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The first GSMA Mobile Observatory report to focus on Africa has come back with some fascinating conclusions. First among them, Africa has passed Latin America to become the world's second largest mobile market. The global mobile association examined the 25 African countries that account for 91% of mobile use (calling them the "A25"). Here are some of the most interesting of the report's conclusions.

The report "integrates data from a wide range of existing sources to provide a comprehensive picture of the African mobile industry. These include public sources such as the ITU, World Bank and research by National Regulatory Authorities as well as commercial providers such as Wireless Intelligence, Informa, Gartner, Buddecomm and ID." Africa now has 620 million mobile connections, passing Latin America Regional penetration has risen from 2% in 2000, to 57% this year Over the last decade, the number of mobile connections has grown an average of 30% per year, forecast to reach 735 million by the end of next year Mobile provides 3.5% of African GDP Highly competetive sector has resulted in price decreases of up to 60% in some areas, with an overall average of 18% decrease in the last year 96% of is pre-paid with voice services currently dominating, however data is increasing rapidly - Kenya data revenues, for instance, including SMS, have increased at a 67% annual growth over the last 4 years, representing 26% of total revenues in that country

45 mobile operators have pledged their support for subscriber identity module (SIM) based Near Field Communication (NFC) implementations in an announcement made by mobile industry trade body the GSM Association (GSMA).

The 45 operators involved account for nearly 3 billion subscriptions worldwide, and include China Mobile, Vodafone Group, América Móvil, Telefónica Group, China Unicom, Axiata, Bharti Airtel, Deutsche Telekom, Verizon Wireless, and AT&T.

Potential applications for this technology include mobile payments, public transit access, event ticketing, secure access to buildings or vehicles, identification, and person-to-person (P2P) data sharing.

Colorado, defending Yahoo against attempts by the federal government to obtain the contents of Yahoo Mail messages without first obtaining a warrant. One month earlier, the Justice Department filed a 17-page brief arguing that Yahoo Mail messages do not fall under current statutory protection because, once opened, those messages are not considered to be in “electronic storage.” The privacy coalition—which included Google—came to Yahoo’s defense, arguing that users with e-mail stored in the cloud have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of that e-mail, and should thus be protected from warrantless searches by the government. (Hopefully the irony of Google opposing robust searches is not lost on Google’s attorneys.) Unfortunately, the protections afforded by the warrant requirement have not yet been fully extended to the digital “cloud.” This handy metaphor for the ethereal Internet as a storage and access hub is coming to have other implications: can we really conceal our data inside this cloud, shielding it from government intrusion? Read more at arstechnica.com

Nearly one in five smartphone users are tapping into check-in services like Foursquare and Gowalla, according to a ComScore report released yesterday. A total of 16.7 million mobile-phone subscribers used location-based services on their phones in March. That amounts to about 7.1 percent of the entire population of mobile users. But among smartphone users specifically, 12.7 million checked in with such sites during the month, representing 17.6 percent of all smartphone owners, ComScore said. For the purposes of its study, ComScore included such location-based check-in services as Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places.

Compared with most smartphone owners, those who used location-based sites on their phones also proved more likely to access other types of mobile content. More than 95 percent of them used their mobile browsers or mobile apps. Almost 62 percent grabbed the news on their mobile devices. And in a stat that will make retailers happy, almost one third of the users browsed to online retail sites on their phones, while one fourth accessed online shopping guides. Users of check-in sites also got a heavier dose of advertising. Almost 40 percent of respondents said they remembered seeing an online ad during March, compared with just 27.5 percent of all smartphone users who said the same thing.

picture a world where software platforms are available online and easily customizable. Picture a world where compute power is generated off site, available in quantities when and where you need it. And picture a world where information is safely stored, efficiently managed and accessible, when and where you need it. These are cloud infrastructures. The economies of scale, flexibility and efficiency they offer will not only save organizations massive amounts of capital and maintenance costs but emancipate them to apply and use information as never before. An unbelievable opportunity to raise productivity while creating unprecedented opportunities for businesses and workers.

Now picture a health-care system where a doctor has medical records at his fingertips, can see x-rays with the click of a mouse, is able to learn and apply the latest diagnostic and surgical technique from anywhere in the world. Think of the efficiencies in hospital supply chains, the delivery of prescription drugs, the processing of billing and insurance claims, reductions in fraud, and the application of best practices for cost controls. The capacity for improvement is endless.  As a matter of fact, these innovations are already being applied in isolated pockets. But for us to seize the opportunity before us it’s imperative that we move from isolated centers of excellence to connected systems of excellence. Pick any industry and systemic improvements like these are available.

