During the first decade of the 21st century, information and communication technologies (ICTs) came within reach of most of the world’s people. As part of World Statistics Day, the United Nations commissioned the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for current data and statistics on ICTs. The resulting report: The World In 2010: ICT Facts and Figures provides an insight into just how phenomenal the growth of ICTs have been over the past few years.

According to the ITU, internet users have grown from under 400 million in the year 2000 to having now surpassed 2 billion. The world now has an estimated 5.3 billion mobile subscriptions, with 90 percent of the world’s population having access to a mobile network. Over 6.1 trillion text messages were sent in 2010 – that’s 200,000 text messages every second!

The mobile market in the developed world, which the UN commonly refers to as being North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, is reaching saturation levels with an average of 116 subscriptions per 100 people. The Asia-Pacific region is experiencing strong growth in mobile subscriptions chiefly due to India and China adding over 300 million subscriptions in 2010. Developing countries are estimated to have 76 percent of the world’s mobiles, up from 53 percent at the end of 2005. Of the world’s 5.3 billion mobile subscriptions, 17 percent are 3G connections.

Looking at the global picture, one in three of the world’s population is now online. The ITU says the number of people online has doubled in the last five years to exceed two billion, of which 60 percent are in developing countries. China has the most internet users with more than 420 million people connected, while 65 percent of Europeans are online compared to 9.6 percent of Africans. The emergence of 3G networks and now next-generation wireless (4G) networks are expected to progressively allow developing countries to access the internet where fixed broadband infrastructure is limited.

The ITU reports that an estimated 1.6 billion people have internet access at home, with an estimated 555 million wired broadband connections globally. Demand for higher speed connections is rising with more and more high bandwidth content and applications available driving further demand. In the developed world, 65 percent of households are online. In some countries, namely South Korea, the Netherlands and Sweden, more than 80 percent of homes have internet access, and virtually all of these connections are broadband. In the developing countries 15.8 percent of households are connected, with 4.4 percent of these connections broadband. In Africa, less than one percent of internet connections are wired broadband.

There are still large differences between countries when talking about broadband affordability, especially those countries with lower per capita incomes, and this is certainly affecting subscriber levels. An entry level wired broadband connection in a developing country costs on average 190 PPP$ per month as opposed to 28 PPP$ per month in developed countries (PPP stands for Purchasing Power Parity and is a is a theory of long-term equilibrium exchange rates based on relative price levels of two countries).

The ITU asserts over 80 countries, including Australia, Afghanistan, Chile and the United States, had adopted or plan to adopt a national broadband strategy. These policies focus on building nationwide broadband infrastructure with the plan to provide public services online, including e-health, e-education and e-government. The ITU claims that over 40 countries now include broadband in their universal service/universal access definitions and a number of countries, including Estonia, Finland and Spain, have already declared access to the internet as a legal right for their citizens.

Via @GizMag

Remember that your iPhone is the camera that’s always with you, so make sure that your camera bag is full of the right tools!

Camera Apps

Camera apps are designed to work with your images on capture. They may also provide you with extensive image adjustment features, but their primary purpose is to become the way that you shoot pictures on your iPhone.

Instagram, Free

You can’t have a list of photography apps and not include Instagram. It’s fairly limited in the creative department  as there is no exposure adjustment or tweaking of the creative filters it applies. That doesn’t mean it can’t turn out very pleasing images with a minimum of fuss though. It’s my go-to app when I’m interested in sharing a quick moment with a bit of visual flair.

The photo sharing network that it’s a part of is the biggest standout feature of Instagram and we haven’t seen how big it can really be just yet. Stay tuned, Instagram isn’t going anywhere.

Camera+, $0.99

Another big name in camera replacement apps, Camera+ offers a widely varied set of enhancements to the feature set of the basic Camera app. Developer TapTapTap makes great products and they’re committed to delivering new features. A recent update brought the Clarity filter, a contrast and levels adjustment that greatly improves many casual iPhone pictures with a simple tap. Anti-shake features and the ability to set exposure and focus independently are also reasons to add this one to your kit.

