Want to figure out how to get more-efficient energy usage from your household light bulbs? Care to track your driving skills and see how to be more fuel efficient?

There’s an app not just for that, but for all things green.

The Apple App Store and the Android Market list many apps to conserve energy and find ways to go green. Many are either free or $1 or $2. They’re not as hugely successful as games or entertainment trivia, but then neither is the green movement. The array of green software applications is growing — and helping raise awareness about things all of us can do to be more environmentally friendly and responsible.

A good place to start: The Green Genie app will show you 100 different ways to go green, from bringing your own bag to the grocery store to ways to get paid for reducing your emissions.

“This is an app that pays for itself,” says Green Genie creator Brad Cracchiola, who made the app in his spare time. By day, he’s a sustainability engineer in Los Angeles at BMW Group DesignworksUSA. “Apply just one strategy, and you’ve paid for the app 10 times.”

Cracchiola has tried to add game elements to the app, to make learning fun. “Consuming information can be an overwhelming topic,” he says. “Making it fun makes it easier to digest.”

Smartphones are great tools for learning, in part because of their mobility. “It doesn’t matter where you’re at, as long as you have a cell connection, you always have access to the information,” says Provo, Utah-based Nate Younger. He is the co-creator of the Green Fuel app, which helps find alternative fuel sources for those driving non-traditional cars. “The iPhone knows your position.”

To read the full story: USA Today

The pay TV network will begin offering its subscribers access to HBO Go programming on Android mobile devices and Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPad tablet at no additional charge.

“That device has changed television,” HBO Co-President Eric Kessler said this week, pointing to an iPad during an interview at the company’s Santa Monica offices.

HBO hopes the iPad will kick-start HBO Go, the online viewing option for current HBO subscribers that the network launched last year. The move marks a turn for the Time Warner Inc.-owned channel, which was a pioneer in enticing viewers to watch cable TV but has moved cautiously in embracing the Internet.

HBO, however, recognizes that the revolution underway in viewing habits is as profound as the one it helped spark in the 1980s when TV viewers began flocking to cable to watch uncut movies and big-ticket sports events. Company executives have been guarded about putting the network’s programming on the Web, fearful that doing so might give subscribers a reason to drop cable TV service.

“HBO, regardless of how strong their programming is, faces a host of significant challenges to their business — more than at almost any other time in their history,” said Will Richmond, a longtime cable executive and publisher of the Boston-based VideoNuze.com news site. “This is a completely new landscape for HBO.”

HBO has held to a contrarian view about how to approach the Internet. Although broadcast networks have rushed to throw their shows on the Web, HBO has held back, pointing out that cable and satellite TV providers are still — and will remain for some time — the financial bulwark of the pay TV industry.

Still, company executives acknowledge that the Internet and mobile technology is reshaping the way people watch TV. And HBO must adapt, they say, to protect its empire, which generates $1.4 billion annually in operating income — a deep well of profits for parent Time Warner.

HBO Go only recently began to pick up momentum with cable and satellite TV operators that are the gateway for the online option. Heavyweights such as DirecTV signed on after HBO added more than 1,400 hours of programming, including full seasons of such hits as ”True Blood” and”The Sopranos” to the HBO Go library. Currently, about 80% of HBO’s homes can access the pay channel’s online service.

To read the full story: Chicago Tribune

Privacy watchdogs are demanding answers from Apple Inc. about why iPhones and iPads are secretly collecting location data on users — records that cellular service providers routinely keep but require a court order to disgorge.

It’s not clear if other smartphones and tablet computers are logging such information on their users. And this week’s revelation that the Apple devices do wasn’t even new — some security experts began warning about the issue a year ago.

But the worry prompted by a report from researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden at a technology conference in Santa Clara, Calif., raises questions about how much privacy you implicitly surrender by carrying around a smartphone and the responsibility of the smartphone makers to protect sensitive data that flows through their devices.

