How Passpoint could make Wi-Fi hotspots more like mobile data services

The Wi-Fi Certified Passpoint initiative could open the door for Wi-Fi roaming between carriers

We all love Wi-Fi, as long as we're logged into one particular hotspot and aren't moving much.

But what if Wi-Fi worked more like our mobile data services that gave us wireless connectivity without the constant interruptions that come from switching hotspots and that gave us a deeper level of security than anything we get when we connect to public hotspots? Happily, the team over at the Wi-Fi Alliance is cooking up just such a technology that utilizes IEEE's recent 802.11u amendment to deliver Wi-Fi connectivity that can let you more seamlessly and securely jump from one hotspot to another.

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MORE WI-FI NEWS: First 'Super Wi-Fi' network goes live in North Carolina
ANALYSIS: Despite LTE hype, Wi-Fi is the real deal

Known as the Wi-Fi Certified Passpoint program, the initiative essentially creates a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and allows you to access any in your area that take part in the program. What's more, any hotspots that take part in Passpoint will allow you to connect without entering in any login or billing information since the program supports Subscriber Identity Module (SIM)-based authentication that cellular networks currently use to grant users seamless handoffs between cell sites. This also means that carriers can forge Wi-Fi roaming agreements with one another that could, for instance, give AT&T subscribers access to Verizon hotspots without having to enter in any information or manually connect to different networks.

Kelly Davis Felner, marketing director at the Wi-Fi Alliance, emphasizes that while Passpoint may allow carriers to set up roaming agreements, it doesn't guarantee that they will do so. In other words, don't expect that Passpoint will suddenly make every single Wi-Fi hotspot in your area available to you without adding any login credentials. You do have to initially log in to your own Passpoint account and then you have to check if there are any Passpoint-supported hotspots in your area.

"Passpoint is an equipment certification program that enables roaming," she says. "It gets all these hotspots to do roaming in the same way so that operators can forge roaming agreements among themselves. It's sort of like we're getting everybody speaking the same language."

The other big advantage with Passpoint is that it comes complete with WPA-2 Enterprise security capabilities that will make it vastly safer to connect to public hotspots than today. Unlike today's public Wi-Fi hotspots, a WPA-2 Enterprise hotspot will allow the network to define users' authentication levels and manage traffic to improve network performance. Felner says that wireless carriers will be very interested in Passpoint once it comes out since it will give them a more reliable way to offload their mobile traffic while giving users a wireless experience more consistent with what they expect out of 3G or 4G wireless connectivity.

"Carriers are already using Wi-Fi and that is why element of why it will be successful," she says. "The user affinity for the technology is already very strong."

The first phase of the Passpoint program will launch by midyear 2012 and will include network discovery and selection protocols, seamless network transition and access capabilities, and WPA-2 Enterprise security. The second phase of the program won't launch until 2013, when it will allow operators to enable subscriber policies and will give users a streamlined process for creating their own Passpoint accounts.

7 office suites for Android devices

Want to take your work with you? These office suites make it possible to view and edit your documents on an Android device

You can take your work with you, thanks to several office suites which let you view and edit your documents on an Android device. Most were originally designed for use on a smartphone, but here are seven that are compatible with most Android tablets that run Android 2.3 (codenamed "Gingerbread").

We're listing these apps in reverse order, from the least to the most useful.

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7. Google Docs (Free)
Android Market page

Main features: View and edit text, spreadsheets, slideshows and PDFs stored on your Google Docs account. You can also create text and spreadsheets from scratch, but not slideshow presentations.

Notable extras: You can view images that you've uploaded to your Google Docs account.

Cut-and-paste UI: Double-tap on text and two indicators appear, which you drag to highlight passages of text. Then touch and hold on the highlighted passage for a second, and a menu pops open listing editing choices.

Conclusion: You cannot upload office documents to your Google Docs account through this app, although you can upload images. Apparently, it's meant to mainly serve as a companion tool to the Google Docs site -- i.e. you upload your documents to the site first, and then use this app to view them, do simple file management, and very basic editing.

6. Documents To Go ($14.99)
Android Market page

Main features: View, edit and create text, spreadsheets, and slideshow presentations. View PDF files.

Cloud storage: Can load documents directly from your Google Docs account for viewing and editing.

