iPhone's safety, privacy extras

Kudos to Apple for building extra layers of privacy and safety right into the iPhones of users who use apps that reveal their physical location. "Apple has long provided pop-ups that ask users to approve an app's use of location information before that app can get access," reports New York Times computer security blogger Riva Richmond, but there will be more in the iPhone's new operating system (OS 4). "To make it clearer just how often approved apps are collecting data about users’ physical whereabouts, Apple will display an arrow in the status bar at the top of the screen, right next to the battery-life indicator, whenever a user's location is being tracked." This is on top of any safety features provided by the services themselves (e.g., loopt's frequent privacy reminders and Glympse's see-where-I-am-only-for-the-next-30-minutes timeout feature, explained by ReadWriteWeb). As the Times's Richmond writes, we all love being able to find friends and great places to eat with the geolocation technology on all new phones, but we're not so crazy about letting just anybody track us or telling "a frienemy where the party is"!

iPhone app pinpoints sex offenders

"Offender Locator" is the 4th most popular paid application in Apple's App Store, according to USATODAY. Users can type in their zip code and get a map pinpointing the addresses of the registered sex offenders within five miles of that location. The app also provides the offenders' names and photos and the crimes for which they were convicted. Users can also request text alerts saying when a registered sex offender moves into their area. The iPhone app costs 99 cents. A BlackBerry version costs $2.99. "Laws in many states limit where convicted sex offenders can live, and ... such laws have been criticized as being so restrictive that they force offenders underground," USATODAY adds. Users might want to note that the app can only provide info on convicted and registered sex offenders and that research shows that the vast majority of child sexual exploiters are people the victims know, so this app shouldn't provide a false sense of security. But it's equally important to note that, according to the latest figures available from the National Data Archives on Child Abuse & Neglect, overall child sexual exploitation decreased 51% from 1990 to 2005.

Basic iPod mutating away

Apple anticipated what would replace the iPod practically when it came out with the first model, if we're to believe Arik Hesseldahi at BusinessWeek.com. And I do. I remember Steve Jobs talking about the iPhone as a great music player at a conference of tech execs a few years ago. "Anticipation of the [iPod's] drop-off is 'one of the original reasons' Apple developed the iPhone and the WiFi-enabled iPod touch, Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said on a July 21 conference call with analysts," Hesseldahi writes. The iPod needed to become a full-blown connected platform, and it is already – a platform for apps, games, video, and Web info-gathering as much as for music-playing. Also needed now, Hesseldahi says (predictions, probably) are: a mic (for talking via Skype and making recordings without the pesky headset) and a still and video cam. What all this says and what Apple apparently got long ago is that the future is sharing (and producing) as much as consuming media.

Microsoft: Forget the controller

Is it a trend, or is Microsoft just trying to leapfrog Nintendo as it goes for more family videogame players? Maybe both. First, with the Wii, Nintendo turned the videogame controller into "a simple swing-and-swivel device. Now Microsoft wants to ditch the controller entirely and leave the swinging and swiveling to you," USATODAY reports. With the help of none other than Steven Spielberg, Microsoft made the point at the recent E3 gaming conference that controllers are intimidating to people and - despite the huge videogame market - 60% of households don’t own videogame consoles. So it unveiled the console-less "Project Natal" with demos of "a painting game that lets players fling paint onto the screen like Jackson Pollock" and a "dodgeball-type game [that] had a player moving forward and back, left and right, using arms, legs and the whole body to ricochet balls and knock down walls of 3-D tiles," USATODAY adds - but with no details on pricing or release date, the Christian Science Monitor adds. But Nintendo keeps innovating too, also with sensors. At E3, it showed off a "Vitality Sensor," which takes videogame players' pulses, Forbes reports. It's "another milestone in Nintendo's quest to break down traditional definitions of videogames," Forbes says, but adding that Nintendo didn't announce what role the sensor would have in future games.

But back to the controller. Microsoft probably hopes that the 60% of households who don't own consoles won't just play games on cellphones. The New York Times recently reported that the iPhone is becoming a significant gaming platform, with games representing three-quarters of "the most popular paid downloads" from the iPhone App Store (Apple also recently announced that 1 billion apps had been downloaded from the store in its first nine months). But beyond games, iPhone's just about all things to all people - it can be anything from a baby rattle (USATODAY reports) to a musical instrument (hear it on the YouTube video).

New DSi = new iPhone for kids?

