Global Nerdy

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Feel free to use it in your articles and presentations; just credit us!

We’ve already hit the point where there are about as many mobile subscriptions as there are people. In Internet Trends 2014, Mary Meeker’s presentation for the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, each new generation of computing carries ten times the installed base of the previous one. With desktop internet having reached one billion users and the current growth of mobile, the pattern looks like it will hold true, giving mobile 10 billion units/users.

Meeker’s presentation is a 164-slide gold mine of information and insight into the present and future of mobility. If you have anything at all to do with mobile tech, you’ll want to at least give it a quick read. We’re going to be consulting it regularly for the next little while, and doing things like taking this chart…

Click the graphic to read the report.

…and sprucing it up into the one at the top of this article.

See more of our infographics on Pinterest!

Want to see more of our infographics? Keep an eye on our Pinterest page, which we’re using as a library for them. And yes, because we want to spread the knowledge, you can use our infographics in your own articles and presentations — just credit us.

Mobility 101 is our series of videos that covers various aspects of enterprise mobility: mobile technology, applications, services, and management. Over the next several weeks, we’ll be post a new video explaining some part of business mobility. We know that the last thing that you want to do is sit through another long, boring presentation, so we’ve made sure that every video is ten minutes or shorter and not like most of the stultifying slide decks you’ve had to suffer through. We’ve worked to make them entertaining as well as educational.

The first video is intro to MMS — what some call “Managed Mobility Services” and others call “Mobility Managed Services”. No matter what you call it, we’ll explain what it is, why businesses need it, and what its key components are. It’s 8 minutes, 18 seconds long, and we think you’ll like it:

In case you were wondering, that’s Yours Truly as the narrator.

All our videos can be found on GSG’s YouTube channel, and we’re going to post videos there often! The easy-to-remember URL for our channel is .

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Of all the geek T-shirts I saw at Ignite Tampa Bay 2014 last Thursday, “Data is the New Bacon” was my favourite. Apparently it’s Cloudera swag.

It wasn’t that long ago that we couldn’t use electronic devices during the first and last fifteen minutes of a commercial flight. The argument for the restriction was that the devices, which generate radio signals as a consequence of their circuitry operating at high frequencies, may cause interference with airplane circuitry and communications during the most critical phases of the flight: takeoff and landing.

The concern about such interference dates back to the early 1960s, when instruments on a commercial plane’s flight deck erroneously announced that it was off course and the culprit was believed to be a passenger’s FM radio. Since then, there’s been some uncertainty about whether or not personal electronics can play havoc with a plane’s avionics.

Over the past 50 years, nobody’s been able to show that a personal device can interfere with a plane’s systems, either in the lab or on flights. Hence the FAA’s recent reversal that now allows us to keep using our smartphones and tablets from gate to gate. Heavier devices, such as laptops, must still be put away during takeoff and landing, but that’s a concern about them being turned into projectiles in the event of really rough air or emergency maneuvers. I’m happy to be able to fire up my iPad and dive into a good book as soon as I’ve settled in and buckled up.

Straight from my “Why hadn’t I heard of this before?” file, here’s a gem from last summer: CollegeHumor’s video that attempts to answer the question “Why can’t we use personal electronics during takeoff and landing?” It’s funny and takes apart a lot of the rationale behind the ban, but be advised, there’s some swearing. Depending on your work environment, you may want to wait until you get out of the office to watch this or at least put on some headphones:

We’d like to wish everyone a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend. While this holiday is seen as the kickoff to summer and a time for cookouts and get-togethers, please take a moment to remember its meaning: to commemorate the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.

How mobile tech changed summer parties

Mashable takes a look at the difference between summer parties in 1983 and 2014 in a big infographic, which looks at all sorts of changes from the way we cranked out the tunes…

…to the way we documented our gatherings:

You can see the whole infographic at full size — which includes changes in the way we met people, sent out invitations, found out what events to go to, and even how we cook — at Mashable.

Get these 6 great paid iPhone apps for FREE!

If you can’t tear yourself away from your iPhone this long weekend, you can at least freshen it up with some great paid apps that are free for a limited time. BGR has rounded them up:

• ThingList: a to-do list app, normally $1.99.
• Work Time: an elegant clock/calendar/appointments/weather app, normally $1.99.
• dJay 2: turns your iPhone into a club-like DJ deck – perfect for house parties! Normally $1.99.
• Analog Film: photo editor with all sorts of filters to make your iPhone photos look as if they were shot on film, normally $2.99
• Recordium Pro: voice and memo recorder. The most expensive of the bunch normally: $6.99.
• Scanbot: turns your iPhone into a document scanner. Normally $1.99

Android/iOS apps for last-minute travel plans

CIO has a quick article highlighting 3 handy Android and iOS apps for people making last-minute travel plans:

• CheapOair, for making last-minute flight bookings, for Android and iOS
• Hotel Tonight, for making last-minute hotel bookings, for Android and iOS
• TravelZoo, for making last minute entertainment and event bookings, for Android and iOS

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Once again, have a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend!

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Think of Windows 8.1 as a modification that lets you slide the head of the Windows 8 hammer to either end and semi-reliably lock it in place, improving the hammer somewhat.

Chitika Insight’s report on smartphone web usage

Click the graph to see its source, Chitika’s Smartphone Usage Update report.

Chitika released their Smartphone Usage Report, which contains the following observations:

• While Windows Phone usage remained flat, declining BlackBerry usage has propped it up to third place.
• iOS users generate the most smartphone web traffic, accounting for 53.1% of it, even though there are about 4 times as many Android devices as there are iOS ones.
• Android users generate the second-most web traffic: 44.5%.

You can download the report for free (you have to provide an email address) from Chitika’s site.

Canalys: Tablets disrupt business tablets and laptops

Tablet shipments may be showing slowed-down growth in Q1 2014 due to a 40% drop in iPad shipments in the US, but the research firm Canalys doesn’t think the slowdown is a long-term trend.

They also see Apple as remaining leaders in the tablet space:

“Consumers, and increasingly businesses, are continuing to adapt, with tablets acting as disruptors and finding their place as desktop and notebook replacements. Apple’s ecosystem and the recent launch of Office for iPad should ensure it is well placed to remain a leader for some time.”

Good Technology: iOS still rules the enterprise, and the iPad really rules enterprise tablets

This news is from a couple of months ago, but the figures are still valid: the enterprise mobile technology firm Good Technology, based on the 2,000+ companies using their services, that iOS has an overall 73% share of enterprise mobile devices…

…and when you consider only tablets in the enterprise, the iOS share rockets up to 91%: