I spent the weekend camping at Silverstone for the Formula 1 race with seven other gadget equipped people.I counted among us eight smartphones (including three BlackBerrys and one iPhone), an iPad, an iPod, a Kindle and a digital recorder. Everyone had digital cameras. That's a lot of pocket ware for camping!For the three days all were charged off the van rented by my friend. We followed the qualifiers and the race through an app which provided live tracking of where the driver were on the course. That was a big help in the stands.Meanwhile, during the weekend one friend managed to field and arrange a response to a takeover offer of a company he is chairman of (this included holding a conference call with his board with the first qualification round underway). We were all texting and e-mailing our wives and girlfriends overseas.Our GPS-equipped phones got us out of the woods, literally, when we got lost a few times trying to go cross-country for the nearest village pubs.When I missed my train after spending three hours in traffic, we looked for new connections via the Internet so I could get home.What's evident is the smartphone is rapidly becoming a dominant way of connecting people, finding information, and seeking directions.A Pew Research Center study shows smartphone owners are increasingly ignoring other devices to get online.About 83 percent of US adults own a cellphone, 42 percent of those have a smartphone, and 87 percent of smartphone owners use their handset to browse the internet and read e-mail.The major surprise is that 25 percent of the 2,277 people surveyed use their handsets as their primary method to access the internet. That's a big number.Just make sure your Internet site has a mobile alternative. As I have discovered, it's tough reading a regular site on a small screen.The dominant platform is Android (35 percent of all smartphone users) followed by iPhones and Blackberry devices.Be sure to take Pew's online test (www.pewinternet.org) to place yourself in one of the nine categories of information and communication technology users.I am a “digital collaborator”, one who uses information technology to work with and share my creations with others. I am enthusiastic about how ICTs help me connect with others and am confident in my ability to manage digital devices and information. Yes.With the rise of the smartphone and access to the internet, has also come troubling stories of the ease of getting hacked.The ongoing scandal in the UK over allegations that the News International journalists (from the Sun and News of the World) hacked into hundreds of phones owned by crime victims, the police, personalities and top politicians is very troubling to most of us.The News of the World has closed down, seriously damaged by allegations it accessed the phones of missing children and by claims it paid police officers for information.As former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the BBC, the scandal indicates everyone is vulnerable to having their cellphone broken into giving the criminals access to e-mails, voicemails and other personal information: “I just can't understand this if I, with all the protection and all the defences and all the security that a chancellor of the Exchequer or a prime minister has, why am I so vulnerable to unscrupulous tactics, to unlawful tactics, methods that have been used in the way we have found, what about the ordinary citizen?”News International is accused of obtaining information about Brown and his family including the fact his son had cystic fibrosis.Of course, we know that hacking into personal data is easy on the internet.Anonymous, which took over hacks into major companies and government organisations from a previous group, this week claimed to have broken into the military.As proof, the group posted this week the email addresses and passwords of about 90,000 US military personnel.Today we have very little personal privacy that can be protected.Send any comments to elamin.ahmed[AT]gmail.com