A new age of innovation and technology advancement is within our grasp – an opportunity for job creation, greater productivity and economic growth. The time for cloud computing is now. We need government and industry to accelerate broad scale adoption of cloud infrastructures so we can reap the rewards of a true information based economy.

With a pool of nearly 1,000 college students in ten countries over five continents – including the US, the study sought to witness the effects of abstaining from social media and ALL media for a period of 24 hours.

The word “addiction” while not clinically relevant was surely on the minds of the students as this word came back repeatedly in responses. “I was itching, like a crackhead, because I could not use my phone.” – US studentFacebook is the social media “drug” of choice. “There is no doubt that Facebook is really high profile in our daily life.” – Hong Kong studentBut “Texting is the glue of social life.” “I found it hard not to text my boyfriend as I am so used to doing that as our main way of communicating during the day.” – UK studentA sense of isolation and loneliness came over many. “When I couldn’t communicate with my friends by mobile phone, I felt so lonely as if I was in a small cage on an island.” – China student Envy led to hostility. "I realized that I was having hostile thoughts towards those students who were walking around texting. I was jealous of them and it literally felt like some sort of withdrawal.” – US student

My first reaction after reading over all of the findings was ‘I think much of this is applicable to ALL social media and media users as a whole.’

At most companies, going AWOL during daylight hours would be grounds for a pink slip. Not at Best Buy. The nation's leading electronics retailer has embarked on a radical--if risky--experiment to transform a culture once known for killer hours and herd-riding bosses. The endeavor, called ROWE, for "results-only work environment," seeks to demolish decades-old business dogma that equates physical presence with productivity. The goal at Best Buy is to judge performance on output instead of hours.

Best Buy did not invent the post-geographic office. Tech companies have been going bedouin for several years. At IBM (IBM ), 40% of the workforce has no official office; at AT&T, a third of managers are untethered. Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW ) calculates that it's saved $400 million over six years in real estate costs by allowing nearly half of all employees to work anywhere they want. And this trend seems to have legs.

Another thing about this experiment: It wasn't imposed from the top down. It began as a covert guerrilla action that spread virally and eventually became a revolution. So secret was the operation that Chief Executive Brad Anderson only learned the details two years after it began transforming his company. Such bottom-up, stealth innovation is exactly the kind of thing Anderson encourages.

I would like to talk about an inflection point in social media that requires pause. I am not suggesting that there will be a social media 2.0 or 3.0 for that matter. Nor do I see the term social media departing our vocabulary any time soon. After all, it was recently added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.  Instead, what I would like to discuss is the end of an era of social media that will force the industry to mature. It won’t happen on its own however. Evolution will occur because consumers demand it and also because you’re willing to stake your job on it.

The future of social media comes down to one word, “value.” Without it, businesses will find it much more difficult to earn and retain friends, fans and followers (3F’s). As adoption of social networks soared in previous years, growth is now plateauing.  eMarketer estimates that Facebook growth will hit only 13.4% this year after experiencing 38.6% acceleration in 2010 and a staggering 90.3% ascension the year before. Facebook isn’t alone in its sobriety either. The  rate of Twitter user adoption fell from 293.1% growth in 2009 to 26.3% this year.

Between June 2009 and June 2011, the following changes were noted in Facebook activity: - Uploading videos is experiencing a modest increase around the world up 5% in the U.S. and 7.6% worldwide. - Installing apps is on the decline, down 10.4% in the U.S. and 3.1% worldwide. - Sending virtual gifts may not be gifts worth giving after all, with numbers declining 12.9% in the U.S. and 7.5% around the world. Twitter on the other hand is a rich exchange for  information commerce, where links become a form of digital currency. For example, 45% share an opinion about a product or brand more than once per day. Another 34% of Twitter users also share a link about a product or brand more than once per day.

Online video is exploding, with annual user growth of more than 45 percent. Mobile-device time spent increased 28 percent last year — with average smartphone time spent doubling. And social networks are now used by 90 percent of U.S. Internet users — for an average of more than four hours a month.

