Tim Conneally

Mobile security issues are no longer the next big thing. The threats are here, and vulnerabilities could be present in your pocket right now.

Apple has released the second security update to iOS 4.3 in just over a week. While the last update addressed a vulnerability to maliciously crafted PDF files, this update fixes a security issue with certificate validation.

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GestureTek, a company which we first noticed three years ago for its Wii-like motion controller technology for smartphones, has sold some of its motion control and gesture recognition technology patents to chipmaker Qualcomm. This acquisition is a signal of the importance of inputs in mobile devices beyond the touchscreen.

Qualcomm will integrate GestureTek's technologies into its popular line of Snapdragon smartphone mobile processors, giving equipment manufacturers the option to enable their devices with natural user interfaces.

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BlackBerry maker Research in Motion will be cutting nearly 10% of its global workforce as it struggles to keep its piece of the smartphone market against the avalanche of Android-powered devices.

RIM will be laying off a total of 2,000 employees globally, and layoffs will begin in North America this week. The rest of the reductions will happen at an unspecified later date due to "local laws and regulations." The company says all employees who lose their job will receive severance packages and job placement assistance.

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Yesterday, I posted a quick stub about AT&T's contribution to the overall proliferation of iOS-powered devices for the last quarter: 3.6 million iPhones (both 3GS and 4) and an indeterminate amount of iPads less than 545,000 in total. AT&T's iPhone sales alone, I concluded made up 10% of all the iOS devices sold for the quarter.

One commenter complained that the article lacked context, and I'll give him that… But it was meant to serve as a single piece of a larger puzzle that will hopefully present a more complete picture of where Apple products are going, who's using them, and what it means to the mobile device market as a whole.

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Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn thinks Motorola Mobility might be sitting on a goldmine with its wireless patent portfolio, and thinks the mobile communications company should perhaps begin shopping them around.

In an amended schedule 13D Icahn filed with the SEC today, the investor's beliefs were clearly laid out:

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Wolfram Research, the innovative company behind the Wolfram|Alpha computational search engine, officially launched a new online document container called Computable Document Format (CDF) which is essentially your average PDF file that has been given the ability to do live computations and display the data accordingly.

The programming and computational functions in Wolfram's Mathematica software can be used to build, for example, a complex graph with a number of variables. It can then be saved as a CDF file so users can manipulate the variables and see the graph results live within the document. To view a CDF file, all it takes is the free CDF Player plugin.

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Fridge, a Y Combinator-funded startup that concentrated on small, private groups for social content sharing, has been acquired by Google with the intention of folding its team and product into Google+.

Fridge worked on a pretty simple concept: create intimate, private user groups to share photos, links, and status updates. Think Facebook, but limited to your "real friends." Users would create a group, invite other users by email, share their content about a particular event or subject in facebook-style feed, and close it up when the talking and sharing is done.

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United States wireless carrier AT&T published its second quarter results on Thursday morning, revealing consolidated revenues had grown to $31.5 billion, up more than $680 million, or 2.2% against last year; total wireless subscribers had reached 1.1 million with the addition of 331,000 new subscribers, and wireless data revenue had grown by a billion dollars, or a 23.4% increase against last year.

The company also revealed that it had activated 3.6 million iPhones in the quarter, with 24% of them being new subscribers.

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In an obtusely titled blog post "More wood behind fewer arrows," Google Senior Vice President for Research and Systems Infrastructure Bill Coughran announced that Google Labs will be winding down its operations.

Google Labs was the breeding ground for many of Google's most brilliant search tools; some of which have "graduated" to become regular features in Google. This includes Google Maps, Reader, Video, Docs, Trends, and Similar Image search.

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Following its record-breaking third quarter earnings report yesterday, Apple on Wednesday took the wraps off of its latest generation of Macbook Air ultraportable notebook computers.

This round of Airs improves the processor speed of last year's generation by a fraction with new Intel Sandy Bridge chips, and replaces the mini DisplayPort jack with the new Thunderbolt I/O port, includes a backlit keyboard, and OS X Lion by default.

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LifeSize, the enterprise video conferencing company Logitech acquired in 2009, has made three major announcements today: a big acquisition, a new service, and a new piece of hardware.

The Acquisition

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Roku, the company who sold more than a million of its tiny eponymous streaming set top boxes without any physical retail presence has announced three new models of Roku 2, even smaller and more feature-packed devices at the same $59-$99 price points.

Three models of the Roku 2 are broken up in the same way last year's batch was. This time, it's the Roku 2 HD, which costs $59, has Bluetooth, and plays back resolutions up to 720p; The Roku 2 XD, which costs $79, also features Bluetooth connectivity, but supports up to 1080p. And the flagship device, Roku 2 XS which costs $99, has Ethernet and USB inputs, and comes standard with the new Roku motion remote, which is no doubt the killer feature of this upgrade.

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AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA announced late last year that they would be partnering in a joint venture called Isis, which would build a unified network for NFC mobile payments. On Tuesday, the joint venture announced that it has secured its payment partners, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express.

Each of the payment companies participating in Isis has been very active in the contactless and NFC-based payment fields for more than five years, so their participation in Isis seems only natural.

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The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday announced it is looking to the public for input about the regulation of mobile health and medicine apps for smartphones, tablets, and mobile computers.

By 2015, the organization expects 500 million smartphone users will count on some kind of health care application on their device, be it to measure and regulate caloric intake, to monitor heart conditions, or to do any number of things.

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Austrian software developers Wikitude were pioneers of Augmented Reality on the Android platform. The company's Wikitude World Browser was the first AR app for Android in 2008, and it has been downloaded onto a million devices.

Tuesday, Wikitude launched its augmented reality satellite navigation app Wikitude Drive for U.S. Android devices. The app has been available for approximately 8 months already in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, the UK, Spain, France, and Italy.

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