Of the over 400,000 Android apps, only a few rise to the top of the list. Of those, not every Android app is suitable for use in Costa Rica. Since they were among the firsts apps installed on my Samsung Galaxy S III, the list does not include Dropbox or SugarSync. I covered the installation of Dropbox as part of the initial configuration of the phone. With the Samsung Galaxy S III 50 GB promot...

With my phone configured and secured for daily use, I started to explore app stores, firmware upgrades, local file transfer. There is more to Google Play Store than meets the eye, and Google Play Store is not the only source of Android apps. Besides the upcoming release of Jelly Bean for the Samsung Galaxy S III, there are other firmware updates. How do I know that I have the latest release of...

Note: You can read my article from yesterday where I outline a detailed review of the Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone. I was seriously considering getting a phone to replace my Nokia E5, but was planning on an orderly transition between phones. Then my Nokia was lost/stolen. I didn't lose any pictures, as they were synced to SugarSync. I lost one contact, since my last backup of contacts, so I...

This is not just another review of the Samsung Galaxy S III, as there are plenty of reviews on the Internet. Rather, it is journal of my experience with the hottest selling smartphone in Costa Rica. The journey began with evaluating carrier pricing, data packages, and coverage of the mobile network operators in Costa Rica. While I prefer prepago, the data speeds that I wanted were only availab...

Selecting an Android phone is not like selecting an iPhone. Instead of one manufacture with a few models, there are many manufactures, each of which sell multiple models, with different features and prices. The phone description provided by a cellphone store is very short, and often does not tell you if it is an Android phone. Sales representatives rarely know anything about Android, or the fe...

There is not shortage of statistics regarding the adoption of cellphone technology for each country on this planet. There are reports from the World Bank, Internal Telecommunications Union (ITU), Global Information Technology Report, Internet World Stats, Global mobile Suppliers Association, StatCounter Global Stats, and Wikipeida. All the information feels overwhelming. Yet, the data tells a ...

Getting a free phone sounds good, but it may not be the best long-term financial decision. How much are you really paying for the phone? What happens if you lose, or accidently damage your phone? Can you modify the plan, after you sign the contract? Are you ready to be bound to a carrier for 18 to 24 months? Signing a contract is a major decision. In Costa Rica, once you sign a contract, you a...

Kolbi vs. Claro vs. Movistar vs. TuYo Movil Brace yourself for a very detailed comparison of facts and charts, and consider sharing this article with your English speaking contacts in Costa Rica as the data is time sensitive. Introduction Until mid 2011, Kolbi was the the only cellphone operator in Costa Rica. TuYo Movil was the first private operator to offer services in Costa Rica. Tu...

The radio frequency spectrum is a limited resource shared by every country on this planet. In 1865, the International Telegraphic Union (ITU) was founded to promote and coordinate the telegraph as a mode of communication. With the advent of radio, the ITU changed its name to the International Telecommunications Union, and in 1947 became a specialized agency of the United Nations. Currently, th...

When you are sitting on a beach enjoying a beautiful Costa Rica sunrise, or sunset, it's hard to picture Costa Rica as ranking #4 in the world for technology exports. Yet, according to the World Bank's World Development Indicators, 41% of Costa Rica's export income is from high technology. For the reporting period of 2011-2012, Costa Rica ranked #1 in Latin America for the Foreign Direct Investmen...

Top Costa Rica News Claro and Movistar are taking advanced registrations for the Samsung Galaxy S III. Kolbi just states that Samsung Galaxy S III is coming soon. With Samsung expecting to only ship 10 million Galaxy S III phones by July 1, the 9 million international pre-orders means there may be a delay. Although the phone ships with the latest version of Android Ice Cream Sandwich, the int...

The services export industry employed 1.4% of the Costa Rica labor force, and generated $2.8 billion in revenue in 2011, according to CINDE (Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency) (PDF). The services export industry includes Business Process Offshoring (BPO), Information Technology Offshoring (ITO), and shared services (such as entertainment and media). The services export industry does not incl...

Flipboard combines a periodical news reader with social networks news in a magazine style format. Mike McCue and Evan Doll initially created this unique approach for the iPad in early 2010. By December of 2010, versions were released for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The unique design of the app quickly made it one of the most popular iOS apps. Flipboard received Apple's iPad App of the year in 2010...

