Life happens 24/7; there’s nothing new about that. What is new is our ability to experience it, in real time, no matter whose life it is. First came email, which let us stay connected all the time with co-workers. Then, text messages on our phones kept us in touch with friends and family. Along came the smartphone, which let us stay connected by all of the above technologies and added social media on top of that. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, you name them, they are all in our hand. More importantly, they are all in our hand 24/7, and some people have become so addicted to the constant contact that they instantly feel anxious when temporarily cut off from them.

Dr. Jim Taylor calls this syndrome “disconnectivity anxiety,” “a persistent and unpleasant condition characterized by worry and unease caused by periods of technological disconnection from others.” This can be very mild in some but nearly incapacitating for others. You may know someone who has the latter reaction — cut them off from the web for any length of time and they freak out.

I have been recently extolling the virtues of unplugging from the technology, so those who are affected by DA likely think I am evil. I am convinced that it is good to disconnect occasionally, though, as it can’t be healthy to be on 24/7 for very long.  It’s a wonderful age, with information being passed constantly, but the reality is we can’t stay on top of everything all the time. Do you suffer from DA when you are disconnected?

I have been using the MiFi for weeks now, and it still thrills me to do so. There is something liberating about pushing the MiFi power button, waiting a few seconds, and then getting any Wi-Fi enabled device onto the web. No wires, no fuss, simple elegance. The MiFi I own is from Verizon, and what sets it apart from those USB modems of the past is the ability to get up to five gadgets online with a single connection. Even when I am working on a laptop, I always have the Palm Pre or the iPhone 3G sharing the connection, too. I share that connection with others rarely, and then usually only family members. I realized today that I actually share the MiFi connections less than I have shared the old, USB connection in the past.

So why don’t I share the connectivity more often than in the past, given the easy ability to do so with the MiFi?

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The timing of this news is quite ironic, but Appmodo reports that AT&T will charge $55 extra to tether an iPhone to a laptop for modem use. The irony is that I just used the service on my iPhone 3GS and we’ve had some good debate and commentary on what, if anything, this should cost. With the adamant “$55 extra” claim, two words come immediately to my mind: no way.

Let’s think about this for a second. Folks who would likely want, need or use such a feature probably already have an idea of what 3G data plans do or should cost.

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I met a old colleague and friend this morning at Starbucks before work today. Now that he’s off to his job, I can start mine. At least, that’s what I thought. Since I’m still on the fence about keeping a dedicated EVDO plan, I’ve been leaving the USB adapter at home. I usually use the Boingo Wi-Fi network, which is a much less expensive $10 a month. For some reason, the Boingo client isn’t recognizing the Wi-Fi network at this location. My Wi-Fi adapter can see the attwifi network, but Boingo can’t. I’m sure it’s a one-time glitch, as the Boingo software is usually quite reliable. But when you need connectivity and can’t get it, that one-time glitch can be painful.

Since I do have both my iPhone 3GS and my Palm Pre, I already have two 3G devices with me. Seems a shame that we seem to need different 3G devices for specific purposes, but that’s the way of the cellular world these days. At this point, I’m online using the non-supported iPhone Internet Tethering feature of the 3GS. I enabled it as a backup plan, and I’m so glad I did. It’s perfect in this particular case. I was listening to music over Bluetooth with my iPhone, so switched that function over to the Pre. This way, I have wireless tunes to go with my wireless Internet.

A quick speed test of the Internet Tethering over Bluetooth yielded very usable results. I’m seeing downloads of 1.65MBps and uploads of 310kbps, which is perfectly fine for my web work. I didn’t even need to bring a USB cable with me, either. Personally, I can’t wait for AT&T to nail down its pricing plan for the feature. While I’d love for it to be free, I am willing to pay for a value-add service. The experience has me really reconsidering the entire 3G space, though. Is there really a need to have 3G in multiple devices when the connection can simply be shared or used for another purpose? I’m getting tired of multiple 3G data plans and devices…

Nokia’s affair with Symbian has been a long one, spanning the company’s reach from feature phone to smartphone. The phone platform had different variants, with S60 becoming the one garnering most of the innovation and advances as Nokia entered the smartphone market. Nokia spun Symbian off into its own entity awhile back and made the platform open source, no doubt to get developers onboard. Now it appears that Nokia and the Symbian Foundation have quietly closed the books on S60 as recent blog posts indicate.

The web site at S60.com has been shuttered as the box above indicates, as Nokia moves to get the platform more clearly identified. The “new” platform will be known as Symbian ^2 (the ^ is silent) and Symbian ^3, according to packets given to developers. The Symbian system will be updated twice annually going forward, and all development will be concentrated on the new Symbian system. This is no doubt due to the reputation that S60 had garnered as an outdated smartphone platform when compared with WebOS and Android.

Although Gartner predicts a 4 percent drop in mobile device sales this year, that won’t stop the LBS train from steaming up the tracks. Gartner expects the subscriber base for location-based services to more than double in 2009, growing to 95.7 million this year from 41 million people in 2008. The same trend holds true for LBS revenues, as shown by the Gartner chart. I would have thought that location apps and services would be held up by the need for a GPS radio in devices, but alternative methods can work just as well. Wi-Fi triangulation may actually have more of an impact on this market than GPS, since Wi-Fi radios are essentially standard fare in most mobile devices today.

Gartner found regional differences in what LBS is used for as well. Here in North America, the carriers are eager to sell revenue-adding navigational services, making that and family safety solutions the common LBS uses. Navigation is key in Western Europe as well, but folks there don’t seem to track their kids with a cellular phone as some do here. Japan is home to local searching and friend finders. With the population so dense in some urban areas there, that makes sense. It’s also totally different from my local area. I wonder if the cows wear GPS tags?