Procamera, $2.99

Procamera is a nice alternative to Camera+. It’s a bit pricier but I like the immediacy of its interface a bit more than Camera+, which makes you wade through some attractive but unnecessary screens to get to some features. If you’re looking for an app to use when you’re whipping your phone out of your pocket to grab a shot quickly, Procamera has the edge. It also offers an unlinked focus/exposure system and White Balance locking to help you set your color tone.

Hipstamatic, $1.99

Inconvenient, awkward and slow, Hipstamatic should never be your ‘quick-shot’ app. But those characteristics are really just reflections of the Russian toy cameras that Hipstamatic was based on. Thankfully the ability to choose many types of film, lenses and flashes to create a unique and warm look for your images more than makes up for the inconvenience.

Hipstamatic comes with a few films and lenses and offers you the ability to purchase more in packs. It also has rudimentary online sharing and publisher Synthetic holds regular photo contests for users of the app. Think of it as Instagram with more control over your filters.

Magic Shutter, $2.99

In dark situations the iPhone’s camera becomes fairly useless, especially if you’d like to take pictures of anything that is not easily illuminated with flash. Magic shutter allows you to leave the sensor of your iPhone turned on to record light for a longer period than normal. This exposure builds up and reveals dim subjects more fully. You can also use this to create light trails with flashlights or other bright lights.

While it has limited capability and takes some practice to master, Magic Shutter will allow you to capture images in situations that you absolutely would not have been able to otherwise with your iPhone. This makes it a worthy addition to your arsenal. Note that the images shot with Magic Shutter are relatively low res as it uses the video camera to perform this light trickery.

I’ve used Magic Shutter extensively and while I do wish the resolution was higher I couldn’t imagine being without it now.

ShakeItPhoto, $0.99

Very simple camera app that allows you to shoot Polaroid style photos that then appear to develop themselves live on your screen complete with sound effects and slowly revealed image. The faster you shake the phone, the faster your image is processed. The finished product is a near exact replica of a classic Polaroid 600 photo.

This is an incredibly single purpose app and hasn’t changed much since it’s introduction to the App Store in 2009 but it continues to find its place in my iPhone camera bag. Photo nerd note, Polaroid always recommended that you not shake your pictures as they would develop evenly regardless of your  gyrations.

Pro HDR, $1.99

Apple’s built-in HDR mode in the Camera app is, by design, fairly subtle. For a more aggressive HDR look grab Pro HDR. This app allows you to shoot an auto HDR just like the Apple version but also allows you to take 3 or more images individually by tapping on the light and dark areas that you would like to capture manually.

This normally leads to being able to capture a very large range of tones without having to fuss with it much. The closest you’re going to get to ‘real’ HDR photography on the iPhone. You’d have to pry this app off of my phone with a crowbar.

Editing Suites

Editing suites are apps that are a collection of adjustments and filters all in one. These are the equivalent of photo editing apps like iPhoto or Photoshop for your iPhone. If you’re looking to use one app for all of your photo editing, these would be a good place to start.

Filterstorm, $3.99

A very full-featured suite, I would liken Filterstorm to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for your iPhone. It’s got all of the basic adjustments but goes no further than necessary. You can’t do any funky texturing or anything and there is a surprising lack of crazy filters for an app called Filterstorm.

What it does provide you is cloning tools, selective adjustment via gradients or brushes and fairly effective noise reduction. Just like Lightroom, it does the basics and does them well. Just to state this one last time, this is not a filtration app, it’s an adjustment app. As it’s a universal app, it works on your iPad as well.

Iris Photo Suite, $1.99

Don’t be fooled by the far-too-busy icon and the fussy looking interface, Iris is an essential editing app for the serious iPhone photographer.

Some of its powerful features include texture layering, color replacement and blending multiple images together to create double exposures. In addition it has all of the normal stuff that you’d expect such as brightness, contrast, saturation and color temperature. I wish that the image itself was displayed larger while you adjusted exposure and whatnot but other than that this one is a must.