Notable extras: A free app provided by the developer, DataViz, lets you sync your documents created with Documents To Go between your Android device and a Windows computer.

Cut-and-paste UI: Double-tap on text to highlight it, and after that, you tap the Menu button again to pull up a series of choices for editing. Pasting text is a similar process that relies on tapping Menu.

Microsoft Office compatibility: Could not load images contained in .docx files. Could not display charts or images in either .xls or .xlsx files. Some .ppt files would not load.

Conclusion: Very minimal feature-set in presentation app. Expensive for what it doesn't provide.

5. Kingsoft Office (Free)
Android Market page

Main features: View, edit and create text and spreadsheet documents. You can view and edit slideshow presentations, but oddly, you cannot create one from scratch. View PDF files.

Cloud storage: Can load documents directly from your Box.net account for viewing and editing.

Notable extras: Nothing really stands out, except the price.

Microsoft Office compatibility: Loaded various .doc, .docx, .ppt and .pptx files we threw at it, but had the most trouble with Excel formats (.xls and .xlsx) -- unable to render charts or cell and table formatting correctly for many files.

Conclusion: It's disappointing that this suite can't access your Google Docs files. Also, the spreadsheet app is really limited. But for a tablet, this suite has a cut-and-paste UI that works well, and is a decent reader app to view your Word and PowerPoint files.

4. OfficeSuite Pro ($9.99)
Android Market page

Main features: View, edit and create text and spreadsheet documents, and slideshow presentations. View PDF files.

Cloud storage: Can load documents directly from your Google Docs account for viewing and editing.

Notable extras: The company behind OfficeSuite Pro, Mobile Systems, makes extra money by selling dictionary modules for use with their suite. Compared to the other suites in this round-up (with the exception of ThinkFree Mobile for Tablet), the OfficeSuite Pro word processing app has several features you'd expect to find in a typical word processor. The spreadsheet app includes a useful and convenient tool for creating charts.

Microsoft Office compatibility: Had difficulty displaying charts and images embedded in some .xls files.

Conclusion: Although its low price is great, OfficeSuite Pro's difficulty with loading a few Excel files with embedded images, and its presentation maker (which has minimal content-creating capabilities), make it fall just a bit short of the other choices we evaluated.

3. Quickoffice Pro (14.99)
|Android Market page

Main features: View, edit and create text and spreadsheet documents, and slideshow presentations. View PDF files. Designed specifically for tablet use.

Cloud storage: Can load your documents stored on Box.net, Dropbox, Google Docs, Huddle, MobileMe or SugarSync.

Notable extras: Lets you take a photo with your Android device's camera and stick it into a document or presentation slide you are editing. Has a unified looking toolbar in its word processing, spreadsheet and presentation apps for conveniently accessing formatting functions.

Cut-and-paste UI: Double-tap on text to highlight it -- toolbar then automatically opens above or below it listing choices for editing.

Microsoft Office compatibility: Successfully loaded all Office documents we tested on it (in .doc, .docx, .ppt, .pptx, .xls and .xlsx formats).

Conclusion: Good compatibility with Microsoft Office document formats, ability to load your documents from several cloud storage services, intuitive cutting-and-pasting, and a unified toolbar interface across its three main office apps make this worth serious consideration. But it's pricey compared to the next choices in this article that have better or more features.

2. Smart Office+ ($9.36)
|Android Market page

Main features: View, edit and create text and spreadsheet documents, and slide-show presentations. View PDF files.

Cloud storage: Can load your documents stored on Dropbox and Google Docs.

Notable extras: Eye-candy UI shows thumbnails of the pages of your text document, or sheets of your spreadsheet, in a carousel-style display. Swiping through pages or sheets is smooth and fast.

You can snap a photo with your Android device's camera and insert it into a text document.

Cut-and-paste UI: Double-tap on text to highlight. Toolbar opens along the bottom of the screen with editing functions. To drag and move the text, tap and drag a hand icon which is connected to the highlighted text.

Microsoft Office compatibility: Successfully loaded all Office documents we tested on it.

1. ThinkFree Office Mobile ($9.99)
|Android Market page

Main features: View, edit and create text and spreadsheet documents, and slideshow presentations. View PDF files. Designed for use on Android tablets.

Cloud storage: Can access files in your Google Docs account. Additionally, the company behind it, Hancom, gives you 2GB of storage for free on its own servers to use with its office suite.

