indication of which types of ads to push at the viewer, and when to deliver them. And that's one of the most likely abuses of Google Glass: The device might display ads that are “contextual.” In other words, the subject matter of the ads may be driven by objects in the wearer’s field of vision, or in the general environment surrounding the wearer.

Marketers could partially target such ads via existing location-based technology. For instance, Glass might display a coupon for a free cup of coffee when it detects that the wearer is walking near the advertised coffee shop (GPS would reveal this), and that the wearer has glanced over at the coffee shop at least twice along the way.

Ultimate Surveillance

Then there’s facial recognition. That technology is unsettling enough when it identifies faces in still pictures or recorded video. But if Google Glass were connected to a server that could recognize faces, facial recognition could happen in real time. Potentially, the wearer could scan a crowd of people and see labels above those who happened to be friends of friends of friends in Google+. Sure, phone apps that do this already exist, but Glass would make such apps far simpler to use, and easier to leave running all the time.

This might not be a big deal if just a few people in every city were to end up wearing Google Glass. But what if the device were to catch on, becoming as big as the iPhone is today? All those glasses would be collecting monstrous amounts of audio and video information every minute of every day, possibly piping the data through the network for storage in some vast server farm. Yes, in the 21st century, Big Brother lives on a farm.

Judging from the wording of Google’s overarching privacy policy and terms of use, the sounds and images that Google Glass records would not be the property of the person wearing the glasses. Google could use those sounds and images for whatever it wants.

As long as we’re talking about worst-case scenarios: What if another horrific terrorist attack were to occur on our soil, one even worse than 9/11? Some people say it’s not a matter of if, but when such an attack will occur. What if the attack involves something insidious like chemical or biological weapons, and is perpetrated by people living within the United States?

Our anxiety levels would skyrocket again, our government might take a renewed and even more aggressive interest in surveillance to detect bad actors in our midst, and frightened constituents might be willing to surrender big chunks of their privacy in exchange for a little reassurance and peace of mind. Our government could then give itself new powers to access information collected by technology companies that sell products and services like Google Glass. You won’t find a better surveillance tool than a bunch of people walking around recording everything they see and hear.

Not Evil, but...

These scenarios are horror stories that may never see the light of day, of course. Internet companies such as Google seem to have a healthy fear of crossing boundaries and prompting a privacy backlash that could hurt their bottom line.

But Google Glass might let the genie out of the bottle. Even if Google has no intention of using the glasses for anything but entertaining and informing users, the mere existence of the pile of real-time data collected could cause problems in the future.

Although Google may not do anything “evil” with the device, some other, smaller, poorer, and more desperate startup company might. For instance, if Google refused to enable Glass as a real-time facial-recognition tool, or as a wearable advertising platform, some other company might see those things as huge market opportunities.

The answer is not to ban or shun such technology. Some of the things that Google Glass does are undeniably cool and useful. But tech companies sometimes forget the maxim that just because you can invent something doesn’t mean you should “productize” it and turn it loose in the wild.

In the end, therefore, it’s up to us consumers to recognize potentially dangerous or privacy-infringing products and let the makers know that they’ve gone too far.

5 Tips for Making Your Cloud SLA Air-Tight

It's one of the most important documents you sign when starting a cloud deployment with a public vendor: your service-level agreement (SLA). But a leading tech lawyer says customers can get burnt by their provider if they're not careful.

MORE CLOUD:Cloud platform comparison: CloudStack, Eucalyptus, vCloud Director and OpenStackThe first thing to remember about a cloud SLA is that it takes two to tango, says Michael Overly, a partner in the IT and Outsourcing Group in the Los Angeles office of Foley & Lardner LLP. "Everyone's expectations have to be set properly," says Foley, who has worked on both sides of the issue having represented both customers and vendors in crafting SLAs.

The larger the contract, the more opportunity there is for negotiating the SLA. But generally, by the very nature of the public infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud, many providers have generic service offerings, which allow the vendors to offer inexpensive prices. To the extent that a customer wants a customized offering, the price will generally rise. Customers of public cloud offerings should not expect customized services made specifically for them. If they're looking for that, there are managed hosting or collocation services.

Meanwhile, cloud providers need to take customer concerns into account. Foley says the cloud companies that listen and respond to customer concerns will be the ones succeeding long-term. Even if expectations are set, he says there are a variety of issues that can pop up during the SLA negotiation and after the document is signed. Foley has five tips to make sure businesses don't get burnt:

Where in the world is my data?

