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A significant number of people are comfortable shopping and paying for items through their mobile devices, according to a new report from mobile media firm JiWire.

JiWire's latest Mobile Audience Insights Report (PDF) found that 79 percent of 5,000 people surveyed are OK paying online via their cell phones or tablets.

Though most of those polled are still making relatively small purchases (less than $100), 50 percent said they're comfortable spending more than $100 using a cell phone, while almost 20 percent said they're OK buying things worth more than $500.

Beyond paying for items, more consumers are also researching products via their mobile devices. JiWire found that 71 percent of those polled had researched future purchases on their phone or tablet before buying the item. Among those, 31 percent later bought the item in a store, 40 percent bought it online through a PC, and 20 percent bought it directly from their mobile device.… Read more

Nearly one in five smartphone users are tapping into check-in services like Foursquare and Gowalla, according to a ComScore report released yesterday.

A total of 16.7 million mobile-phone subscribers used location-based services on their phones in March. That amounts to about 7.1 percent of the entire population of mobile users.

But among smartphone users specifically, 12.7 million checked in with such sites during the month, representing 17.6 percent of all smartphone owners, ComScore said.

For the purposes of its study, ComScore included such location-based check-in services as Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places.

Compared with most smartphone owners, those who used location-based sites on their phones also proved more likely to access other types of mobile content. More than 95 percent of them used their mobile browsers or mobile apps. Almost 62 percent grabbed the news on their mobile devices.

And in a stat that will make retailers happy, almost one third of the users browsed to online retail sites on their phones, while one fourth accessed online shopping guides. Users of check-in sites also got a heavier dose of advertising. Almost 40 percent of respondents said they remembered seeing an online ad during March, compared with just 27.5 percent of all smartphone users who said the same thing.… Read more

You're driving to Grandma's house. You've got 200 miles to go. In the car with you: a fatigued spouse, two kids at each other's throats, and a slobbering Labrador Retriever with a full bladder. You're hungry, the gas tank is nearly empty, and you want to get off the road for dinner. Where do you stop?

Traditional roadside placards and billboards might tell you what's next on your route. Some GPS units and apps will show you what's beyond that as well. But nothing I've seen yet is as dialed in to the road-tripper's dilemma as a new app launching today: RoadAhead.

RoadAhead is a smartphone app (iPhone only so far: iTunes link) that can tell you which exit to take when you're on the move and looking for a certain combination of services. Say you want a sit-down dinner, gas, and a playground. You can select just that combination, and the app will show you which of those services are at each exit ahead of you. It will rank services based on how well they fit in with your direction of travel--if possible, it won't route you across a freeway or far off the beaten path.

Most importantly, it won't ever show you attractions or services that are behind you. Because we don't double back, kids. If you wanted to go to Burger King, you should have told me 30 miles ago.

RoadAhead founder Jeffrey Beir (formerly of North Bridge Venture Partners, Xerox, Lotus, and his own start-up, eRoom) tells me the technical challenge to building this app was not trivial. A proprietary database takes available map and business data and enables the app to route based on direction of travel. "It's a tough algorithm," he says.… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Google defended its music storage service at a press conference today shortly after it unveiled the service at its developer conference here.

The new Google Music service, which CNET first reported last night, allows people to store up to 20,000 songs in the Internet "cloud." The benefit of doing this is that they will then be able to access the music from any Web browser that supports Flash or Android devices. The service is still being beta-tested and will only be offered to a select group of invitation-only users in the U.S. Initially, the service … Read more

Could the fruits of Apple's recent purchase of the iCloud.com domain already be showing up as a new cloud-based music service in the latest build of its upcoming Mac OS X Lion?

Following Apple's latest release of its Lion Developer Preview last Friday, French tech site Consomac.fr (Google Translate Version) spotted a reference to a hidden feature in the build codenamed "Castle," to which users can supposedly migrate their existing MobileMe accounts. Seeing this as evidence of a new major cloud-based initiative, the site believes Castle will include MobileMe, indicating that the new project … Read more

Maybe it's to offset the high price of chicken, but NASA and the U.S. Air Force could soon be fueling their aircraft on jet fuel derived from recycled chicken fat.

Seventeen organizations are participating in Alternative Aviation Fuel Experiment II, or AAFEX II, to see if hydrotreated renewable jet fuel is a viable, eco-friendly fuel for jets.

"It's made out of chicken fat, actually," said Langley's Bruce Anderson, AAFEX II project scientist. "The Air Force bought many thousands of gallons of this to burn in some of their jets and provided about 8,… Read more

The bottom line: Firefox 4 is a worthy expression of Mozilla's ideals. The browser is competitively fast, sports a new minimalist look, and includes some excellently executed features. Unfortunately, that describes most of Firefox's competition, too.

Review: Firefox 4 had a rough time in its early development, but those days are over. The browser that you can download now is in the same speed category as its competition; offers many similar features (stronger in many areas and slightly weaker in others); includes broad, cross-platform support for hardware acceleration and other "future-Web" tech and standards; and is … Read more

With the plethora of USB devices available, such as iPhones, iPads, iPods, digital cameras, and printers, many machines do not have enough ports to keep everything connected. Fortunately, USB hubs are readily available and can provide much-needed USB port additions. However, some hubs may not respond well when your Mac wakes from sleep.

According to a recently updated knowledge base article from Apple, some USB hubs may disconnect after your Mac wakes from sleep. This can cause system instability, resulting in unexpected performance from your machine and your connected devices.

Just as when you disconnect an external hard drive before … Read more

Jolicloud will have a new name and direction, according to comments made yesterday by project founder Tariq Krim.

The Jolicloud operating system--touted for its HTML5 and cloud sync capabilities--will be known as Joli OS "to avoid confusion" and Jolicloud will be used to refer to the online desktop, Krim said in a blog post.

Despite the successes--which include 300,000 account registrations since August--of the Jolicloud desktop, Krim said it was imperative to "expand our experience beyond our own OS to be relevant on other platforms."

Read more of "Jolicloud changes name and direction" … Read more