Every venture capitalist, Web publisher, and digital marketer is hyper-aware of these three trends.

What replaces the declining searchable Web is a new and “fully connected” digital life. You may have heard this before. After all, the promise of the Web was to connect pages with hyperlinks. Well, this time, “connected” means much more. It means the Web connects us, as people, to each one of the individuals online; and those connections, ultimately, extend from one of us to all of us.

With big bets by the titans of technology and consumer finance, 2011 is becoming the year that American business got serious about jumpstarting the “Internet of things“—a broad web of digitally enhanced locations that consumers can navigate the same way they now use smartcards to pay their bus fare or open security doors at work. For Seattle startup Iota, that transformation isn’t happening fast enough. This team of former T-Mobile employees is aiming its considerable experience in the mobile sector at a new type of device that it says is ready to go right now. They believe it can be made cheaper, easier, and more open than expensive new radio frequency ID-enabled smartphones controlled by the big market players. Their mission is to put the futuristic promise of what’s called “near-field communications,” or NFC, into the hands of anyone who doesn’t have a smartphone, or wants to spend less time digging around in a field of apps. The company, based in Seattle’s hip Capitol Hill neighborhood, has raised $1.4 million so far and is currently about $600,000 of the way through a $1 million convertible-note round, founder and CEO Russ Stromberg says.

2008 Elections From the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses to the Nov. 4 general election, information graphics were a major component of the New York Times election coverage. Interactive maps on the nytimes.com home page and inside the web site were rich with information, but easy to navigate.

2008 Olympics Coverage In August 2008, The New York Times graphics department published more than 30 interactive graphics covering subjects ranging from the Olympic torch to the medal count. The package included graphics produced in advance of the games, plus more than a dozen produced on deadline analyzing results from a vareity of events. Because NBC tape-delayed the showing of many events, these graphics frequently were readers' first visual picture of how a race was won.

Flight 1549 Lands in the Hudson River When U.S. Airways Flight 1549 made an emergency landing in the Hudson River, graphics editors immediately began reporting what happened in the air, building 3-D models of the plane and developing an interactive graphic. The graphic was initially published the same day as the emergency landing, and updated over the next several days as more information was released. Published Jan. 15, 2009

25-year-old Tim Pool — an internationally known journalist who attracts tens of thousands of viewers to his live-stream broadcasts from Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, DC, LA and other cities. (His feeds and archival footage are also aired on mainstream networks such as NBC.) He and his partners hope that the toy chopper — the $300 Parrot AR Drone — will be one step toward a citizen-driven alternative to mainstream news.

Along with “general assembly” and “99 percenters,” Occupy Wall Street has brought the phrase “live streaming” to the forefront. Rising-star reporters — known best by their Twitter and Ustream handles — such as Pool (timcast) in New York City and Spencer Mills (oakfosho) in Oakland are passionate, deeply embedded correspondents who provide live video reporting – sometimes lasting a dozen hours or more – of protests, general assemblies and other Occupy events. Instead of using a satellite truck, they broadcast live “TV” coverage from 3G- and 4G-equipped smartphones over video networks such as Ustream.com and Livestream.com.

The AR Drone is the first toy that came out,” said Sam Shapiro, a 24-year-old programmer from Brooklyn who’s helping Pool hack together an airborne news network.

PayPal has taken the wraps off its single sign-on digital identity service for online shopping, PayPal Access. The move comes as the San Jose-based payments operator unveils a series of new partnerships with a host of banking technology suppliers at the BAI Retail delivery show in Chicago.

PayPal Access is designed to simplify the checkout process by enabling the company's 100 million account holders to sign in at participating retailers' sites with just their PayPal user name and password.

The initiative is a key element of X.Commerce, a new division of PayPal parent company eBay, that aims to provide a common set of APIs for building consumer-facing online merchant services.

For those of us who have grown accustomed to purchasing things from our laptops, tablets and smartphones, the experience of walking into a physical store and standing in line can get tiresome. It's hard to top the immediacy and convenience of online and mobile shopping. Yet, there are still plenty of items that are best purchased in person.

Apple hopes to bridge the gap between these digital and physical worlds. The company just released an update to its Apple Store app for iOS. Using the application, customers can not only purchase Apple products like they can on the Apple website, but they can now opt to pick them up in person at one of the company's many retail locations.

