As technologists, we have all been using and or promoting the use of technology for years, some of us for decades. Whatever your view of the merits of technology for getting work done, finding information or communicating to co-workers, friends and family, we can all agree that our lives have changed dramatically and permanently from the digital revolution that started decades ago.

 

Increasingly, I've been reading books and articles that express a growing discomfort with some of the unintended consequences of our reliance on computers. The latest book to cover it is Sherry Turkle's Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Turkle, a professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, founder and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, and a licensed clinical psychologist, has written before about the impact of technology on our lives. In this book she examines the costs and risks to us of relying on technology for our emotional lives, either through sociable robots or our reliance on social networks and smart phones for our connections to others. 

Given the dependence on mobile devices these days, it's no surprise that hackers view smart phones as an easy target. What makes them even easier to compromise is that there are very few applications or services for protecting these devices, despite the fact that they can contain sensitive company as well as financial information, and can also act as a pathway into corporate networks.

Responding to the fact that, according to IDC, there are more than 10 billion non-PC devices connected to the Internet today - and a predicted 20 billion by 2014 - Symantec is planning to extend its popular Norton suite of security products to smart phones.

The primary goal of Hewlett-Packard's pending acquisition of smartphone maker Palm is to gain its mobile operating system, which HP plans to built into everything from tablet PCs to printers.

HP CEO Mark Hurd gave the first detailed look at the company's plans for Palm, once the $1.2 billion acquisition is complete, during the conference call with analysts to discuss the company's second-quarter earnings. Hurd said webOS will go well beyond smartphones, and into connected devices such as tablet PCs and Web printers, complete with an app store. The company also plans to grow Palm's smartphone business, but the acquisition is a broader play to gain a mobile OS.

"It isn't precisely a smartphone play, as I've seen some people write," Hurd said. “It is, for us, strategically broader.”

As expected, HTC on Wednesday fired back in a legal fight with Apple, claiming Apple infringes on five of its patents and asking the U.S. International Trade Commission to block sales of iPhones, iPads and iPods. The counter punch comes after Apple filed an ITC complaint and a suit in U.S. District court, claiming HTC's Android-based smartphones infringe on 20 of its patents.

HTC, the maker of the first phone based on Google's Android mobile operating system back in 2008, is widely viewed as a proxy for Google.  HTC makes the Google-branded Nexus One as well as much anticipated new models – the Droid Incredible for Verizon Wireless and the EVO 4G for Sprint – which run the lastest 2.1 version of Android. Depsite lackluster sales of the Nexus One, the Google operating system is rapidly gaining momentum against Apple's iPhone/iPod/iPad OS, and has overtaken Apple as No. 2 in U.S. smartphone market share.

I have become very accustomed to my BlackBerry.  I use it for everything, my address book, my calendar, my notes, my music, everything.  However, my BlackBerry is getting a bit worn out, not functioning as well as it should, so I’m in the market for a new smart phone.

 

My story today on what's up with smartphone security was due to a release I had received last week from Kasperky Lab Americas on one of their new products.

 It got me thinking that handset security is a lurking threat that could be easily ignored until the inevitable bad thing happens. Given the new Apple iPhone 3GS out and Palm's new Pre smartphone now in market it's a great time to assess what, if anything, should be done in smartphone security work.