"It's becoming an increasingly difficult question to answer, and that makes a lot of people uncomfortable," Overly says. Some users need to know where their data is physically located for compliance or security reasons, particularly customers in the healthcare and financial industries. But there's a give and take: In an effort to guarantee highly available services, providers may spread data out across multiple sites as a disaster-recovery measure. But when data crosses borders into another country, different laws apply to who has access to the data and what it can be used for.

The burden remains on the customer to ensure they stay compliant with security certifications, Overly says. Some providers, such as Amazon Web Services, allow customers to dictate where their data is stored. It's not just about where the company's data centers are though, it's also important to ask who can access that data. If a support center is located outside the U.S. and they have copies of the customer data to provide support, the data may be going overseas without customers knowing it.

Overly says it's all about questioning your provider if these answers not outlined in the SLA. There are a variety of end-user "self-help" solutions, Overly says. Customers can encrypt data that's put in the cloud and hold on to the keys, for example. Or, they can choose to not store personally identifiable information (PII) in the cloud and keep that on their own premise instead.

Floating terms

Normally SLAs are paper documents signed by both parties with the terms of the agreement outlined in the document. One trend Overly has seen recently are SLAs that refer to specific terms that are published on a website. That should generally be a red flag to consumers, he says. Websites can change and vendors, unless specifically agreed to in the SLA, may not be required to inform customers of changes to the terms.

It's reasonable that a provider may have to make a change to the service or SLA, but customers should be notified of the changes. It is best practice to have an out clause that allows the customer to terminate the contract if unacceptable changes are made as well. One tip is to ensure that any changes that are made are done so uniformly throughout the company's offering to all customers. "There's safety in numbers," he says.

Service respond time

One of the chief benefits of cloud computing is its elastic nature and the agility it gives customers to dynamically scale their IT usage based on their exact demands. If that's an important function for the user, Overly says it should be discussed with your provider. "Many people focus on availability, but sometimes just as important is the quality of the service," he says. If the customer's business relies on the ability to spin up new resources quickly, for example, perhaps that should be written into the SLA.

One innovative solution Overly has seen regarding this issue is vendors agreeing to survey their customers periodically, anywhere from once a year to quarterly, to monitor the quality of their service. If there are declines in customer service results, then the provider may agree to make changes, for example. This is helpful particularly in multi-year agreements, he says, and it's good for both the customer and the vendor. It provides the customer with assurances that the provider will continually improve or provide the expected service, and it allows the vendor to ensure they have satisfied customers.

Notification of security issues

Security breaches are all too common in IT today and Overly says customers should consider how they will deal with them when they occur. Does your service provider have to tell you about it? If your company has customers that are impacted, who informs the public of the breach? Overly says it's a grey area in many cloud contracts. Overly says providers should share information about security breaches and suspected security breaches and the sooner the better after an issue is discovered.

Furthermore, if there is a breach then the provider should leave it to the customers to notify any of its users that may be impacted. "You want to handle that message to your customers," Overly says. Customers may want to know about all security breaches their provider has, not just the ones that you're impacted by. "I may want to know about issues other customers are having," he says. "That's a situation of 'thank God my data wasn't hit, but I still want to know what happened to make sure we're not next in line,'" he says.

Beware of hidden costs

Behind agility, another top reasons many customers embrace cloud computing is because of potential cost savings, yet Overly says customers aren't paying close enough attention to all of the revenue streams vendors may try to sneak into an SLA. In one circumstance, Overly says he found an SLA with a dozen potential revenue streams for the vendor, but only a handful of them were listed in the "Fees" section of the SLA. "Really go through every last line in the contract looking for these things," he says.

For example, a vendor may stipulate that if there is a reported problem that is found to be the user's fault, then the customer can be billed for the time and material used to investigate the issue. "That can add up pretty quickly when there's no limiting factor," Overly says. In another situation, a vendor may provide conservative estimates on how much it will cost to transfer data into or out of the cloud, then when the service is performed it costs much more. Find out how the estimate was made and double check the math, Overly says.

The overall lesson, he says, is to take an all-encompassing approach to reviewing the details of the agreement and the impact it can have on the business. Get the appropriate people involved, from the security, IT and business divisions all the way to the legal team and technical implementers to review everything and look for red flags.

Why IT Matters More Than Ever

Although it's impossible to know for sure, Ashlee might have been the victim of an overzealous headline writer. However, Carly "Let's Make Everyone's Cubicle Two Feet Shorter" Fiorina, the old chief of Hewlett Packard got it right when saying that Carr was, in fact, "dead wrong"-and everyone glomming on to that Carr-Vance sound bite is wrong, too.

