Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve all been at a huge outdoor event which renders our phone useless, with no available bandwidth to make calls or check a map. That’s why Sandia Labs has built this giant cluster, to simulate large networks of phones and make sure they place nicely together. More »

comScore today released its latest U.S. mobile market rankings, covering usage by 30,000 consumers over a three-month period ending August 2012 — that is, in the period just before the launch of Apple’s newest iPhone, and during the time when Samsung was slapped with a $1 billion+ fine over a patent suit brought against it by Apple. In that time, Samsung retained its position as the country’s most popular handset maker, covering both smartphones and feature devices, but its share actually remained flat, at 25.7% of all users, while Apple’s share grew the most and other top players declined. Google’s Android OS, meanwhile, solidified its position as the most dominant smartphone platform, now being used on nearly 53% of all smartphones.

Among all mobile handset makers (covering both smartphones and feature devices) Apple stood out in the period for growing the most, with a rise of 2.1% to take a 17.1% share of all mobile users. That narrowed that gap between it and number-two LG, which declined by 0.9% to 18.2%.  Motorola, equally, saw a decline of nearly 0.8% to bring it down to 11.2%. That’s largely in line with how both of these performed in the quarter before. HTC, however, appears to be seeing a mini-turnaround. It’s market share increased by 0.2 percentage points, and is now at 6.3%. As with the previous survey, it’s telling that the top-five are dominated by Android and Apple.

As for Samsung’s flatlining, it may be that this is more about how it’s doing in its feature phone business rather than its smartphone business. Figures out today from Localytics show that in fact July and August were pretty strong months for sales of Samsung smartphones — in particular its new flagship Galaxy S3. (September looks to be a different story.) Indeed, growing sales in smartphones coupled with slowing sales in feature phones is a trend we’ve seen in previous quarters, too.

Among smartphone platforms, Google is once again gaining some ground and is now well into accounting for more than half of all smartphone users in the U.S. However, as in the previous quarter Apple is still growing at a faster rate, with Google now at 52.6% of all smartphones, growing by 1.7 percentage points; and Apple at 34.3%, growing by 2.4 percentage points. And it’s all about consolidation: RIM, Microsoft and Symbian, which all have less than 10% market share, all continued to decline.

That’s in contrast to the international picture as painted by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. The WPP-owned analysts chart smartphone purchases, and there it is noticing some gains being made by Windows Phone, particularly in Europe.

comScore also charts what people are using devices for, and while it looked like text messaging continues to be the most popular activity, with 75.6% of all users sending texts. The quarter before texting growth was flat; this time around it’s picked up a little steam once again, up by 0.8 percentage points. But it’s not growing as fast as app usage or using the mobile web, these both grew by more than 2 percentage points, with app downloading done by 53.4% of all users, and mobile web being used by 52%. Social networking, games and music rounded out the top 5.

What’s perhaps most notable about this list is that it covers both smartphone and feature phone owners. In other words, “advanced” services beyond basic voice and text are becoming mainstream and easy enough to access even on low-end devices that we are seeing an overall growth in a critical mass using them.

Photo Flickr

InfraRed connections used to be commonplace on PDAs and other mobile devices, but fell from favor as WiFi and Bluetooth proliferated; now, researchers into high-speed optical data at Fraunhofer want to bring it back. Six times faster than USB 2.0, the “multi-gigabit communication module” requires line-of-sight but can offload HD video from a camcorder to a PC in seconds, the research team behind it claims.

The magic – which makes it 46x faster than WiFi and 1,430x faster than Bluetooth – is in the combination of signal processing and the IR optics themselves. Skipping transfer to radio signals, instead the Fraunhofer approach uses a laser diode and a photo detector that can fit into a transceiver roughly “the size of a child’s fingernail” for simultaneous high-speed transmission and reception.

The decoder, too, has been polished with special error-correction systems to counteract weakened or distorted light signals. Put your camcorder next to your laptop and it can achieve anything between 1 Gbps and 3 Gbps, with the next goal being 10 Gbps.

While IR may not seem particularly important these days, the Infrared Data Association would beg to differ, and Fraunhofer is working with the group to push the high-speed laser-IR as an alternative for traditional wired and wireless connections.

3Gbit InfraRed: This isn’t your parents’ TV clicker is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

A group of scientists from Scotland have suggested a unique approach to fighting global warming here on earth. The scientists believe that the answer to global warming on Earth is a giant dust cloud blasted from an asteroid to act as a sunshade for Earth. According to the scientists, a project that reduced the amount of solar radiation the Earth receives by only 1.7% could offset the effects of the global increase in temperature of 3.6°F.

One of the researchers, named Russell Bewick from the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, says that a 1.7% reduction is very small would hardly be noticeable on earth. There are alternatives to using a giant cloud of dust blasted from an asteroid to shield the Earth. Another proposal would place giant mirrors in space, but this plan would be very expensive and require construction in outer space.

The scientists believe that the asteroid could gravitationally anchor a giant dust cloud in space to block sunlight and cool the earth. The scientist does specify that he doesn’t recommend geoengineering in place of simply reducing carbon emissions on earth. The theory suggests that the asteroid and its massive dust cloud would be placed at Lagrange point L1, which is about four times the distance from the Earth to the moon.

The plan would then use something called a “mass driver” consisting of electromagnets to hurl asteroid-derived material away from the asteroid and out into space. The scientists say the mass driver could serve as a rocket to push the asteroid to its orbital point as well as the engine to blast the shielding cloud off the asteroid. The researchers have also picked a potential candidate in a near Earth asteroid called 1036 Ganymed. The cloud needed to shield the Earth from the solar radiation would have to measure about 11 million-billion pounds in mass in be about 1600 miles wide.

[via LiveScience]

Asteroid dust could be used to fight climate change on Earth is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

In many ways, graphene is one of technology’s sickest jokes. The tantalizing promise of cheap to produce, efficient to run materials, that could turn the next page in gadget history has always remained frustratingly out of reach. Now, a new process for creating semiconductors grown on graphene could see the super material commercialized in the next five years. Developed at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the patented process “bombs” graphene with gallium, which forms droplets, and naturally arranges itself to match graphene’s famous hexagonal pattern. Then, arsenic is added to the mix, which enters the droplets and crystallizes at the bottom, creating a stalk. After a few minutes of this process the droplets are raised by the desired height. The new process also does away with the need for a (relatively) thick substrate to grow the nanowire on, making it cheaper, more flexible and transparent. The inventors state that this could be used in flexible and efficient solar cells and light emitting diodes. We say forward the revolution.

Continue reading New process for nanotube semiconductors could be graphene’s ticket to primetime (video)

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New process for nanotube semiconductors could be graphene’s ticket to primetime (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 Sep 2012 12:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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