Top Costa Rica News

• ICE/Kolbi dramatically reduced the postpago incoming rates for International Roaming. Incoming calls are now billed at a flat-rate of $0.60 USD per minute, and incoming SMS messages are free. These rate changes apply to 90 countries. The incoming maritime SMS messages are also free. All other rates remain the same.
• According to an article in El Financiero, a special commission was formed last week to establish the digital radio format standard for Costa Rica. The commission is to report its findings to the government in six months. Costa Rica is already in the five year process of converting from analog television to digital television. Digital signals offer a higher quality, while conserving bandwidth in the radio spectrum.

Top Mobile Device News

• IDC published its Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker report for the 1st quarter of 2012. Android now holds 59% of the market share for smartphones, while Apple’s iOS holds 23% of the world market share. Samsung smartphones accounted for 45.4% of the Android shipments. The rise in Android came at the expense of Nokia Symbian phones (10.4%), while Windows Phone 7 still only holds 2.2% of the market.
• With the approaching July 9th deadline for Operation Ghost Click, Google launched an effort to find the last 500,000+ machines still infected with the DNSChanger malware. Starting last Tuesday, any machine infected with the malware will receive a notice, in the preferred language of the user, when they use Google Search. Google is hoping to reach as many as 500,000 users. On July 9th, there will still be some users that never got the message.
• With Android accounting for 59% of the smartphone market, it is no surprise that Android is targeted by malware developers. To get a better understanding of malware, the Computer Science Department at North Carolina State University started the Android Malware Genome Project. The researchers tested four Android anti-virus programs against 1200 malware examples. Lookout took the top rating by detecting 79.6% of the malware. Trend Micro was next with 76.7%, followed by AVG (54.7%), and Norton (20.2%). While an anti-virus app is not perfect, you can take the steps discussed in a previous article to protect your Android device.
• Just weeks after announcing its intent to purchase Instagram, Facebook releases its own Camera app for iPhone. The app doesn’t have all the effects, such as tilt-shift, that Instagram has. Yet, it is a lot better than the photo app that is part of the Facebook app. The Camera app is a separate app, and provides a different view of your timeline. Are we seeing the rumored Facebook phone being built in front of our eyes?
• The Facebook IPO did not live up to the hype. First, there were complaints about the NASDAQ software failure at the the beginning of Friday’s session, that resulted in delayed trades. Then there are the reports that the Morgan Stanley, leading underwriter for the IPO, only disclosed its lower valuation to a select group of investors, just days before the IPO. The result is an IPO is clouded by lawsuits, and government investigations. Instead of the inspiring small investors, it has turned into a Wall Street fiasco. For details see the San Francisco Chronicle’s article.
• The TouchPal Spanish Pack is now available for the TouchPal keyboard. TouchPal is an award winning alternative input method to the standard mobile device keyboard. TouchPal moves predictive touch swiping from the phrase level to the sentence level, with corresponding increase in input speed. TouchPal also includes voice input.

Other Top Technology News

• Fish forensics steps in to help separate between legal and illegal fish catches. Currently, up to 25% of the global fish catch comes from illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. The FishPop Trace project devised a simple DNA test that differentiates between different populations of the same species. Thus, it is now possible to differentiate between the illegally caught Northeast Artic Cod, and the legally caught Eastern Baltic Cod.
• Early Tuesday morning, SpaceX launched its first rocket and placed the “Dragon” module into orbit. Early Saturday morning, the NASA and SpaceX teams started the delicate task of attaching the Dragon module to the International Space Station. Dragon first parked at 70 meters from the ISS for tests, then to 30 meters for final tests and inspection for micro meteor damage, then to 10 meters from the ISS. As this point, the robot arm from the ISS grabbed the “Dragon by the tail,” and brought it into position for bolting to the ISS. The NASA App for Android was how I watched NASA TV through the whole “birthing” process. SpaceX now takes its place in history as the first commercial company to launch a module to the ISS, for less than what Facebook spent for Instagram.