1. Despite Outsourcing, IT Remains Important.Why? Consider the following four reasons.

Just because a company chooses to outsource parts of its information technology investments to other providers doesn't mean IT doesn't stay relevant internally. A team still has to be a guide. Who selects these vendors? Who comes up with the jargon necessary to translate business requirements into technical mandates? Who sorts through the requests for proposals? Who monitors the market for outsourcing, keeps track of pricing and adds and removes services as necessary?

Case Study: IT Roles Shift with Move to Cloud

No team is in a better position to integrate the true value of technology across the entire business than IT. No team can better drive business results, via the profit and loss statement, across the entire business through the value created and costs reduced via smart computing.

2. Eliminate Busywork, and IT Can Create Value.

As a CIO or someone in your technology department, you well know how much time is spent reacting to situations. This application is down. Internet access is slow. It's time to manage a desktop operating system refresh. You need to buy a new SAN appliance because you're bringing up more virtualized servers. There's a lot of busywork.

Imagine if, instead, your IT department could focus on writing a new point of sale system for your stores. What if you could assist your marketing department in putting out a killer mobile application for smartphones? Perhaps you could find a way to bill customers for a service you've never thought of. In these scenarios, IT becomes a business partner, not just a cost center. IT can now focus on creating real, true business value, not just on caring for and feeding boxes with blinking lights. That's important. That's game changing. And that's entirely relevant.

3. You Wouldn't Neglect HR or Finance, Would You?

In his article, Vance quotes Siobhan McFeeney, who leads AAA's information systems management in Northern California, Nevada, and Utah. "Sometimes it is a harsh reality when companies realize they are not IT companies," McFeeney says. "We are in road service and a huge insurance agency. We are not an IT company."

One can understand this point of view, of course. There's an old management maxim: Focus on the things only your business can do and leave the rest to another firm. However, that logic only goes so far, and it's rooted in the concept of minimizing cost. Does AAA have a finance department, even though it's not an accounting firm? AAA most likely has a human resources division, even though it's not a temporary hiring business.

Just because something isn't core to your business vision doesnt mean it's irrelevant, lest paychecks bounce and employees run amok and your systems go down or you miss the next big way to gain more functionality and reduce cost with a core application, as the above points suggest. Just because your company isn't an "IT company" doesn't mean running that part of the business successfully isn't important.

4. IT Is Best Suited to Navigate Ever-Changing Technology.

The rate of disruption and change in the technology sector is increasingly rapid. Just in the past month we've seen reports that tablets will upend notebooks in four years. This year we've found you can run email and collaboration in the cloud with feature parity to desktop Microsoft Office for $6 per month per user, or even lower. Who better than IT to sort through all of this? No other team will have the necessary expertise-or even the interest-in how to do more with less.

News: Mobile Devices Will Turn IT Security "Stateless," Says Forrester Analysis

Since most organizations aren't "IT companies," as McFeeney points out, employees won't be going to industry conferences, networking with key technology groups and executives and generally understanding what is new and what's on the horizon. Businesses need information technology departments to sort the wheat from the chaff.

IT: The Last Greenfield of the Customer

What is true is that IT as it was defined in the 1980s and 1990s, and even the very early 2000s, may not matter as much as it did. IT as a place where money is spent and things don't work-the place where Nick Burns, Your Company's Computer Guy, had a chair and a desk-shouldn't exist anymore.

The premise that IT doesn't matter may be valid, if you're not allowing your definition of a group of professionals to grow and change as technology evolves. There's no solid reason to expect any sort of correlation in shoveling budget dollars to Windows administration and website delivery. Only so much differentiation can be done on your desktops. Every company has computers. You're not going to win any battles there.

But there's an entirely different argument to be made for giving IT a proactive mission, a purpose to use its money to gain a competitive advantage through effective, custom, efficient use of technology. Whether that's the decision to outsource email to free up money to build a custom system for customer self-delivery for a new product, or that's the decision to build a new website on the Amazon cloud platform and invest your capital money and bandwidth charges in developers that can create compelling applications to beat the pants off your competition, the conclusion remains the same.

IT isn't a commodity. IT's utility doesn't approach zero as more people get computers, websites and mobile apps. No, it's precisely the opposite-IT is the last greenfield to the customer, where relationships can be won, lost, cemented, expanded, reduced or even created out of nothing through opportunities to do cool things we've never seen before.

