Rick Ross Promises to Stand By Meek Mill Through Prison Bid

Bennett Raglin, Getty Images

Maybach Music Group took a heavy blow on Friday (July 11) when Meek Mill was sentenced to three to six months in prison for violating his parole.

Despite this setback, MMG leader Rick Ross promises to stand by the Philadelphia rapper and give him the support he needs.

“I created MMG years ago, my desire was to create a space where the most talented artists in the world could be nurtured and supported. With that came a commitment. I vowed to support these artist, through the good and the bad,” said Rozay in a statement to MTV News on Saturday (July 12).

“Every individual signed to MMG is not just an artist, they are my family. And with family you ride, or you die. Yesterday, my brother, Meek Mill ran into some unfortunate legal issues. It happens. However, his team, our team, will continue to execute Meek’s plan as close to schedule as possible,” he continued.

Mill’s second album, ‘Dreams Worth More Than Money,’ is slated to drop on Sept. 9. But now that he’s in prison there’s speculation that his project will be put on hold. Not so, according to Ross.

“His album is coming,” he said. “We ask that the fans and the media continue to support him and his music during this time. He’ll be home soon. ‘Dreams Are Worth More Than Money,’ and family is worth more than Everything. MMG FOR LIFE.”

Watch Meek Mill’s ‘Dreams Worth More Than Money’ Album Trailer

View the original article here

Through Group Dating, Getting to Know You (and You and You)

Nicole Weiss, 25, an aspiring singer, songwriter and actress who lives in Astoria, Queens, showed a smartphone photo of herself working as a clown for children’s parties to Matt Hunziker, a bearded 28-year-old writer and improv comedy performer who lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, who shook his fists in apparent delight. Laura McDonald, 25, an actress living in the financial district, told Mike Greene, a 27-year-old architect living in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, that “I’m pretty well known for my Kristen Stewart impressions.”

And Alex Blum, 25, a law student living in the East Village, bought a second round of drinks and spoke to Julie Sygiel, 25, who has a start-up lingerie line and lives in Midtown, about his family’s hardware business.

Discussing alma maters, odd jobs and Zooey Deschanel, the six seemed surprisingly comfortable, considering that none had met before. They had been set up by the Dating Ring, a matchmaking service that facilitates group dating.

“Traditional online dating takes too much time,” said Lauren Kay, 24, a founder of the Dating Ring, which is headquartered in Dumbo, Brooklyn, and started last spring. She requires potential daters to meet with an in-house matchmaker, Emma Tessler, 25, before being set up, at the cost of $20 a date, in groups of three single men and women (with smaller groups of four for gay members, in response to their feedback, Ms. Kay said).

“A group maximizes the chances that you’ll hit it off with someone,” Ms. Kay said. “If you’re not attracted to anyone, it’s a good night and you try it again.”

The Dating Ring is one of several companies banking on the idea that getting to know people in small clusters is more intuitive and less awkward and pressure-filled than meeting one-on-one.

This is because group dating is simply a version of general night life, said Abel Acuña, 25, a founder of Martini, a group-dating service in New York, Paris, London and Seoul, South Korea.

“My friends go out in groups together,” he said. “It makes sense for services to replicate what they’re seeing in real life.”

Part of the appeal, participants say, is that these services make fewer claims about arranging romance, promising only the low-stress opportunity of hanging out — or as Mr. Acuña puts it, “the joy of meeting up” — whether one is interested in friendship, networking or something more.

“It leaves less of a scripted experience,” said Matt Hamilton, a 24-year-old software engineer who lives in the meatpacking district and met his girlfriend via the Dating Ring. “You have more freedom, you go with the flow of conversation.”

And even if the night is a bust, at least sometimes you will walk away with a full stomach: Dating in Groups, in Washington, D.C., and Grubwithus, in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Venice, offer their users prepackaged dates at restaurants.

Grouper, a company in SoHo, goes further, billing itself as a social club, somewhat de-emphasizing romantic connections. Each user signing up for the service, which also costs $20, is matched with another user; both participants commit to bringing two friends to the date.