Notable extras: Drawing tool lets you sketch freehand with the ability to adjust line width, line color, and background fill colors. Comes with a set of 64 preset shapes. Lets you snap a photo with your device's camera. Photos and drawings can be pasted into your text document, spreadsheet, or presentation slide.

Cut-and-paste UI: Double-tap text to highlight, and a menu of editing choices pops open. Everything is done by directly tapping on the text in question, and not needing to go through toolbars or the Android device's Menu button.

Microsoft Office compatibility: Successfully loaded all Office documents we used to test the office suites for this slideshow.

Conclusion: Because of its wide set of options for creating images from scratch, this office suite is great for building slideshow presentations, particularly when using its drawing tool on a tablet. Good compatibility with Microsoft Office documents and a cheap price also help to make ThinkFree Office Mobile the best overall value for Android tablet owners.

Informatica, MapR team for Hadoop streaming

Informatica and MapR tackle the problem of analyzing data in Hadoop in near-real time

Apache Hadoop users will soon be able to analyze data as it is streamed from its source, thanks to a partnership between data-warehouse software provider Informatica and Hadoop distributor MapR.

The companies are integrating their products so that the new world of big data analysis can work more easily with more traditional data warehouse implementations.

[ Also read the InfoWorld story Supersize me: Hadoop upgrade will handle even bigger data.  | Also on InfoWorld: Look before you leap into Hadoop. | Explore the current trends and solutions in BI with InfoWorld's interactive Business Intelligence iGuide. | Keep up with the latest approaches to managing information overload and staying compliant in InfoWorld's Enterprise Data Explosion newsletter. ]

Specifically, the companies are writing a connector that will ingest data streamed from Informatica's Ultra Messaging application into a MapR Hadoop implementation.

Ultra Messaging copies log file entries, transaction data and other forms of high-volume, continually updated content onto a messaging bus, so it can be reused and analyzed by other systems. Hadoop is a data processing platform, one that can be used to store and analyze large amounts of data in varying formats.

One disadvantage to Hadoop is that it is designed for batch processing, explained Jack Norris, MapR vice president of marketing. With the standard edition of Hadoop, the underlying file system, HDFS, requires that a data file be closed before it can be analyzed. This can be problematic when trying to analyze a flow of constantly updated data. The administrator must pick arbitrary times to close the file for analysis. As a result, "You are knowingly dealing in old data," Norris said.

MapR's distribution, however, is unique in that it allows data to be read even while the file the data resides in is still open and being written to. By connecting MapR with Ultra Messaging, the combined system will offer the ability to analyze data in near-real time as it comes off the message bus.

With Hadoop, users can then combine this live data with other types of data, providing a wider breadth of data to analyze. "With Hadoop, [analysis] is not just done on a single data source. It's the combination of different data sources," Norris said.

This combination of technologies would be handy for time-sensitive pattern recognition tasks, Norris said. One such task is fraud detection, in which a financial institution would need to spot the misuse of its credit cards as early as possible. While computer systems have long been used for fraud detection, using Hadoop in conjunction with a stream of live data provides more data sources to monitor, along with the ability to identify infractions more quickly. "You can look across an entire portfolio of transactions and detect small frauds earlier," Norris said.

At least one other technology has been created to tackle the problem of real-time big data analysis. Last year, Twitter purchased BackType, and subsequently released as open source the company's Storm stream data analysis software. Twitter itself uses the software to spot emerging trends from its users.

In addition to Ultra Messaging, the two companies are building connectors to other Informatica data warehousing tools, including bidirectional connectivity with Informatica's flagship PowerCenter and PowerExchange data warehouse applications. MapR data will be able to be backed up in Informatica Data Replication and Informatica FastClone. Also, the community edition of Informatica's HParser, a Hadoop file parser, will be bundled with the MapR distribution.

Google's Chrome drops share for second straight month

Web tracking firm Net Applications acknowledges it had over-counted Chrome's use

The browser battle returned to a kind of normalcy last month as Microsoft's IE (Internet Explorer), which had posted its largest-ever share increase in January, declined slightly in February.

And Google's Chrome fell for the second straight month in Web metrics firm Net Application's statistics as the company acknowledged it has been over-counting that browser's share for months.