Think about it. Five years ago, Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud didn't exist. Today you can go spin up a complete virtual server on Amazon EC2 for pennies per hour. Five years ago, you had to budget thousands of dollars in time and hardware to do that. What happens when technology itself is commoditized? Highly engaging, valuable, and rich experiences are created-see Netflix,Pinterest and others. Who better than IT departments to guide us safely in that direction?

Yes, IT does matter. In fact, in this day and age of disruptive technology, IT matters more than ever. IT is where the battle for the customer is won. It's a key weapon, a competitive advantage and nothing less than a necessity you can't afford to be without.

Silent Update Speeds Firefox 14 Uptake

Firefox 14 accounted for nearly half of all copies of the open-source browser in use just a week after its launch, a sign that Mozilla's automatic update mechanism may be working as intended.

The browser became the most-used edition much faster than its predecessors, Firefox 12, which launched April 24, and Firefox 13, the version released June 5.

In the seven days since its debut, Firefox 14's share of all Mozilla browsers went from 3% on July 17 to 46% on July 23, according to usage data collected by Irish analytics company StatCounter.

At the end of their first week, version 12 accumulated a 30% share of all Firefox browsers and version 13 accounted for 31%.

Firefox 14 was the second version that Mozilla has shipped since it seeded users with a silent updating service as part of Firefox 12.

Mozilla's silent update service sidesteps Windows User Account Control, or UAC, to push updates into the background so that users receive a browser upgrade without interruption.

Firefox 14's first-week uptake was significantly faster than either version 12 or 13. (Data: StatCounter)

Data analyzed by Computerworld four weeks ago showed that Firefox 13, the first after the introduction of silent updating, had, in fact, been adopted at a slower pace than Firefox 12. Mozilla had speculated, and StatCounter's data hinted as much, that an emergency update issued partway through the Firefox 13 upgrade cycle had hindered uptake.

At the time, Mozilla said that it had seen similar adoption issues when it had released a so-called "chem spill" patch before.

Chitika, an online advertising network that regularly mines its ad impression data for trends in operating system and browser usage patterns, reported identical results for Firefox 14.

According to Chitika, Firefox 14 accounted for 46% of all copies of Firefox as of late Monday, and was the most popular version of the Mozilla application on the Web, with almost twice the share of Firefox 13.

The faster adoption rate of Firefox 14, however, was not enough to stem the slide of Mozilla's browser. With just eight days remaining in the month, Firefox had a 23.9% share of all browsers, said StatCounter's, a dip of seven-tenths of a percentage point from June's average of 24.6%.

Rivals Chrome and Internet Explorer (IE), meanwhile, held shares of 34% and 31.6%, respectively, through Monday. Chrome's tentative share was 1.2 points higher than in June, while IE's was down seven-tenths of a point.

Box Adds Windows Phone to the Mobile Mix

Box has a mission to enable customers to access and share data from anywhere. Today, it’s extending its reach on mobile devices with the launch of a new Windows Phone app.

Simon Tan, product manager of mobile for Box, explains in a blog post, “Mobile use has skyrocketed this year, with nearly 750 million workers using 4.1 billion devices to access and share content,” adding, “Our team has seen tons of growth at Box, too, with a staggering 40% of our users accessing Box from a mobile device.”

Box launched a new app for Windows Phone devices.I spent a great deal of timeusing the Windows Phone platform, and I think it is an awesome mobile operating system. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been a blockbuster success, and its current market share compared to iOS and Android doesn’t really do it justice. I could almost forgive Box for not bothering to invest the time and effort to create an app for a mobile OS that represents such a small segment of the market.

However, the fortunes of Windows Phone may soon change for the better. Microsoft is revamping almost everything from the ground up and rebuilding itself and its products to adapt to a mobile future. Despite the tepid response to Windows Phone thus far, it still has appeal to businesses--especially with BlackBerry continuing to fade from the picture. Microsoft has an opportunity to capture market share among business professionals who want more integrated, seamless access to Microsoft tools and services.

It’s Still Microsoft’s World

The interesting thing about Box and Microsoft working together is that they’re also rivals. Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud storage service competes with Box on some level, and it seems to be given priority on Microsoft mobile devices and applications.

I have said before that Microsoft should have some confidence in its own products and services, and let them stand on their own without tying customers to them against their will. When Microsoft launched Office 365 last year I wrote, “Ideally, Microsoft would open up the API and let third-parties like Box.net integrate with Office 365 so that the tools of Office 365 can work seamlessly with the file storage of Box.net.”