“The breakdown is kind of like a bar; the vast majority is single but there are roommates and co-workers who might not be single but are there for moral support,” said Grouper’s chief executive, Michael Waxman, 26, who said he met his girlfriend of two years on a Grouper date. “We’ve seen engagements and serious relationships to friend groups merging together.”

Mary Leigh Bliss, 30, the trends editor at Ypulse, a youth-oriented research firm, said that such organizations make sense to what is known as the millennial generation.

“They are team-oriented individuals who would much rather cultivate experiences together than on their own,” she said. “They want to be around each other in real life and have experiences that are really collaborative. The digital is the means to the ends, which is the in-person meet-up.”

Some larger, more traditional online dating companies are also discovering the allure of the crowd.

“We are less excited about small groups and more excited about groups that are 12 and higher,” said Sam Yagan, 36, a founder of OKCupid.com and the chief executive of Match.com.

Match, which is the world’s largest dating site, holds events called Stir, at which users meet for activities like sushi-making classes or D.J. lessons. These events have two advantages, Mr. Yagan said.

“You’re more likely to have fun even with no romantic spark,” he said. “And there’s a context and something to focus the time around.”

He said group dating offers a different appeal to men and women.

“Women like to be with other women,” Mr. Yagan said. “Men just like the volume.”

If nothing else, group dating offers safety in numbers, both physical and mental.

A Vulnerable Age: Fraud Against Seniors Often Is Routed Through Banks

Bruno Koch, 83, told the telemarketer on the line that, yes, of course he would like to update his health insurance card. Then Mr. Koch, of Newport News, Va., slipped up: he divulged his bank account information.

What happened next is all too familiar. Money was withdrawn from Mr. Koch’s account for something that he now says he never authorized. The new health insurance card never arrived.

What is less familiar — and what federal authorities say occurs with alarming frequency — is that a reputable bank played a crucial role in parting Mr. Koch from his money. The bank was the 140-year-old Zions Bank of Salt Lake City. Despite spotting suspicious activity, Zions served as a gateway between dubious Internet merchants and their marks — and made money for itself in the process, according to newly unsealed court documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The Times reviewed hundreds of filings in connection with civil lawsuits brought by federal authorities and a consumer law firm against Zions and another regional bank that has drawn even more scrutiny, First Bank of Delaware. Last November, First Delaware reached a $15 million settlement with the Justice Department after the bank was accused of allowing merchants to illegally debit accounts more than two million times and siphon more than $100 million.

The documents, as well as interviews with state and federal officials, paint a troubling picture. They outline how banks profit handsomely by collecting fees while ignoring warnings of potential fraud and, in some instances, enabling dubious merchants to prey on consumers.

Anyone, young or old, can be targeted by unscrupulous marketers. But for several reasons — financial worries, age, loneliness — older people are particularly vulnerable to what is known as mass market fraud, deceptive pitches that arrive by telephone, mail and the Internet.

The problems at Zions and First Delaware, where the banks became financial conduits and quiet enablers for questionable businesses, extend well beyond those two institutions, federal authorities say. Indeed, banks across the country, from some of the largest to smaller regional players, help facilitate billions of dollars of fraud each year, according to interviews with consumer lawyers and state and federal prosecutors.

Officials at the Justice Department say they are taking aim at banks’ role in giving predatory lenders and fraudulent merchants access to the United States financial system. The department is considering civil and criminal actions against a number of banks for allowing tainted money to flow through branches, for failing to safeguard against suspicious merchants, and for originating transactions on behalf of businesses that they know make unauthorized withdrawals from customer accounts, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.

“You can’t close your eyes anymore to the fraud that you are allowing to happen,” said Michael Blume, the director of the consumer protection branch at the Justice Department. “Banks are in business to make a profit. Unfortunately, this is a moneymaking operation at consumers’ expense.”

Zions did not interact directly with the company that called Mr. Koch, National Health Net Online. What the bank did was establish a banking relationship with an intermediary, Modern Payments, that handled payments for National Health. Mr. Koch’s account at a small Virginia bank was debited by National Health, which in turn paid Modern Payments for processing the transaction. Modern Payments gave its bank, Zions, a cut of its fee.

