In November 2010 Google announced the release of its Call Metrics service.
After 8 long months of waiting for the full release of the service, Surojit Chatterjee,AdWords Product Manager, finally announced yesterday that, “Call Metrics, a simple way to get more phone calls and detailed call reports with AdWords, is now available to all advertisers in the US and Canada.”
Just picked up a used Toyota Sienna van and I’m pretty psyched about it - lots of room and it’s really comfortable to drive - but I’m not sure how to pair my Apple iPhone 4 with the navigational system from Toyota. Any help or tips? Before you ask, yes, the car does have Bluetooth as far as I can tell.
I was trying to join a Facebook fan page for my favorite TV show, Game of Thrones, and was disturbed to see a warning message that I needed to “switch to a regular connection” that wasn’t secure so I could proceed. Are they trying to hack my account? Should I proceed on Facebook?
I have my iPhone set up as a personal hotspot through AT&T but suspect that using it via wifi slows me down and that if I could plug it directly into my computer, it’d work faster. Is that true, and if so, how can I tether my iPhone via USB to my MacBook and gain faster access to the Internet?
Dave’s Answer:
Google continues to be dismissive over the public’s concerns regarding the ability of its mobile devices to send precise user locations back to its servers. Google has been collecting the location information from millions of mobile phone and devices stating that the information was “extremely important” to the direction of the company’s future.
My friend Pete Warden does a splendid job of data mining, of analyzing the information that companies make available and/or track, but without telling us exactly what they’re doing. His last adventure was with Facebook, where his data analysis got him into hot water with the notoriously lax company (see his blog post I got sued by Facebook).
This time he and fellow researcher Alasdair Allan have stumbled into something rather astonishing: a time-based archive of iPhone lat/long locations where you’ve used your phone. Better yet, they wrote an open source app called iPhoneTracker that lets you visualize the data so you can understand what’s going on. A caveat: iPhoneTracker is quite clearly not intended to be a polished application with a fully implemented interface but rather a tool to let you see your own tracking information. It reveals alarming data pulled out of your primary iPhone backup file.
You all know I really despise AT&T, even though I continue paying them thousands of dollars per year for three cell phones. Since getting my Verizon iPhone I haven’t dropped a call and I can actually hear the other party. Steve Gillmor got one on Friday and, wow, what a difference. Not to mention that the world’s toughest dead zone: Devil’s Slide is non-existent for AT&T and TMobile, but works the entire way on Verizon for me.
Google Nexus S is the first phone to run Gingerbread, the fastest version of Android yet. Gingerbread builds on some of the most popular Android features like multi-tasking and Wi-Fi hotspot and adds a refreshed user interface, an improved keyboard, near field communication (NFC) support, and more.
Five years ago, penning a MediaPost piece that feels like it was written far more recently, I asked, “Is all mobile local?” That question would have been a more fitting title for the column rather than the wonkier one I used, “The Mobile-Local Redundancy,” which sounds like a rejected name for a Jason Bourne movie. The question and the column answering it remain relevant, making me wonder if so little has changed in sixty-one months.
Verizon and Apple both, made big gains on Wall Street as highly substantial rumors were being made of Verizon finally getting support for the iPhone. WSJ.com has cited unnamed sources, though they seem positive that their information is accurate. Before going further, it should be noted that neither Apple, Verizon, or the manufacturers of the supposed Verizon iPhone, Pegatron, have made official statements.
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