Don't Forget the iPhone
When requesting eDiscovery, don’t forget to ask for information from the user’s mobile devices, and, if needed, probe as to whether the mobile device has been used for cloud computing.
Like many spouses, I received my first iPhone as a Christmas present from my wonderful husband. I spent nearly my entire vacation day getting to know my new mobile device and downloading exciting applications that promise to make my life easier. As I started social networking through my iPhone, I was excited to see the many others I knew who also had my same mobile device. According to MacDailyNews, by the end of 2008, over 13 million iPhones were sold. An interesting statistic I learned is that daily website traffic from phones is 3% on the low-end and on 10% on the high-end of all traffic. With easy to use new phones like the iPhone, daily web usage will only increase.
To say the very least, mobile computing is booming. Many people are starting to use their iPhone and Blackberry devices as their day to day computers. The most advanced users are not even opening up their laptops for days and are sending all email from their mobile device.
Mobile devices can offer a plethora of useful (and hurtful) information. If pictures can help (or hurt) your case, the mobile device is where you should go. In 2009, it is predicted that 968 million mobile phones will be in use with over 89% of the phones having camera’s built within.
Due to the small size of mobile phones, cloud computing through mobile phones is expected to increase. The “cloud” is where all data from the mobile device is created and stored and new tools called “Internet Assistants” help wireless devices send computing tasks via the web to servers known as “the cloud”.
Excellent points by Shawnna. Social networks are vast responsitories of untapped information. Too few attorneys are alert to this potential resource, and too few vendors can effectively manage the acquisition. This topic opens the door to the implications of so-called "cloud computing."
Posted by: Bill Hamilton | January 19, 2009 at 08:24 PM