In all, Zions in effect let roughly $39 million be withdrawn from hundreds of thousands of accounts from 2007 to 2009. Much of that money was ultimately transferred to bank accounts in Canada, India and the Caribbean, according to a Times review of court records. Many of the Internet merchants’ customers were older people and others on shaky financial footing. But that, too, worked in banks’ favor: the withdrawals set off a cascade of insufficient fund fees — more than $20 million in all, court records show.

Bits Blog: Looking at Facebook’s Friend and Relationship Status Through Big Data

WolframAlpha A data visualization shows the clusters of friends on Facebook. Each color represents a different group.

Wolfram Alpha, a computational search engine, released a detailed report Wednesday about people’s friendships and relationship habits on Facebook.

The research is corralled from the details of more than one million people who have signed up for a free feature on the Wolfram Alpha Web site, Personal Analytics for Facebook, that uses complex algorithms to answer questions and generate reports about the social network.

Wolfram Alpha A detailed look at how people meet friends on Facebook.

The research found that the median user has 342 friends on Facebook. This has continued to grow rapidly in recent years. But that number does not include everyone on the service, as “there are significantly more people who have almost no Facebook friends.”

The differentiating factor between people who are ultra popular on the site, and those who are Facebook loners, seems to come down to age.

“After a rapid rise, the number of friends peaks for people in their late teenage years, and then declines thereafter,” wrote Stephen Wolfram, a scientist and entrepreneur. “Why is this? I suspect it’s partly a reflection of people’s intrinsic behavior, and partly a reflection of the fact that Facebook hasn’t yet been around very long.”

The report also showed the relationship status of people across Facebook. People begin to change their relationship status to “in a relationship” in their early 20s, and then at around 27 begin to tag themselves as “engaged.” The next step, of course, is letting the world know they are married. The marriage relationships status continues to grow slowly for people in the late 20s all the way to age 60.

Wolfram Alpha A chart shows the relationship status of people across Facebook.

One curious addition to the relationship aspects of the research found that with age, “the fraction of people who report themselves as single continues to increase for women, while decreasing for men.”

A number of teenagers tend to muddy the statistics slightly by tagging themselves as “married” at a very young age. This is often a result of a strange Facebook hack that teenagers use to note that they are best friends with someone.

Mr. Wolfram compared the data from his research to the United States census data, and found that the two were almost identical, with Facebook users and the real world marrying in their mid-20s.

Using the Facebook data, researchers were also able to determine that although Facebook’s users now total 1 billion, the majority of people on the service are young.

The research also highlights other relationship information — including how people tend to meet and tag friends into grouped clusters around school, work or personal settings, and how the geographic location of friends changes for 18-year-olds as they begin to leave their hometown and head off to college.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 26, 2013

An earlier version of this post misstated the number of Facebook friends among people who have signed up for Wolfram|Alpha's Personal Analytics for Facebook. The median user of the service has 342 Facebook friends; that is not the average number of friends for users of the service.

Winfrey’s Low-Rated Cable Channel Is Poised to Break Through

Ms. Winfrey conferred with the co-presidents, Erik Logan and Sheri Salata, about booking a trip to Mr. Armstrong’s hometown, Austin, Tex., reserving airtime for Thursday night and announcing the “get” to the press.

What no one said on the call was that this interview — maybe Ms. Winfrey’s biggest since her 1993 sit-down with Michael Jackson — could be a turning point for OWN, which has been low-rated since its birth two years ago.

Another turning point — perhaps even bigger — came this month when OWN started to pocket substantial per-subscriber fees from some of the biggest cable and satellite operators in the country.

Some of these deals were made before OWN even had its premiere. The operators agreed to pay just a penny or two per subscriber a month until January 2013, and then start paying nearly 20 cents a month on average, according to people with direct knowledge of the deals who asked for anonymity because the details were confidential. The fees increase over a span of several years.

