It is nothing surprising that Android gets Google+, after all, Android is a product from Google itself. Android’s Google+ app is indeed very clever. The mobile app is intuitive and excellently designed, though of course it has a few flaws. If you didn’t know much about the Google+ app, you would probably think that it is designed specifically for mobile application.

As the application is opened, a home screen appears which includes most of the main elements such as Profile, Photos, Circles, Stream and Huddle. Interestingly, the element called Hangouts, used for video conferencing, is missing though Google is currently planning to add it sometime soon.

The moment you tap on any icon, it takes you to an inner screen which perfectly fits all the G+ elements within itself, without looking even a bit cluttered. The navigation is fairly easy and convenient too. When you tap on Circles, a list of Circles appears and after tapping on a particular one while using the bottom tabs, a list of people in that Circle appears. From there, the photos and/ or posts that you wish to see can be filtered.

One interesting thing about the Google+ app is its location awareness, which the web-based version lacks. If you wish to see posts from only the people near you, you can filter them accordingly with great ease. This feature is very useful and was demonstrated in one instance, when a Google+ user needed a bicycle pump for specific wheel type and was able to get it from someone nearby who had it.

Regardless of the fact that they are no longer mere instruments for communication and hold a lot of sensitive information like our debit card PIN numbers, email passwords etc., many of us still forget to lock our mobile phones. That is same as leaving the front door of a house unlocked or forgetting the keys in the car.

As NFC (near field communication) is round the corner, it is high time we begin demonstrating safer and smarter mobile phone habits.  With NFC, if stolen, our mobile phones will soon put us at even more risk because they would have become one of the payment mediums for our merchandise purchases. This will make them even more valuable than their present face value.

Hence, if your mobile phone doesn’t lock itself while in sleep mode, ensure it does so from now on.  You need to be careful about it just like you would in case of your email passwords, debit card PIN numbers or the keys of your home.

Protecting your mobile phones doesn’t stop at locking them alone.  You must also be careful about the applications you download on your phone. Just like there are malicious applications which can steal information from your computer, there are similar applications which can steal information from your mobile too.  Furthermore, never perform any banking tasks on your mobile phone while you’re on an unknown or public Wi-Fi network. Doing so can be as dangerous as passing on all your confidential personal details to a complete stranger.

Please keep in mind that our mobile phones are no longer ‘just phones’ and they must be treated in the same manner. So lock them now.

National Sleep Foundation (NSF) in the US has found that around 95% of US nationals use some technology during the hour leading up to sleep. The technologies used vary, including mobiles, computers and televisions. Moreover, different statistics also reveal that more than half of US teens not only play games or text using their mobile phones right before going to sleep, a large number of them actually go to bed with their mobiles.

I recall how my first mobile phone remained the first thing I’d switch on and the last thing I’d switch off every day, until a few years ago when I started keeping it on 24/7. Although I have friends who sleep with their mobiles, I never do so. However, despite keeping it at a safe distance in the hall during nights, it manages to wake me up as early as 3am on some occasions. It is the incoming email tone that plays sleep spoiler.

Keeping so busy with our mobile phones is certainly not good for our health. It not only affects our sleeping habits, but also isolates us from our surroundings. Since we’re occupied playing and texting on our mobiles most of the time, we tend to forget to pay attention to people in our environment.

I wonder if things will continue the same way or will we ever say enough! I need some non-gadget time! Mobiles, no doubt have many positives too. But sleeping with them and allowing them to take over our life is a bit too dangerous.

To relieve the burden on our existing resources and space with the ever increasing population, the UK mobile phone users have begun reusing and recycling their old phones and Sell Your Mobile helps in getting them some extra cash too for doing so.

Sell Your Mobile’s site fetches you money for any old mobile phone of yours, should you wish to recycle it. It is a well-designed comparison site which gathers all the required information from a number of UK recyclers (since it doesn’t do the recycling itself) and gets you all the deals available in the market for your old mobile phone. It saves you a lot of effort and precious time in checking out individual sites and typing in the same information each time, like the model and the make, just to be sure you are getting the best deal. And despite that, you may not be sure whether you have really checked out all the recycling sites too.

