OLEAN, N.Y., April 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Starting Thursday, April 19, Verizon Wireless customers in the Cattaraugus-Allegany area will be able to surf the Web, download large files, and share music and photos at speeds up to ten times faster than before with the company’s 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) high-speed data network. The new network will be available in the Olean, Amity, Angelica, Arcade, Bolivar, Cuba, Ellicottville, Franklinville, Friendship, Hinsdale, Killbuck, Machias, Napoli and Wellsville areas, and along portions of the I-86 and Route 219 corridors. Additional local cell sites will get the technology over the next several months, expanding and filling in coverage further. Full nationwide deployment of the company’s 4G LTE network is scheduled to be complete by the end of 2013.

In addition, the company has activated 28 new 4G LTE sites in the Buffalo area since January. 4G LTE launched in that market in October.

“Our 4G LTE network will change the way our customers in Western New York think about and use wireless technology,” said Russ Preite, president of Verizon Wireless‘ Upstate New York Region. “By bringing true fourth-generation wireless technology to the area, we continue to lead the way with 4G LTE by giving our local consumer and business customers the ability to enjoy a much more powerful and robust wireless data experience. That will translate into greater productivity, expanded business opportunities, and exciting new entertainment options.”

Verizon Wireless is introducing its 4G LTE network in a total of 27 new markets and expanding the network in 44 markets across the United States on April 19. With the new and expanded markets, the company’s 4G LTE network will be available to two-thirds of the U.S. population in 230 markets. 

In real-world, fully-loaded network environments, Verizon Wireless customers will be able to use their 4G LTE smartphones, tablets, notebooks, laptop modems and mobile hotspots to experience average data rates of 5 to 12 megabits per second (Mbps) on the downlink and 2 to 5 Mbps on the uplink – perfect for surfing the Web, streaming video, and downloading large files wirelessly.

When customers travel outside of a 4G LTE coverage area, 4G LTE devices automatically connect to Verizon Wireless’ 3G network, where available, enabling customers to stay connected from coast to coast.  Verizon Wireless’ 3G network is the most reliable high-speed data network in the country and allows customers in 3G coverage areas who purchase 4G LTE devices today to take advantage of 4G LTE speeds when the faster network becomes available in their area, or when they travel to areas already covered by 4G LTE. 

Visit www.verizonwireless.com/lte for more information about Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE network. 

About Verizon Wireless
Verizon Wireless operates the nation’s largest 4G LTE network and largest, most reliable 3G network. The company serves nearly 108 million total wireless connections, including 92.2 million retail customers.  Headquartered in Basking Ridge, N.J., with nearly 82,000 employees nationwide, Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications (NYSE, NASDAQ: VZ) and Vodafone (LSE, NASDAQ: VOD).  For more information, visit www.verizonwireless.com. To preview and request broadcast-quality video footage and high-resolution stills of Verizon Wireless operations, log on to the Verizon Wireless Multimedia Library at www.verizonwireless.com/multimedia.

Our home media PC is getting a little long in the tooth. It’s always been a bit of a problem because we bought a horizontal case that would look pretty in our media room, rather than one optimized for holding PC hardware. Right now, the machine is just about three years old, hasn’t had a Windows reinstall in all that time, and has developed its own set of quirks.

It’s getting near that time. It’s getting near that time when either a Windows reinstall is necessary, or its general crotchetiness will give us an excuse to build a spiffy, new machine. And that has had me thinking about whether we’ll just put our trusty copy of 64-bit Windows 7 on it, or hold out for Windows 8.

That has had me thinking about whether I even want to run Windows 8, and that got me thinking about what it would take to make Windows 8 a real, acknowledged, indisputable success in the marketplace.

Here, then, are eight things Microsoft needs to do to save Windows 8:

1. Clearly overcome Windows 8’s WTF problem

Windows 8 suffers from WTFitis. Most of us, when presented with news of Windows 8’s various changes — from the weird start environment to Metro to Windows RT, to the apparent push for Windows on tablets — look at Windows 8 and simply ask, “WTF?”

In other words, why is Microsoft doing this to us? Why can’t Windows 8 just be Windows, only better? That’s all most of us want, anyway. Just Windows, but better.

Microsoft seems to have iPad envy, and the company looks like it’s willing to sell all us desktop and notebook users down the river, just so it can have a nice tablet interface, even though most tablet users will still just buy an iPad.

So, the first major thing Microsoft has to do is make it clear that they understand that there’s a future desktop and notebook market, and that they don’t consider all of us who have to do real work with Windows 8 the ugly step-children of the beautiful people who use tablets and want a PLAYSKOOL interface so they can fling Angry Birds.

See also: Why Windows 8 matters for real work, and so will Windows 9

2. Rename the tablet version of Windows to “Windows for Tablets”

This is a corollary to #1 above. There’s a version of Windows 8 being designed for OEMs who are building tablets on Arm processors (the most popular mobile processor). This is a fundamentally different Windows than most of us will run on our PCs, and it’s not even available to the general public.

But Microsoft’s early Windows 8 marketing has been problematic, because Microsoft hasn’t made it clear that PC version is completely different from the tablet version. Even now, things aren’t completely clear. Microsoft has been encouraging developers to move to RT as a development library, saying that it’s the future of Windows applications.

But Windows 8 RT is just the version of Windows for Arm devices (yes, the name of the tablet product is “RT”, not something — you know — like “tablet”). So it’s not clear to developers that if they start coding RT applications, whether or not those applications will only run on Windows RT or Windows for PCs.

Clarity is essential here.

3. Build an install option to install Windows 8 in “classic” mode with a Start button

There is no doubt that the Metro interface has the potential to be pretty — on small displays. But there’s also no doubt that all the jumping back and forth into and out of Metro to simply launch desktop programs is completely untenable — especially, again, for those of us doing real work.

Clearly, there are now two approaches to the Windows interface — the old-style desktop and the optimized-for-tiny-displays Metro.

To avoid truly pissing off Microsoft’s very loyal (and very busy) desktop user-base, they need to create an option for a “classic” interface install, including a Start button and the desktop as the primary environment.

4. Start promoting the “getting real work done” benefits of upgrading to Windows 8

As it turns out, other than the whole Metro nightmare, Windows 8 is a pretty slick desktop OS upgrade. It adds a ton of helpful new features that will make using Windows more productive.

These include being able to manage what items boot from the Task Manager, without having to MSCONFIG or hack a registry, faster booting, the ability to do a clean Windows reinstall without wiping your data or settings, the ability to sync your settings across PCs, and a lot more.

These individual feature tweaks are what will make us active users (you could also call us “recommenders”) decide to upgrade to Windows 8.

Microsoft needs to go out of its way to explain these benefits, not just rely on us in the trade press to discover them and point them out as afterthoughts.

5. Remove artificial performance limitations from all Windows 8 versions

Windows 7 has a bunch of artificial performance limitations, designed to force customers to buy different packages just to get better performance from their computers. For example, Windows Home doesn’t allow you to use all your RAM, if you have a boatload of RAM.

Another limitation: the IIS Web server artificially throttles down the number of simultaneous Web sessions, presumably to try to force server operators to buy Windows Server.

These artificial limitations do not encourage Windows upgrades, they simply annoy their customers. Any company that wants a fully powered server operating system will buy Windows Server, for example. But there’s no good reason why Microsoft should be pushing people to things like Apache and Linux, when their own products work quite well.

The way to separate versions is by features, plain and simple. The Pro version of Windows 8, for example, will offer Active Directory domain management, a feature that’s almost exclusively corporate. This makes sense, but artificial limitations don’t.

Next: Stop self-limiting Windows »

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Unless brazen thieves pull up to your house in a moving van with the aim of purloining all your electronic valuables, your desktop PC isn’t likely to get stolen. It’s too bulky, and a zillion cables connect it to other devices. Certainly you’re not going to simply lose a PC!

However, your smartphone has nearly as much computing power as that PC (more, if the PC is really old), and opportunities for smartphone loss or theft are almost limitless. We’ll show you how to protect both your iPhone or Android device and the personal data it contains.

