Ben's Blog World: From the Editor's Desk: Laboring away on Labor Day

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

From the Editor's Desk: Laboring away on Labor Day

Phil Nickinson

So today's the Labor Day holiday here in the states, which I'm told celebrates people who work by giving them a day off. It's also the unofficial end of summer (though here in Florida, that usually doesn't happen until sometime in October), and the signal that school's about to start for many. So with that, a few Labor Day thoughts:

Back to that school thing for a second. Kids are going to be walking to the bus stop. They're not paying attention to you. You're in a hurry, possibly with your own kids in the back seat. Leave your damn phone alone. If you still can't help yourself, there are a number of apps to treat you like a grade-schooler to lock it out while your car's moving. Sprint and AT&T have been champions of that for a while now. But above all, put down the phone.
Fun fact: There's an HTC One XC and One XT, Chinese variants, both. I didn't know that.
Alex and Richard killed it at the IFA conference in Berlin last week. (And I'm still a little jealous that I didn't go.) My highlights? No surprise, really -- the Samsung Galaxy Camera and Galaxy Note 2. Can't wait to play with them. Catch up on all the IFA news here.
It's smartphone hell week this week. Or tech heaven, depending on how you look at it. We've got the Motorola-Verizon event in New York, the Amazon event in California, a Sony event in London, some other stuff going on, plus our pals at WP Central have a Nokia-Microsoft thing laid on. This is going to be a good (long) week.
Oh, and I'm in New York City this week on HTC's dime for the second Frequencies event, for some more candid conversation with some of the top names in tech journalism. (Seriously, it's humbling to be in this group). If you've got anything you want me to pass on, leave a note in the comments. (But, no, I won't be asking them about ICS for the Thunderbolt. HTC knows it's late.)
And believe it or not, this is just the start of an unusually busy fall season. We've got the fall CTIA event coming up in a little more than month. It's been renamed "MobileCon" (from "Apps & Enterprise"). Not sure if that'll make it any more worth the trip (last year was pretty slow), but, hey, it's the job. I also can already taste the tacos in San Diego. Nom.