The app can also be used as a sort of self check-out scanner for certain accessories in Apple stores. Need a new case for your iPhone or a power adaptor for your MacBook? Now you can scan the item with your phone's camera, pay for it in the app and be on your way.

Des Moines is the home of mobile payments platform Dwolla. It is an interesting case study - local startup creating buzz within the community and getting retailers and consumers to actually use the platform. Dwolla has created a mobile payments ecosystem from the bottom up.

Within a 5-mile radius of Des Moines there are 500 to 700 business that are using mobile payments through Dwolla. The company works kind of like a payments version of Foursquare. You check at the register in the store using your phone and a pre-loaded Dwolla account.

it is likely that the company will be able to partner with banks and financial institutions in the near future to go straight from a bank account to the retailer.

Ituran Location and Control Ltd. (NASDAQ: ITRN, TASE: ITRN), today announced its consolidated financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2011. Highlights of the First quarter - A 40 thousand year-over-year increase in net subscribers to a record of 615 thousand as of March 31, 2011; - Gross margin at 49.3% and operating margin at 21.8%; - EBITDA of $13.4 million or 33.1% of revenues; - Generated $10.1 million in operating cash flow; ended the quarter with $66.1 million in net cash (including marketable securities and deposits for short and long term); First quarter 2011 Results Revenues for the first quarter of 2011 reached $40.4 million, representing 15% growth over revenues of $35.0 million in the first quarter of 2010. 75% of revenues were from location based service subscription fees and 25% from product revenues. Revenues from subscription fees grew by 16% over the same period last year. The increase in subscription fees was mainly due to the increase in the subscriber base, which grew to 615,000 as of March 31, 2011, as compared with 575,000 at the end of March 31, 2010. Product revenues grew 15% compared with the same period last year. This increase was driven primarily by the increased sales of products in Israel.

Azavea announced the publication of a free white paper that summarizes their research on the use of mobile augmented reality techniques for enhancing digital access to historical and cultural resources

the Philadelphia Department of Records was awarded an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant to develop innovative techniques for leveraging the sensors in contemporary smart phones to expand public access to historical data in novel ways. 

The new Augmented Reality by PhillyHistory.org application provides point-and-view access to 500 historic photographs of selected sites around Philadelphia.  Users are able to automatically access and view the historic photographs by simply pointing the camera of a smart phone at the contemporary site and selecting an available image.  The historic photos then appear as an overlay on the current urban landscape, enabling viewers to compare the past to the present.

a group of international researchers meeting in Istanbul, Turkey has released what they call “stunning proof” that confirms findings from the Council of Europe -- pulsed digital signals from cell phones disrupt DNA, impair brain function and lower sperm count. A meeting convened by Environmental Health Trust, with the Turkish cancer society, and Gazi University, revealed the new research that the scientists say shows damage to DNA, brain and sperm

Nesrin Seyhan, an advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) and NATO and head of the Biophysics Department and Bioelectromagnetics Laboratory at Gazi University in Ankara, presented findings that he says confirm the warning that just four hours of exposure to cell phone radiation disrupts the ability of human brain cells to repair damaged genes. “We are deeply concerned about what this could mean for public health,” Seyhan said. Prof. Wilhelm Mosgoeller from the Medical University of Vienna, who has led European research teams, said he found that the cell waves induce DNA breaks. Despite industry claims to the contrary, he says DNA breaks are real.

Insect studies A research team at the University of Athens said insect studies have demonstrated that acute exposure to GSM (Global System for Mobile) signals brings about DNA fragmentation in insects’ ovarian cells, and consequently a large reduction in the reproductive capacity of the insects. Further studies, they said, demonstrated that long exposures induced cell death to the insects in the study. Other researchers said throughout a gestation period, exposure to radiation for just six minutes a day affects the bone formation of fetuses. The researchers also worry about the effect of cell phone use on children.

Literacy has evolved beyond the definition of the ability to read and write. Literacy now includes the ability to seamlessly interpret on-screen information, such as the graphics in a videogame, and the ability to rapidly decode symbols. To be effective, gamers must be able to quickly decipher each game’s symbols and conventions, which is essentially what good readers have to do in terms of deciphering the alphabetic code.

Serious Games are not replacing literacy activities, they ARE literacy activities.

Literacy specialists are just beginning to investigate how reading on the Internet affects reading skills. Students are developing new reading skills that are neither taught nor evaluated in school.