I actually see those cows during my running activities, and while they may not have a GPS tag, I do. I’m testing RunKeeper Pro, an iPhone application that uses the GPS radio in my phone to track my run. Here’s a screenshot from an easy 5k earlier this week, in preparation for a 5k race this evening. Aside from basic tracking, the GPS functionality offers pace, elevation, distance and more. And since we’re dealing with GPS data, it’s drop-dead easy to view my route on a map. I’ll have more to say on the app later, but for now, I’m using LBS more each day. What LBS apps are you using on a regular basis?

We’ve known that Clearwire soft-launched its CLEAR WiMAX service in “sin city” some time ago, but it becomes more official on July 21. The company has invited press and media contacts for an afternoon of demos, likely similar to what I experienced at the Baltimore launch last year. From 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on launch day, Clearwire is hosting a consumer event at Town Square Mall, 6605 Las Vegas Boulevard South, Las Vegas. Folks who are curious about the benefits of WiMAX can experience it for themselves, get a look at WiMAX devices, and hear about the unique pricing plans that Clearwire is offering.

Since the Las Vegas market has already been enjoying fast wireless broadband, this seems more like a marketing event. But it’s good news for WiMAX fans, as it shows that Clearwire is sticking to its rollout plan for 2009 so far. Bear in mind that the plan for 2009 is 10 markets. Lighting up Las Vegas officially brings us to three, so there’s a long road to hoe. That’s been the biggest sticking point –  getting the service quickly enabled in major markets. Right now, I think one of our readers who used the service sums up that point best:

I have enjoyed the ClearWire service, but I will probably cancel…The data services by ATT and Verizon are close to ubiquitous in populated areas.  Guaranteed access is more important to me than sheer speed of connection when I’m on the go.

That’s a powerful statement, and it underlies the rollout constraints. Another challenge is marketing, but events like the one on July 21 can go a long way to helping that cause. Although I live near the Philadelphia market, I haven’t seen any WiMAX marketing at all. That could be due to me living outside the planned coverage area, however.

One last concern I’ve personally witnessed and have heard others confirm is coverage holes. Perhaps the official launch means that most of the gaps have been plugged? I won’t be at the Las Vegas event, so I’ll rely on locals to tell me more in that regard. At this point, the service in Baltimore has been live for over six months. I asked back then if it will get better with age, so maybe it’s time for folks using the service there to check in. Are you still finding major variances in speed as you change location? Are the service gaps fewer and farther apart?

We often debate the whole tether your 3G phone vs. using a 3G adapter or device like the MiFi. Today I’ll throw a bone to the tethering crowd — to BlackBerry owners in particular. TetherBerry isn’t a brand new tethering application, but UneasySilence heard of a new beta version that adds some speed and more flexibility to the current version:

We are working hard at TetherBerry to make our product better and better. Some of our latest updates are [sic] our Mac Beta is much faster; this week we will begin offering seven-day trials of TetherBerry for the PC and will begin testing the BlueTooth version.

Our latest Mac beta blows our previous Mac beta out of the water. It is noticeably faster, but we want your feedback! Our interface is dead simple and is compatiable [sic] with all BlackBerrys. No more hassle finding scripts for mac tethering, just one solution: TetherBerry.

The application is free while in beta status, but the currently available pay version is a whopping $49.95. Faster throughput and the additional support of Bluetooth tethering is definitely desirable, but that price-point is too high for my budget. Luckily, I don’t have a BlackBerry, so I won’t be agonizing over a purchase decision for the software.

How much is too much for this functionality? On one hand, the $49.95 is a one-time fee. That beats the pants off monthly tethering plans from a carrier which can tack on $20, $30 or more every 30 days. On the other hand, I remember paying around $25 to tether using PdaNet. In fact, it offers a BlackBerry version today for $29.95. That version already supports wireless tethering over Bluetooth, so is there a compelling reason to use TetherBerry?

While we start a new debate over tethering software prices, BlackBerry owners can download TetherBerry directly to their device at http://tetherberry.com/d/tetherberry.jad. Unless you’re on a truly unlimited 3G plan, I’d watch your usage with any tethering software. You won’t pay the developer if you go over a bandwidth cap, but your carrier might come knocking.

One of the benefits of working for the GigaOM Network is gaining exposure to a lot of great resources. The recently launched GigaOM Pro is a major source of information that touches on a lot of what we do. GigaOM Pro has published a technical report (subscription required) that delves into the impact that speech technology can have for mobile uses such as those performed on a phone. I have long been an advocate of speech recognition, and I believe it can play a part in creating a natural interface for working with computers. Speaking your mind takes on a special meaning when it’s done in order to interact with a computer. That interaction can benefit when applied to the mobile phone, perhaps even more so than with speech-enabled computers.

The mobile phone is a personal device that has become ingrained in most everything we do in our lives. It is a device that is designed from the ground up to work with speech, and it makes great sense that a proper interface revolving around speech technology could be a huge benefit.

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Call me crazy or call me at 262-KCTOFEL. It’s your choice and I’ll only know which you chose if my phone rings. Some early morning web browsing alerted me to the news that Google is offering Google Voice phone number changes for $10. Boy Genius Report called out the Google blog post that provides the details and I’m thinking that a fair number of original Grand Central account owners will search the new batch of numbers.

Searching is easy: Enter an area code or zip code and then any combination of numbers or letters you want in a phone number. If Google has any that match, you can grab them for the one-time fee. I searched around for at least 20 minutes in the four area codes local to me, thinking I might get a more personal number than what I have. Then I realized: You can leave the area code blank to widen the scope of your search. That’s how I ended up with a number that spells my name, but the area code and exchange are in Hartland, Wis. Since I live in southeastern Pennsylvania, I felt immediate disappointment. But then I reconsidered.

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