Google is activating half a million Android devices a day, a big jump in just the last couple months, a sign of growing momentum for the platform.

Google’s VP of mobile Andy Rubin tweeted out the new milestone, saying activations are growing 4.4 percent week over week.

At Google I/O in early May, the company boasted that activations were up to 400,000 a day with 100 million cumulative device activations, representing 36 OEMS, 215 Carriers and 310 devices. The pace of growth has been staggering for Android, which hit the 100,000 activations per day milestone in May 2010. By December 2010, that number was up to 300,000 a day.

Read Full Article On Gigaom.com

Last June we added a post about the upcoming launch of the SMS My Customers 2-way SMS Gateway. We have just spoken to the sites owners and they have told us that it is going gangbusters!

Nick Goritsas from SMS My Customers has told us that they have a  load of customers and to date their feedback is all positive. They have signed resellers and have added a whole pile of features to the SMS Gateway and have a lot more new features being rolled out in the next few months.

If you are currently a subscriber of any other Australian SMS Gateways you owe it to yourself to check this one out SMS My Customers. If you are currently a reseller of other SMS Gateways then it might be time for you to jump on board.

Security holes in Android and iPhone apps from PayPal, Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, and more could give attackers access to financial data.

Smartphone banking applications from Bank of America, Chase, PayPal, TD Ameritrade, USAA and Wells Fargo have bugs that an attacker could exploit to steal people’s personal financial information. So said digital forensics firm viaForensics in a security warning released Thursday. The security flaw was not found in the firm’s testing of a Vanguard Group smartphone banking app.

Read Full article on Informationweek web site

Queensland University of Technology’s “Mumbubconnect” Selects CellTrust’s Global SMS Platform Delivering Two-Way Text Messages to Breastfeeding Mothers across Australia.

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA, USA and SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – October 12, 2010 – CellTrust Corporation, the world’s largest provider of SecureSMS™ (Secure SMS) for mobile phones (www.celltrust.com), announced today that its GlobalSMS platform solution has been selected by the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), for the world’s first text message pilot program to offer breastfeeding support for new mothers in Australia.

The “Mumbubconnect” trial, concepted and engineered by Andre La Porte, a Digital Media and Social Marketing Specialist in Brisbane, Australia, for a team from QUT’s School of Public Health and the School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations, is the first of its kind to use two-way SMS to provide support for breastfeeding mothers. The text messages provide a direct link with breastfeeding women and offer support, encouragement and advice when needed. For example if a mother responds to a text message indicating she is struggling with breastfeeding, she will be sent an encouraging response, along with hints on how to get through the difficult times. This pilot program aims to facilitate QUT’s research and ultimately to increase breastfeeding rates among new mothers.

“Our research found that text messages are an ideal way to communicate with new mothers, because they send and receive messages on their mobile devices throughout the day,” said Mr. La Porte. “CellTrust Australia had our system up and running in less than two hours and it’s easy to use. I was astonished to find that a particular vendor would have to build a specific SMS platform application from scratch, and that other vendors with existing technology had platforms that were complicated to program and manage.”

It is important to note that standard SMS is not secure and can be spoofed. CellTrust’s Global SMS Gateway also features SecureSMS a tamper-proof process, which enables message sizes up to 5,000 characters versus standard text messages, which allow up to only 160 characters.

“We can assure participants of Mumbubconnect that their information and all conversations with us are completely private, which is crucial when dealing with people’s health issues, and after this initial trial is carried out, further information could be gathered by utilising Celltrust’s two-way SecureSMS platform,” said Nick Goritsas, Managing Director, CellTrust of Australia. “It is exciting that Andre La Porte chose to leverage CellTrust’s technology for QUT to deliver this groundbreaking new service to new mothers in Australia.”

La Porte has spent over two years developing the SMS-based concept for QUT, which incorporated various areas of research into women’s behaviours and use of technology. A preliminary study by QUT of mothers has revealed that women find breastfeeding difficult in the first few months and they are receptive to receiving text messages about breastfeeding, especially if these are linked to a resource where they can access further information. Overall the study found the response to an SMS social marketing campaign was positive. It also found new young mothers in particular use their mobile phone as an essential link to peers, family and friends.

CellTrust’s SecureSMS Appliance is the first global enterprise appliance to offer secure SMS communication for handset to handset and enterprise applications to handsets with highly encrypted end-to-end security in compliance with HIPAA, FISMA, and Sarbanes-Oxley, ensuring that information is kept private and only delivered to the intended recipient. CellTrust’s award winning SecureSMS™ Appliance and Gateway reaches 200+ countries and over 800 carriers.

CellTrust SecureSMS™ Appliance was named winner of many industry awards by CTIA, Mobile Marketing Association, RCR Magazine, MobileTrax, and more.