Photogene, $1.99

The granddaddy of ‘photoshop’ style apps on the App Store, Photogene is ugly and unintuitive but it gets the job done for basic editing. All of the basic adjustments I mentioned above in the Iris section are here, including a nice interactive histogram that allows you to adjust your levels.

One big plus to Photogene is that it does display your image full screen while you’re editing it which makes it much easier to see the effects of your adjustments. If Photogene ever got a nice graphical overhaul it would become far more popular than it already is. Available for iPad as well as a separate purchase.

Photoshop Express, Free

It’s decent, but it should be great. The Photoshop name conveys industry standard on the Mac or PC platforms but this is a fairly weak showing at least initially on iOS. Adobe has recently demonstrated a ‘full’ version of Photoshop on the iPad and when that comes all bets are off.

Until then Photoshop Express remains a solid option for those who only need simple image editing only and don’t want to have to pay for an app they only use lightly. It does earn high marks for its interface, which is easily the best looking one of this bunch.

Perfect Photo, $0.99

An image editing suite focused on basic iPhone photographers, Perfect Photo can remove redeye, fix acne and do a decent amount of basic adjustments. All of your standard features are represented and, aside from Photoshop, is one of the cheapest editing suites in this list. A little over 20 basic tools make this a solid option for casual users but it’s definitely not as slick as Filterstorm or as feature rich as Iris Photo Suite.

MonoPhix, $0.99

Think of this one like Filterstorm for black and white images only. It’s a sort of traditional black and white lab that has vignetting, channel adjustment, grain reduction or enhancement and Infrared options. It’s a must have for any photographers that want more precise control while converting their color images to monochrome. Far better than most apps’ ‘b&w’ 1-button conversion method.

Effects Apps

Effects apps may have a set of options or even a pack of different effects to apply, but they’re usually single-purpose apps rather than full-on editing suites.

TiltShift Generator, $0.99

A very simple app that allows you to create fake depth-of-field blur that can create miniature effects or just help to isolate the focal point of an image. You can set your blur in a straight line or circular pattern. The effect can be applied to images shot in other apps and the resulting images can be exported in high-resolution. I often use this in combination with images processed in some of the other apps below. Instagram recently added a similar filter to their app though it cannot do a circular blur.

Pano, $1.99

Hands down the best traditional panoramic shooting app on the App Store. This app allows you to shoot up to 16 photos in horizontal or vertical sets and automatically stitches them together for you. Initially lower res, an update brought the final resolution up to 800×6800. That means that you could easily print a fairly large image of an image shot with Pano.

If you’re looking around for a solid option to shoot panoramic images, look no further. Julian, Adam and Eric of Debacle Software have put a lot of love into Pano and they have some cool updates on the way to make it even better.

Dynamic Light, $0.99

This is a very cool tool. If you want to give the HDR treatment to an image after it’s already been shot, just pass it through Dynamic Light and crank the dial for the desired amount of punch. It works far better than it has any right to from a single image. The images look very manipulated but if you don’t mind that it can deliver a super cool effect.

360 Panorama, $1.99

This app lets you shoot panoramic shots extremely quickly, as quick as 20-30 seconds for a full 360. You have the ability to export them as still images or send them to people in very cool 360 degree VR galleries. Note that as interesting as this app is, it should not be used as a standard panoramic shooting app. You can’t really get a nicely straightened and cropped image for output and the image isn’t suitable for printing. Despite that, it is a fantastic way to share your immediate surroundings quickly to friends and family via Twitter or email.
Montage, $1.99

Really more of a collaging app that lets you combine as many images as you want with any amount of text, color swatches and even clipart downloaded from a web library. You can cut and slice your images using different shaped tools and add them into your montage. Once you’re done you can email them out or save them. There’s even the ability to save layered, editable versions to come back and arrange. A good tool to use as quick poster creator for a band or school project.

