Dear Lifehacker,
With all the hullaballoo about Carrier IQ spying on all those phones, I’m left wondering what else is my phone gathering about me? Should I be concerned, and if so, what should I do about it?
Signed,
Not Trying To Be Paranoid More »
Telstra’s already selling LTE devices. Vodafone’s announced it’ll have LTE by the end of the year. Optus isn’t in that much of a hurry; it’s just announced that its first LTE products will go on sale in April 2012. More »
Telstra’s Ultimate USB 3G modem has finally been made available for general buyers, having been on sale for business customers since September. Telstra has also adjusted its higher-priced next G mobile broadband packages to offer more data. More »
Want to upgrade the Internet access options on your phone? 3 has halved the price on several of its data packs during March, making a potentially appealing offer for existing 3 customers. More »
Now that Google’s made some much-needed improvements to Gmail’s mobile webapp, should you abandon your smartphone’s email client for its browser? Let’s find out. More »
Netbooks are an obvious candidate for mobile broadband, but often require a little tweaking before you can get them to work. Over at our sibling site Gizmodo, Nick details the process for getting 3′s Internet key to work on notebooks like the HP Mini 2140, which has a lower resolution screen than 3′s software expects. If your problem is getting 3G broadband working on a Linux-based Eee PC, check out our earlier guide but bear in mind that some more recent modem models won’t work without some significant hacking.
How To: Get Your 3 Internet Key Working With Low-Res Screened Netbooks [Gizmodo]The experience of accessing banking sites on a mobile phone is often highly variable, so we’ll be interested to see how the Commonwealth Bank’s new mobile banking site, which claims to work on “any internet enabled mobile phone”, works in practice. One minor restriction: you have to be registered for the bank’s SMS security system before you’re allowed to use the mobile platform. Aside from the expected balance checking and funds transfer features, one sensible option is to search for the nearest ATM (driven by Google Maps).
NetBank MobileMozilla’s Firefox-like mobile browser, Fennec, has reached its first beta release, with TraceMonkey-backed JavaScript, better support for add-ons, “gestures” and no-button browsing, and a few other neat developments. The full release notes show what’s new in Beta 1, but most people will want to know how to get it on their phones. And the answer is, still, not quite yet—this release is only officially supported on Nokia N810 tablets, or in a kind of emulator for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Most of the changes between the alpha releases and this beta are faster, faster, and faster—panning, zooming, start-up, and other performance tweaks. Check out the video walkthrough of the Beta1′s new features. Fennec is a free download for Nokia N810 tablets and Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Fennec M12 (Beta 1) for Maemo release notes [Mozilla via Gizmodo]
A year ago, Google enabled read-only access to your Google Spreadsheets from your mobile browser. Now the Google Docs team has added editing capabilities to Google Spreadsheets from popular phones, including the iPhone and Android phone. The excitement you feel at this announcement probably depends on how big of a spreadsheet junkie you are. For example I love the idea of tracking expenses from my phone using one of the many personal finance templates available at the Google Docs template gallery—but I was born at least a quarter spreadsheet junkie. If you’ve got your own killer use for a little spreadsheet editing on your mobile device, let’s hear it in the comments.
Add, edit, sort, and filter: Improved mobile access to spreadsheets [The Official Google Docs Blog]
