By NICK BILTON
| May 27, 2012,

May 19th 2012 | | The Economist | Anonymous

the growth of internet usage on smartphones, the rise of “big data” computer processing and the increasing willingness of customers to do complicated things online. These developments have long promised to transform the way banks do business and organise themselves....If this was just a more convenient way of paying, the banks would probably shrug. But it also promises to overturn your existing financial relationships. Instead of reaching for the first card that happens to be in your wallet to pay for a $2 cup of coffee (and risk being charged a $35 penalty by your bank for exceeding your overdraft limit), your phone will choose the best method of payment.

April 7, 2012,
By JEANETTE PAVINI

SMART PHONES: The farmer's new best friend
February 2011 | Better Farming | by BERNARD TOBIN.

Estimates are that upwards of a quarter of Ontario’s farmers are using these devices – and finding that they are making information sharing and decision-making a great deal more efficient

Mar 07 2012
The Coming Revolution in Mobile Job Hunting
By Joseph Walker

Recent graduates and college and graduate students surveyed are either using their smartphones for career-related purposes or could imagine themselves doing so....Yet just a quarter of the 117 American companies surveyed had either a mobile application or mobile-enabled website....AT&T, in 2009 optimized portions of its careers site for mobile users. It uses "sniffer" technology to detect what device someone is using and then directs them to a page designed for that particular smartphone. In the coming months, it will release a new version of its mobile site that will make even more content from its desktop site available to mobile users, said Jennifer Terry, director of staffing strategic initiatives.

Feb. 28, 2012| The Globe and Mail |SUSAN KRASHINSKY

ivor tossell
Special to Globe and Mail Update
Published Monday, Feb. 13, 2012

JANUARY 30, 2012

The Coming Tech-led Boom
Three breakthroughs are poised to transform this century as much as telephony and electricity did the last....

By MARK P. MILLS AND JULIO M. OTTINO

In January 2012, we sit again on the cusp of three grand technological transformations with the potential to rival that of the past century. All find their epicenters in America: big data, smart manufacturing and the wireless revolution.

Aug 5, 2011 12:03 PM, By Alison Hall

Jan 19, 2012 – Jan 20, 2012 2:25 PM ET

Eastman Kodak, which invented the hand-held camera and helped bring the world the first pictures from the moon, has filed for bankruptcy protection, capping a prolonged plunge for one of the United States' best-known companies.

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By Matt Hartley and Jameson Berkow

By NICK BILTON
| January 15, 2012,

“We believe strongly that the company is going to be reflected in the product and vice-versa,” Mr. Dorsey said. “The internal matches the external and the external matches the internal, and if we can’t provide a clean, simple, well-designed experience in here, it’s not going to be reflected in our identity. It’s in our DNA.” (Mr. Dorsey also is the chairman and co-founder of Twitter, where his obsession with openness is not as extreme.)

Square also borrows metaphors from traditional institutions, including the old United States Mint building, which sits across the street from the company’s office. “It looks like something that is built to last; it looks like it will stay up forever,” he said. “So how do you build that into pixels instead of stone?”

For centuries banks were built with thick stone walls, marble slab floors and heavy metal doors, all of which gave customers the feeling that bankers were dependable and trustworthy.

Square transactions primarily occur on a small plastic plug, inserted into a smartphone’s headphone jack, through which people swipe credit cards.

A hefty chunk of marble it is not. Square’s front door to customers is a smartphone application. Square has to provide the simplest experience possible, Mr. Dorsey believes, because, along with good design, it will evoke trust and confidence in a new financial institution that lives in a smartphone.

shane dingman
From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Oct. 28, 2011

APRIL 23, 2011 | WSJ | By ROBERT LEE HOTZ.

The Really Smart Phone
Researchers are harvesting a wealth of intimate detail from our cellphone data, uncovering the hidden patterns of our social lives, travels, risk of disease—even our political views.

"We have turned society into a laboratory where behavior can be objectively followed."

04 October 2011 | By Robert Cyran.

Apple has an astonishing ability to casually unleash creative destruction. Its latest iPhone, the 4S, offers faster data-processing and downloads, as well as voice-powered software. This may not have lived up to the most feverish expectations of investors: Apple shares fell while the market rallied. But it will do more than enough to create headaches for companies ranging from Research In Motion to American Greetings.

Smartphones started by devouring the personal digital assistant, as any former Palm Pilot aficionado can testify. They terrorized the market for fixed-line phones, which are now in sharp decline. Apple’s newest gadget shows just how hungry smartphone makers, and Apple in particular, are to eat rivals’ lunches.

