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Do you obsessively check your smartphone? and New wave of location apps mark 'paradigm shift'
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(CNN) -- There I was at a long-awaited dinner with friends Saturday night, when in the midst of our chatting, I watched my right hand sneaking away from my side to grab my phone sitting on the table to check my e-mail."What am I doing?" I thought to myself. "I'm here with my friends, and I don't need to be checking e-mail on a Saturday night."The part that freaked me out was that I hadn't told my hand to reach out for the phone. It seemed to be doing it all on its own. I wondered what was wrong with me until I read a recent study in the journal Personal and Ubiquitous Computing that showed I'm hardly alone. In fact, my problem seems to be ubiquitous.The authors found smartphone users have developed what they call "checking habits" -- repetitive checks of e-mail and other applications such as Facebook. The checks typically lasted less than 30 seconds and were often done within 10 minutes of each other. [Read the full article]
(CNN) -- As location-based apps go, Foursquare or Gowalla will work just fine if you're looking for the spot where all your buddies are having a beer.But what if they discovered an awesome, out-of-the-way spot six months ago? Or, better yet, what if you didn't even know you were looking for a watering hole until your phone told you there's one around the corner you shouldn't miss?As the novelty of the simple check-in fades, and the abilities of GPS-based location technology expand, some new mobile apps -- call them "discovery apps" -- are looking to parlay mobile "noise" into useful, place-based tips."It feels like the paradigm shift in the late '90s when Google came along," said Babak Pahlavan, CEO of Cleversense, which released the app Alfred this month."There's an information overload -- to find something useful for you is a very daunting task. [Read the full article]
(CNN) -- Are users of other Web browsers smarter than the people who use Microsoft's Internet Explorer?The survey by AptiQuant, a Vancouver-based Web consulting company, gave more than 100,000 participants an IQ test, while monitoring which browser they used to take the test.The result? Internet Explorer users scored lower than average, while Chrome, Firefox and Safari users were slightly above average.And users of the more obscure Camino and Opera browsers, as well as those using Explorer with Chrome Frame (a plug-in designed to let users view emerging HTML5 content), had what AptiQuaint called "exceptionally higher" IQ levels.Those numbers, it should be noted, probably aren't very scientific. The field of test-takers was self-selecting -- people who chose, on their own, to take an IQ test instead of a scientifically selected study group. They found the test through Web searches or ads the company placed online. [Read the full article]
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