Lock It Up
If you haven’t set up a screen-lock passcode to protect your smartphone, pull the device out right now and set one. IPhone users can choose a simple four-digit numeric PIN or an eight-character alphanumeric passcode. The four-digit PIN is easier to enter due to the big buttons on the phone keypad, but the eight-character passcode is much more secure. To minimize the annoyance of frequent passcode re-entry, you can set the phone to auto-lock after a delay of one to five minutes.

Android users have choices that vary by device. Using a numeric or alphanumeric passcode is one option. Some devices support unlocking with a swipe pattern, or even using facial recognition. As with the iPhone you’ll probably find it convenient to set a delay, so the phone doesn’t lock immediately when you turn it off.

While a four-digit numeric PIN is handy on either type of device, you should know that law enforcement can crack four-digit PINs using advanced forensic software. If the lawmen can do it, chances are good the crooks can do it too.

Don’t Break Security
Numerous studies have shown that the built-in security in Apple’s iOS works very, very well. It’s not perfect, but it’s significantly tighter than Android’s.

The one way to lose this protection? Jailbreak your iPhone. According to researcher Dino Dai Zovi, a jailbroken iPhone is roughly as secure as a standard Android phone. Jailbreak it and you throw away your security advantage.

Rooting an Android phone is the equivalent of jailbreaking an iPhone. Some apps require rooting; don’t install those apps. Do note that the law-enforcment forensic software mentioned earlier can automatically root an Android phone, and some malware attacks can also root the phone.

A few high-end Android phones automatically wipe all data when rooted. The thief will have your smartphone, but not your personal data.

Don’t Give Permission
Every time you install an Android app, you have to approve a laundry list of permissions. Don’t just click to allow them all. Read the entire list. If you find something illogical, like a flashlight app asking for access to your email contacts, cancel the installation. An Android app with no permissions whatever can still get a small amount of information about your phone, but if you don’t review the permissions list you may be giving an app the keys to the kingdom.

You can only get iPhone apps from the App Store, but Android apps are available outside the Android Market. In China, the official Android Market isn’t even available. Android malware is rampant in China because there’s no Google Bouncer to suppress obviously malicious apps. Stick to the Android Market, or put your phone at risk.

Apps for the iPhone go through a rigorous vetting by Apple. In theory, an app requiring unreasonable permissions wouldn’t get past this process, though there have been slip-ups. The main area where you have a choice involves apps that want to use your location. Check the list of apps under Location Services in the iPhone’s settings, and turn it off for any apps that don’t truly need your location. Note that if you let the camera use location settings, every photo you upload reveals exactly where you were at the time.

Crank Up Security
When your smartphone’s operating system gets an update, it almost always includes patches for security flaws. Don’t delay; always install updates as soon as they’re available.

Android users can prevent certain types of hack attacks by making a few simple changes to settings. The USB Debugging feature gives hackers (or lawmen) easy access to your Android phone via a USB connection to a PC. Disable USB debugging. If your phone includes the option to use full disk encryption, enable it.

Those using iPhones should check to see if backups are encrypted. If not, open iTunes, delete the old backups and set a password to encrypt new backups. You can also choose the SIM PIN option in Phone settings to ensure that a thief can’t simply eject your SIM and use it in another phone.

Get Help
You wouldn’t leave your PC naked, unprotected by an antivirus tool or security suite. Your smartphone, especially if it’s an Android device, can benefit from a mobile security app.

In addition to protection against mobile malware, these tools often come with a variety of antitheft features. They’ll let you check a lost or stolen phone’s location, lock the phone remotely, wipe or encrypt personal data, even snap a photo of the thief.

Smartphones put virtually all the power of a desktop computer in your pocket. Most of us would sooner go out without pants than without our cherished phone. Take the precautions listed here to keep your smartphone and its data as safe as possible.

Consumers can now buy the Galaxy Nexus smartphone, which is manufactured by Samsung but runs on Google’s Android operating system, in the Google Play store, or what it used to call its Android Market. The phone, which costs $399, will ship “unlocked,” which means it works with multiple wireless carriers. Sprint Nextel and Verizon will subsidize half the cost of the phone for consumers who commit to a two-year contract.

Google’s previous direct-to-consumers push was in January 2010, when it sold its Nexus One smartphone through its online store. It had helped design the phone with HTC, the manufacturer. It abandoned the effort less than six months later because of poor sales. The problem was that T-Mobile was the only carrier that subsidized its $529 price tag, and that carriers refused to sell the phone through their own retail outlets.

“While the global adoption of the Android platform has exceeded our expectations, the web store has not,” Google wrote in a blog post in May 2010 “It’s remained a niche channel for early adopters, but it’s clear that many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone, and they also want a wide range of service plans to chose from.”

Google has since worked closely with carriers to make phones with its Android system available in their retail outlets. That has helped make Android the dominant smartphone operating platform with 300 million Android devices activated globally. That, experts say, helped Google lure app developers. Google had 16,000 apps in its Android market when it introduced the Nexus One in January 2010. It now boasts 500,000.

“The Nexus One was a flop, but at least it got a lot of phones into developers’ hands,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners.

Google’s new online store could soon feature two new devices: its much-anticipated tablet and a home entertainment device. Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, told an Italian newspaper last December that Google planned to release a tablet by June of this year. The Wall Street Journal, in a subsequent report, said Google would sell the device through its online store.

The company is also working on a prototype for a home entertainment device, according to people inside the company who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak. While the initial purpose of the device will be for streaming music, the eventual use could be much wider, these people said.

Analysts have largely questioned whether Google’s online sales strategy will work. “It’s won’t be a game changer,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, a Forrester analyst. To work, Ms. Rotman Epps noted, Google will have to reposition itself from a free search engine into an e-commerce company. Google has always given away its core services for free and generated its revenue from advertising. It will take an undisclosed cut of sales from its online store.

“Google has spent the last decade training consumers to think ‘free’,” Ms. Rotman Epps added. “Now they want to change that relationship and re-brand as a company that sells stuff to consumers. That is a hard thing to do.”

HAMBURG, GERMANY —
The free app CamSam is now available in iTunes App Store and in the Android market. Users get timely information over the GPS about all registered speedcams on their section of the road. Besides radar trackers, they are also informed about red lights and section controls. The warnings are not only displayed on the screen, they are also accompanied by voice messages in any of the 6 available languages.

To keep this network of information up-to-date, it also works in the other direction. If a user wants to report a speedcam, they can use the reporting function on the smartphone to warn other fellow drivers. The current position of the speedcam is determined immediately and transmitted to the system, checked by the CamSam editor team and sent back to the community. To improve the quality of speedcam data for the users, the app also has a useful, integrated feature called “Confirm speedcam.” That means, if the user passes by a registered speedcam location, the system asks them whether the speedcam is currently there. Anyone wishing to benefit from the other useful functions, such as the Landscape mode, can download the paid version “CamSam Plus.”

Users will derive benefit from the world’s largest database “SCDB.info” containing entries for more than 47,000 stationary speed and red light cams all over the world and the mobile real-time speedcam notifications of the steadily growing community of CamSam.

“CamSam far exceeds our expectations. So far, almost 3 million active users have installed the mobile speedcam warners on their smartphones. Our community is growing every day and improves with every new user,” says CamSam founder Matthias Eifrig.

www.camsam.com

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© Marketwire 2012

I’ve commented before on the size of Symbian’s installed base of active users, pointing out that it’s larger than most industry commentators would have conceived. However, with Symbian smartphone sales on something of a decline in recent months and with Android device sales still rising, it was clear that at some point the active installed base of the two smartphone OS would switch positions. According to my calculations this happened recently – Android has overtaken Symbian and is now the most used mobile OS on the planet – see the helpful chart below.

A few notes first:

1. The size of the ‘active installed base’ for a smartphone platform is important as it reflects how many users might be interested in a particular app, service or download. Or indeed, interested in a particular web site (cough: All About Symbian?)
    
2. Actually defining ‘active installed base’ is somewhat problematic. Rafe has used ‘sales from the last two years’ in some previous statistics, but I think this understates the true figures slightly. I mean, there are still plenty of people using N95 variants, from 2007, still plenty of people using N82s and E71s, and so forth, all from 2008. But clearly, on the other hand, there are also plenty of 2009/2010 era Symbian smartphones which are now either being used as a dumb phone by a relative or child, or which are simply sitting in a drawer doing nothing. 
    