Multiply those dimes and quarters across most of the 83 million homes in which OWN is available (but not all — at least one deal is still pending) and the value for Ms. Winfrey and Discovery Communications is plain. Discovery, OWN’s other owner, has said that the channel will turn a profit for the first time in the second half of 2013. Discovery has invested more than $400 million to date.

Paul Maxwell, who runs MediaBiz, a television industry reporting and consulting firm, said OWN was now where Discovery hoped it would be at birth. “They see a lot more to do,” he said. “But they think they’re on the right track now.”

The OWN story is a reminder that cable is a niche business, one built on serving loyal but often small groups of fans.

Ms. Winfrey remains just as well-known now as she was three years ago, her last full year hosting “The Oprah Winfrey Show” on local television stations, said Henry Schafer of Marketing Evaluations, a research firm that publishes proprietary Q Scores for celebrities. But her emotional connection to consumers is not nearly as strong as it was then.

Her Q Score — a combination of both traits — dipped to 22 in 2012 from 31 in 2010 among adult women. Although Ms. Winfrey remains above the average of 16, “she’s been out of focus for a while,” Mr. Schafer said.

Big scoops like the sit-down with Mr. Armstrong can bring her back, at least temporarily. OWN is trying to capitalize on the interview by spreading it over two nights, by raising advertising rates and by running some ads for other programs on the channel. To make sure people can find the interview, OWN is running Internet and print ads and promoting a channel finder tool.

“When Oprah does what you know she’s going to do — get the big gets — it just provides a big spotlight on all the good that’s been going on,” said Mr. Logan, who cited two successful reality shows, “Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s” and “Iyanla: Fix My Life,” and an Emmy Award for Ms. Winfrey’s “Super Soul Sunday.”

Success for OWN is relative. Last year, 325,000 people watched the channel on a typical night, 160,000 of whom were 25 to 54 years old. About 50 broadcasters and cable channels had a bigger audience. But OWN was up about 30 percent over its first year, 2011.

Publicly, the low point for the channel seemed to come in March 2012, when the channel decided to lay off 30 employees, about 20 percent of its work force. The layoffs and the cancellation of a talk show by Rosie O’Donnell helped the channel to save $50 million a year and achieve profitability more quickly.

Moscow Journal: Russian Web Site Roszkh Fights Corruption Through Housing

In a city where it is often impossible to get a plumber or any other repairman, somebody just figured out how to fix the pipes — and replace light bulbs, scrub off graffiti and patch leaky roofs. Throughout Moscow and other Russian cities, such elementary building repairs are suddenly in full swing as the city’s craftsmen, their reputations for surliness, laziness and drunkenness undiminished, are hurrying from one appointment to another.

Delighted Muscovites are crediting a new Web site for the unaccustomed Calvinist work ethic. Called Roszkh, it streamlines the process for filing complaints about maintenance of the communal areas of apartment buildings, like hallways and entryways, that remained public property after post-Soviet privatizations.

Stymied by a loss of momentum after street protests, Russian opposition leaders had been casting about for other approaches to remain relevant through what promises to be a long tenure for President Vladimir V. Putin. Aleksei Navalny, a blogger and political activist, hit upon the idea of the Web site, which is run under the auspices of his Foundation for Fighting Corruption.

“It’s difficult to say when the next wave of protests will come,” Mr. Navalny said in an interview about his new site, named after an acronym Russians use for their combined utility and building maintenance bills, ZhKKh.

Roszkh was an instant sensation. Since the site went up on Nov. 8, 28,354 users have filed 45,835 complaints, mostly in Moscow and other large cities. So far, repairmen have fixed about 2,600 reported problems. That may not sound like much, but in Russia it qualifies as extraordinary.

“I live in an old five-story building where the hallway has no light and no windows,” one Muscovite, Boris Frantskevich, wrote in a post. It seemed it would be that way forever. But on a lark, he tried logging a complaint on the Web site.

“Just today, I walk out of my apartment and an electrician is digging in the wires,” Mr. Frantskevich wrote. “Wow, he’s fixed the light.”

