Forget 'Big Brother' as someone much closer may be snooping

By Andrew Eisner, Director of Community and Content for Retrevo.com

While the government is busy crafting legislation to protect your privacy and prevent companies like Apple and Google from tracking your online activities, this recent Retrevo Gadgetology study discovered there's a lot of snooping and tracking going on among people who know each other. If you've ever wondered what the likelihood is that someone is reading your emails or text messages or even tracking your comings and goings, you might be surprised to learn it's more common than ever especially among spouses and parents and their children.

Easy access to someone's emails, text messages and call history on cell phones, laptops and other gadgets make it easy to invade someone's personal space. Everyone's personal information is, more times than not, left sitting on the kitchen counter, readily available to curious onlookers like spouses, partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, significant others, or who knows, even nosy friends and relatives. In this recent Retrevo Gadgetology study more than a third of respondents (33%) admitted to checking a boyfriend's or girlfriends email or call history on the sly. Slightly more married couples snoop on their spouses (37%) and an even larger number of parents spy on their kids (37%). The number of parents snooping is highest among parents of teenagers with 60% snooping on their kids and possibly for good reason as 14% of those parents reported finding something they were concerned about.

Suspicious Partners Snooping More Than Last Year

When we looked at the data on snooping from a study conducted a year ago we were surprised to learn that snooping had increased across the board. Overall the number of people under 25 checking their boyfriend's or girlfriend's emails or call history rose from 38% last year to 47% this year. Women continue to be a bit more suspicious than men. The number of women saying they checked their partner's email or call history without them knowing rose from 24% to 35%. It's also possible that unfaithful partners are more careful about hiding any incriminating text messages as the number of spouses reporting they discovered someone cheating rose only slightly.

Spouses and Children Might Need Their Own "Do Not Track" Law

Not only does snooping on emails, text messages and call history appear to more common today but smartphones with built-in tracking technology and portable GPS tracking devices becoming easy to use on someone without their knowledge, we wondered just how common tracking is among people who know each other. While most respondents (68%) said they would never go so low as to actually gather latitude and longitude data about their spouses or partners comings and goings, over 20% of both men and women said a suspicion of wrong doing could get them to track their spouse or partner.

Kids, Is There a GPS in Your Backpack or a Tracking App on Your iPhone?

Parents appear more willing to track their children's movements. You could argue they want the peace of mind knowing they can locate their kids which probably accounts for the high percentage of parents (59%) indicating they wouldn't have a problem with tracking their kids. Mothers "protective instincts" may also account for the higher number of moms (64%) vs. dads (53%) who would track their kids. Parents of teenagers appeared slightly more willing than parents of younger children to track their kids whereabouts.

Conclusion

With congress busily holding hearings and crafting legislation to prevent companies like Apple and Google from invading you privacy, this Retrevo Gadgetology study illustrates that consumers may have just as much to fear from people they know than big corporations.

About Retrevo's Gadgetology Report

The Retrevo Gadgetology Report is an ongoing study of people and electronics from the consumer electronics shopping and review site Retrevo.com. The data for this report came from a study of online individuals conducted exclusively for Retrevo in June of 2011, by an independent panel. The sample size was over 1,000 distributed across gender, age, income and location in the United States. Most responses have a confidence interval of 4% at a 95% confidence level.

About Retrevo

Retrevo.com is one of the largest consumer electronics review and shopping sites in the world, helping people decide what to buy, when to buy, and where to buy. Retrevo uses artificial intelligence to analyze and graphically summarize more than 100 million real-time data points from across the web to give shoppers the most comprehensive, unbiased, up-to-date product information they need to make smart, confident purchasing decisions for electronics.

Story URL: http://www.retrevo.com/content/blog/2011/07/forget-big-brother-someone-closer-you-have-worry-about

Graphics URL: http://bit.ly/rm3e1V

5 Best Cell Phones Sure to be Collectible Items

By Scott Moritz, TheStreet

There are lots of twists and turns in thesmartphone market. Occasionally, some really good phones just fall through the cracks. Let's call these The Collectibles -- a handful of phones, years in development, that arrive or are set to launch, but instead they get cut down at their prime or doomed before they reach their full potential.