The new iPhone’s camera offers sharply better video. That will further hurt sales of digital still and video cameras. Its software allows easy and free texting to other Apple devices. That’s bad news for telephone operators, who make fat margins on such services. Instant messaging has also been the killer app for BlackBerry users.

4 Oct 2011 | Financial Times| By: Chris Nuttall.

Apple’s unveiling of the iPhone 5 on Tuesday at its Cupertino HQis just the latest sign that Silicon Valley is taking on a fresh mantle of Smartphone Valley, with its growing reputation making it a magnet for mobile operators around the world.

AT&T, Verizon and Vodafone have all just opened research, testing and incubation centres in San Francisco and the Valley only weeks apart. weeks apart....The app culture that both have engendered means there is a race on among operators to feature the newest trends and advances in software first, amid fierce competition for the attention of Silicon Valley developers.

Vodafone’s lab allows developers to incubate their ideas and test how apps and services would perform on the worldwide networks it replicates at its facility.

“We want to bring to market these ideas and accelerate the process – the hope is that six to nine months after we prove something here, it can be in the hands of a user in one of our operating countries,”

SEPTEMBER 30, 2011 | WSJ | By PHRED DVORAK, SUZANNE VRANICA and SPENCER E. ANTE

PREET BANERJEE | Columnist profile | E-mail
Globe and Mail Update
Published Tuesday, Sep. 27, 2011 10:26AM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Sep. 28, 2011

Oct. 20, 2010 | The Globe and Mail | by Nick Rockel.

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

A Galaxy S Sequel With Big-Screen Ambitions

By WALTER S. MOSSBERG

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011 | WSJ | By SEAN CAPTAIN. Make Your
Smartphone Smarter
The tools you use the most on your iPhone, iPad or Android don't have to
be one-size-fits-all. With the right apps, you can customize your
device to fit like a handmade glove

When GE wanted to inform people about its business in health
care management, it could have trotted out a new Web page and e-mailed
announcements to staff, inviting itchy-fingered employees to hit the
delete button. Instead, it created a game for smartphones, targeting
both employees and the general public.

CHAD SAPIEHA
Globe and Mail Update
Published Thursday, Aug. 11, 2011

By JAMES B. STEWART
Published: July 22, 2011

April 1, 2010 | Fast Company | By: Anya Kamenetz

The U.S. Department of Education has earmarked $5 billion in competitive
school-reform grants to scale up pilot programs and evaluate best
practices of all kinds. Major foundations are specifically zeroing in on
handhelds for preschool and the primary grades. "Young kids and
multisensor-touch computing are a huge area of innovation," says Phoenix
Wang, the head of a startup philanthropic venture fund called Startl --
funded by the Gates, MacArthur, and Hewlett foundations -- that's
entirely focused on educational investing. For Pat Condon

Apr 7th 2011 | DAR ES SALAAM

Whether on mobile phones or tablets, being online is rapidly becoming
the norm in Africa. That will boost the continent’s information and
entertainment business and allow African media houses such as the Nation
Media Group (in the east) and Media24 (in the south) to expand their
businesses around digital content tailored to local languages and
markets. Western content-makers will no doubt worry about the increased
risk of piracy, but if they get their offerings right Africa will be a
huge new market for their wares too.

January 04, 2011

July 1, 2011, 8:23 pm
Many Smartphone Customers Are Still Up for Grabs
By NICK BILTON

June 22, 2011 | NYT | By JON PARELES. Dematerializing
recorded music has consequences. The positive: it hugely multiplies the
potential audience, letting the music travel fast and far to listeners
who would never have known it existed. It escalates music’s
portability...Negative: it also drives down the price of recorded
music, often to zero, ...the unexpected combination of a nearly infinite
supply, constant availability, suboptimum sound quality and the
intangibility makes songs more trivial...a challenge to culturally
ambitious musicians: before they can be larger than life, they have to
be larger than the LCD screen. Or they can try to conquer that screen
and play the Internet as an instrument, using its defining attribute:
interactivity.....The evolving world of music: Bjork is working on an
album, “Biophilia,” that will have smartphone apps built around every
song: apps that diagram the song in both conventional music notation and
invented graphic notation. ....

36. Paul

If you are really looking for a cheap way out you could try doing what I
did. Although it’s highly dependent on how much you use the phone.

I got a used 2G version of the iPhone for ~$225 from Kijiji. Normally
you can pick them up in decent shape with only a few scratches, etc for
roughly that price.

