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At the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS), the company announced that it has released a beta of a tool to let IT manage iPhones, iPads, Android devices, Symbian devices, and Windows Phone 7 devices in the enterprise. Up until now, the tool only worked for Windows Mobile. The tool is called System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), and it's designed to deploy and update servers, clients, and devices across an enterprise's entire computing and network infrastructure.

At Google IO today, Google announced the availability of the Android Open Accessory Development Kit, a new way to extend the Android platform so that other devices can be controlled via phones or tablets. Similar to the SDK, the ADK will allow hardware developers to take advantage of Android so that the OS can control or monitor external devices.

encryption, as a preventive measure, assumes the primary threat is coming from the "outside" - typically (but not exclusively), in the form of a hacker trying to intercept communications or extract data from a lost or stolen device. While such threats are real and you absolutely must guard against them, we've reached a crucial point in the evolution of mobile technology, and just as importantly, user behavior where the primary mobile security threat is no longer the faceless and malicious hacker, but instead the legitimate, fully authenticated owner of the device itself.

Nearly 80% of children between the ages of 0 and 5 who use the Internet in the United States, do so on at least a weekly basis, according to a report released Monday from education non-profit organizations Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Sesame Workshop. The report, which was assembled using data from seven recent studies, indicates that young children are increasingly consuming all types of digital media, in many cases consuming more than one type at once. Television use dwarfs internet use in both the number of children who surf the web and the amount of time they spend on it. The analysis found that during the week, most children spend at least three hours a day watching television, and that television use among preschoolers is the highest it has been in the past eight years. Of the time that children spend on all types of media, television accounts for a whopping 47%. Heavy television viewing may even be partially responsible for the rising number of children who use the Internet. Parents in one study indicated that more than 60% of children under age three watch video online. That percentage decreases as children get older (the report suggests this is because school-age children have less time at home), but even 8- to 18-year-old children reported in another study that they consume about 20% of their video content online, on cellphones, or on other portable devices like iPods. Internet and television use among children has become entwined in other ways as well. A 2010 Nielsen study suggests that 36% of children between the ages of 2 and 11 use both mediums simultaneously. Altogether, children between the ages of 8 and 10 spend about 5.5 hours each day using media - eight hours if you count the additional media consumed while multitasking. The report doesn't attempt to solve the more-than-decade-old debate of whether all of this screen time is good for children. Instead, it preaches balance: "My mother used to say that too much of anything isn't good fo

Wikipedia's tech team announces a test site for ensuring Wikipedia works seamlessly across mobile devices.  They are asking for input and testing support.

 an ITC judge ruled that smartphone maker HTC has infringed two Apple patents, and it seems likely that every single Android device out there infringes the same patents.

Engineers have developed a device platform that combines electronic components for sensing, medical diagnostics, communications and human-machine interfaces, all on an ultrathin skin-like patch that mounts directly onto the skin with the ease, flexibility and comfort of a temporary tattoo. Led by researcher John A. Rogers, the Lee J. Flory-Founder professor of engineering at the University of Illinois, the researchers described their novel skin-mounted electronics in the Aug. 12 issue of the journal Science.

The launch of the Global Adaptation Index (GaIn) literally puts a powerful open data browser into the hands of anyone with a connected mobile device. The index rates a given country's vulnerability to environmental shifts precipitated by climate change, its readiness to adapt to such changes, and its ability to utilize investment capital that would address the state of those vulnerabilities.

The apps are Color, Shopkick and IntoNow, all of which activate the microphones in users' iPhone or Android devices in order to gather contextual information that provides some benefit to the user.

IBM announced it is joining with Italy-based hardware architecture firm Eurotech in donating a complete draft protocol for asynchronous inter-device communication to the Eclipse Foundation. It is being called Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol, the machine-to-machine counterpart of HTT

"I went back and found every Android phone shipped in the United States1 up through the middle of last year. I then tracked down every update that was released for each device - be it a major OS upgrade or a minor support patch - as well as prices and release & discontinuation dates. I compared these dates & versions to the currently shipping version of Android at the time. The resulting picture isn't pretty - well, not for Android users:"

Sales of smartphones were up 74 percent year-on-year and accounted for 25 percent of overall sales in the second quarter of 2011, up from 17 percent in the second quarter of 2010. Android grew to 43.4% marketshare from just 17.2% the previous year. 

A quiet revolution has been going on in the medical profession and the field of personal health in the last two years, spearheaded by smartphones and tablets, that will change forever the way we obtain and process medical information. Called mHealth (Mobile Health), this industry phenomenon encompasses a wide range of applications - from self-treatment apps on sub-$100 Android phones in Kenya, through texting reminders for the immunization schedule of newborn babies in India, up to testing yourself for STDs with a smartphone kit, or your doctor panning and zooming radiology scans on the go.