The early preview of Office 2013 and the new Office 365 still has Microsoft defaulting to SkyDrive for cloud storage. I still maintain that Microsoft should allow other services to integrate so that users can choose to default to SkyDrive, or Box, or Dropbox, or any service that puts in the effort to make the option available.

Online Privacy: Americans Want It, and They Want It Now. So Why Can't They Get It?

A new survey by Truste claims 94 percent of people care deeply about online privacy. Unfortunately, none of them are in the online advertising industry. Tis the season for surveys. Last week I noted a survey by PwC about what personal data consumers are willing to give up, and what they want in return for it. The respondents to that survey were quite concerned about their privacy and understood their data had real monetary value.

Today’s topic is another recent survey, this one commissioned by Truste, an organization that offers a Good Housekeeping-style seal of approval for corporate privacy practices. As with PwC, Truste’s survey suggests that consumer concern about online and mobile privacy is on the rise, and people are much more sophisticated about the issues than the ad industry might have you believe.

According to the survey, a whopping 94 percent of the 1000+ people surveyed consider privacy issues “really important” or “somewhat important,” and six out of ten are more concerned about it than they were a year ago.

More than a third claim they’ve stopped visiting a Web site or doing business with a company because they were concerned for their privacy, and 83 percent are aware of behavioral (ie, targeted) ads, up from 70 percent last year.

Admittedly, asking people questions like these often inspires them to answer in the way they think they’re supposed to, not necessarily in the way they actually act when not taking an online survey.

(“Do you floss after every single meal to ensure cleaner teeth and a whiter smile? Why, yes, I’m doing it right now.”)

For example: In this survey, 40 percent of people claim to read a Web site’s privacy policy often or most of the time. I think that number is off by a factor of ten. Even I don’t read privacy policies most of the time, and I do this for a living. Likewise for things like refusing to allow third parties to share information (76 percent) or opting out of online ads (50 percent). I suspect there’s a bit of self delusion at play here (though not as much as this guy seems to believe).

Still, because Truste asked the same questions last year, you can draw the conclusion that all the public debate over mobile privacy, GPS tracking, and Do Not Track legislation has had an impact. People are more aware of the issues, and they’re taking more steps to protect themselves. That’s all good, and I’ll happily take all the credit for it.

OK, maybe just some of the credit.

But wait, there are more interesting stats to be gleaned:

• 58 percent say they don’t like online behavioral advertising (ie, targeted ads)
• 53 percent believe their personal information is being shared with advertisers
• 58 percent say they’d rather only see ads from stores and brands they already do business with
• About 38 percent have warmer fuzzier feelings for targeted ads that come with a AdChoices icon they can click to get more info or opt out, though only 14 percent of those surveyed said they’d ever seen that icon before.
• Only 14 percent say they are OK with targeted ads if they can be assured their personally identifiable information is not being shared. The number of people who are OK with ads that glean personal info? A scant 2 percent.

As with the PwC survey results, this is not good news for an ad industry that desperately wants the FTC and Congress to leave them alone. People don’t trust the online ad industry, even if their notions about what information the industry collects aren’t especially accurate.

I can’t say I feel much sympathy for these guys. Ad networks have shot themselves in their collective feet by acting like petulant children who are going to hold their breath until they get what they want. That no longer seems to be working.

Maybe it’s time to give up the pretense of “self regulation” and give the people what they want: worthwhile incentives for sharing their data, and an easy and complete way to opt out across all platforms. Is that too much to ask? Survey says, No.

Apple’s iOS 6 Removes Password Prompts for Free Apps

Apple is making it easier to get apps from the App Store with iOS 6 by removing the need to enter your password for every app you download to your device, according to numerous online reports. If all you’re doing is downloading an app update, a free app, or an app you previously deleted, Apple reportedly will not ask for your password in its next update to its' mobile OS for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. Instead, you will only have to enter your password for paid apps. The change was first publicized by a Reddit user with access to the latest beta version of iOS 6 released to developers.

The decision to eliminate constant password checking appears to be part of Apple’s plan to streamline App Store purchasing on an iPhone, according to Macrumors. In addition to the password changes, downloading an app using iOS 6 will happen in the background. So instead of kicking you back to the home screen where you can watch the app install, you can stay in the App Store and continue to browse, Macrumors says.

Assuming Apple doesn’t pull these changes before the official launch of iOS 6, the news is likely to make iPhone owners happy. Entering your password can feel cumbersome when all you want to do is download a free app or process the 65 updates you’ve got sitting on your phone. Apple will reportedly still require password authorization before you can buy anything, but for most users that’s likely a welcome annoyance since it can prevent unwanted charges on your credit card.

