Sony's US Mobile Strategy: Whatever

Sony has dropped three new mobile devices into the US market -- its Smartwatch 2 and its Xperia Z1 and Z Ultra smartphones -- but it doesn't seem to be playing a very high-stakes game. That's possibly because it doesn't need to. "Sony is a diversified consumer electronics and digital content company," noted tech analyst Stephen Blum. "Its competitive advantage is its brand."

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Motorola and Google unveil upgradeable modular smartphone platform

Remember that technologicallyutopian future with modular, upgradeable smartphones that I envisioned back in August? It turns out that Motorola has had the same idea. Called Project Ara, Motorola’s R&D department is working on an “open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones,” with the aim of doing for hardware what Android has done for software. If an open, modular smartphone ecosystem can be realized, it could do wonders for innovation, massively drive down development timelines and total cost of ownership, and finally allow you to do whatever you want with your smartphone, rather than being constrained by draconian measures imposed by carriers and device makers.
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Hell freezes over: Intel announces plan to fab ARM processors

As developments go, this one is a bombshell. For the first time, Intel has agreed to build ARM chips based on its prime competitor’s architecture, for another company. For decades, Intel was an Intel-only shop. When it announced plans to lease some fab space to companies several years ago, the deal was presented strictly as a low volume project to be used for a handful of small customers, with no significant impact on Intel’s bottom line. Even the news that Chipzilla would build FPGA’s for Altera on 14nm wasn’t a huge shift in this policy, though Altera was a bigger customer than Intel had previously signed.
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Computational sprinting with wax takes heat off smartphones

(Phys.org) —What about using wax with a processor as part of a technique to stave off smartphone overheating? Can wax be the answer to the thermal problem confronting smartphones? That is the proposal coming from a University of Pensylvania and University of Michigan team of researchers, who have been studying ways to manage the chip performance of smartphones. Milo Martin, an associate professor with the University of Pennsylvania and his colleagues at the two schools believe the answer is in computational sprinting involving wax. "When someone cranks the chip well beyond its recommended speeds, the wax absorbs the extra heat coming off the silicon, and at 54 degrees Celsius, it starts to melt," said a report about their research in Wired. Small mobile devices don't have room for the large fans that cool a laptop. If mobile phones actually used all of their transistors at the same time, they would overheat. Only a portion of a smartphone chip's transistors can operate at once. If you hear the term "dark silicon" it refers to the large portions of a silicon chip that must remain off at a given time. As transistors get smaller, the heat problems may only get worse.

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A field test of Structure Sensor's 3D scanning for mobile devices

When Occipital launched its Kickstarter campaign for a portable 3D sensor for Structure Sensor mobile devices, it saw the project fully funded within a few hours. Knowing we had to see this gadget in action, Gizmag met with co-founder Vikas Reddy after Structure Sensor had become the 50th Kickstarter project to reach the million-dollar mark. Our goal was to test the gadget that has its backers so eager to test one too.
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Apps audience choice battlefield disrupt13 zula app Zula’s Mobile-First Teamwork Tool Lets You Spend More Time Outside Of The Inbox

Zula, a startup from Jeff Pulver, a co-founder of VoIP success story Vonage, and serial entrepreneur Jacob Ner-David, is hoping to make your life a little less reliant on your inbox. The app combines elements of enterprise collaboration and communication tools, as well as mobile messaging giants like WhatsApp, for a tool that targets enterprise but could also find a home with personal users as well.
The team’s priorities seem to have shifted slightly since the last time Zula popped up on our radar — at the time the Zulians were informally referring to themselves as working on a WhatsApp for businesses, but these days they’re much more amenable to the notion of opening up the app to the masses.
Today’s Zula isn’t a purely business play, as the team now looks as it more as tool for teams of all sizes to communicate more effectively. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the app itself is really rather handsome, too. The UI is remarkably clean and free of nearly all visual clutter, and it seems as though very design choice made here was for the sake of reducing complexity. The end result is an app that looks good and works well.
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Yahoo To Acquire Sports-Centric Mobile Developer Hitpost

Yahoo is set to acquire Hitpost, the maker of a handful of sports-centric mobile apps, to beef up its own sports offerings on iOS and Android, say sources familiar with the deal. The company’s team of seven or so is heading over to join Yahoo.
The company was co-founded by Aaron Krane who learned the science behind making social games at Slide. He wanted to marry that knowledge with products that appealed to sports fans. The idea was that there was an unexploited sweet spot in between freemium games like Zynga Poker and sports media. (We hear that Krane, who shifted into an executive chairman role from the CEO position, isn’t joining Yahoo. But Courtland Alves, who took over, is.)
Indeed, betting on sports is probably as old as sports are to human civilization. But an analogue to this behavior hadn’t really existed on mobile platforms.

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Google Improves Knowledge Graph With Comparisons And Filters,, Brings Cards & Cross-Platform Notifications To Mobile

Google is turning 15 tomorrow and, fittingly, it’s celebrating the occasion by announcing a couple of new features for Google Search. The mobile search interface, for example, is about to get a bit of a redesign with results that are clustered on cards “so you can focus on the answers you’re looking for.”
Those answers, Google today announced, are also getting better. Thanks to its Knowledge Graph, the company continues to push to give users answers instead of just links, and with today’s update, it’s now featuring the ability to use the Knowledge Graph to compare things. If you want to compare the nutritional value of olive oil to butter, for example, Google Search will now give you a comparison chart with lots of details. The same holds true for other things, including dog breed and celestial objects. Google says it plans to expand this feature to more things over time.

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Required Reading Regarding Mobile

Semil Shah is a contributor to TechCrunch. You can follow him on Twitter at @semil. It’s clichéd, overplayed, and the obvious new normal: Mobile is the big, fundamental force driving consumer tech. Yes, we all know that, but even taking a few steps back for a minute, we should stand in awe of just how much of a massive platform change this is.
“Tectonic” might be the right word. Readers of this site and column will already know this, but what I wanted to do this week is briefly highlight some of the best bloggers, operators, investors, and analysts writing about mobile today. As I’ve been focusing more of my work over the last year-and-a-half to cover the product side and investment side of mobile, I’ve been trying to learn by reading from experts below, specifically trying to focus on the problem of app discovery and testing various techniques in order to lock in distribution.

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NoWait, A Mobile Replacement For The Restaurant Buzzer, Launches Its Consumer App

The Pittsburgh-based mobile waitlisting service for restaurants, NoWait, which raised $2 million in Series A funding just over a year ago, is now rolling out its first consumer-facing product with the launch of its iOS app for restaurant goers. The new app shows a list of nearby restaurants, wait times and distances, and lets you join the waiting list from your phone.
The ability to virtually “get in line” ahead of your arrival works also for some restaurants that don’t offer online reservations, such as through OpenTable, for example. The NoWait consumer app lets you browse through its supported restaurants, see how busy they are, and enter in your party size to grab your spot.
Initially, the app will only work around Pittsburgh as the company scales its operations, but the plan is to have the consumer version working nationwide by January 2014 – just a few months away.
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This Dock Turns Your iPhone Into a Bedside Lamp

The iPhone's Flashlight function eliminates the need for a standard flashlight — assuming of course, your phone has enough battery — and a London-based design team has now used that function to create a bedside lamp.
Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay, the talent behind Raw Edges Design Studio, created a few simplistic stands that use the iPhone and its flash to create a makeshift lamp. They recently showcased their designs at the London Design Festival.

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