[ Get your websites up to speed with HTML5 today using the techniques in InfoWorld's HTML5 Deep Dive PDF how-to report. | Learn how to secure your Web browsers in InfoWorld's "Web Browser Security Deep Dive" PDF guide. ]

Chrome's pre-rendering feature -- where the browser loads pages in the background that the user may view -- kicked off last August with version 13, and was enhanced in Chrome 17 that launched about a month ago.

As users type in search strings, whether at Google.com or in the browser's combined address bar/search field, dubbed the "omnibox," Google loads one or more hidden pages that it thinks the user will select from the ensuing search links.

Net Applications admitted that it had given Chrome a larger share than the browser deserved. "[Pre-rendering] creates unviewed visits that should not be counted in Chrome's usage share," said Net Applications on its website yesterday.

Starting with the data from February, Net Applications has adjusted Chrome's share -- which is derived from the page views attributed to the browser -- by tossing aside unused pre-loaded pages and counting only those the user actually sees.

"Pre-rendering in February 2012 accounted for 4.3 percent of Chrome's daily unique visitors," said Net Applications.

Chrome is the only major browser that offers pre-rendering.

Under the new methodology, Chrome's share fell about one half of a percentage point to end February with 18.9 percent, off its peak of 19.1 percent last December. The browser remained in the No. 3 slot, behind both IE and Mozilla's Firefox.

Last month, Net Applications linked Chrome's decline to Google's January decision to demote the PageRank -- a rating Google assigns based on how many other sites link to a URL -- for Chrome's download site after it confirmed a marketing campaign had violated the company's own rules against paid links.

At the time, Google said it would punish its own browser with a 60-day PageRank demotion; the time-out ends in a few days, after which Google will presumably restore the download page's prominence in search results for "browser."

Currently, Firefox is the top result of such searches, while Opera Software's Opera is third, Apple's Safari is fifth, and IE is seventh.

IE lost just over one-tenth of a percentage point to account for 52.8 percent of all browsers used on desktop and notebook personal computers, while Firefox stayed flat at 20.9 percent.

Don't let Google catch you with your pants down

Want to be Internet famous for 15 seconds? Urine luck -- especially if Google's Street View cameras are in the area

Google's new all-for-one one-for-all privacy policy that went into effect yesterday is getting some people's boxers in a bunch. Small wonder -- it's a timely reminder that Google knows more about most of us than our mothers do. And like our mothers, it could use this information to embarrass us in front of our friends.

For example, Reuters reports that a man in a remote region of France is suing Google becauseits Street View cameras caught him in the act of emptying his bladder.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Street View or no, Google still doesn't need your stinking privacy rules, says Cringely. | For a humorous take on the tech industry's shenanigans, subscribe to Robert X. Cringely's Notes from the Underground newsletter. | Get the latest insight on the tech news that matters from InfoWorld's Tech Watch blog. ]

L'homme in question was in his driveway, um, watering the plants, when one of Google's camera-festooned vans drove by. Only later, when his garden micturition became part of Google Maps, did he realize he'd been captured for posterity.

Though Google blurred his face, the man says his neighbors were able to recognize him. Now he claims he is a laughingstock in his village and wants 10,000 Euros to salve his pain.

According to the Daily Mail, the man's attorney Jean-Noel Bouillard "did not explain why the man had chosen to urinate outside at his home in the village with a population of 3,000 in the Maine-et-Loire region, in France's Loire Valley."

Having been to France on multiple occasions, I would guess that Google Street View is less likely to capture a Frenchman in the act of actually using an indoor toilet. But I digress.

As Bouillard notes, yes, it's kind of amusing when someone else is caught with his pants down -- literally. But if Google had captured his client in the act of kissing another man's wife (another classic French pastime), the situation would be somewhat less comical.

I don't know whether Bouillard's client has a leg to stand on. But it turns out that Google catching people in the act of relieving themselves is not uncommon. The website StreetViewFunny offers up a dozen such captures from around the globe, as well as a handful of blurry shots of people in their birthday suits and/or kissing.

It's also not clear if any of these aggrieved parties are (ahem) PO'd enough to sue Google. I hope they do -- because Google's belief that the world's information is the company's to manipulatehowever it pleases has really gotten out of hand.

And now for something completely different: Check out this video of autonomous flying robots playing the theme from James Bond, shown earlier this week at the TED conference. It's wicked cool and more than a bit freaky.