Then go with Speakout Wireless through 7-11. There is an option which
allows you to have “unlimited browsing” for $10.
http://speakout7eleven.ca/pages/rates/

You can then setup the phone using instructions here:
http://www.binarysearchtree.com/

It would then depend on your usage from there. It’s $0.25/minute after
that and $0.10/text. So if you don’t use your phone a lot you could
probably keep it to around $30 – $40/month and have no contract.

It’s not perfect as not all apps work, but a rather large amount do.

y DAMON DARLIN
Published: June 8, 2011

By ROY FURCHGOTT
Published: June 8, 2011

May 17, 2011 | Forrester Blogs | by Sarah Rotman Epps who
explains that computing is shifting from: Stationary to ubiquitous.
Contrast the experience of computing on a desktop PC, in one place with a
clear start and finish time, to that of the anytime/anywhere computing
done on a smartphone or tablet. Ubiquitous computing = context-aware
computing, aided by sensors like accelerometers, gyroscopes, and
geolocators in smartphones & tablets.
Formal to casual. Instant-on/always-on computing on smartphones and
tablets fills in-between moments like standing in line or watching TV.

Abstracted to physical. Touchscreens on smartphones and tablets
enable direct physical manipulation of content in two-dimensional space.
Cameras with facial recognition, voice sensors, and motion sensors
(e.g. Microsoft Kinect for Xbox 360) permit a wider range of physical
interaction with devices, where a user’s body and voice become the
controller.

May 10, 2011, 2:07 pm
What Does the Skype Deal Mean for Windows Phones?
By JENNA WORTHAM

March 29, 2011, - NYTimes.com by NICK BILTON

March 24, 2011 | Brian L. Frank | WSJ

By David Goldman, staff writerFebruary 3, 2011:

DECEMBER 27, 2010 | | By ANDREW DOWELL The Rise of Apps, iPad and Android

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010 | Wall Street Journal | By PHRED DVORAK

July 8, 2010,| BusinessWeek | By Ira Boudway. Fed up with
poor service at traditional banks, Josh Reich is building BankSimple—an
alternative with "the agility and mindset of a tech company"

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
Published: August 17, 2010
Major retailers are working with a new smartphone application that
tracks and offers promotions to shoppers as they move from outside the
store, to counters, to cash registers — even inside the dressing room.
The app, called Shopkick, will be available on Tuesday for the iPhone
and in the fall for Android phones. And with five major companies
supporting it — Macy’s, Best Buy, Sports Authority and American Eagle
Outfitters, along with the Simon Property Group, the prominent mall
operator — it is getting a big introduction. Unlike apps like
Foursquare, Shopkick tells retailers when users are inside, not just
near, a store. The app lets stores “influence their behavior,”

JUNE 23, 2010 | Wall Street Journal | By YUKARI IWATANI KANE And BEN WORTHEN. IPhone Advances Inside Companies BlackBerry Had.

JUNE 11, 2010 | Wall Street Journal | By DANA MATTIOLI. As
More Consumers Shop via Mobile Devices, Stores Tailor Sites to Make
Viewing, Ordering Easier.

May. 10, 2010 | The Globe and Mail | Omar El Akkad. Polar
Mobile, a 30-person Toronto-based startup, has no shortage of famous
customers. TIME Magazine, Sports Illustrated and BusinessWeek have all
turned to the company to help develop their mobile applications for
smart phones.

Now, Polar is on the cutting edge of a new technology phenomenon fuelled
by the rise of the app generation: call it reverse outsourcing.

A number of Asia's biggest publications have just signed deals with the
firm to develop the mobile versions of their websites, leveraging
Polar's content management system. The deals lend credence to a growing
sentiment in technology sectors: that Toronto and Waterloo, where Polar
was founded and where Research In Motion has its headquarters, are
joining Silicon Valley as the world's application development hotbeds.

Jun. 09, 2010 | Globe and Mail | Elizabeth Church. "Their
work, part of a push by the Toronto campus to tap student know-how to
create new digital products, is allowing riders on one line of the Paris
Metro to use their smartphones to get directions, plan their trip and
ask for assistance from transit staff. Closer to home, the group is
hoping to test the student-developed application on the GO train’s
Lakeshore and Richmond Hill lines this fall."..."The new application is
one of the first products to be launched from the school’s Digital Media
Zone, a project that began this spring and brings together students
from various fields of study to develop their ideas under the guidance
of staff and business advisers."

