Global mobile phone use to hit record 3.25 billion

Per Yahoo News, global mobile phone use will top 3.25 billion, which is equivalent to around half the world's population , in 2007 as cell phone demand booms in China, India, and Africa. The three billion milestone will be passed on July 2007. In comparison, the world's population is forecast to hit around 6.6 billion in July.

Interestingly, it took over 20 years to connect the first billion subscribers, but only 40 months to connect the second billion. More than 1,000 new customers are effectively signing up for mobile phones every minute around the world.

Private Facebook Pages Are Not So Private

From Wired News -
A security researcher has discovered that private Facebook profiles aren't quite as hidden as many users might think they are. Pages that are supposedly restricted are visible to anyone using searches based on religion, sexual orientation or relationship status.

A quick search by Wired News for women in a major U.S. city who were interested in random hookups with men revealed the names and photos of two high school girls, including one ninth grader.

Facebook responded to Wired's inquiry Wednesday evening with an announcement that it had changed the behavior of its privacy settings.

"Facebook offers sophisticated search and privacy controls and is constantly making improvements based on feedback from our users," the spokesman wrote. "We have since updated the advanced search function so that profile information that has been made private by a user, such as gender, religion and sexual orientation, will not return a result."

Why iPhone Won’t Redefine SMS Texting

From iPhonetics -
For all its innovations, Apple’s iPhone has slim chances of making an impact on the way mobile phone users around the world do SMS texting. In two words: QWERTY keyboard. Here’s why:

First of all, even if the Apple goes on to sell 10 million iPhones in the first year as Steve Jobs has predicted, that is just roughly 1% of the nearly 1 billion phones sold annually. You simply can’t redefine a market with such a miniscule share.

Secondly, most of the new market gains are entry level phones sold in third world countries. This implies that most buyers are first time users who in most likelihood have never used a computer before, or if ever, sparingly. Thus, for a lot of them, the mobile phone keypad has become their first exposure to typing. For the younger generation, it is their de facto standard. In fact, a lot has mastered the art of touch-typing on phone keypads. They can enter SMS messages one-handed rapidly into the phone without ever looking at the keypad or the LCD. Somehow I simply can’t imagine them doing the same with the iPhone’s on-screen QWERTY keyboard. The Apple design lends itself to two thumb typing, which is definitely far from the current single thumb texting experience.

Yes, Apple will most likely go on and sell millions of the iPhone as it has previously succeeded with the iPod. But until it adds a physical mobile phone keypad, it most likely will remain a niche play. And when it does add a keypad, it will no longer be redefining the SMS experience but merely improving it.

Digital Divide via Social Networks

Interesting piece from Danah on how the American social classes are reflected in the respective user bases of Myspace and Facebook.

Curiously, I personally feel Faceboook, with all the recent updates and changes, is fast approaching the chaotic look of Myspace. Just my 2 cents.

Apple to launch iPhone in Europe on July 1?

Newswireless is reporting that Apple, in a joint promotion width Vodaphone, T-Mobile (Germany) and Carphone Warehouse, will be launching a 3G version of the iPhone on Monday i the UK. The US version launched today does not support 3G and instead uses the slower EDGE technology.

Shipment date is still unknown, but supposedly on course for the year-end date predicted last October by Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

So where does the line start?

Five Ideas That Will Reinvent Modern Computing

From PC Magazine - Interesting prediction of five future trendsetters. These include -

IMAX at Home
HP Labs is developing Pluribus, a cineplex-quality image using a handful of ordinary, USD1,000 PC projectors—in less time than it takes to pop the popcorn. For a mere USD12,000, you could c a home theater that stands up to the USD100,000 image at local movie houses. And this mega-display is good for more than just movies. It might be even better for 3D games.

