Owners of the Apple iPhone often regard it as much more than simply a cell phone for a very good reason. In addition to being able to communicate with others by making phone calls, iPhone users can also send and receive emails and interact with friends and business contacts using social networking websites.

Text messaging is also very straightforward with the highly efficient QWERTY keyboard, quite a difference from the usual numeric-keyboard found on most cellphones. When you have an iPhone, you own a tool to stay connected to people, stay up-to-date by browsing any news sites and if you have some time to spare, play cool games.

Such a flexible and useful device doesn’t come cheap though. Early adopters of the Apple iPhone had to pay over six hundred dollars to acquire one of these beauties. Whenever you spend so much money on something you will naturally want to look after it and keep it as well protected as you possibly can. Using a standard cell phone case isn’t very practical since you need access to the touch screen when you want to use your iPhone.

The touch screen is by far the most vunerable part of the device and it so you really need to find a way to protect that above everything else. If your screen was to become damaged you simply wouldn’t be able to use your iPhone any more.

Quite a few companies have released some impressive products designed to keep your iPhone screen protected and safe from damaged. Probably the best product to be released so far is the iPhone invisibleSHIELD from Shield Zone. This iphone cover gives keeps your screen protected from not only scratches that may form through wear and tear but also other damage that could happen if you accidentally bump the screen against something.

The origins of the invisibleSHIELD come from the military where it was originally used to protect their helicopter blades from rocks and other items. The cool part is, the same technology has been applied to the invisibleSHIELD iPhone protector. You are now able to carry around your iPhone, without having to worry about scratching the surface, or even

bumping it against the table.

Lines stretched for blocks outside phone centers Monday as the government allowed ordinary Cubans to sign up for cellular phone service for the first time.

The contracts cost about $120 to activate — half a year’s wages on the average state salary. And that doesn’t include a phone or credit to make and receive calls.

But most Cubans have at least some access to dollars or euros thanks to jobs in tourism or with foreign firms, or money sent by relatives abroad. Lines formed before the stores opened, and waits grew to more than an hour.

“Everyone wants to be first to sign up,” said Usan Astorga, a 19-year-old medical student who stood for about 20 minutes before her line moved at all.

Getting through the day without a cell phone is unthinkable now in most developed countries, but Cuba’s government limited access to mobile phones and other so-called luxuries in an attempt to preserve the relative economic equality that is a hallmark of life on the communist-run island.

President Raul Castro has done away with several other small but infuriating restrictions, and his popularity has surged as a result — defusing questions about his relative lack of charisma after his ailing older brother Fidel formally stepped down in February.

An article Friday in the Communist Party newspaper Granma said it was Fidel Castro’s idea all along to lift bans on mobile phones and that he was behind recent government orders easing restrictions that had prevented most Cubans from staying in hotels, renting cars, enjoying beaches reserved for tourists and buying DVD players and other consumer goods.

“They are part of a process initiated and called for by Fidel,” the paper said of the recent changes.

Fidel Castro has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006, but he has continued to…

Internet search giant Google Inc. unveiled a new feature Tuesday for its popular mapping programs that shines a spotlight on the movement of refugees around the world.

The maps will aid humanitarian operations as well as help inform the public about the millions who have fled their homes because of violence or hardship, according to the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which is working with Google on the project.

“All of the things that we do for refugees in the refugee camps around the world will become more visible,” U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees L. Craig Johnstone said at the launch in Geneva.

Users can download Google Earth software to see satellite images of refugee hot spots such as Darfur, Iraq and Colombia. Information provided by the U.N. refugee agency explains where the refugees have come from and what problems they face.

Although not all parts of the world are displayed at the same high resolution, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company has made an effort to allow users to zoom in closely on refugee camps.

In the Djabal refugee camp in eastern Chad, which is home to refugees from the conflict in neighboring Darfur, Google Earth users can see individual tents clustered together amid a sparse landscape, and learn about the difficulty of providing water to some 15,000 people.

Google says more than 350 million people have already downloaded Google Earth. The software was launched three years ago and originally intended for highly realistic video games, but its use by rescuers during Hurricane Katrina led the company to reach out to governments and nonprofit organizations.

Google Earth has since teamed up with dozens of nonprofit groups seeking to raise awareness, recruit volunteers and encourage donations.

Among them are the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the U.N. Environmental Program and the Jane Goodall Institute.

“Google wants to…

In a brick building in central Berlin, Nokia runs a development center where engineers are adapting personal navigation software to its advanced line of cell phones. The company is trying to turn global positioning satellite technology into revenue-generating, location-based services like mapping and, eventually, friend-finder guides.

The first service to come from Nokia’s Berlin center is Nokia Maps, a GPS navigator that has a monthly cost of euro 9.99, or about $15.60, in Western Europe and guides users with step-by-step voice commands. To direct Nokia handset owners to the service, Nokia has built a dedicated button into the keypad of its Series 60 line of smart phones that connects users to Ovi, Nokia’s Internet portal, where its mapping service is sold.

But Germany’s largest wireless operator, T-Mobile, is refusing to sell Nokia handsets with dedicated Ovi buttons in Germany because it doesn’t want to disadvantage its own navigation service, NaviGate, which charges 99 cents per route.

The companies are fighting over what is today a small piece of the GPS pie: navigation by cell phone. Although 50 million GPS-enabled devices were sold globally last year, according to Telematics Research Group in Minnetonka, Minnesota, most were for cars, not phones.

In GPS devices, Nokia’s 5 million in sales trailed TomTom, based in Amsterdam, and Garmin, based in Olathe, Kansas, which together sold 17 million GPS auto navigation devices last year, according to Telematics.

But Telematics predicts that by 2015, satellite tracking will migrate to mobile phones and Nokia will be the market leader, making 180 million GPS-enabled handsets annually, or 36 percent of 500 million units to be sold that year.

Nokia is investing heavily to make mobile GPS a success. Its $8.1 billion purchase last October of Navteq, a U.S. digital map maker, is under review by the European Commission, which expressed concerns that Navteq would…

Remote workers who need to carry confidential documents and securely access corporate resources often depend on two small pieces of hardware: a USB flash drive that can be encrypted, and an RSA SecurID token that allows two-factor authentication. Now both devices are available in a single token.

SanDisk, which makes USB flash drives, announced that its new secure Cruzer Enterprise flash drives will have the RSA SecurID token built in. Both elements will take advantage of SanDisk’s CMC (Central Management & Control) server software that allows IT managers to provision and manage flash drives, according to Dror Todress, senior marketing manager for the enterprise division at SanDisk.

Converging Storage and Security

“We’re converging our secure storage and two-factor authentication,” Todress told us. “The main feature [of the Cruzer Enterprise drives] is central management, which basically controls the entire life cycle of the drives.” That means everything from deploying the drives to recovering lost passwords, backing up data, and even remotely terminating the data on the drive if it’s lost or stolen, he said.

CMC helps enterprises manage regulatory-compliance issues, Todress said, in part because it can delete data from a lost drive, and also because it can keep a full audit trail of filenames put on or taken off the flash drives. CMC can also prevent drives from being used with unauthorized PCs as well as restore or re-create lost drives.

SanDisk’s Cruzer Enterprise drives offer another element of security: data can be encrypted with 246-bit AES encryption, protected by a user password. Users are forced during the setup process to create a complex password. Todress said that makes the drives resistant to brute-force attacks.

Ubiquitous Authentication

SecurID is a technology from RSA, the security division of EMC. SecurID tokens have a six-digit number that changes every 30 or 60 seconds. It has…