Top Costa Rica News On June 14, SUTEL certified the Samsung Galaxy S III GT-I9300" for use in Costa Rica. Samsung officially announced the Galaxy S III in London on May 3, and was officially available to select markets on May 29. The version of the Samsung Galaxy S III coming to Costa Rica sports a quad-core processor, with 1 GB of memory. While the standard version has 16 GB of internal stor...

Top Costa Rica News Costa Rica Technology Insight 2012 is being held in San Jose on June 19 and 20. The conference is organized by the Export Promotion Agency of Costa Rica (PROCOMER) and the Costa Rican Chamber of Information and Communication Technologies (CAMTIC). If you cannot attend the conference, you can follow it on their iPhone app. They did not release an Android app for this confer...

Top Costa Rica News Venton Medical in Costa Rica developed a new multi-layer extrusion technology for the next generation of catheter based medical devices. These new thin walled, large bore, multi-layered tubes are ideal for emerging therapies in the treatment of diseased heart valves. On May 30th, President Laura Chinchilla Miranda reaffirmed her support of the International Telegraphic ...

Some smartphones have a built-in receiver for local FM radio stations. Since phones do not include a built-in FM antenna, they use the wire to an external headset as the antenna. While it works, you are limited to FM stations within the range of your mobile phone. Unless your mobile phone provides an option for ignoring the external headset, you must listen to the radio using the corded headset. A...

Top Costa Rica News ICE/Kolbi dramatically reduced the postpago incoming rates for International Roaming. Incoming calls are now billed at a flat-rate of $0.60 USD per minute, and incoming SMS messages are free. These rate changes apply to 90 countries. The incoming maritime SMS messages are also free. All other rates remain the same. According to an article in El Financiero, a special com...

For the past eight years, Export Promotion Agency of Costa Rica (PROCOMER) and Costa Rican Chamber of Information and Communication Technologies (CAMTIC) jointly hosted the annual Costa Rica Technology Insight conference. This years conference is on June 19 and 20 in San Jose, Costa Rica. Costa Rica Technology Insight (CRTI) draws participants from Panama, Central America, Dominican Republic, T...

If you have visions of storing your Android device in a cloud, you need to come back down to earth. Cloud storage is a form of virtual storage for the data on your Android device. Virtual storage merely means that you are allocated a specific amount of space, without knowing the details of the storage platform. Cloud storage provide a number of services: Extend the storage capacity of your mo...

The Facebook IPO and the marriage of Mark Zuckerberg (founder and CEO of Facebook) dominated technology news for the week. Many top stories got buried in the traffic. Top Costa Rica News My Babilon launched a new Costa Rican grown social network, with President Laura Chinchilla present at the launch event. With My Babilon, you don't need Google Translate to translate message between member...

Call centers are often linked to telemarketing, but this is just one of the many business functions performed by call centers. Call centers may focus on one of the following business functions, or operate campaigns that cover many different functions: Inbound sales, where customers are responding to an advertisement. Outbound sales using client provided call lists. Lead generation through q...

Every new app that challenges a well-established app, such as Evernote, has to prove that it is better. Every new social network needs to offer something to attract users, and keep their interest. Evernote achieves its status through the number of mobile devices supported, number of browser extensions, number of hardware devices that integrate to Evernote, and the number of add-on apps, such as...

Top Costa Rica News Kolbi prepago customers just went through their first week of “Semana Kolbi.” Semana Kolbi now has double days every week. Your double day is based on the last digit of your phone number. Monday is double day for numbers ending in 1 or 2, Tuesday 3 or 4, Wednesday 5 or 6, Thursday 7 or 8, and Friday 9 or 0. You still must make a minimum charge of 1,000 colones to get th...

When laptops offered more features (such as Webcams, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi), the sales of desktops began to decline. Before netbooks could gain a significant market share, smartphones and tablets grabbed their mobile market share. The change is so rapid that it is hard to find reliable statistics. Studies performed in 2011 are now outdated. Studies made this year will be ancient history next year...

With high-end smartphone prices starting at 365,000 colones (about $730) for a Samsung Galaxy SII, we are talking about a serious investment in a mobile device. How many of us can afford to replace the smartphone, if it is accidentally damaged, lost, or stolen? If you purchased your phone, you are faced with purchasing a replacement. If you acquired your phone on a postpago contract, you are still...

