featuritis

People are increasingly relying on their mobile phones to deliver maps and directions on the go, according to ComScore.

Data released by ComScore on Friday discovered that 14 percent of all mobile phones users in the U.S., or 33.5 million people, accessed maps on their devices at least once a month over the three months ended April, a 44 percent rise from the same period in 2009.

The number of mobile users who retrieved maps one to three times a month rose 47 percent to 17.1 million, while those accessing maps once a week climbed 60 percent … Read more

There's a lot we like about Palm's WebOS platform, but when it comes to the App Catalog, there are some decisions that leave us scratching our heads.

The latest is Palm's new free program, called Featured Apps, that rotates through a roster of "great handpicked apps each week" on U.S. phones in the Pre and Pixi family.

The app certainly looks good, and it's polished enough that we wish Palm would hurry up and replace its entire spartan App Catalog with the Featured Apps design.

However, with a channel dedicated to EA Games, … Read more

People with Web-browsing phones are spending a lot more of their minutes accessing social networks these days, according to a new study from ComScore.

The study, released Wednesday, pegs social networking as the fastest growing activity among people with smartphones and other advanced phones that offer Web browsing, which are also known as feature phones.

Among the 69.6 million phone users who tapped mobile apps over the three-month period ending in April, 14.5 million of them accessed social networks--a 240 percent jump from the same period in 2009.

Among the nearly 73 million who used mobile browsers, 30 … Read more

Mint.com's CEO Aaron Patzer on Tuesday is giving attendees of the Finovate spring conference in San Francisco a sneak peek at its next major enhancement. The financial planning and tracking service, which was snapped up by Intuit back in September, is getting long-term goals--a feature its software cousin Quicken has had for years, but that could be overly complicated and disjointed.

Patzer, who spoke with CNET about the upcoming service update on Monday, said the new system has been designed with the same kind of simplicity as the rest of Mint.com, and the goals themselves were decided … Read more

Facebook is reportedly adding a new feature that would let its users share their location in their status updates.

The new location feature, described Friday in a story by Advertising Age, would debut later this month and let people automatically include their current locale in their postings if they choose to do so.

Stung by concerns and complaints about customer privacy and new features that are turned on by default, Facebook is likely to offer the location feature on an opt-in basis, according to Ad Age.

Certainly, many of Facebook's more than 100 million users might find it useful … Read more

So, the new MacBook Pros have made their debut, and as always we're left re-evaluating our list of features we hoped Apple would add. We had a rundown on our most-desired MacBook features back in January when the iPad was announced. Revisiting that list, we're happy to say that some indeed came to pass.

Intel's new Core i5 and i7 CPUs made it into this MacBook Pro generation, with the exception of the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

(What we said then: "We're not saying that any laptop without Intel's new mainstream CPUs is ready for the recycling bin, but now would be an ideal time to update the processors inside the entire line, to take advantage of the improved power efficiency and other advantages of the new Core i-series chips.")

We're also pleasantly surprised to see that Apple included automatic graphics switching, enabling MacBook Pros to enjoy a similarly seamless way to activate and deactivate discrete graphics in a way comparable to what we've seen in Nvidia's new Optimus laptop graphics.

There's even another boost to battery life, too. Yet, despite addressing a few of our biggest wishes, a lot of features remain to be addressed. Here's our short list of five, culled from our previous post with a few new additions. … Read more

Adobe is launching another offensive into the online office collaboration market with a new addition to its Acrobat.com service that lets groups of users share virtual workspaces.

The workspaces feature, which just went live on the Acrobat.com site, is aimed at teams who are working in different locations. Each workspace looks and acts the same as a user's individual collection of files. However, its creator can select other administrators and contributors who can manage what gets stored there. This level of control can also be applied on a per-file basis, so you can give certain users access … Read more

All signs point to "yes" for an Xbox 360 console refresh after what appears to be a leaked motherboard photo surfaced on a Chinese gaming forum.

We first dropped the notion of such a move last August; we're hoping Microsoft uses this opportunity to address a number of complaints, annoyances, and other hiccups most of us have experienced during the first 4.5 years of Xbox 360 ownership.

Nothing has been confirmed by Microsoft yet, but we'll probably know more in June when the company hits the stage for its annual E3 press conference.

Make sure … Read more

The day the iPhone 3GS launched, I wrote a column entitled "364 days and counting to iPhone 4G." Since then, thanks to Google, I've gotten a lot of e-mails from folks wondering just when the fourth-generation iPhone will come out, whether other carriers besides AT&T will offer it, whether it will actually work on 4G networks, and just what features it might have.

Until I hear otherwise, I'm sticking to my guns and saying the iPhone 4G--or whatever Apple chooses to call its next iPhone--will arrive almost a year to the day from when … Read more