Stealing your Contacts < There's an App for that.

     How much do you care about privacy? What you may not consider private now, may come back to haunt you later.

It has been recently discovered that several social, productivity, convenience, and even game apps have been guilty of uploading address book data. Most of the time users aren't even aware of the share. This information may be safe at a particular company that has good "consumer privacy" thoughts and practices in place. But what about when that company is hacked? Well, for example, when the VA got hacked, thousands of highly sensitive social security numbers were exposed and an unknown amount of digital damage was done.

Say for example, you partake in a multitude of digital software markets and different minor private information is released in each separate activity... If there was private information sharing legal or illegally, all those pieces may fit firmly together to amount to a private bundle of information you may not be comfortable with sharing.

There have been several posts, articles, and even a law in California that go into more detail. The cali law doesn't quite stop the upload of personal information, it just makes the app developers let users know about it in a privacy policy that is specifically released to the user before downloading/installing the app.

So, next time you skim pass a privacy policy... keep in mind, nobody cares about your personal information more than you yourself.

Care to read on...
Seattle Article Stating Specific Apps and what they do

Appolicious Article - Focus on Apple, Google, and Blackberry

Focus on CA's Law

CNN - Mobile Privacy and Kids

Apple doing TV Transformation

     Well, i have been predicting the change, or mutation, of the TV into what would be a TV Computer combo. Steve Jobs, according to LA Times article by David Sarno on the 25th. The article goes on to explain why Apple would get involved in such a competitive market... to improve it. If you seem confused about the improvement that could be done.

UPDATE: as of the second week of Nov. 2011, it seems XBox has beat apple to the first punch with their introduction of their controlling with your voice. They call it Kinect and it has voice recognition. As far as the software itself, I'm not sure if Microsoft developed it or some other party. The reason I said "first punch" above is because Apple has a way about perfecting things.

NIN App Later Approved

     This is an update for the previous post in which Apple denies the iPhone App for NIN. Apple has actually went back on it's word and approved it now, reason... no idea.

iPhone 3G Fix?

Good news could be here for iPhone 3G owners. Apple has released an update (2.1) to help fix the problem associated with the chip that switches from EDGE to 3G that so many users had complains about. Apples website lists twelve updated and/or fixed features.

Among them is support for "Genius" the new software that works in iTunes to create playlists automatically from your songs already in iTunes. All you do is pick one song you like and "Genius" arranges other songs that fit with the one you picked. Although, the process involves sending information about your entire iTunes library to Apple to get other users involved in the more perfect fit of "Genius" Playlists.

Another feature worth noting is: "Dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes". Who actually likes waiting for backups anyways?

For the complete list of improvements and how to upgrade, go to Apple.com.