In most of these cases, it's a sweeping change at the company that effectively orphans the handsets.

For Nokia and Research In Motion, blame a full-scale shift to a new operating system. At Palm, it was the HP takeover.

And, sometimes, it's failure's fault, like in the case of Garmin's exit from the market.

Yes, you may have seen the 13 ugliest phones, but these are much different. Here are five "keepers" that could have been big contenders.

More from TheStreet:  5 Relics of the ‘80s That Aren't Coming Back 13 Ugliest Phones of the Mobile Era Famous Products Invented by Accident

#5 : Garminfone

The awesomeness of this device isn't the fact that it was a GPS phone made by navigation ace Garmin, or the fact that it was powered by Google's Android. No, the best thing about this phone is that it was the first Asus phone in the U.S.

Asus is a rising star in mobile computing. The 21-year-old Taiwanese tech shop is best known for its motherboards and netbooks, but it has recently turned its attention to tablets and phones. Asus was one of the first developers of a Microsoft Windows Phone 7, but that device never materialized.

Unfortunately, Garmin pulled the plug on the joint venture with Asus after it became clear that smartphones were just a little too far outside the GPS specialists' competency. With Garmin and T-Mobile as partners, Asus may not have had the best supporting cast for its debut.

The Garminfone was discontinued last month.

#4 : Sony Ericsson Xperia Play

The "PlayStation Phone" finally arrived, despite some difficult odds.

For one, Sony Ericsson doesn't do much business in the U.S. Even worse, after the company killed its CDMA phone development in 2003, it had almost no ties to Verizon.

And third, novelty phones are a dicey business.

But after a few years of speculation, the Xperia Play arrived in May.

With its slide-out PlayStation game controls, the Xperia Play lives up to its gamer name. But it is also a touch-screen device powered by Android.

The game/phone hybrid is certainly a niche, and some users are happy to have both on one device. "I get my two interests meshed into one," said one Xperia Play user on gdgt, the technology Q&A and review site.

The Play hasn't gotten much backing in the form of marketing and advertising. Perhaps one sign that this phone may not last long at Verizon is the fact that just a month after it debuted at $200 with a two-year contract, it is now being sold on Amazon.com for $50.

#3 : Palm Pre

Back before the smartphone market was narrowed down to two choices -- Apple or Android -- there was a phone company that sold a very compelling device beloved by professionals and consumers alike.

The Palm Pre matched Apple and Android in touchscreen prowess and also included a slide-out keyboard.

Sadly, Palm didn't have the financial firepower to promote the phone heavily and stoke the fires of application development like its more resource-rich rivals. Palm also didn't keep the Pre fresh. And when telcos like Verizon started cutting back on orders in favor of Droids, the Palm Pre faded from view.

Eventually, HP acquired Palm, but the integration took a long time, leaving the Pre suspended from the market.

The Palm Pre is listed as out of stock on HP's Web site, but Verizon still offers it for $100 with a two-year contract -- your last chance to start your own Palm Pre collectors' club.

#2 : RIM BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900

BlackBerry fans proved to be a far more loyal group than one would have expected. While other phones got touchscreens and smarter application processors, Research In Motion kept cranking out aging Bolds andCurves.

The addictive BlackBerry e-mail and messenger service helped keep people interested and bought RIM some time as it put together a new generation of phones built around the QNX operating system.

But between the maturing BlackBerry 6 operating system of yesterday and QNX of next year is an awkward spot that RIM hopes to fill with the touchscreen Bold.

The Bold 9900 is a beautiful BlackBerry with a full-powered 1-gigahertz processor, a familiar keypad and a gesture reading touchscreen. The problem: Even though it won't arrive until later this summer, it's already been eclipsed by the promise of fully-functioning QNX devices next year.