Much of the concern about the iPhone and iPad tracking stems from the fact the computers are logging users’ physical coordinates without users knowing it — and that that information is then stored in an unencrypted form that would be easy for a hacker or a suspicious spouse or a law enforcement officer to find without a warrant.

Researchers emphasize that there’s no evidence that Apple itself has access to this data. The data apparently stays on the device itself, and computers the data is backed up to. Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by The Associated Press.

Tracking is a normal part of owning a cellphone. What’s done with that data, though, is where the controversy lies.

A central question in this controversy is whether a smartphone should act merely as a conduit of location data to service providers and approved applications — or as a more active participant by storing the data itself, to make location-based applications run more smoothly or help better target mobile ads or any number of other uses.

Location data is some of the most valuable information a mobile phone can provide, since it can tell advertisers not only where someone’s been, but also where they might be going — and what they might be inclined to buy when they get there.

Allan and Warden said the location coordinates and time stamps in the Apple devices aren’t always exact, but appear in a file that typically contains about a year’s worth of data that when taken together provide a detailed view of users’ travels.

“We’re not sure why Apple is gathering this data, but it’s clearly intentional, as the database is being restored across backups, and even device migrations,” they wrote in a blog posting announcing the research.

Allan said in an email to the AP that he and Warden haven’t looked at how other smartphones behave in this regard, but added there’s suspicion that phones that run Google Inc.’s Android software might behave in a similar way and is being investigated.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Alex Levinson, a security expert, said the tracking Apple’s devices do isn’t new — or a surprise to those in the computer forensics community.

The Apple devices have been retaining the information for some time, but it was kept in a different form until the release of the iOS 4 operating software last year, Levinson, technical lead for the Katana Forensics firm, wrote on his blog.

Through his work with law enforcement agencies, Levinson said he was able to access the location data in older iPhones and warned about the issue over a year ago. The location data is now easier to find because of a change in the way iPhone applications access the data, he said.

“Either way, it is not secret, malicious, or hidden,” Levinson wrote. “Users still have to approve location access to any application and have the ability to instantly turn off location services to applications inside the settings menu on their device.”

The existence of the location-data file on the phone is alarming because it’s unencrypted, the researchers said, which means that anyone with access to the device can see it.

Charlie Miller, a prominent iPhone hacker, said a security change that Apple made last month would make extracting the file from the phone in a remote attack very difficult. Even if an attacker were to break into someone’s phone looking for the file, he wouldn’t have the right privileges to access the file.

The data is “pretty well-protected on the phone,” Miller, principal security analyst with Independent Security Evaluators, said in an interview.

To read the full story: Yahoo! Finance

Sunday when their phones bungled the one-hour “spring forward” to daylight savings time that went into effect overnight Saturday.

In the latest clock woe for Apple’s chic iPhone, some users’ phones fell back one hour instead of springing forward, making the time displayed on the iPhone two hours off.

For all of their fancy features, these paragons of high-tech have had trouble telling time. A clock glitch prevented alarms from sounding on New Year’s Day and the devices also struggled to adjust to the end of daylight savings time back in November.

The solution is simple: Shut down and restart the phone or switch the phone to “airplane mode” and then back.

To read the full story: Forbes

Apple Inc. is working on new versions of the iPhone that are aimed at slowing the advance of competing handsets based on Google Inc.’s Android software, according to people who have been briefed on the plans.

One version would be cheaper and smaller than the most recent iPhone, said a person who has seen a prototype and asked not to be identified because the plans haven’t been made public. Apple also is developing technology that makes it easier to use the iPhone on multiple wireless networks, two people said.

Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs, who remains involved in strategic decisions while on medical leave, would use lower prices to widen the iPhone’s appeal and keep it from losing further ground to Android devices. Less expensive iPhones may also ratchet up pressure on Nokia Oyj, whose Symbian software is especially popular in Europe and some developing markets.

“Instead of targeting 25 percent of the global mobile-phone market, Apple would be going after 100 percent,” said Charlie Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Co. in New York, who has a “buy” rating on Apple shares.