For details on Mum Bub Connect, visit www.mumbubconnect.com.au

About Mumbubconnect

Mumbubconnect (MBC) is the name of a pilot project currently being conducted by Queensland University of Technology. The mission of MBC is to create better communication connections between mums and official support services (such as government, commercial, community or charity based support); with the belief that better communications will enable better connections between a mum and her baby. MBC aims to test the delivery of tailored SMS text messages and online communications to each new mum participating in the project. For more information, visit www.mumbubconnect.com.au.

About CellTrust Corporation

CellTrust is a leading provider of secure mobile messaging and applications. CellTrust’s patent pending Secure SMS Gateway™ featuring the SecureSMS™ Appliance and a suite of mobile applications provide advanced secure mobile messaging and information management solutions across 200+ countries and over 700 carriers. CellTrust ensures the secure and trusted exchange of information on mobile devices to the financial services, healthcare, government, education, energy, information technology, marketing, and travel, among other global industries. For more information about CellTrust’s Global, African, North American and Australian operations: www.celltrust.com, www.africa.celltrust.com, www.celltrust.com.au.

We’ve been given a sneak preview of a new 2-Way SMS Gateway set to launch very soon in Australia. The application is using the CellTrust 2-Way SMS Gateway as it’s delivery platform and having seen the customer web portals for both SMS My Customers and CellTrust I have to say that the SMS My Customers is a breakthrough in terms of end user functionality and ease of use.

The SMS My Customers 2-Way SMS Gateway will be live and available for customers to log on and use within the next two weeks. If you are currently a subscriber of any other Australian SMS Gateways you owe it to yourself to check this one out when it becomes available.

In January a moment that all kinds of mobile application developers have long feared finally arrived.

When the FDA decided that an iPhone image viewer from Cleveland-based vendor MIMvista was a class III medical device that requires pre-market approval.

Read the full article here on the Fierce Mobile Healthcare web site.

Jack Dorsey the co-founder of the increasingly popular social networking site Twitter is set to expand in to mobile payment services.

Dorsey has beta launched Square offering users tools to accept credit and debit card purchases without using traditionally available card services and hardware. Square is currently available on Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch. Dorsey is aiming to release Square across other platforms in 2010. Square allows users to accept and swipe cards using a small device plugged in to their mobile phones audio jack. Square plans to focus more on the service than on the hardware whilst offering users no contracts, no monthly fees and without any hidden costs.

Click here for more information about Square.

I was just reading back through the blogs at the Sydney Morning Herald web site and I came across an article posted back in March about how unemployed people are increasingly using Web 2.0 to get a job.

It got me thinking that an enterprising developer/company would be able to build an application using CellTrust Secure SMS to communicate securely with those people using Web 2.0 sites. When it comes to things such as resumes and employment information, that’s the exact type of data that needs to be transmitted securely. A lot of employment site currently are using SMS, but not securely.

Read the full article on the Sydney Morning Herald web site.

Fierce Mobile Healthcare have published an interesting article about how mobile email and SMS are opening up patient-physician communication channels. This fits in nicely with what we have been blogging about for months.

Here’s an excerpt from the article,

And if doctors are comfortable with email, it could only be a matter of time until they also embrace SMS text messaging. Public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are exploring SMS as a quick means of communicating health information to large groups of people. “In an emergency situation, people may not have access to the Internet or mobile phone calls, but they could still have access to mobile texts,” CDC e-health marketing chief Janice R. Nall is quoted as saying.

CellTrust are Already Working in This Area – CellTrust Secure Mobile Healthcare Solution

Providing healthcare organisations, vendors and patients with a solution to securely receive and exchange patient information, generate critical physician notifications, ask patient related questions in real-time and deliver prevention/intervention education to patients with complete confidence of a HIPAA compliant pathway has become an essential part of healthcare delivery and workflow.

Secure Health Messaging is a suite of Mobile Healthcare applications built on highly encrypted CellTrust SecureSMS text messaging technology that enhances delivery of real-time Protected Health Information (PHI) to healthcare providers’ and patients’ mobile devices.

By opening up HIPAA compliant two-way mobile communication via text messaging, hospitals, healthcare vendors, Medical Answering Service providers, Pharmacies and insurance companies can reduce cost, improve response time and advance the quality and delivery of healthcare.

Designed to easily integrate with existing EMRs, CRMs, lab systems and email exchange servers, Secure Health Messaging removes security or compliance obstacles to receive text messages with real-time PHI from multiple applications supported by Health Information Technology vendors.

Click here to read the full on article on the Fierce Mobile Healthcare web site.

There is an interesting article by George Miller from FierceBiotechIT about how text messaging can improve patients treatment adherence.

Here is an excerpt from the article,

Daily text-message reminders have yielded a 2x improvement in adherence to a treatment regimen among subjects in a dermatology study. Those who received the texts had an average daily adherence rate of 56 percent for sunscreen application, while those who received no text messages had a 30 percent rate.

Link to the full article: Texts improve treatment adherence – FierceBiotechIT.

CellTrust have some applications that can help prevention & intervention health messaging that is HIPAA compliant, PHI secure text messaging, anytime, anyplace, for any mobile phone. It can turn patient mobile phone into a prevention and intervention devices.