The Consumer Electronics Association released some interesting data yesterday about electronic devices on planes. • Ninety-nine percent of flyers bring a portable electronic device on a flight with them. That's a lot of gadgets! • Thirty percent of them have forgotten to turn off a device at some time. Whoops! Another interesting breakdown is this: The study found that when asked to turn off their electronic devices, 59 percent of passengers say they always turn their devices completely off, 21 percent of passengers say they switch their devices to “airplane mode,” and five percent say they sometimes turn their devices completely off. Of those passengers who...

Bloomberg’s Hugo Miller and Nadja Brandt quote Blackberry CEO Thorsten Heins contending that the popularity of tablet computers may wane, a strong hint that there will be no BlackBerry tablet successor to the company’s ill-fated PlayBook device. Miller and Brandt cite Mr. Heins saying in an interview at the Milken Institute conference in Los Angeles that in five years he doesn’t think there’ll be any reason to have a tablet anymore, adding that tablets themselves are not a good business model—his presumed implication being that smartphones are getting so feature-packed and powerful that they will be capable of fulfilling nearly everyone’s mobile computing...

Thorin Klosowski poses an interesting question over at Lifehacker: Are phones good productivity tools? Klosowski argues that, for almost every productivity task he needs to accomplish, there is a desktop or tablet app that will do it quicker and more efficiently than his phone. "None of this is to say that I don't appreciate a smartphone for what it is," he hastily reassures us. "I still take pictures all the time, I listen to podcasts, dink around on Twitter, and look up oddball questions in the browser. But none of those things are actually productive." I suppose that for me, it all comes...

This story has been making the rounds of tech blogs today, and it's interesting to watch the reactions. First, the story: Amazon announced today that developers can now submit their apps for distribution in nearly 200 countries. As I've said before, I think competition is a good thing, and the more competition Google has with its apps, the better it is for consumers. Android phones are doing well in other countries, and it's a logical move for Amazon to tap into that market. So much for the story. Now for the interesting reactions: One of the Android blogs was quite lukewarm about it, and obviously...

LifeProof announced this past Tuesday that they're offering a Total Water Protection Program for the Apple iPhone and iPad to anyone who purchases a LifeProof case from their website. This optional program takes the protection of these devices to an entirely new level by offering a one-time repair or replacement of the device if it sustains accidental water damage while in one of their cases. LifeProof cases are advertised as being waterproof, submerged down to 6.6 feet deep, as well as being dirt proof, snow proof and shock proof. The Total Water Protection Program will offer consumers even greater peace of mind. Available as of Tuesday,...

Want to be able to use your iPad, Kindle, iPod or other electronic device during take-off and landing why flying? Write your congressperson and ask them to support upcoming legislation to change the rules. According to Politico, Sen. Claire McCaskill, Democrat from Missouri, said on Thursday that she would write legislation to allow passengers to use electronic devices on all parts of the flight. This is long overdue, and it’s ridiculous that the FAA has been dragging their feet on this, especially since they have given flight crews the go-ahead to use iPads for referencing flight manuals. If it’s OK to use iPads in the cockpit,...

The White House is supporting the consumers' right to unlock their cellphones once they have fulfilled the terms of their contract. In response to a petition on WhiteHouse.gov, the executive branch has stated that “The White House agrees with the 114,000+ of you who believe that consumers should be able to unlock their cell phones without risking criminal or other penalties. In fact, we believe the same principle should also apply to tablets, which are increasingly similar to smart phones. And if you have paid for your mobile device, and aren’t bound by a service agreement or other obligation, you should be...

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like I've been hearing about more and more companies lately—some of them new, and some that have been around for awhile—that are putting together large and (presumably) expensive teams of designers and developers to create digitally-enhanced "electronic reading experiences," as they're often called. The latest such organization I've heard of is Byook, a French company that was founded in 2009 by three friends who worked in the video game and digital entertainment industries, and they refer to their product as "a new reading experience." That might be a bit of a stretch, given the...

A common complaint about Android apps in comparison to iOS apps is that Android apps are often missing features or seem “unfinished” and not as polished. While I’ve found that to be true in some cases, the Kindle app is a particularly grievous example. While books in the Android version are easy to read, sync with the Cloud and are very pretty on my Nexus 7 screen, some basic features in the iPad app are mysteriously missing. Here are my biggest gripes: 1. You can’t open a book from an email or from Dropbox With “Send to Kindle,” this isn’t as big a...

Last week, Digital Book World editorial director Jeremy Greenfield shared the details of an interesting (if non-scientific) e-reading study; it was conducted via DBW's Twitter account, which has more than 20,000 followers. The tweet itself was simple enough; it read this like: Do you read on your smartphone? Do you read on other devices, too? Tell us! As of September 11, 30 DBW Twitter followers had answered back, and about half of those respondents answered in the affirmative. The tweets featured in the post were fairly interesting, although most surprising to me was Greenfield's mention of Michael Tamblyn, Kobo’s EVP of content, sales and merchandising: In a DBW interview conducted earlier...

We’ve written about device restrictions on airplanes before, but in the New York Times Nick Bilton presents an angle that hasn’t been as widely considered: what happens when people’s electronic devices aren’t so obvious? A PDA or smartphone is one thing, but what about a smart watch or even smart glasses that have their own computerized networking enabled? “We’re not policemen. We’re not going to be able to get anything done if we have to ask people if they’re wearing sunglasses or computer glasses and if their watch is a computer,” [transport worker union president Stacy...

Ars Technica and our sister blog Gadgetell have links to an interesting Pew Research survey on the demographics of smartphones. According to the survey, 46% of American adults now (think they) have smartphones. (8% aren’t sure whether what they have is a smartphone or not.) There are some numbers in the study relating to the demographics break down, but the most interesting takeaway for here, I think, is that now nearly half of American adults own a device that may be capable of reading e-books. It’s unclear how many of those people care about reading e-books on such a...