Google’s share of the global smartphone market more than tripled to 32.9 percent in the fourth quarter, eclipsing Apple’s 16 percent, according to Canalys.

Natalie Kerris, a spokeswoman for Cupertino, California- based Apple, declined to comment.

Apple fell $3.62 to $354.54 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The stock has climbed 9.9 percent this year.

Smaller, Cheaper

Apple has considered selling the new iPhone for about $200, without obligating users to sign a two-year service contract, said the person who has seen it. Android phones sell for a range of prices at AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless and other carriers, and typically come with agreements that include a fee for broken contracts. The iPhone 4, sold in the U.S. by AT&T and Verizon Wireless, costs $200 to $300 when subsidized by a contract.

To read the full story: Bloomberg News

After years of rumor and speculation, the Verizon iPhone is finally set to go on sale to the general public today.

Verizon and Apple stores across the country will open their doors at 7 a.m. local time to sell the iPhone 4, which for the first time will be available on a U.S. wireless network not named AT&T.

The iPhone went on sale online last week exclusively to existing Verizon customers, and the carrier sold out its stock in just 13 hours. Early estimates from Ticonderoga Securities suggest Apple sold between 700,000 and 1 million Verizon iPhones last week.

Those who pre-ordered began receiving their phones earlier this week. YouTube and iReport are already filled with reports from Verizon’s new iPhone owners.

Today, non-Verizon customers will get their opportunity.

About 2.5 million AT&T customers are expected to defect to Verizon, according to a Yankee Group survey.

Years of being the exclusive provider for the data-hogging iPhone have taken their toll on AT&T: The carrier’s data demands rose 5,000% after it first got the iPhone in 2007. As a result, AT&T quickly fell out of favor with its customers, especially iPhone subscribers. It was recently labeled “the worst network in America” by Consumer Reports.

Still, the vast majority of AT&T’s roughly 20 million iPhone customers are expected to stick with the carrier, thanks to a number of strategic moves made by the network, including early upgrades that locked customers into two-year contracts.

But Verizon has a few competitive tricks up its sleeve. It’s going after AT&T’s customers by offering unlimited data plans for the iPhone for a limited time.

To read the full story: CNNMoney

eBay said that its electronics-buyback service will buy people’s old smartphones for at least $200 as the company anticipates a crush of consumers replacing them with Verizon Wireless’ version of the iPhone.

Under the promotion, running until Feb. 22, the Instant Sale service will pay $200 for a functional iPhone 3GS from Apple, Droid X from Motorola Mobility, Evo 4G from HTC or Galaxy S Vibrant from Samsung Electronics.

This price is the same that Verizon will charge for the cheaper 16-gigabyte iPhone (with a two-year wireless service contract) when it starts selling the popular device online on Wednesday and in stores on Thursday.

Instant Sale will also offer $200 to $450 for the most recent iPhone model, iPhone 4, that people have gotten through AT&T, which has been the iPhone’s only U.S. carrier since its launch in 2007. Although AT&T has charged $200 or $300 for the iPhone 4 with a two-year contract, it is actually a subsidized price. Phones actually cost a few hundred dollars more, but wireless carriers figure they can make that back from service fees over the life of the contract.

Fans of the iPhone have long awaited its release on Verizon, the nation’s largest wireless carrier. Verizon said last week that it received record sales of the gadget when it briefly began offering pre-orders to current subscribers.

Instant Sale, which San Jose, Calif.-based eBay rolled out as a pilot program in October, is one of a growing number of services that lets people trade in consumer electronics such as laptops, digital cameras and digital music players for money.

To read the full story: The Seattle Times

Verizon Wireless warned it will slow down the data connection of its most-active users when its network is stressed, a new policy that comes as the company prepares to add Apple Inc.’s iPhone 4 to its network.