Among other things, autonomous robots like these could be used to enter collapsed buildings to look for survivors or to carry parts and construct objects in areas too dangerous for humans to enter.

Also: They could be mounted with cameras and used for Google's upcoming Toilet View service. Because, as we all know, there is no place where Google will not go.

Has Google gone too far -- yet again? Post your thoughts below or email me (but please, no photos of bodily functions): cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, "Don't let Google catch you with your pants down," was originally published atInfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely's Notes from the Field blog, and subscribe to Cringely's Notes from the Underground newsletter.

7 new features in Ubuntu 12.04 'Precise Pangolin' beta 1

A quick guide to what you can expect in next month's Ubuntu Linux release

Exactly three months after the first alpha version of Ubuntu Linux 12.04 "Precise Pangolin" made its debut, the project's developers on Thursday launched the first beta release of the operating system.

As a long-term support release, Ubuntu 12.04 is a particularly important iteration of Canonical'sLinux distribution. Just one more beta version of the free and open source software is scheduled -- with an arrival date of March 29 -- before the launch of the final release on April 26.

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Among the new changes included in this first beta version are a feature enabling considerablepower savings and a new CD image size of 703MB "to squeeze in every bit of package goodness we can on the installation CD images," Kate Stewart, Canonical's Ubuntu release manager.

Designed for testing purposes, Ubuntu 12.04 beta 1 can now be downloaded from the project's site. Here's a quick rundown of some of the release's key highlights.

1. A taste of HUDAs hinted by Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth in late January, Ubuntu's new Head-Up Display, or HUD, interface makes its debut in this beta version. Dubbed by Canonical as "a new way to quickly search and access any desktop application's and indicator's menu," HUD can be accessed by pressing the Alt key and typing in a description of what you want to do. The OS then returns a set of corresponding entries, including some fuzzy matching, the project team says. Over time, it also learns from your previous choices to make the search more and more accurate, they say.

2. Unity tweaksUbuntu's Unity interface has been nothing if not controversial, but in this new release, the Appearance panel in the OS's system settings lets you more easily configure some properties of Unity. For bookmark users, the Unity launcher now also includes Nautilus quicklist support.

3. Clickpad supportUbuntu 12.04 includes support for clickpads, which are trackpads on which the physical button is integrated into the trackpad surface. Most Synaptics clickpads are recognized out of the box in this new release, as are Apple MacBook trackpads. Coming in Ubuntu's next release will be support for Apple's Magic Trackpads and more Synaptics-branded devices, the Ubuntu team says.

4. Power savingsFor the aforementioned power savings, RC6 -- the technology that allows GPUs to go into a very-low-power consumption state when the GPU is idle -- is now enabled by default for Intel Sandy Bridge-chip-based systems. The result can be improvements of between 40 and 60 percent in power usage under idle loads, the developers say.

5. LibreOffice 3.5 and RhythmboxAmong the default applications in Ubuntu 12.04 are the newly updated LibreOffice 3.5, as well as Rhythmbox as the default music player.

6. Better language supportWhen users install new software through the Ubuntu Software Center, the corresponding language support packages -- including translations and spell check modules -- are now installed automatically as well, thus eliminating the need to open Language Support after installing new software.

7. A fresh kernelFinally, upgrading from the second alpha release of "Precise Pangolin," this new beta version includes the 3.2.0-17.27 Ubuntu kernel, which is based on version 3.2.6 of the upstream stableLinux kernel.

Revealed! Secrets behind IT magic tricks

When you're good, you can troubleshoot anything -- most of the time. Here are a few riddles and their solutions

Some IT folks have the magic touch when it comes to both consumer and enterprise computing gear. The same digits that might circumvent a bad situation by feverishly freehanding code into a switch to account for an unforeseen failure can also deftly cure an ailing smartphone.

This ability isn't without its drawbacks. For one thing, it can inspire jealousy and frustration when a seemingly insurmountable problem is spirited away in just a few seconds by someone with the touch. I suppose beating your head against a door for a few days only to have someone pull the handle instead could do that to someone.

[ For more insider tech knowledge, check out Paul Venezia's "How to become a certified IT ninja" and Matt Prigge's "6 things every IT person should know." | Subscribe to InfoWorld'sData Center newsletter and make sure you don't miss a word. ]

But as any magician knows, these tricks aren't magic at all -- you just need inside knowledge and a little practice. For those of you who aspire to wizard status, here's a couple real-world encounters of ghosts in the system.