   So, for my definition, I went for ‘sales in the last three years’, rolling in the extra current quarter (Q1, 2012) since we now have stats for this, making a total period of 13 quarters if you want to count them up. In Symbian terms, this means everything from the Nokia 5800 onwards, with some now unused S60 5th Edition phones being cancelled out by some pre-2009 devices being still in happy use. In Android terms, this effectively means every device, since three years is around the life of that platform(!)
    
3. As you’ll see, I was interested in how the installed base of each platform has changed over time, so I went back to the start of 2006, to integrate the three year rolling calculation across the chart.
    
4. There are some approximations in my figures, due to oddities like Japanese Symbian non-smartphone sales not being counted, like Samsung bada sales in recent years complicating Samsung’s figures, which in terms makes a slight difference to the Android count, but I’m happy that the data points are all within a couple of percent. 

Of note for Symbian fans is that the platform’s not going away in a great hurry, the size of the ecosystem and general active Symbian community has remained at just over the quarter million mark for the last 18 months and, taking into account the same 3 year ‘rolling sales’ method of calculation, I’d estimate that it won’t be significantly under 250,000 even at the end of this year, 2012.

Android’s installed base is rising fast, of course, I’d estimate this at hitting 400,000 or so by the end of the year. Plus, judging from current sales trends, iOS will also overtake Symbian’s installed base by the end of the year.

And so effectively, Symbian, Android and iOS are by far the biggest existing smartphone ecosystems on the planet. Yes, I know we also run the All About Windows Phone web site, but the installed base for Windows Phone is still ‘in the noise’ in terms of the numbers being quoted on this chart – it’s still very early days for this new smartphone platform.

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 26 April 2012

Projections may have changed, however, after the launch of Google Play, which replaced the old Android Market. The slides indicate that Google had recognized it was “behind on music, video and books,” which is something the new Google Play store is supposed to address. Google projected it would generate $738 million in music sales revenue in 2011 and $1.5 million in 2012, which seems to be a grand expectation for a service that’s still secondary to other music streaming and MP3 purchasing software.

In a note to The Verge, Google was sure to indicate that the numbers in the slides were outdated. Here’s what they had to say:

The discussions in the documents date from 2010 or earlier, so don’t represent current thinking about our business operations. Our industry continues to evolve incredibly fast and so do our aspirations for our various products and services. 

Follow @MichaelFNunez

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NEW YORK (AP) — Fitch Ratings Services said Tuesday that ATT’s sale of a majority stake in its Yellow Pages business shows the credit of directory publishers is getting worse.

Fitch said revenue and cash flows are decreasing, and directory publishers have not been part of a recent recovery in advertising spending. The firm said the industry will probably see a new round of restructuring. It said Dex One and SuperMedia may have to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the second time in just a few years. Both companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2009 and exited in 2010.

People have increasingly turned to online directories, web searches and smartphone apps to fulfill the role formerly dominated by Yellow Pages-style directories. That had made space in the directories less enticing — and less valuable — to advertisers.

On Monday, ATT Inc. agreed to sell a majority stake in Yellow Pages to the private-equity firm Cerberus Capital for $950 million. Revenue from the business has fallen 30 percent over the last two years as consumers have preferred the Web to phone books.

Akdas Infotech let us know about their release of three free BlackBerry smartphone apps that I think are worth mentioning. The first is a simple yet cute SMS viewer and composer that will spice up your SMS messages.The best I can describe it is as a theme for your SMS. The second two allow you to set a password on your Instant Messenger apps (Windows Live, WhatsApp, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger along with a separate one for email and SMS.

Check out the apps below and let us know what you think:

• Cute and Smart SMS Viewer and Composer For BlackBerry -  collected more than 7000 reviews within 8-9 days of first release. It is also in Top free apps list on App World.
• Socio Lock™ – Password Protect For BlackBerry Windows Live WhatsApp Google Talk Yahoo Messenger Apps – a all in one lock tool for all Instant Messenger’s and social network apps.
• Message Lock – Password Protect your SMS Email and Messages – Message Lock allows you to password protect access to all your Messages, Emails and SMS