The Bold 9900: destined to be a lovely end-of-the-line.

#1 : Nokia N9

Soon after Nokia picked the MeeGo operating system as its next direction, MeeGo became a no go.

Well, almost.

When Nokia jumped from its burning platform to start developing phones usingMicrosoft's Windows 7 software, it didn't completely abandon the MeeGo effort. Some of Nokia's brightest minds kept working to deliver a new generation of MeeGo-powered phones to compete with Apple and Android.

Recently, Nokia introduced the N9 MeeGo phone, a finely-sculpted touchscreen device that could have kept the Finnish phone titan on top of the phone market had it arrived a couple years ago.

But as it stands, the N9 sales launch will be overshadowed by the Sea Ray and other Windows Phone 7 devices coming from Nokia later this year and next.

Collectors will probably call the N9 the best pure Nokia phone of all time. Too bad Nokia investors can't take that to the bank. 

Microsoft revenues hit a record as Xbox sales inch upwards

The US technology giant Microsoft said its annual revenues hit a record of $70b.

Sales of the company's Xbox 360 video-game console and its Office software helped fuel the growth.

Net income at the world's biggest software maker jumped 23% to 23.15b for the year.

The figures, which beat earnings estimates, also showed final quarter revenues reached a record high of $1.37b, leading to profits of $5.87b.

Sales rose 8% to $17.37 billion, a boosted chiefly by sales of Office, Xbox and server software behind Microsoft's push into cloud computing.

Microsoft's business division, which sells the Office suite of programs, including Outlook, SharePoint and Excel, was the company's biggest seller in the quarter, increasing sales by 7% to $5.8b.

The company's online services unit, which runs the Bing search engine and MSN internet portal, increased sales by 16.5% to $662m, but saw losses increase to $728m as it struggles to fight competitor Google.

One weaker spot was sales of its widely-used Windows product, which are slowing as tablet PC sales eat into demand for traditional PCs.

Earlier this week, chipmaker Intel warned that PC sales would not be as strong as it had expected this year.

Microsoft is itself expected to enter the tablet market next year with the launch of its next operating system, code-named Windows 8, which will be compatible with the low-power chips commonly used by tablet and mobile phone makers.

Microsoft is the latest technology company to exceed profit expectations.

Google, Apple and IBM all reported strong earnings recently.

Source: Silicon Valley Technology News

Are You a Position or Pivotal Player?

NETSHARE CEO Katherine E. Simmons 

It’s baseball season, and for the record, I am not crazy about sports analogies, but I was struck by the wisdom of this recent blog post from Auren Huffman, CEO of Rapleaf, about Position Players Versus All-Around Athletes.

As Huffman writes:

“Hiring managers face a dilemma similar to coaches: Should you hire someone who's really good at one particular thing - or someone who is more of an all-around player?”

Conventional wisdom from our career coaches indicates that you need to address a prospective employer’s immediate point of pain. Their point is that to get the right attention from the hiring manager, you either have to be able to save the company money, make the company money, or address some other immediate need. That would make you a position player in Huffman’s view.

But what about the company that has multiple points of pain and has limited hiring capacity. Should you try to sell yourself on your greatest strengths, or show that you have multiple talents that can be of value as the company grows?

Huffman, who among other things is an angel investor, notes that whether you are looking to hire a position player or an all-around athlete depends on where you are in the evolution of your team. If you are in “scaling mode” and have a three-year plan, then you know where the holes are in your lineup and looking for top performers with the specific expertise you need makes sense. He uses the example of an ad agency looking for a solid player in Web marketing. Like recruiting a catcher or a place kicker, it’s a highly specialized role and an expert won’t come cheap, but it will help with the firm’s growth strategy.

However, what if your company is a startup or in transition? Then you are in “change mode” which means you need pivotal players who can roll with the changes. If you are a tech startup, for example, you may find yourself targeting different markets. What starts out as an ideal software application for financial services may find a strong role in pharmaceuticals, so hiring a sales executive with a financial services Rolodex may not help your business grow when you need to. This is when hiring all-around athletes makes more sense. As Huffman puts it:

“While hiring position players will significantly increase the chance of success for your current model, it gives you little room to pivot. Any significant change in your business model might force you to swap out your team.”