Home router chaosThis situation usually occurs when someone is at home, connecting via a cable or DSL router. They've had a power outage or brief hiccup and possibly even an inadvertent connection to a neighbor's access point. After much gnashing of teeth, the router is power cycled, but that appears to have worsened the problem. After a period of utter dismay and forsaking all gods, the user finally reboots or power cycles everything in the area, and it all starts working again.

What's actually happened here is a series of DHCP address collisions. The router in use is of sufficiently poor design that it does not maintain DHCP lease tables across reboots, and it extends that deficiency with the lack of ICMP checking before handing out new addresses. Thus, when it powers back up, it dispenses addresses to anything that asks, regardless of whether that IP is already in use. Chaos ensues; some OSes figure out there's a duplicate IP, so they request another. This then breaks a running app and poof -- the TiVo in the back room won't connect to anything, and the wife or husband sitting on the couch is thrown off the network. Anarchy!

The remedy for this is fairly simple: Buy a better router. It's not terribly hard to do.

IT's 6-step guide to adopting consumerization

Most businesses are accepting, even embracing, consumer technology. What do they know that you don't?

If your IT department is resisting the "consumerization" trend, it's in the minority. Recent research shows that most enterprises are proactively addressing this trend and the new relationship between IT and users that often accompanies a consumer IT strategy. What do they know that you don't?

Many of the fears regularly expressed by some technology and business executives -- often related to information security in the mobile environment -- can be effectively addressed through technology and policy.

[ Get savvy about the consumerization of IT with InfoWorld's special reports: Understand how to both manage and benefit from the consumerization of IT trend with InfoWorld's"Consumerization Digital Spotlight" PDF special report. | Get a handle on the mobile management framework with our overview guide. | Then go deep into BYOD mobile strategies and deployment approaches in our "BYOD and Mobile Deep Dive." | Sign up for InfoWorld's weekly Technology: Consumerization newsletter today. ]

A recent survey by the consultancy Avanade found that 60 percent of the companies are adapting their IT infrastructure to accommodate employee's personal devices, rather than restricting use of such devices. Also, 91 percent of the executives say their IT department has the staff and resources needed to manage the use of consumer technologies. In that environment, resistance really is futile.

As your organization moves to consumer-based technologies such as tablets and smartphones, cloud services, a mix of PCs and Macs, and social networking, here are critical practices to help create the right environment to make both IT and the business happy.

Consumerization step 1: Create a culture that welcomes consumer tech
How can your organization ensure it gets the most out of consumerization and users have the freedom they need while at the same time maintaining appropriate control?

Perhaps the first move the organization needs to make is adjust its cultural orientation and attitudes from one of zero tolerance on consumer technologies to one of intellectual curiosity and business opportunity, says Frank Petersmark, former CIO of Amerisure and now a CIO advocate at the consulting firm X by 2.

Instead of automatically frowning on, say, employees bringing their own devices to work, you might think about how best to leverage this new technology and the processes that come with it for better customer service, improved profitability, or increased productivity, Petersmark says. An organization's ingrained culture is probably one of the biggest inhibitors to effectively and sensibly leveraging the opportunities presented by technology consumerization.

Part of the cultural change is getting IT out of the mind-set that only technology people can make technology choices.

For example, the IT team at the Austin (Texas) Convention Center had a hard time accepting that consumer products such as iPads would be suitable for use in its business environment, says Joe Gonzales, IT services manager. "In our organization, there is this perception that if a product didn't get ordered from our Dell Premier page, then it's not good enough to use in the enterprise."

First, the center had to get to a way of thinking that the objective is to give employees productivity tools, and it doesn't matter if these tools are considered business IT or consumer IT. Now, it uses iPads to deliver service-order information to its employees on the show floor, and about 50 employees are using their own smartphones to access email and calendar information.