The Midair Mouse
Soap goes one step further than the current state-of-the-art wireless mouse: It works in midair. With this new-age pointing device, now under development at Microsoft Research, you can navigate your PC using nothing but a bare hand. You can lose the end table and the lap desk. You can even lose the couch and the bed, driving your machine while walking across the room. It's a bit like the Wii remote—only more accurate and far easier to use. In fact, Soap is so accurate that you can use it to play a high-speed first-person shooter.

The Perfect Machine
But at Bell Labs, they are working on a new quantum computer, a machine which uses a quantum bit, or qubit, instead of the basic bit for storing and processing information. A qubit is not stored not in a transistor but in a quantum system, such as the spin of an atom's nucleus. An "up" spin might indicate a 1, and a "down" spin might indicate a 0.

But thanks to the superposition principle of quantum mechanics, a quantum system can exist in multiple states simultaneously. At any given moment, the spin of a nucleus can be both up and down, holding values of both a 1 and a 0. Put two qubits together and they can hold four values simultaneously (00, 01, 10, and 11). That makes a quantum computer exponentially faster.

But when a quantum system interacts with the classical world, it decoheres: It loses its ability to exist simultaneously in multiple states, collapsing into a single state capable of holding only a single value.

Researchers have long been working on this problem but no major breakthrough has been achieved. Now Bell researchers are working on a new method called "topological quantum computing," which involves tying quantum systems into knots. By tying them into the right knot, they are able to do the right quantum computation. In short, these knots are a great way of solving the decoherence problem - the first to do so.

Extreme Peer-to-Peer
The classic point-to-point networking model is fundamentally flawed. If you want a piece of data from the network, you almost always need a direct connection to the data's original source—the server. That's true even if the data has already been downloaded to a device that's much closer. So often, tapping into a distant server wastes time. And if the server is unavailable, you're out of luck entirely.

With a project called Content-Centric Networking, PARC networking gurus are turning this model on its head. They're building a networking system that revolves around the data itself. Under the CCN model, you tell the server you want a particular piece of data. You broadcast a request to all the machines on the network, and if one of them has what you're looking for, it responds. It's a bit like BitTorrent, but on a grander scale. CCN can improve everything from the public Internet to your private LAN.

The Man-Made Brain
At IBM's Almaden Research Center, a team are chasing the holy grail of artificial intelligence.- they're looking to build one—neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse.

The project is particularly daunting when you consider that modern neurology has yet to explain how the brain actually works. Yes, we know the fundamentals. But we can't be sure of every biological transaction, all the way down to the cellular level. Three years into this Cognitive Computing project, Modha's team isn't just building a brain from an existing blueprint. They're helping to create the blueprint as they build. It's reverse engineering of the highest order.

What's that good for? Anything and everything.

The wide world of Sprint's WiMax

From Business 2.0 - An article on outlining plans for Sprint Nextel's upcoming USD3 billion mobile WiMAX network due later this year.

But according to OM Malik on GigaOM, Sprint is apparently rethinking its strategy. Accordingly, it is mulling one or more of these options:

1. Form a joint venture or a partnership with Clearwire.
2. Maybe spin-off the WiMAX business.
3. Attract outside partners like cable companies to co-invest in the WiMAX buildout.

Sprint has had informal talks with Time Warner Cable, its partner in a four-play offering Pivot. However, a potential sticking point is that cable providers want a guarantee that they would be able to lease access to the WiMax network at low cost to offer future broadband services.

Still, this proposal makes most sense when compared to the Clearwire option. Sprint has been hammered on the stock markets, though theprice declines have nothing to do with WiMAX. Instead, Sprint’s misfortunes are directly correlated with massive churn in its cellular customer base. Sprint Nextel’s postpaid gross additions fell 12% in Q1, and revenue grew a meager 5% - leaving investors disatisfied.

The integration problems between Sprint and Nextel are the real reason the former finds itself between a rock-and-a-hard-place. While WiMAX might seem crazy today, it may seem like a minor investment and could dramatically change the future of mobile communications.