The success of an online mobile phone and accessories store depends mainly on the reliability of the site’s web hosting provider. A site that is always down; does not supply enough images; and has insufficient information is a major no no. Potential customers will be just buy their units elsewhere. To to make sure that a web host you want reliable and well worth the subscription fees, it is wise to refer to web host reviews.

Web host reviews, such as the Blue Host Review, are independently run websites that rate the general services of web hosts. Through theses reviews, customers are able to see how other customers rate their experience with the said provider (on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest) and also read their feedback on the services received from this firm. Host reviews make finding a reliable web host for websites ranging from personal pages to more online stores and portals a whole lot easier

So what does this mean for the existing or soon-to-be Smartphone user? What else can we expect to see the Smartphone, which is essentially a computer that can make/take calls rather than a phone that can surf the web, do in the next four or five years?

1. SECURITY

Security is upmost in users’ minds, specifically how secure their data is and their Smartphone itself. Chip and PIN technology is already used now to secure phones and Google uses a 2-step notification system so if you access a Google app on your phone for the first time, you have to input a code, supplied to you by them, to prove you are the user who requested it. A free app called ‘Google Authenticator’ exists for this purpose already. Several security packages for Smartphones exist already to allow users to wipe their phones remotely of data if they are misplaced or stolen, allow the user to track the phone using GPS capability if it is taken, and allow it to ‘scream’ to alert others that it has been taken against the owners will. We will see data security becoming more personalised to the owner and biometric technology will become more common so instead of inputting a four digit pin to gain access, a user will place their thumb over the camera or even use it to take a picture of their iris, to scan either, and prove they are the owner of the phone.

2. HOME INTEGRATION

The Smartphone will become a central component in the home as programmers and designers use this shift in human behaviour to their advantage. Light sensors will recognize the presence of the Smartphone and turn on/off when the user enters/leaves a room; home or garage doors could lock or unlock through the phone’s presence or by remote command, heating and air conditioning will only function if a Smartphone is present, or will allow the user to control them at will. In the same way that a Smartphone can control a remote computer desktop today, in a couple of years, you will be able to control most of the electric components of a modern house.

3. CAR INTEGRATION

Texting and Driving is a modern curse but the technology that created the problem will solve it. Cars will sync with the phone as a desktop does today allowing car functions to be controlled by the user using their voice. They will be able to compose and send texts and emails, have them read aloud and play their music through the cars stereo remotely or sync it to the car’s hard drive. In the next couple of years, HUD displays will become more prevalent in cars and the smartphone will be integral to this. You will use the phone to unlock the car, set the temperature, start it remotely, and set security protocols so the car will only start or drive when the phone is inside. Haulage companies will be able to use the Smartphone to track exactly where drivers are, and also use recording and camera capabilities to record journeys through cameras in the car. Vital in the case of accidents, crimes or even to play back memorable journeys.

4. WALLETS

Google Wallet launched this year and this NFC (Near Field Communication) technology or similar, will allow the Smartphone to replace the debit and credit card. Users will sync their financial details to a secure, cloud-based ‘wallet’ that the phone will access when it touches a special pad in a store or restaurant – it will then debit/credit the account automatically. This is happening today and will only become more commonplace.

5. GPS COMMERCE

As location-based check-in websites like Foursquare become more popular and the idea of checking-in takes hold, Smartphones and their integrated GPS technology will take customer targeting to new levels. Instead of receiving an email or text of great new deals, the Smartphone will tell the user of any sales or offers when they walk or drive within 20 meters of a Starbucks or a Sears! Another benefit for retailers is that they won’t need to hire students to hold signs saying “GOLF SALE” if Smartphones can direct customers to you when they walk by.

Google tried to buy Groupon for as much as $6 billion last year, and decided to launch its own service, Google Offers, in Portland. Google’s service has since expanded to New York and the San Francisco Bay Area. Google has made many moves into the location business in the last two years. It is trying to grab a large share of the European traffic market by offering real-time services in 13 European companies. Google shook up the navigation market with free navigation service for Android phones in 2009.

At least one analyst said he was intrigued by the acquisition, of which financial details were not disclosed. Mike Dobson, TeleMapics president, said that The Dealmap acts as a deal aggregator and cross-channel distributor for national in-store deals from brand retailers, restaurant chains, and other businesses; local daily deals (from Groupon, Living Social, and more than 200 other sources); and what The Dealmap calls “store window” deals from individual local businesses.

In a recent presentation that The Dealmap made at the Kelsey Deal3D Conference, the company claimed to have grown in its first year to 2 million-plus cross-channel users, including more than 1 million mobile users, said Dobson, who authors a location blog. The volume of monthly deal searches on its network was more than 75 million and the monthly network reach was estimated at 85 million, he said.

The Dealmap and others (Borrell Associates, Needham and Company, and Groupon) have predicted that the projected size of the local daily deal market will be sized at $10 billion by 2015, while the online local ad revenue will be $32 billion by 2013, Dobson said. “The Dealmap claims that its deals provide more than $10 million in savings each day, although it is less clear what earnings it creates in the way of margin/profit for distributors, such as, well, Dealmap,” he said.

Dobson said that the “deal supplier” market appears to be dominated by top sites. Eighty percent of the local deal inventory nationwide is dominated by 20 sources, 69 percent by 10 sources, and 40 percent by two sources, Groupon and Living Social, he said. “The Dealmap claims that its daily ad inventory is supplied at a modest 6.25 deals per source, while half the deal supply sources offer only one-to-two deals a day,” he said.

“Perhaps more disconcerting is the fact that 69 percent of deal suppliers have a presence in from two to nine markets, while 19 percent cover only a single market. Only 4 percent of The Dealmap’s suppliers have a national footprint, which the company defines as 25 or more markets, Dobson said. “While this could suggest that the deal market is inherently local, I think it suggests that local suppliers add the ‘long tail’ that is appended in local markets to the offerings of Groupon and Living Social. In other words, the market appears to be close to a duopoly at a national scope, with numerous smaller players operating as regional and local suppliers. My conclusion is that the market for local deals from individual local suppliers is quite small, and that the major force of deals in all markets are national chains who wish to present deals to draw local users to their shops.”

Dobson says the reason he makes this distinction is that it does not appear likely that “deal-based advertising” is going to be the replacement for local newspaper advertising, or a real-time Yellow pages, at least not as currently configured.

“The Dealmap indicates that in a sample taken from Chicago for one day of deals, the inventory from the two leading providers was split one-quarter each for fitness spas and shopping, while attractions and dining evenly split the last quarter of the pie,” Dobson said. “When all deal suppliers were added, salons and services deals added 10 percent each to the mix, while dental deals (3 percent) and hotel deals (5 percent) rounded out the categories. Who knew that people looking for social shopping deals were looking for an athletic workout and liked to meet in spas, followed by a good meal and a visit to an attraction?”

According to The Dealmap, more than 50 percent of deals searched for nationwide by consumers are related to dining, followed by shopping at 20 percent, while attractions, bars, spas, travel and “things to do” to ranked in the single digits. On mobile devices the search profile is somewhat different, with dining at 40 percent, shopping at 30 percent, spas and travel each at 12 percent, “things to do” at 4 percent (a 5-percent loss compared to deal-search in general), and bars at a measly 1 percent (a 3-percent drop compared to deal-search in general), Dobson said.

“I am not sure how others perceive the message that can be found in the numbers above, but I think it might be hard to find a long-term growth business here. Google acquired The Dealmap because Google needs to buttress its local advertising empire, but clearly this is a small-potatoes business,” Dobson said. “Yes, I understand that Groupon walked away from a $6-billion-dollar offer from Google, but I suspect that they already regret their bristliness during the negotiations. I guess this shows that just because you can market deals, does not mean that you know how to negotiate one for yourself.”

What’s the Big Deal for LBS?

Dobson said that the big deal may be for the LBS industry. “It appears to me that the concept of ‘location’ is in the process of occupying its rightful place in a variety of industries that are clearly location-centric, and were location-centric before any of us thought of using the term location-based services to describe those business services that had a location component,” he said. “Perhaps the only thing that has changed for these industries is that the consumerization of GPS and the inclusion of its functionality in phones, laptops, PNDs, and other navigation devices have allowed these businesses to pinpoint the location of consumers and provide relevant services to mobile users.”

While The Dealmap certainly fits within Dobson’s notion of LBS, he suspects that the company sees itself in the deal-distribution business and has forward integrated into location services to expand its deal-distribution capacity. “Google almost certainly did not acquire The Dealmap because the company had a new, unique, and proprietary location technology. Instead, they acquired The Dealmap for the company’s distribution strength (its distribution network and deal-distribution applications) and their knowledge of how Groupon and Living Social operate,” he said. “It seems to me that the one trend that continues in LBS is that service businesses require strong distribution channels and few companies in this space have capabilities in this respect. For this reason, the action in LBS will continue to be acquisitions by companies who already have the distribution, but need the know-how that will allow them to leverage location as a method of increasing their distribution capability. In short, ours is a market segment in which companies need to innovate, out-perform, and pray that they get noticed by the industry leaders in other market segments.”

There are no potential Google or Facebook success stories in our midst, Dobson said “Our task is to build location engines, use them to solve common but ubiquitous problems involving location — and hope that our efforts get us to the finish line before anyone else,” he said.

In turn, Nick is one of those guys who doesn’t like maps or taking travel directions; however, his wife Candy got Nick a GPS navigation device for their van before taking this trip to the central Oregon coast from their home in central Washington. In turn, the fastidious and fact-checking Candy says she “loves GPS,” but Nick is not so keen, stating “I hate to rely on a machine during my summer vacation. I want to get away from that stuff, and now I’m listening to this voice tell me where to go when maybe I want to explore that road without some voice telling me I’m going the wrong way.”

At the same time, wife Candy and their two kids say they literally broke in huge laughs when Nick “got crazy with this GPS.” Vamosi writes that frustration with technology is “common now days,” as more users of technology fight the urge to use their own brains over some tech gadget.

GPS helps drivers but also puts them in a fuzzy haze of self-doubt

With a helpless wave of his hands, Nick pulls into this central Oregon camp site both dazed and confused. He’s experiencing what many summer drivers to the coast – where such locations as camp sites are off the main highway and sometimes have signs that are hidden – claim is GPS hangover.

Marty, a local traveler, notes that he would never use GPS because “I don’t doubt my skills as a driver.”

He then breathed an exasperated sigh, and notes how “my old man would think people are crazy to trust this GPS because he prided himself in reading and following maps. I guess both my father and I take pride in our map reading.”

For those not in tune with the Global Positioning System or GPS, it’s a space-based device that’s linked to the “Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)” that – according to directions on one GPS device – “provides location and time information in all weather, anywhere on or near the Earth.”

In turn, a U.S. government website states that GPS satellites are “maintained by the government” and is “freely accessible by anyone with a GPS receiver with some technical limitations which are only removed for military users.”

GPS is another technology that’s taken hold with over 900 million users

According to Vamosi’s investigation in his book “When Gadgets Betray Us,” “different vendors have sold millions of GPS enabled gadgets for use in private airplanes, cars and boast since the mid-1990s. ABI Research predicts that over 900 million people will use GPS navigation devices in both dashboard gadgets and via mobile phone, by 2013.”

“Our need to know where we are is primal, and mobile gadgets give us that means in a way never before possible in human history. For many of us, myself included, it is an understatement to say that people today can’t live without their technology. It’s addictive. But in order to reach the masses, technology vendors have taken shortcuts. Software wizards whisk us through otherwise complex configuration settings, interfaces today have fewer and fewer options for advanced settings, and consumer goods are produced to be magic boxes whose internal components don’t involve the end user. Along the way, we’ve introduced some unintended consequences. What if our dashboard GPS gadgets deliberately misled us? GPS gadgets in our cars don’t just provide navigation; they also warn us of upcoming road closures or accidents. What if they lied?” writes Vamosi.

In turn, Nick thinks that his camping vacation with family will help him distress after a busy year working in the business world.

“I don’t want to return home and have to take a vacation from my vacation. I’ve told Cindy this, and that’s why we’re here on the coast camping. There’s no cell phone service, and the kids don’t have their laptops or video games along. It’s just us, and the GPS,” he jokes.

• One US study found that drivers are eight times more likely to be involved in an accident while texting, and that texting while driving is equivalent to driving under the influence of four shots of alcohol

• The National Safety Council in the US estimated 28 percent of all American vehicle accidents – or 1.6 million per year – are related to mobile phone distraction, and texting is believed to be responsible for between three and 18 percent of the total

• A 2006 study by the Monash University Accident Research Centre into the effects of text messaging while driving on young people found that the time drivers spent with their eyes off the road increased by up to 400 percent when sending and receiving messages

• A poll by Telstra at the beginning of this year found that almost one third of Australian drivers admitted to sending and receiving texts while behind the wheel.

These startling numbers have led to the development of systems that attempt to remove the distraction of mobile phones, by automatically blocking texts and phone calls when the car is in gear.

New Berlin engineer, John Looby, is the man behind one such new system that connects to the vehicle’s onboard diagnostics port and disables texts and calls until the vehicle comes to a complete stop.

Mr Looby believes the simple and inexpensive device could one day become as common as airbags and seatbelts.

Ford Motor Co is set to feature a similar system in its 2011 vehicles equipped with MyFord or MyLincoln Touch. Called “Do Not Disturb”, mobiles paired with the onboard SYNC system will not receive texts and all calls will be forwarded to voicemail. Ford’s system does not restrict voice-activated outgoing calls.

Some GPS-based smart-phone applications also block texting when they detect the phone is moving, but have their limitations, as they cannot tell the difference between when the owner is driving or simply a passenger.

According to the Australian Road Rules, the only time a driver is allowed to touch a mobile phone when a car is not parked is if they are handing it to another passenger in the car.

Texting, hand-held talking, emailing, turning the phone off and on, and operating any of the other functions are all banned. Resting a phone on any part of the driver’s body, besides in a clothing pocket or pouch, is also illegal according to the road rules.