June 6, 2010 | NYT | By ASHLEE VANCE. The hardest part may be
convincing consumers to change their behavior and adopt the new tools.
People who once printed out directions now have their own navigational
devices, and things like boarding passes and tickets are starting to
give way to their digital equivalents on smartphones. Analysts add that
recessions tend to condition people to print less.

JUNE 3, 2010 | WSJ | By SPENCER E. ANTE. Security Concerns Prompt Warnings

By Nilay Patel posted Jun 2nd 2010

MAY 26, 2010 | WSJ | By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR Whose phone
strategy is smarter in the long run—Apple's or Google's? The dangers of
Google's approach? With so many different Android phones floating around
and with so much openness to the Web, the search giant risks delivering
a crummy, fragmented, even disastrous user experience, with security
leaks, viruses and customer service that fails when needed most. For
Apple, the immediate danger is overreach, undermining its ability to
deliver an ineffably superior user experience that just pleases. Apple
has decided it needs an advertising strategy. It will need a TV
strategy, especially after Google last week announced a version of
Android to bring the cloud cornucopia to the biggest, best screen yet.
Apple may also find it needs a strategy to compete in search. It
certainly will need a strategy to make sure its infotainment offerings
through iTunes don't fall behind in price and variety what Android users
can get through their browsers.

MAY 20, 2010 | By SCOTT MCCARTNEY. Using a Smartphone to Organize Your Travels
TripIt, WorldMate and TripCase Compile Itineraries, Send Flight Alerts, but Accuracy Can Be an Issue; Being Sent to Terminal 0.

May 14 2010 | The Atlantic | by Derek Thompson. The story
here isn't really that smartphones are killing talking. The story is
that a host of emerging technologies (e.g. email, Tweet, Facebook, text,
instant-message, video chat, and so on.) are revealing that Americans
love to talk, but they don't always want to use their voice.

May. 10, 2010 | Globe & Mail | by TMS Ruge

Dec. 03, 2009 | The Globe and Mail | by Omar El Akkad

APRIL 21, 2010 | Wall Street Journal | By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER.
Retailers Reach Out on Cellphones. Software Apps Provide Shoppers With
Rewards to Help Lure Them Into Stores.

March 12, 2010 | New York Times | By BRAD STONE and MIGUEL
HELFT. Mr. Jobs, Mr. Schmidt and their companies are now engaged in a
gritty battle royale over the future and shape of mobile computing and
cellphones, with implications that are reverberating across the digital
landscape.

In the last six months, Apple and Google have jousted over acquisitions,
patents, directors, advisers and iPhone applications. Mr. Jobs and Mr.
Schmidt have taken shots at each other’s companies in the media and in
private exchanges with employees....At the heart of their dispute is a
sense of betrayal: Mr. Jobs believes that Google violated the alliance
between the companies by producing cellphones that physically,
technologically and spiritually resembled the iPhone. In short, he feels
that his former friends at Google picked his pocket.

FEBRUARY 24, 2010 | Wall Street Journal | by By JOSEPH DE AVILA. The Unused Cellphone App: 'Calling'

January 31, 2010, | BusinessWeek | By Aaron Ricadela. 'Here I
Am!' GPS Location Apps Have Limited Appeal
Online services that send updates on a person's location are all the
rage in Silicon Valley, but they have far to go before they'll be
adopted elsewhere

Jan. 09, 2010 | The Globe and Mail | by Omar El Akkad
(Technology Reporter). “My basic thesis is that the smart phone has
become people's most personal computer,” said Fixmo Co-founder Rick
Segal. “And like personal computers, they need utilities to make them
better.”

Mr. Segal and his partners are hoping users find the suite of tools
useful enough to pay for. The company will roll out its BlackBerry
software first, followed by versions for the iPhone, Android and Windows
Mobile devices. Fixmo is one of a number of companies that was spawned
in whole or in part by Extreme Labs, a Toronto-based venture capital
firm.

By MOTOKO RICH and BRAD STONE
Published: November 17, 2009

By ROY FURCHGOTT
Published: September 9, 2009

Mar 11 2009 | Etech | by Quinn Norton

June 21, 2009 | New York Times | By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER and
MATT RICHTEL. Mobile payment systems have been tried before with
limited success. However, driven by the success of the iPhone,
BlackBerry and other smartphones, complex interactions have been made
easier, and they have demonstrated that people on the go are willing to
spend on music, games and virtual goods. Now the race is on to develop
new payment systems — and to seek several percentage points in fees from
each transaction.

By JENNA WORTHAM
Published: April 3, 2009

JULY 22, 2008 WSJ blog post by Ben Worthen on rise of smart phones