Suzanne Choney , NBC News   –   1 day Using the computer for Internet access is so 2004, at least for many teens: One in four now skip laptops and desktop computers for their phones, preferring to be “cell-mostly” Internet users. And among the teens lucky enough to own a smartphone, half use that device as their primary means of accessing the Internet. The phone has become “the primary means by which 25 percent of those ages 12 to 17 access the Internet,” says the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project in a new report, “Teens and Technology 2013.”"Among teens who are mobile Internet users, that number rises to one in three (33 percent).

(AP)—North Korea will soon allow foreigners to tweet, Skype and surf the Internet from their cellphones, iPads and other mobile devices in its second relaxation of controls on communications in recent weeks.

SEOUL – North Korea has done its best to butter up Google Inc. ahead of Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt’s visit that started on Monday, even to the extent of setting up a gmail account for its state news agency KCNA at kcna@gmail.com.Sadly, the Hermit Kingdom’s chosen email address doesn’t work as it is short of the minimum six characters required for a Google account.If Schmidt, on a private visit with Google executive Jared Cohen and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, does access the Internet in his foreigners-only hotel, he’s likely to find a similar experience to that in Google’s Silicon Valley home.Maxim Duncan, a Reuters correspondent who was in Pyongyang in 2010 and 2012, said speeds on systems set up for visiting foreign journalists were faster than those he was used to in China and that no sites were blocked.”China correspondents were amused they could tweet in North Korea but not in China,” he said.Schmidt may even come across a North Korean tablet that was unveiled last year and runs Google’s Android operating system, although the tablet is likely a knock-off of a cheap Chinese clone, according to Martyn Williams, a technology journalist who runs the North Korea Tech blog (www.northkoreatech.org).But he will only get a glimpse of what experience of the web is like for the small elite that is granted access if he looks at the local Internet, essentially a North Korean-only Intranet that blocks access to the outside world.”If he types in google.com, he won’t be able to reach it,” said Williams, who has visited the North, a reclusive state that has been run by the Kim family since it was established in 1948 and where Amnesty International says 250,000 people are imprisoned in forced labor camps for political crimes.Even the local Intranet is limited to the politically sound among the 24 million strong population, according to Kim Heung-kwang, a North Korean computer engineering expert who defected to South Korea in 2004.”I think around 100,000 people can use Intranet. There’s a North Korean version of portal service called “Naenara” (My Country) and people can download content posted there,” he said.”People could do emails and chats until 2008, then the government shut down these services…