MWC 2012: Smartphone Apps, Gadgets For Cars

MWC 2012: Smartphone Apps, Gadgets For Cars Read the Original Article at InformationWeek If you're perfectly happy with your car and smartphone integration, you're lucky. But if your phone sometimes won't connect to your hands-free system or if you occasionally get lost, these apps and gadgets deserve your attention. Cobra, SuperTooth, Novatel, and CoPilot Live showcased new apps and devices at Mobile World Congress 2012, demonstrating how to make driving more enjoyable and safe. And if you don't mind a bit of Big- Brother-style monitoring, you could even cut your car insurance costs. Mobile apps and gadgets developed by Cobra do everything from find your keys to report speed zones. The iRadar device adds new Cobra iRadar Community information to allow users to warn and report caution areas in real-time. Companion apps for iOS and Android display visual alerts from the detector. Cobra Tag is for people who constantly leave keys or other valuables behind. The sleek key fob can be attached to anything. Bluetooth powers the separation alarm that triggers whenever the phone and key fob are separated. Cobra Tag apps are available for Android, iOS and Blackberry. Cobra also showed off the first smart charger for Android phones: Cobra JoyRide. With availability expected for July 2012, Joyride allows users to configure smartphone settings as a driver enters or exits the car. At the push of a button, drivers can launch GPS navigation, answer calls, or listen to music. The companion app's unique "Car Finder" mode provides walking directions back to where the phone was disconnected from the charger, ensuring you no longer waste time wandering around parking lots. [ See our complete Mobile World Congress 2012 coverage, live from the mobile industry's hottest event. ] How about a hands-free speakerphone that also streams music from your smartphone? Take a look at Crystal, SuperTooth's stylish new gadget. Crystal works with any Bluetooth A2DP-enabled smartphone and handles automatic pairing and multi-point connection. Additionally Crystal supports voice recognition dialing and can announce turn-by-turn navigation. UBI, or usage-based insurance, customizes car insurance based on a driver's unique profile. Novatel and SeeControl demonstrated a system that focuses on ease-of-use and plug-and-play capabilities for consumers. The new Novatel Wireless Spider devices support capturing driver behavior data such as speed, miles driven, and possible accident or theft. The system also provides helpful tools for consumers such as diagnostics and oil change notifications. CoPilot Live's GPS app is free and will be released soon for Android and iOS devices. Providing maps stored on the device for offline use, the app promises not to burn through a data plan. An optional in-app purchase upgrades the app to provide guided, turn-by-turn navigation as well as a 3-D map option and safety alerts. Want more information on how to improve your driving experience? Click through to the slideshow for a showcase of phone apps and gadgets for the modern driver.

Quad-core arms race 'ridiculous' says Microsoft exec

Editor's note: Will Findlater is editor of Stuff, one of the world's best-selling gadget magazines. Follow @stufftv on Twitter.

(CNN) -- The last full day of the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona has drawn to a close. After a bonanza of new phones, tablets and mobile gadgets, here's the last of what's new at this year's show, courtesy of Stuff Magazine.

Quad-core arms race 'ridiculous'

Microsoft Windows Phone Director Aaron Woodman has stated his belief that competition between manufacturers to produce phones with faster and faster quad-core processors is unnecessary. "The quad-core arms race is ridiculous," said Woodman. Instead, he explained how Windows Phone devices like the Nokia Lumia 800 are able to run fast without using battery-sucking quad-core innards. Microsoft has even gone as far as handing out €100 ($133) to anyone whose phone can beat a Windows Phone in a one-on-one user test during MWC.

Sketching out the future of mobiles

BlackBerry in your car and in your hands

Microsoft releases Windows 8 preview

Microsoft announced the release of the consumer preview of its forthcoming Windows 8 operating system. The new software is designed to work on both computers and tablets, taking many design cues from its own Windows Phone 7 software. The company said it has made a staggering 100,000 code changes since the last preview. Early testers will be pleased to know that all apps in the Windows 8 app store are free to download during the preview.

LG phone delayed by UK's lack of 4G

LG's recently revealed Optimus Vu smartphone, which sports a 5-inch screen with an unusual 4:3 aspect ratio, won't be seen in the United Kingdom for at least a year. The long wait is due to the UK's lack of a 4G or LTE network. Other countries such as the United States are already enjoying super-fast 4G mobile data speeds while the UK lags behind.

Samsung previews projector phone

A prototype of the Samsung Galaxy Beam projector phone has been doing the rounds. The smartphone prototype runs on Google Android 2.3 and has a 15 lumens projector built into its top edge. Users can beam a 50-inch image on a blank wall or screen, perfect for showing off holiday snaps or giving impromptu presentations.