That's what the Youth Trends research firm's calling this third version of Nintendo's handheld game player. "The $170 DSi fully embraces the two biggest trends in gaming: customization/personalization and multi-player interactivity," writes its Gen Digital blogger. By customization, the blog's referring to all the little features that are putting the new DSi in competition with the iPod Touch - 2 easy-to-use built-in 0.3 megapixel cameras, photo editing, game downloading, music recording, wi-fi, and Web browsing - features that I think do make the DSi (with its 850 games to choose from and not so many to download yet) just that much more attractive to young gamers. Interestingly, with this device, Nintendo's targeting "women, adults, and non-gamers," according to Wall Street Journal blogger Courtney Banks, but her review makes it sound like those users would much prefer the iPod Touch's better Web and photo-sharing functionality (browsing on the DSi is very slow, she couldn't play video, and "any time I attempted to load Gmail I was greeted with an "insufficient memory error" message).

Porn on iPhones

"If one thing is clear, porn on iPhones is going to be huge," reports CNET blogger Daniel Terdiman from the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas (which runs simultaneously with the giant Consumer Electronics Show there). He qualified that slightly by saying that, although "there don't seem to be any porn-related apps available for the iPhone, there is a plethora of adult entertainment available on the Web, and a growing amount of that content is being optimized for Apple's hit device." A Google search for "iPhone porn" returns millions of results. Executives from Digital Playground, a leading international porn producer, described their latest technological advances to Terdiman, adding that the iPhone is "a very big piece of the puzzle." So far, Digital Playground told the CNET blogger it has made 300 full-length films for the iPhone.

New iPhone: A parent's view

The last time I checked, there were almost 2,000 articles worldwide in Google News about the very cool, $199 smart (3G) iPhone just unveiled by Apple's Steve Jobs. I'll bet not one of them offered a parent's-eye-view of this product. But the view is clear across these relatively uncharted waters: the pressure is on, parents; a whole lot of young cellphone users will want one. The reasons: it's cheaper, they'll argue (than the first iPhone at $399), and "you'll be able to find me anytime," a smart teen will tell you, "because it has GPS technology." What they probably won't tell you is that, with it, they - the ultimate multitaskers - can surf the Web and do mobile social networking twice as fast as on the old iPhone (the new one "runs on AT&T's high-speed network using 3G technology," the Washington Post reports), so they can watch video, get directions to parties, etc., "even when they're on a call," Apple marketing says. Also attractive to teens, who really like to download and mess around with software applications and games on phones, in social sites, and on the Web in general, my ConnectSafely co-director and CBS News tech analyst Larry Magid reminds me, will be the iPhone's App Store (some of the apps will be free, Apple says). Here's Larry's piece on the new iPhone at CBSNEWS.com. Avid music and video sharers may prefer the 16 gig $299 version, but they might keep that wish to themselves in case it lessens their chances of getting an iPhone at all, right?

Then there's the safety question: What parents also need to know, though, is that this and other 3G phones are basically mini Net-connected computers that go everywhere with their users. With one significant difference: this little mobile computer's movements can be tracked. With GPS technology, you can pinpoint your kids' locations, as they'll tell you, but so can their friends (with social-mapping services such as loopt) and - potentially - non-friends, if they're using a social-mapping service and aren't careful about giving their numbers out to and keeping friends lists restricted only to their real-life friends. We are clearly way beyond putting filtering and other parental controls on a single family computer plugged into a wall in a high-traffic area of the house.

The iPhone does come with parental controls, the Seattle Times reports, but I couldn't find any specifics on them yet at Apple.com. The phone has to be used with a two-year AT&T service contract, and AT&T and the other major US carriers also have parental controls, but parents will need to check with AT&T to see if its service's controls work with the iPhone's. To see what controls are available from the major cellphone companies, click to "What Mobile carriers need to do for kids" (see also our forum ConnectSafely's "Cell-Phone Safety Tips"). [See also the New York Times on how 3G or smartphones are taking off and how 71% of women make the decision about their family’s wireless choices, including phones and service plans. (Smartphones require data plans that can cost $30 or more a month.)]

Teen's hack unlocks iPhone

It took him 500 hours, but 17-year-old George Hotz figured out how to unlock his iPhone from the AT&T networking and use it on T-Mobile. "He posted his 10-step hack on his blog Thursday, along with a video illustrating it on YouTube; by early Friday afternoon, his video had been viewed by some 130,000 people," TechNewsWorld reports. Fortunately for Apple and AT&T most people won't "try this at home." It takes a good two hours and involves soldering and software programming. The Register reports that George got a new Nissan and three more iPhones in exchange for the unlocked iPhone, but the Associated Press reports that anyone hoping to make money from unlocking iPhones could face legal trouble. "Unlocking the phone for one's own use, for instance to place calls with a different carrier, appears to be legal. But if it's done for financial gain, the legality is less certain."