Back in the good ol' days, between walking a mile to school shoe-less, in the snow, you'd make you're own fun with a cardboard box and a piece of string. Or so my Dad tells me.

In 2013, people seek entertainment on their phones, with 23% of the people surveyed by Apigee saying they "would be unable to feel happy" without the apps on their phones. Like, at all. No laughter, warmth or contentedness without apps.

And, it gets worse.

12% wouldn't be able to order dinner, 20% couldn't navigate to work and 19% would be unable to maintain relationships.

Puh-lease

Who are these feeble-minded idiots? Cavemen with square-eyes, scratching about in the dirt with sticks until their phones beep at them? Waiting on a GPS unit to point them to McDonald's and then back to bed again?

For perspective, we should point out that, even though Apigee did search far and wide -- surveying people in France, Germany, Spain, the UK and US -- the total number of respondents totaled only 762. So, not example a brimming sample pool.

And, its possible the answers to this survey were taken out of context. Maybe listing Facebook and SMS as the primary ways you communicate with loved ones translates to "destined to die alone and without ever finding love" in garbage-survey land.

It's also worth noting that Apigee is a company dedicated to selling API platforms to developers, so the more people who seem unable to live without apps, the better business will be for them. Still, anyone reading this who can be counted among the 700 respondents should be ashamed of themselves.

Via Mashable

Are you listening, mobile Pandora users? That's the sound of free unlimited music shriveling up.

The internet radio service today announced a plan to cap free mobile listening at 40 hours per month, starting in March.

The reason, explained Founder Tim Westergren in a blog post, is rising royalty rates.

"Pandora's per-track royalty rates have increased more than 25 percent over the last three years, including 9 percent in 2013 alone and are scheduled to increased an additional 16 percent over the next two years," he wrote.

"After a close look at our overall listening, a 40-hour-per-month mobile listening limit allows us to manage these escalating costs with minimal listener disruption."

The other 96 percent

Pandora-ites will remember the company introduced a 40-hour monthly cap on free desktop listening previously but rescinded that policy in September 2011.

According to Westergren, less than 4 percent of Pandora users ever hit the 40-hour mark a month, meaning a small percentage of uber users will be effected.

Average Pandora people usually hang out around the 20 hours of listening a month across all devices, not just phones.

That said, should you exceed the listening limit, you'll need to fork over US$0.99 for the remainder of the offending month.

Of course, there's still the option to listen limitlessly on desktops and laptops, or to pay US$3.99 for a Pandora One subscription that not only offers unlimited tunes but eliminates groove-interrupting advertising.

Are you listening, mobile Pandora users? That's the sound of free unlimited music shriveling up.

The internet radio service today announced a plan to cap free mobile listening at 40 hours per month, starting in March.

The reason, explained Founder Tim Westergren in a blog post, is rising royalty rates.

"Pandora's per-track royalty rates have increased more than 25 percent over the last three years, including 9 percent in 2013 alone and are scheduled to increased an additional 16 percent over the next two years," he wrote.

"After a close look at our overall listening, a 40-hour-per-month mobile listening limit allows us to manage these escalating costs with minimal listener disruption."

The other 96 percent

Pandora-ites will remember the company introduced a 40-hour monthly cap on free desktop listening previously but rescinded that policy in September 2011.

According to Westergren, less than 4 percent of Pandora users ever hit the 40-hour mark a month, meaning a small percentage of uber users will be effected.

Average Pandora people usually hang out around the 20 hours of listening a month across all devices, not just phones.

That said, should you exceed the listening limit, you'll need to fork over US$0.99 for the remainder of the offending month.

Of course, there's still the option to listen limitlessly on desktops and laptops, or to pay US$3.99 for a Pandora One subscription that not only offers unlimited tunes but eliminates groove-interrupting advertising.

4G LTE is the fastest commercially available wireless data standard, but as travelers will attest, fragmentation between the world's more than LTE-supported 40 frequencies means that it's not universal in the U.S. and Europe.

Qualcomm, the third-largest semiconductor producer in the world, is looking to put an end to all of this 4G LTE roaming, which bumps travelers down to 3G, and it wants to begin solving the problem as early as this year.

"LTE is the first technology to be capable of being present in all the different regions worldwide," said Qualcomm Vice President of Product Marketing and Business Development Roberto Di Pietro to CNET.

"The issue is that the spectrum is completely different in different regions. Band support is one of the major issues we are working on."

RF360 to turn things around

Qualcomm's solution is its RF360 Front End Solution chipset, which is a single, global 4G LTE design for mobile devices.

"Currently there are around 40 different frequencies on which LTE is available," said Di Pietro.

"Our chipset supports around 40 different bandwidths. It is a step forward for the LTE global roaming scenario where you can roam with a single device in different regions."

Qualcomm hopes to mitigate the 4G LTE fragmentation problem while improving radio frequency performance.

The company also wants to help OEMs develop multiband, multimode devices that support all seven cellular modes: LTE-FDD, LTE-TDD, WCDMA, EV-DO, CDMA 1x, TD-SCDMA and GSM/EDGE.

4G LTE carriers still an issue

Qualcomm's global chipset with LTE carrier aggregation would make 4G phones compatible throughout the U.S. and Europe, however carrier compatibility would still be an issue.

Networks haven't laid out their plans for roaming agreements over 4G when customers travel abroad, notes CNET, so using an existing number and contract wouldn't be feasible even with a global 4G LTE phone.

Popping in a foreign SIM card, however, would be possible once Qualcomm's RF360 chipset makes it to market in the second half of 2013.

Rovio has released an update to Bad Piggies that delivers 30 new levels to the popular mobile title. The new maps are part of a bundle called Flight in the Night but the new content doesn’t stop there as players also have access to new Road Hogs events, a new sandbox and additional achievement features.

Rather than giving players a basic map pack, Rovio has taken things one step further with the 30 new levels by infusing them with Angry Birds. True to its name, the Flight in the Night maps take place after the sun has set when the Angry Birds are sound asleep. You’ll need to pilot the pigs to their destination without disturbing the sleeping fowl as they are extremely territorial. One false move and they will attack!

Aside from the 30 new maps, Rovio also included six new time trial events that pit you against the clock, a brand new sandbox to exercise your creativity and six additional achievements to try and collect.

The Angry Birds spinoff was released last September, quickly climbing the App Store ladder to become one of the top grossing apps less than 24 hours after it was released. Instead of catapulting various species of birds, Bad Piggies lets you build contraptions to transport the green pigs from point A to point B. It’s somewhat reminiscent of the Incredible Machine series from the ‘90s albeit with a twist.

The update is available free of charge for the regular version as well as HD variants through your respective app marketplace.