So what does this mean for you as an executive job seeker? It means you have more homework to do. You need to assess where your target company is in their own development. Are they a more mature company with a game plan that requires your specialized expertise? Or are they in transition, which means you can bring multiple skills to the table to help the company grow?

The other question you need to ask yourself is do you work better as a position player or a pivotal player? 

Can you command the job and salary you want with niche expertise that really hits the sweet spot of a company with a well-thought-out growth strategy? Or do you prefer the challenge of being more of a generalist, and adapting your skills to meet the changing needs of the company? Either way, you need to make sure that your personal brand and your executive marketing documents highlight your expertise, and you approach the right kind of company that is either building their squad from scratch or looking for the expertise to extend their long game.

Katherine E. Simmons is President and CEO of NETSHARE, Inc.

Rupert Murdoch: From Bad to Worse?

MPC Paul Stephenson (L) & AC John Yates resigned over the scandal

By Frederick E. Allen - Forbes 

Here is how British journalists watching Rupert Murdoch's testimony before Parliament are reacting today. Granted, they work for competitors that might be happy to see News Corp and its newspapers suffer, but they know the story of the ever-widening News Corp scandals better than anyone.
Dan Sabbagh, at The Guardian:

The great old man of newspapers looked hopelessly out of touch in the early stages of the father-and-son grilling in front of MPs today. There were the marathon pauses; the one-word answers; the look, again and again of mystification. He tried, several times, to defer to [his son] James, who clearly had plenty of answers at his fingertips. His hand beat the desk several times to emphasise the occasional long answer. But above all, Rupert Murdoch knew nothing about phone hacking – and he didn't look like he was acting either.

  Tony Harnden, of The Telegraph:

He gives the impression of knowing nothing and having decided to just wing it – repeatedly saying he has never heard of key characters and issues involved in the phone hacking scandal. . . . One minute monosyllabic, the next minute sarcastic and dismissive, banging the table and cantankerous throughout – it’s hard to imagine an approach that could elicit less sympathy. . . .

It’s extremely difficult to takeRupert Murdoch’sappearance at face value. The man whois legendarily hands on and runs a global empire that, he said, employs 53,000 people (of which the News of the World represented one percent, he pointed out) is surely not a senile old dodderer who was blissfully aware that dark arts being practiced by his journalists.

 Andrew Sullivan:

Murdoch refuses to take any responsibility for the affair. Again: staggering. The notion of the buck stopping at the top seems completely alien to him. The total lack of interest in correcting wrongs, the blithe assurance that he has no ultimate responsibility - the NOTW [News of the World] representing a mere 1 percent of his company. . . .

Even though this corporation had evidence itself of criminality, no one knew of it; and when the police investigated, the review was a couple of hours. The whole thing stinks to heaven.

And as for the board of Murdoch's company, Andrew Ross Sorkin, inThe New York Times, quotes Nell Minow, a member of the board of GovernanceMetrics International and founder of the Corporate Library, a governance consultancy, as saying, "This is a board that qualifies for an ‘F’ in every category. It is the ultimate crony board.”

As Andrew Sullivan puts it, "It looks bleaker and bleaker for News Corp to me."

And this just in, according to Sullivan: Someone has tried to physically attack Murdoch at the hearings and has been taken away in handcuffs.

Addendum: A friend points out that Andy Borowitz has given this explanation for Murdoch's ignorance of his company's activities:

Now, I’m sure many of you are wondering, how could I, Rupert Murdoch, one of the most powerful men in the world, have no idea what is going on?  The answer, my friends, is simple: I get all of my information from my own newspapers.  If you relied on News of the World, The Sun, and The New York Post for your information, I can assure you that you wouldn't have a clue what was going on, either.