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Analysts on Wall Street are worried that Apple may have passed its peak in attracting consumers to the latest, newest iPhone offering.  Traditionally releasing a new iteration of the popular smart phone every year, the iPhone has become the phone of choice for many of the nation’s tech-savvy and fashion conscious.  Now, however, that trend may be changing as more and more are purchasing older, less costly last-generation phones instead.

The shift towards cheaper phones has begun to nibble at Apple’s profit margins, as these older phones are often sold by stores and providers at deeply discounted prices as Apple sells off its remaining old-generation inventory at bargain basement prices to promote its latest and greatest.  Currently, many service providers like AT&T and Verizon are giving away the iPhone 4 for free or nearly so with a contract signing or renewal.  Compared to the $199+ iPhone 5 (with contract), that becomes a no-brainer for many consumers intent on keeping costs low and who seem to see little to entice them with the newest Apple offering.

Apple, of course, downplays the significance of this and points to its “black hole ecosystem” – a tendency of new Apple customers to remain Apple consumers, coming back again and again as brand loyalty remains high for the company.

Further, Apple’s self-released sales figures show continual growth.  The company sold 4 million of the iPhone 4S in 2011 in its first three days whereas the iPhone 5 sold five million in that same amount of time last September.  Further, prices for the new iPhone 5 have dropped earlier than with older models on their release, indicating that Apple may be seeing the sales slump and working to mitigate it.

Finally, the growing trend of buying older phones also means that Apple’s other profitable venue, apps, are suffering as those who purchase older, less capable phones tend to also buy fewer apps for them.

Making a promise is easy to do, but following through poses more of a challenge for some people. Thankfully there is an app that can help chronic promise breakers kick the habit by turning it into a game of sorts.

Dubbed PromiseUp, the app urges users to keep promises in a competitive way and compels people to be more reliable in the pledges they make. Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?

The app has a unique way of holding people accountable for their promises. For example, when your partner promises to call you three times a day but then fails to do so, he or she is entitled to pay you back with UP dollars, the app’s virtual currency. Very clever!

Every new gamer will be rewarded 1,000 UP dollars that can be used as a bet against the promises they make. In making a promise to a friend or to themselves, users will state what they intend to do, set a deadline for when they wish to complete it, and attach an amount they’re willing to bet. If the user follows through, he or she will win the amount and it will be added to that person’s score. On the other hand, breaking a promise and losing the game leads to a deduction in the virtual currency. Promises can also be monitored but only the promise’s maker can tell if he or she fulfilled it.

Furthermore, UP dollars can be traded for actual prizes. When users run out of the currency, they also have the option of buying more with real money.

The secret to long and satisfying relationships, they say, is communication. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that couples who use more media channels to communicate will live together forever.

Research conducted at the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute found that married couples who communicate through more channels reported lower levels of satisfaction within their relationships. As a matter of fact, those that used over five channels said they were 14 per cent less satisfied in their marriages.

The survey, which polled around 24,000 married couples, found these results taking into consideration a list of ten media channels including texts, emails, and social media, particularly Facebook.

“This work suggests that media, which now includes online social media, still operates as a signal of ties of strength in relationships,” said Dr Bernie Hogan of the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute and author of the research.

“However, there may be a cut-off point after which the increasing complexity of maintaining so many separate communications threads starts to undermine relationship ties.”

Notably, the results of this new research support the theory of “media multiplexity,” which refers to the ability to communicate using a wider number of communications channels. Moreover, the theory draws a link between the media channels used to communicate and their effects on the relationships between people.

The theory was initially tested in the age of email, telephone and chat. Now with social media dominating digital communication, it is fitting to assess how relationship ties are enhanced or affected by these media channels, noted Dr Hogan.

High school and college students in the US are going crazy over a brand new app. Aptly dubbed as Whisper, this iOS program lets people anonymously share their deepest secrets via digital postcards, according to a report in The Business Insider.

Everybody has secrets, but nobody likes people to judge them. This new app lets you send messages, place a “heart” on secrets you like, and reply by sending in your own confession, all without having to tell anyone who you really are.

While the first whisper doesn’t cost anything, you will have to pay for a monthly subscription fee if you want to continue messaging others. After all, telling secrets always come with a price.

Whisper rekindles memories of PostSecret, the snail-mail community that allowed people to anonymously reveal their secrets via postcards. It was so popular that an iOS version was unveiled in September 2011, but it was subsequently axed from the App Store due to inappropriate content.

“Those memories are kind of bittersweet for me,” said Frank Warren, founder of PostSecret, adding, “It had a short but brilliant life.”

The PostSecret app was well received by users, with millions of secrets out on the web in just three months. Many of those were really deep and moving, he noted. However, once abusive content started spreading, Warren needed to shut it down for good.

This is why the new Whisper app has a feature for flagging malicious content. Despite this, the platform has already ignited several quarrels at Marathon High School in New York and a secondary school in South Florida.

Until now, most of Apple’s advertising has been pretty straight forward.  For the iPhone specifically, the company has largely just held things close to its vest, leaked selected tidbits to a few outlets (mostly new media), and then relied on a big marketing bash on release and sheer numbers and hype to do the rest.  Recent sales figures have shown, however, that this may not be working anymore and the company has apparently been re-thinking its strategy.

Enter Apple’s VP of Marketing, Phil Schiller, who interviewed with Reuters just before the Samsung Galaxy S4 was announced.  His interview turned out to be a huge faux pas as he dropped an old (and at that point, discounted) rumor that the S4 was releasing with an old version of the Android operating system.

Instead of throwing a torpedo under Samsung’s marketing blitz, Schiller gave them a new battleship as the backfire from Schiller’s false statement hit the wire and gave Samsung a lot of free publicity while making Apple look.. well, more tarnished than usual.

In the critical hours just before the big unveil, which is the best time to build hype, Apple inadvertently handed Samsung a huge amount of free publicity in big time publications like the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.  Worse, Apple was seen as the bad guy and was labeled by the popular press as “defensive” in its attempted attack as conjecture that the move was out of desperation due to low iPhone sales.

It’s an interesting role reversal, as Jean-Louis Gassee at MondayNote points out.  Not long ago, Apple was often seen making fun of Microsoft as it used its underdog status to promote itself as “new” and “edgy.”  Today, Samsung has used its perceived underdog status to (or more specifically, the status of Android as “edgy” and iOS as “old”) poke fun at Apple.  With Apple now “The Man”, as Gassee puts it, the roles are reversed.

Smartphones can sometimes reveal more information about their owners than their family and friends. They store information about people’s personalities, preferences and habits, so it’s not surprising that mobile phone operators are looking for ways to make money off of this data.

According to a CNN report, most data shared by mobile phone firms with third parties today is generic, and all US national carriers group their clients’ personal information together and utilise that accumulated data to help advertisers.

However, the data only account for a small portion of what they know and could share with advertisers, as smartphones can monitor what apps you use, what you like to shop for, where you’ve been and where you are now. Wireless carriers, on the other hand, know your gender and age. With all of this information pooled together, phone operators will be able to acquire very relevant information that can be sold to advertisers and brands on the lookout for potential clients.

“An interesting transformation is happening in wireless, in which consumers are no longer customers — they’re the product. The trick is for operators to find out how to make money without violating their relationships and trust with their users,” said Dan Hays, Principal for Communications and Technology Practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Already, Verizon has started monitoring broad categories of customers who pass by certain stores and jots down their data (gender, race and age). The company then sells the information to retailers so that the vendors can specifically target people that will likely buy their items or set up shop in a location frequented by those people.