Technology, Cell Phone | featured news

Google Maps have found their way back to the iPhone. The world's most popular online mapping system returned late Wednesday with the release of the Google Maps' iPhone app.

...It’s an echo of the so-called browser wars of the 1990s, when Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator fought for dominance on the personal computer. This time, though, the struggle is shaping up to be over which company will control the mobile world — with browsers on smartphones and tablets. Entrenched businesses are at stake. Google’s browser-based business apps, for instance, threaten Microsoft’s desktop software, and mobile Web apps threaten Apple’s App Store.

It's been hailed for its succinctness and blamed for everything from sore thumbs to the decline of conversation. Love it or hate it, the text message is 20 years old.

Poor Microsoft. People who use your search engine seem especially interested in ... Apple. Bing published its most-searched news stories for 2012, and topping the list -- ahead of the presidential election, Superstorm Sandy and the London Olympics -- was the iPhone 5, the newest version of Apple's iconic smartphone.

Analysts are talking up the RIM share price after a depressing run for the Canadian phone maker. But something else is going on. While the press and analyst were burying RIM, its popularity was already on the increase, months before the share price went up.

Bharti Airtel's mobile-tower unit plans to raise around $800 million by selling a 10% stake via an initial public offering next month... Bharti Airtel, India's largest mobile-phone-services company by revenue and users, and other investors in the mobile-tower unit are looking to capitalize on improving foreign sentiment toward India. This follows steps announced by the federal government in September, aimed at encouraging foreign investment in sectors like retail and insurance.

At the University of Tulsa school, students learn to write computer viruses, hack digital networks and mine data from broken cellphones. Many graduates head to the CIA or NSA.

Is Google in a hurry to get 2012 over with? Probably not. But that didn't stop the snarky headlines after it was discovered that a buggy app in the new version of Google's mobile operating system omits the month of December. The People app lets users bookmark friends' birthdays and other important dates on a calendar. But some users of Android 4.2, the system's newest update, are complaining they can't note December dates in the app because its calendar skips from November to January. December simply does not exist.

App developers have turned cellphones and tablets into powerful tools, spawning a multibillion-dollar industry but making huge sacrifices in the process.

With only sporadic access to text messaging and the Web, many in Hurricane Sandy's no-power zone quickly cobbled together systems for passing along information and arranging when and where to meet.