According to SUTEL, there are about 4 million active cellphones in Costa Rica. A study performed by Unimer for La Nacion shows that 35% of the cellphone users have Internet access on their phone. This represents a dramatic increase from 14% in 2010. According to the survey, 26% of the users say they have smartphones. In raw numbers, this translates to 1.4 million users who use their phone for Inte...

Until recently, the authors of malware used Android apps to infect Android devices. Starting in January of this year, Google started aggressively scanning apps in the Google Play Store. In addition, Google scanned new apps and upgrades for malware. While not perfect, Google's efforts greatly reduced the number of malware infected apps in the Google Play Store. With one door closed, the authors of ...

Top Mobile Device News The Samsung Galaxy S III was announced at special event in London on May 3. The Samsung Galaxy S III contains a Exynos 1.5 GHz quad-core processor, a larger 4.8 inch 720p screen, an 8 megapixel camera, 1 gigabyte of memory, 16, 32, or 64 gigabytes of internal storage, and up to 64 gigabytes of external storage. All this is packed in a phone that is only 8.6 mm thick, an...

Today is World Press Freedom Day. In 1993, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution declaring May 3rd as World Press Freedom Day (WPFD). The day “celebrates the fundamental principles of press freedom; to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession...

Born out of their frustration with news reading apps for mobile devices, Ankit Gupta and Akshay Kothari created Pulse in May 2010. Pulse is available for the iPhone, iPad, and Android. While all news readers depend on RSS feeds from news sources, Pulse took a different design approach. Pulse organizes news sources into pages, with a maximum of twelve sources per page. The default setup provides...

I receive hundreds of tweets everyday on technology changes. The goal of this new column is to bring the top stories to you every week. The focus is on technology news that applies to Costa Rica. Top Costa Rica News SUTEL stated that the maximum charge for calls, established in 2006, has not changed. The maximum full rate is 33.9 colones (roughly 6.8 cents US) per minute, and 25.9 colones ...

In November of 2011, the FBI arrested and charged six Estonians for running an international fraud-ring that effected millions of computers around the world. Using sophisticated Malware, these individuals redirected individuals to their servers. They were not after changing content, but changing the ads. Their scheme defrauded $14 million dollars from USA citizens alone. The arrest of these indivi...

Today, Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. announced their return to Costa Rica, with the launch of the Motorola RAZR XT910. The phone will be available through Claro beginning in early May. The Motorola RAZR seeks to displace the Samsung Galaxy SII as the hottest smartphone on the market. It will priced around 370,000 colones ($740 USD), which is close to the current Samsung Galaxy SII price of 365,...

Dropbox is an Internet file sharing service, that allows you to share files across multiple devices. Dropbox is not a social network. Rather, it is a private remote file service. While it is useful as a backup file service, its primary purpose is to act as a hub for sharing files across multiple devices. Although there is a degree of overlap, Dropbox and Evernote serve different purposes. Just ...

On April 3, Garth Wright reported his discovery of a Facebook security loophole on his iPhone. The security problem centers on the .plist file used by apps to store settings. Grath Wright discovered that the iPhone Facebook app not only stores the Facebook token (used by apps to access your Facebook account) in the .plist file, but also stores the OAuth key and secret key in plain text. Simply cop...

Several weeks ago, SUTEL posted several short notices on their Web site regarding cellphones in Costa Rica. Based on one of the notices, The Costa Rica Star article entitled “Reporting Stolen Phones in Costa Rica: SUTEL Blacklist,” provided the numbers to call for reporting a stolen cellphone. However, the article left several questions unanswered. I contacted SUTEL, and now have the additional in...

In the United States and Canada, the sales of eBooks now exceeds the sales of traditional books. Europe is not far behind in the growth of eBook sales. Slowly, eBooks are spreading to the rest of the world. We commonly associate eBooks with eBook readers, such as the Barns&Noble Nook, or the Amazon Kindle. The eBook reader has a screen size about the size of a paperback book, and can store as many...

On April 11, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an anti-trust complaint against Apple and five publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Group, and Simon & Schuster) over eBook pricing. While it is a US action, the implications are global. The action not only effects the pricing of eBooks, but has an impact on paper books. The book world is essentially divided between publishers an...

The availability of Instagram for Android made a big news splash, but is it really better than equivalent Android apps. Android does not suffer from a lack of photo editing apps. Rather than review several apps, this article will focus on a comparison of Instagram to Pixlr-o-Matic, a free Android app. Pixlr-o-matic is also available as an iOS app, a Facebook app, or a Google Chrome extension. B...