Juxtaposer, $2.99

Originally intended as a goof-off app that will allow you to cut out heads and faces and place them into other images, Juxtaposer has taken on a second life among pro photographers as a masking tool. It’s a great way to isolate the subject of an image with a poor background and drop in one that’s cleaner or more interesting. It’s not going to be all that great blown up in print but it’s solid enough for Facebook or profile pictures. The uses for this one are only limited by your experimentation.

pic Grunger $0.99

This one was created to give your pictures that grungy rock club look. It’s got a solid if not extremely extensive set of textures and styles for you to apply. Thankfully all of the textures it uses are high res so you can export your images full size if you’d like to print them out. There is a strength option to help you choose the intensity of the effect but for the most part this is a one-shot ‘add me some grit’ app. This is a great app to use in conjunction with Instagram or one of the other vintage cameras.

Grungetastic $0.99

With an extensive array of grunge effect sets and sliders that can be adjusted manually to combine them, Grungetastic is an expanded grungifying app that will give you far more options than something like the aforementioned pic Grunger. The sheer array of options can make it a bit tougher to decide on a particular effect but if you’re interested in wrecking your pictures with more control then Grungetastic is a good option.

PhotoArtista Oil, $2.99

One of the best if not the most popular of the apps I’ve found to convert your photos to a painted look. You’ve got your choice of 7 different painting styles, like impressionism and realism. These are complimented by 7 different fine tuning controls that will help you tweak the look of your painted image. Very solid effects app with full resolution output. You can purchase other effects in-app but the oil effect is by far the best and most subtle.
Impression, $1.99

Impression watermarks your images with a signature or message that declares your copyright. A good way to ensure image credit if you upload your image to Flickr or another photo sharing site. Even though this is a free app I’ve marked it at $1.99 because you don’t get font and color options without an in-app purchase of $2 and you really need those for this app to be really useful.
Image Blender, $1.99

This app just blends images together. You can layer images in any registration and then choose how they blend with most of the standard layer effects that you’d find in Photoshop. These include modes like multiply, screen, overlay, hard and soft light  and more. A good way to get two images blended to then use in another editing app.

TouchRetouch, $0.99

Highlight unwanted picture elements with your finger and hit go to make them disappear. Perfect for removing unwanted people, buildings, birds and more from your images. It functions sort of like Juxtaposer but instead of saving elements for use in other images you’re making them go poof. It pretty much does what most people ask for when they say ‘can’t you just Photoshop it out?’

AutoStitch Panorama, $1.99

I’m going to include one more pano app in this list because as great as Pano is, it won’t do two things that AutoStitch does. First, it can’t create pano’s from pre-shot images. With AutoStitch you can whip out your favorite camera app, snap off a bunch of shots and then throw them into the app later for stitching. Sometimes speed is of the essence.

Second, Pano only stitches end-to-end. Autostitch simply stitches all of your images together to create one big image. That means that you can stitch together a double-wide, double-height image if you wish. Enough extra pano goodness to include another one here.

SketchMee, $1.99

I’m not a huge fan of sketch effects for photos, but if you are and you want the best one on the App Store, check out SketchMee. You get plenty of options in pencil color and texture and the ability to sketch in vector format. This means that you can start with even a tiny resolution image and output a huge, full res file that you can print fairly large if you’d like. If you’re interested in making sketches of your photos, check this one out.

FX Photo Studio, $0.99

Basically a giant pack of filters, 187 in all, that you can apply to your images solo or by stacking them one on top of another. A good app for people who are a bit more hands-off with their images but still want something cool looking to throw on Facebook or Twitter.

There are a ton of filters here though and many are decent so you can apply them to your photo then save it and work on it in another app that allows for more control. The interface to FX Photo Studio is top-notch, with an easy and clean design. Surprisingly more rare than you’d think in the photo app genre.