Competing platforms such as Android and Windows Phone let you download apps, including paid apps, without a password check.

IOS 6 is due out in the fall featuring a new Maps app, Facebook integration, improvements to the Siri digital personal assistant, and a new iCloud-based photo sharing feature.

Vizio's $99 Co-Star Available for Pre-Order

Vizio’s Google TV-based Co-Star Stream Player is now available for pre-order for $99 on the company’s site. Co-Star, the latest in a new round of Google TV gadgets, is the cheapest device yet to use the search giant’s Web-meets-TV software.

You can use the Co-Star in typical Google TV fashion including to browse the Web on your TV, download apps from Google Play, watch online video such as Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand, YouTube and M-Go. But forget about watching Hulu Plus or accessing online content directly from some network websites. Hoping to add more value for your $99, Vizio also added OnLive gaming support to the Co-Star, letting you play games such as Civilization V and Batman: Arkham City on your big screen TV via the set-top box.

The Co-Star is a 4.2-inch square device featuring one HDMI out, one HDMI in, one USB 2.0 slot, and an Ethernet port. The device is also packing 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and supports 1080p screen resolutions. It is 1.6 inches high.

The set-top box will work with the Google TV Android remote apps, but the Co-Star also comes with a dual-sided remote. One side features a TV remote including one-touch buttons for Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand, and M-Go. The reverse side features a full QWERTY keyboard and gaming pads. The Co-Star remote is designed to work with some OnLive games, but for a complete experience you’ll need to get the $50 OnLive universal wireless controller. Vizio is currently showing an estimated ship date of August 14 for the Co-Star.

iPhone and iPad Security: 5 Often-Overlooked Settings

Take a few minutes now and enable these settings; you'll be glad you did.

Apple mobile devices are among the most popular gadgets today. In fact, Apple reports that 250 million iOS devices have been sold and 18 million apps downloaded. I often find that, while the popularity of these devices increases, many don't understand the basic security features that Apple makes available to them. Some of you may not even realize that these features exist and how easy they are to use. Let's walk through the top five security settings for these devices:

The Passcode

This is the most important security feature of your device. It's also one of the least configured settings. While it may be a pain to "unlock" your device when you want to use it, it's also your first line of defense if your device is ever lost or stolen. The key to the passcode is to ensure its complex and greater than 4 characters or digits. Never use simple passcodes like "1234" or your ATM PIN number. The two other settings that you need to set are to "Require Passcode Immediately" and set "Simple Passcode" to OFF. You can find these settings under the "Settings" icon then "Passcode Lock".

Erase Data

The erase data functionality adds another layer of security to your device. This function will erase all data after 10 failed passcode attempts. What this means is that if someone steals your device and tries to brute force your passcode, if they enter it incorrectly, the device is erased and returned to the factory default settings. Turn "Erase Data" to ON in the Passcode Lock screen.

Find My iPhone/iPad

If you ever lose or misplace your iPhone or iPad, "Find My iPhone/iPad" is a very important feature to enable. Simply download the application on your device or access it through iCloud (icloud.com). If your device is iOS 4 or below you will need to use the "MobileMe" (me.com) feature instead of iCloud. Either way, you will need to login with your Apple ID to set it up. You can then send the device a message or alert, locate the device on Google Maps, remotely set a passcode, and remotely erase the device. This feature is invaluable if your device is lost or stolen.

Backup Encryption

One of the more obscure settings that many users don't set is the "Encrypt Backup" setting, which is found in iTunes. This setting even applies to the new iCloud service in iOS 5. This setting ensures that the backup of your device is encrypted. It goes without saying, if you can access this backup, the data on your device can be accessed and harvested. For example, earlier this year there was a "feature" in which Geolocation data could be easily harvested from the backup file. This has since been remediated, but just think how much information could be harvested about you through an unencrypted backup file.

Keep iOS Updated

Making sure that you always have the latest version of Apple iOS on your device is important because Apple is always releasing security updates and implementing new security controls. Simply plug your device into iTunes and you will get prompted to update your phone to the latest version. As a side note, don't Jailbreak your device! Jailbreaking makes many of the built in security features useless and allows your device to be an easy target for data theft.

Ensuring that you have enabled and configured these security settings on your Apple iOS device is more important than ever. Devices like these are lost or stolen all the time and without taking the proper precautions, your data could be vulnerable. Having conducted Apple iOS device penetration testing assessments at SecureState for our clients, I can tell you how easy it is to break into these devices. It's easy because the proper basic precautions were not taken. Take five minutes now and enable these settings; you'll be glad you did.