The biggest U.S. carrier by subscribers hasn’t previously taken such measures to manage demand on its network, a process known as throttling. It is one of several ways carriers are dealing with the dilemma of offering unlimited data while managing the costs associated with carrying that traffic on their networks.

The change, which applies only to new contracts, took effect Thursday, the same day Verizon began letting customers order an iPhone. Verizon executives had previously stressed the company was prepared to handle any surge in smartphone usage, thanks to heavy investment in its wireless network.

Verizon Wireless is offering a $30 unlimited data plan with its version of the iPhone, which hits its stores Feb. 10. On Thursday the carrier and Apple began taking advance orders from existing Verizon customers. Verizon said it saw a spike in visitors to its website but declined to say how many units were sold; as of Thursday afternoon the iPhone was still available.

To read the full story: The Wall Street Journal

Pre-order sales of the long-awaited Verizon iPhone 4 start Thursday at an agonizingly early hour, and it can be in your hands by February 10.

As if tech-lovers haven’t been discussing the release of the iPhone on Verizon since the beginning of time (or at least since the iPhone was first released exclusively to AT&T in 2007), Verizon and Apple sent out a little reminder today that the Verizon version will be available for pre-order starting tomorrow, February 3, at 3 am EST, and will arrive in stores (or on your doorstep) on February 10.

To read the full story: Digital Trends

In case you forgot: The iPhone 4 will cost $199.99 for the 16GB version, and $299.99 for the 32GB model with the signing of a new two-year agreement. An unlimited data plan through Verizon will cost $30 per month. Customers can order online via Verizon, or visit the Apple Store.

The joint Verizon-Apple statement also reminds potential customers that, “due to high demand,” iPhone 4 orders “will be fulfilled on a first come, first served basis.” Whether or not that’s because they truly believe they don’t have enough iPhones to go around, or because they’re simply trying to boost the hype surrounding the long-awaited release, is a matter of speculation.

As we’ve previously noted, the Verizon iPhone will surely be a success. But Apple has been receiving increasingly stiff competition from Android, as it recently took the top spot in the worldwide smart phone market, beating out both Apple’s iOS and Nokia’s once-ubiquitous Symbian operating system as the most popular OS among recent phone buyers.

Verizon’s CDMA-compatible iPhone 4 will differ from the GSM AT&T version in a few ways. Most notably, the Verizon iPhone comes loaded with a 3G EV-DO antenna chip, capable of 1.4 Mbps downloads. The AT&T version, on the other hand, comes with a UMTS chip, and can download at up to 3 Mbps — hypothetically, at least.

The last time a new Apple iPhone went on sale, lines went out the door, the product sold out in most places within a day, and shortages continued for weeks. That was in June 2010, and AT&T was the exclusive wireless carrier.

But Verizon Wireless says things will go differently when it begins selling the iPhone 4 online only Thursday morning at 3 a.m. ET/midnight PT for existing Verizon subscribers: The Verizon and Apple websites will be ready.

“We’ve been working on this for a very long time,” says John Stratton, Verizon Wireless chief operating officer. “We expect unprecedented demand, bigger than anything we’ve ever seen before. We feel good about being able to handle it.”

Richard Doherty, an analyst at Envisioneering Group, estimates “400,000 to 500,000 iPhones will be sold in the first weekend. … Verizon has never had that kind of a hit before. The last phone to sell out was the Motorola Razr back in 2006, and I don’t know if they’re really ready to handle this kind of traffic.”

The first wave of sales orders can only be made online. Phones will ship directly to customers.

The phones go on sale to the general public at 7 a.m. on Feb. 10 at Apple and Verizon retail stores, in addition to the Web. Apple iPhone partners Target, Best Buy, RadioShack and Wal-Mart won’t get the Verizon iPhone initially.

Verizon is selling the 16-gigabyte iPhone 4 for $199.99, or $299 for 32 GB with a new two-year contract or an extension of the old one. Subscribers will be eligible for the iPhone if they’ve passed 20 months on a two-year contract; 10 months on a one-year plan.

To read the full story: USA Today