Tiny Planet Photos, Free

If you’re unfamiliar with stereographic projections you can learn more about them here. Basically they’re panoramic images that are stitched together to make what looks like a tiny planet. Tiny Planet Photos will do that for you using just one of your images. It’s a striking effect but unfortunately due to the process it outputs low resolution images that are only good for sharing online. Great for Twitter or Facebook though and very unique. It’s free, just get it.

picfx $1.99

This is a slick little effects app that lets you apply about 25 different textures and frames to your image in a square format. You can choose from 13 additional styles to layer your effects. The square format makes it easy to share these images via Instagram and either layer it’s effects on top or send it through natively. This will help set it apart from the stream of photos that look eerily similar to one another.

Diptic, $1.99

Sometimes sharing just one image alone doesn’t tell the whole tale. Diptic fixes this by letting you splice together two or three images into a simple collage and then share those out to social sites like Flickr or Facebook. The collages are varied in composition and allow you to pull images from your camera roll as well as download them from your Facebook or Flickr accounts, this is a super cool feature that more apps should integrate. I’m not too fond of the fact that it’s $2 and they still make you purchase the extended layouts for another $1 but it’s still a nice single purpose app.

Via @ TheNextWeb

Mobile phones have come a long way. And though you probably haven’t been following it quite as closely, so has 3D projection mapping. Vodafone uses the technique in this stunning new video that celebrates the cell phone from the Zach Morris days, through the Snake era, and up to the feature-laden smartphones of today. [YouTube]

Via @ Gizmodo

You need to have a jailbroken iOS device in order for iOS 4.3.1 unlock to work. You can jailbreak your device using Redsn0w 0.9.6 RC9, PwnageTool 4.3 or Sn0wbreeze 2.5.

Step 1: Open Cydia on your iPhone 4 or 3GS

Step 2: Go to Manage->Sources

Step 3: Now tap on “Edit”, then tap on “Add”

Enter the following repo
http://cydia.pushfix.info
Now tap on “Add Source”

Step 4: Tap on Done.

Step 5: Tap on Pushfix.info and install

Step 6: After the installation Go to Pushfix.info again. Now scroll down and look for “Ultrasn0w fixer for 4.3.1” Tap on it. Install the package. It will ask you to reboot your device.

Via @ Ultrasn0w

Over the weekend, the group of iPhone hackers known as the Dev Team released two new tools to jailbreak the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 4.3.1. Both the PwnageTool and the tool called redsn0w allow users to perform an “untethered” jailbreak, which means that when rebooting your mobile device, it doesn’t have to be connected (“tethered”) to your computer in order to keep the jailbreak in place.

These jailbreaking tools were made possible by an exploit found by German security researcher Stefan Esser, who provided details regarding the exploit to the team.

Currently, this untethered jailbreak works on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod Touch 3G and 4G, AppleTV 2G and the original iPad. The new iPad 2 is not supported because of increased security on that device. The iOS 4.3.1 jailbreak requires a bootroom-level exploit to install, notes the Dev Team on its blog, and the iPad 2 is not susceptible to either of the two bootrom exploits available now (limera1n and SHAtter).

Redsn0w or Pwnage Tool?

PwnageTool is the jailbreaking software that iPhone unlockers (those who run the phone on an unsupported mobile network) need to use. However, the Dev Team says that the accompanying software (ultrasn0w) is not yet ready for iOS 4.3.1. For now, unlockers need to hold off on using the new jailbreaking tools, or they will lose their unlock. When an updated version of ultrasn0w becomes available, unlockers will want to then use the PwnageTool app if on Mac, or Sn0wbreeze, the unofficial version of the tool for Windows.

For everyone just waiting to jailbreak, but not unlock, their mobile devices, redsn0w is ready now and is also much easier to use, says the Dev Team.

Step by Step Jailbreak Guide via ReadWriteWeb

@ The Joy of Tech

Truth is… there is no iPhone killer

Huge valuations, impossible salaries, perks that are befitting royalty? Must be a bubble, right? Not so fast.