One must know that the deals vary between what the shops offer and what the online sites offer. Majority of the best offers come from online sites as compared to in-shop deals. And moreover, the deals vary even within the online sites, as it all depends on what is the supply and demand of particular handsets among other determining factors.

So if you are looking for a purely unbiased advice on which deal is the best for your old phone, Sell Your Mobile is the answer, as its rankings are solely based on the prices offered.

Not only the UK, but many countries are feeling the strain of smartphones clogging up their respective mobile phone networks.

As reported by the International Telecommunications Union of United Nations, HTC Desire, iPhone and other smartphones are the reason behind such network issues as they take up to five times more data as compared to a standard cell phone. However, wider-spread and better fibre optic cables should resolve these issues.

In fact, the number of smartphone users will only increase as all the analysts and experts see it and this number is expected to rise from the current 500 million to at least 2 billion by 2015. The number of mobile phones too is increasing all over the world with even the developing countries having poor landline structures and internet facilities using their mobile phones for communication as well as web connection. Not to be missed in this race is the increasing number of tablet gadgets world over, which too use mobile network services to access any data.

ITU’s Secretary-General, Dr. Hamadoun Toure, in a statement said that mobile operators across the world are investing billions to not only upgrade but also improve their network’s performance and capacity. Even then, high-usage cities like London, New York and San Francisco still get complaints from users with respect to perennial network unavailability. To support the ever increasing number of data-intensive applications, robust broadband plans are needed which will promote quicker roll-out of fibre networks and promote extra spectrum.

Due to its lagging support infrastructure, UK is anyways also facing issues with its sluggish broadband networks.

An interesting article appeared on AP and was also telecast on Daybreak which talked about this new app that has been introduced in the market by iPhone. This application allows Catholics to basically prepare for confession using their mobile phones and is available for iPhone as well as iPad.

The name of this app is “Confession: A Roman Catholic App” but in no way, it substitutes your visit to the priest for the actual confession.

How this app works is that it takes you through a series of many questions which assist you in determining what sin(s) you have committed. Once that is determined, the user is then guided through repentance. In the end, the user is provided with some sample wording which he/ she can use at the time of actual visit to the priest. You will then be able to confess properly and your sins will be absolved. Again what is being reiterated is that an actual visit is a must.

LittleiApps created this app and the US Catholic Church sanctioned it too. The purpose of this app was never to replace an actual confession, but still the Vatican has developed a dislike for such a thing. Father Lombardi, Vatican spokesperson said in a statement to the media that confessions via iPhone are just not apt. A confession mandatorily requires both the priest and the penitent to be present. No IT application can substitute this.

All the Twitter accounts and Facebook page of Vatican terms this app as “forbidden fruit”.

I read an article recently about Charles Manson being caught with a mobile phone once again. This is the second time he is committing this offense. In 2009, he was found with a mobile for the 1^st time. He had used the phone to call people across various states and seemingly received calls too. The first time around, the punishment he received was a deduction of 30 days of good behaviour credit, which seemed like a small punishment. The penalty for his second offense would be decided soon by a hearing.

The man is serving life imprisonment and has been denied parole 11 times. He becomes eligible for it once again in 2012. He is considered insane and has been in prison for more than 40 years now. In fact people hope that even if he manages to get a parole, he never really gets a passport as he is one American who is better off being in America. Manson is the leader of the cult Manson family, which shot to fame in USA after they murdered 7 people, one of the victims being Sharon Tate. Sharon Tate, who was the wife of famed director Roman Polanski, was 8 and half months pregnant at the time of her murder. Manson is also associated with the use of a term, “Helter Skelter”, supporting the beginnings of a race war of apocalyptic nature. The phrase has been nicked from a song of the Beatles, twisting the words around.