YouTube Asks Users to Post Real Names in Bid to Clean Up Comments

Google is trying to clean up YouTube’s comments section by encouraging users to post their real names.

When a YouTube user now tries to comment on a video, a box pops up asking that person to start using their "full name" at the video sharing site. The "full name" is taken from the person’s Google+ account since Google requires the real name of someone signing up for a Google+ account.

After the "start using your full name" box appears, you can refuse to start using your real name. If you do that, another pop up appears asking you to justify your decision. Choices offered by Google include:

• My channel is for show or character.
• My channel is for a music artist of group.
• My channel is for a product, business or organization.
• My channel is well-known for other reasons.
• My channel is for personal use, but I cannot use my real name.
• I'm not sure, I'll decide later.

Google offers to help you review your YouTube content before your full name begins to be displayed on the service. It also makes clear that you can switch back to your username at any time.

Whether this step will improve the discourse in YouTube’s comments section remains to be seen. People who leave constructive comments are likely to embrace the new policy, but others will continue to hide behind anonymity and revel in their vile comments.

Google’s requirement that people sign up for Google+ is a policy one Google executive compared to a dress code for a restaurant. That characterization may be true for most YouTube users, but for social and political activists living in repressive regimes, the policy could be a ticket to prison or worse. That Google+ policy was eventually revised after Google was deluged with user complaints.

That's not to say that Google isn't sensitive to the dangers some of its users face in the pursuit of social justice. For example, it recently added a feature to YouTube that allows people who post videos to the site to automatically blur out the faces of the subjects in their footage.

In June, Google revealed at its developers conference that it was working on improvements in YouTube's comments section. So this latest development could be just a baby step in a longer strategy leading to a vast reduction of anonymous comments on YouTube. Such a reduction could take some liveliness out of the offering, but it could improve the site's appeal to businesses, which could contribute to Google's bottom line.

Apple's Siri-ous Mistake

By restricting Siri to iPhone 4S and the new iPad, Apple has widened the market opening for Google Now and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

One thing that Apple has been known for is anticipating what consumers want in a device before they even realize it. It's what they did with the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad -- all devices that sparked high demand in categories that had been either dormant or fairly static.

Then came Siri.

Siri was around as a stand-alone app before Apple acquired it; and other apps such as Vlingo responded to voice commands -- including Google's voice actions on Android. But it was Apple's version of Siri that ratcheted up interest in mobile-device "personal assistants" that could help users organize appointments, send messages and fetch information.

However, Siri is only available if you buy an iPhone 4s or a new iPad; Apple is using Siri to help sell its new hardware. And while that may work well among Apple's existing fan base, it's limiting Apple's ability to leverage Siri beyond its core -- and stoking demand that one of its chief competitors may end up meeting.

Although I use -- and like -- Apple products, I'm not one of those folks who lines up at midnight to buy whatever new gadget has come out of Cupertino. I like the idea of Siri, and certainly would have spent, say, $39 for an iOS upgrade that included Siri. But I'm not so enamored with the concept that I'm going to shell out $600 to replace a perfectly good 32G iPad 2 (especially since it was hard to tell the difference between the new iPad and my old iPad's crisp display). I'm also not about to break my 2-year phone contract after a few months in order to buy an iPhone 4S, which is a smaller form factor than I prefer for a smartphone anyway, as I tend to use them more as mini tablets.

Shut out of Siri, I sought a Siri-like experience on Android with mixed results. So, I was understandably intrigued by Google Now on the latest version of Android, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which seemed to offer most of what I thought I wanted from Siri. I'm still locked into my phone contract, but $199 for a 7-inch tablet with Google Now seemed worth a try -- even though I'm a happy iPad user and haven't thought much of the previous 7-inch tablets I've tested.

It turns out that I like the Nexus 7 tablet far more than I thought I would. With Jelly Bean, I rarely feel like I'm sacrificing usability and polish when using Android as opposed to iOS (although I do miss some multi-touch iOS gestures). And the 7-inch form factor, which I'd previously thought was too bulky for a pocket device but too small for serious content consumption, turns out to be quite nice for a lot of what I do on a tablet: Web surf, email, social media and info lookup. In fact, I'm tending to reach for the Nexus 7 over the iPad when I'm home for most tasks that don't involve viewing photos and videos. Not only is it lighter; it's easy to speak to from time to time if I want to check weather, sports scores and the like.

Had Siri been available as an add-on for my iPad, I doubt I would have pre-ordered a Nexus 7. But it wasn't, and I did. And now I'm content with Android not only on my phone, but a tablet. That Siri-ious mistake widens the opening for Android in the tablet space for a lot of iPad and would-be iPad users. And given that Android already beats iOS handily in smartphone market share, I'm not sure it's wise for Apple to pave the way for strengthening its chief mobile OS rival on tablets.

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Heads to HTC One: An Update Roundup

Now that the source code for Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is available, the update announcements from phone makers are starting to roll in.

HTC is the first phone maker to confirm Jelly Bean for some of its phones. The HTC One X, One S, and One XL will all get the update to Android 4.1, but the company didn't announce timing, carrier-specific plans or the fate of other phones, such as Sprint's Evo 4G LTE.

Other phone makers have been less forthcoming.

Samsung told Pocket-Lint last month that it will “review the possibility of implementation to existing Samsung products” with the update, but offered no specifics. Sammobile has reported that the Galaxy S III could get Jelly Bean in August or September, and that the Galaxy S II passed Samsung's initial tests for the update. None of those details have been confirmed by the company.

As Pocket-Lint reports, Motorola, Asus, LG and Sony have yet to comment on upgrade plans.

As for Google's lead devices, the Jelly Bean update is coming to the unlocked Nexus S and Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi tablet, and is already available for the unlocked Galaxy Nexus. Update status remains unclear for the Sprint and Verizon versions of the Galaxy Nexus, the Sprint Nexus S and the Verizon Motorola Xoom. Of course, Google's Nexus 7 tablet comes with Android 4.1 out of the box.

Google wants to make Android updates easier for phone makers with a “platform development kit,” which will provide preview versions of upcoming OS versions months before they are released to open source. A handful of manufacturers received a beta PDK for Jelly Bean, but it's not clear which ones.

Many companies, however, are still trying to deliver the previous version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, to phones and tablets. According to Google, roughly 11 percent of devices that have accessed Google Play in the last two weeks are running Android 4.0 or higher.

If you get tired of waiting, chances are the hacker community will have an update for your phone before the phone makers and wireless carriers do. The team behind CyanogenMod has already released a preview version of CyanogenMod 10, with Jelly Bean, for Samsung's Galaxy S III. Samsung has not made it official when the Galaxy S III will get Jelly Bean, however there is news the update will be delivered no later than September. But even if you're comfortable rooting and flashing new ROMs, it's still a little early to dive in unless you don't mind broken features and general instability.

Android 4.1 isn't a major update, but it greatly increases the smoothness of the operating system and includes access to Google Now, a sort of Siri competitor that tries to deliver important information automatically. For more on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, check out Armando Rodriguez's test drive of the OS.

Alleged New iPhone Connector: Both Blessing and Burden

Speculation about Apple's next iPhone is piling up ahead of an expected fall launch.

The latest unconfirmed story, from Reuters, claims that the next iPhone will use a 19-pin dock connector, which would be smaller than the 30-pin connector in all current iOS devices. The smaller dock connector will make room for a headphone jack on the bottom of the iPhone, Reuters' two "sources familiar with the matter" said.

This isn't the first talk of a smaller dock connector in the next iPhone. Earlier this year, iMore reported that Apple was working on a "micro dock" for future devices, with a possible debut in the iPhone 5. The latest report follows a familiar pattern for iPhone rumors, in which larger publications confirm stories that have been circulating among smaller blogs for months.

If Apple plans to ditch the 30-pin dock connector, it'll be both a blessing and a burden for accessory makers and consumers. Companies that make speakers, chargers, and other accessories will have a chance to sell newly-designed products; but because older iPhone models will presumably remain on sale, those companies will have to keep supporting 30-pin dock accessories for years to come.

For existing accessories, new iPhone users may have to get an adapter -- assuming Apple releases one -- but this introduces more headaches. Even if adapters are available, users will either have to buy one for every accessory they own, or carry one around. The transition to a 19-pin connector will be a bit messy, which is why cordless accessories are looking like better options all the time.

Still, docking issues aren't likely to be a big concern as iPhone fans begin the waiting game for the next model. Analysts expect iPhone sales and profit growth to sink to their lowest rates in two years, now that consumers have begun to hold out for the latest and greatest, Bloomberg reports. Granted, analysts have underestimated Apple in 25 of the last 26 quarters, but the one exception was a year ago, when people started waiting for the iPhone 4S.

Many of the expected tentpole features for the next iPhone have already been discussed to death in the rumor mill, including a larger display and support for 4G LTE networks. At this point, iPhone fans have a pretty good idea of what they're waiting for.