While there’s a lot of talk about how things are getting out of hand, it seems that nobody is looking at the history of things. In order to be classified as a bubble, it seems to me that we’d need to have a gauge. Thus far, the only marker that anybody seems to be using is their own intuition. While intuition might be great for some things, it’s a terribly poor indicator of fact.

Now let’s look at facts — Numbers.

At the understood peak of the dot-com bubble, March 10th of 2000, the NASDAQ closed at 5048 points. Compare that with today, assuming that this past Friday was the peak of the bubble that we’re supposedly in right now. This past Friday’s close? 2743. If the economic downfall of an entire industry was indicated by an artificially-inflated technologies market, then we’re far from a bubble.

Now it is worth noting that a good deal of the market inflation of 2000 was due to the fact that there were more than 300 IPO’s during the year, the fact that we have only 20 in 2010 keeps a good part of the “danger” out of the public markets. But the story that we’re looking at today goes much deeper than just IPO’s, or the lack thereof.

Read more @ TheNextWeb ME
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Google is reportedly working on adding another product to its Nexus range of devices, partnering with LG to deliver a new Honeycomb-powered tablet device which could be released in the Summer.

According to industry insider Eldar Murtazin, a man famed for his ability to get information we could only dream of obtaining, Google will introduce a new version of it’s Honeycomb operating system when it launches its own-branded tablet in partnership with LG, making the software available to partners only when the Google-branded device has hit the market.

Read more @ TheNextWeb

If you had to guess what the top downloaded iOS app of all time was, what would you say? You’ll probably get it. It’s an obvious one. It’s Facebook. Number two is fairly easy too: Pandora. But did you know that number three is the Google Mobile App? I wonder what Apple thinks of that?

As they countdown to 10 billion total app downloads, Apple has unveiled a page within the iTunes Store that shows the top app downloads of all time. These are broken into four categories: Top Free iPhone Apps, Top Paid iPhones Apps, Top Free iPad Apps, and Top Paid iPad Apps.

At first, it seemed a bit surprising that Apple would rank them in order, but we’ve spoken with a few app developers who assure us that this is exactly what they’re doing. Below, find the full top 10 list for each category. As you can see, the lists are pretty strong and obvious, except for paid iPad apps, which seems oddly weak (iFart Mobile, seriously?). In other words, there’s a huge opportunity out there developers.

All-Time Top Paid iPhone Apps

1. Doodle Jump
2. Tap Tap Revenge 3
3. Pocket God
4. Angry Birds
5. Tap Tap Revenge 2.6
6. Bejeweled 2 + Blitz
7. Traffic Rush
8. Tap Tap Revenge Classic
9. AppBox Pro Alarm
10. Flight Control

All-Time Top Free iPhone Apps

1. Facebook
2. Pandora
3. Google Mobile App
4. Shazam
5. Movies by Flixster
6. The Weather Channel
7. Google Earth
8. Bump
9. Skype
10. Paper Toss

All-Time Top Paid iPad Apps

1. SoundHound
2. StickWars
3. FlightTrack
4. Backbreaker Football
5. Calorie Tracker
6. BlocksClassic
7. iFart Mobile
8. GoodReader for iPad
9. Cro-Mag Rally
10. Ambiance

All-Time Top Free iPad Apps

1. Pandora
2. Google Mobile App
3. Movies by Flixster
4. Google Earth
5. Yelp
6. Fandango Movies
7. Remote
8. iBooks
9. Bible
10. Solitaire

This last list is particularly interesting. You’ll notice one glaring absence: Facebook. If the social network had a native iPad app, it would undoubtedly be the top app of all time on the platform. Instead, they’ve gone months without one now, letting other paid apps like Friendly Plus (in the Top 30 all time) take their thunder.

Other surprises include that Echofon (a Twitter client) has more downloads than Twitter itself. (Though it’s not really fair since Twitter only got their own native app when they bought Tweetie.) Loopt is far, far ahead of rival Foursquare — and AroundMe kills them both. Meanwhile, Urbanspoon beat Yelp. And Tic-Tac-Toe beat Checkers.

@ TechCrunch