Mr. Navalny attributes the site’s success to official sensitivities to a deep vein of public anger over the deplorable state of housing in Russia, and particularly in Moscow. In a leaked letter, Russia’s chief housing inspector issued an order that the complaints on Mr. Navalny’s Web site be addressed immediately.

The inspector, Nikolai Vasyutin, clarified the government response in a letter to subordinates: Applicants needed to be helped immediately, not in spite of the site’s political character, but because of it.

“It’s become obvious this is a policy by the opposition to discredit all levels of the government,” the letter said. “But this shouldn’t confuse the organs of the state housing inspection.” It instructed city officials to counteract the tactic by fixing problems quickly.

Public opinion surveys indicate that the steady rise in ZhKKh fees is the issue that upsets Russians most; a planned increase was delayed during presidential elections last winter, only to kick in this year.

The fees have been rising faster than inflation. Many Russians are incensed about paying more — currently about $130 a month in Moscow, and less in other cities — while hallways, even in upscale buildings, are often yawning black tunnels, splattered with graffiti and reeking of septic odors.

These problems have become a vulnerability for Mr. Putin, but one largely of his own making. The governing political party, United Russia, went to great pains to ensure that it dominated not only national but also regional and local politics, often suppressing opponents to do so. The party also dominates city councils.

As Mr. Navalny, a former real estate lawyer, has been gleefully pointing out, this means that every broken light bulb and burst pipe is now the party’s problem.

“We are trying to attract people who can fight corruption together with us,” Mr. Navalny said. “It’s clear that an ordinary person has a hard time helping us fight corruption at Gazprom,” the big state energy company. “But unfortunately in Russia, corruption surrounds a person everywhere. We are trying to create a mechanism for people to fight corruption themselves.”

The site asks users to enter their address and choose from a menu of common Russian repair problems: water flowing a rich orange color from rusted pipes, say, or a boiler failing in midwinter.

The program then automatically pastes on a lengthy legal text composed by Mr. Navalny and his volunteer group of lawyers for the benefit of the receiving bureaucrat, citing ordinances that mandate a response or repair, usually within 45 days.

The site automatically routes complaints to the appropriate municipal authority in thousands of cities in Russia’s 83 regions. So far, though, Muscovites and residents of a few other large cities where Internet use is high have filed most of the complaints.

The site is easy to use. It saves profiles, allowing angry Russians to return whenever they have another leaky pipe or a new buildup of filth in a hallway.

In St. Petersburg, building inspectors initially declined to respond to several thousand complaints generated on the site. Whether that was for political reasons or out of laziness remains unclear.

But by early December, the office was working overtime to fix communal areas, and a housing maintenance official had been arrested for mismanagement, one of several moves by the government in an apparent effort to get ahead of the issue.

Even as complaints pile up, site moderators urge users to keep on filing.

One man, Sergei Sadko, wrote that an entire delegation of city officials promptly visited his apartment after he complained about a leaky roof.

“They said they would fix it in the spring,” he wrote. “Should I change my status to ‘problem solved’?”

The response: “File another complaint. They are required to fix everything immediately.”

On Twitter, Sifting Through Falsehoods in Critical Times

Trouble is, not all of it was true.

Deliberate falsehoods, including images showing the Statue of Liberty engulfed in ominous clouds and sharks swimming through waterlogged suburban neighborhoods quickly spread through the service, as did word that power would be shut off for the entire city of New York and that the floor of the New York Stock Exchange had been flooded.

Twitter says it cannot possibly regulate the millions of messages on its service, and that a bit of misinformation and mischief is to be expected. But in recent years, the service has become an indispensable funnel of information in critical times for many people, especially for those who lose access to power or cable TV. For them, it can be a crucial lifeline.

Twitter has also become an invaluable tool for local government, news and relief organizations, which can monitor updates and dispatches from smartphone-wielding citizens.

“The limits of Twitter come into play during a situation like a hurricane,” said John Palfrey, co-author of “Born Digital,” an examination of Internet technology’s impact on society. “There’s great power in it, but also great power for deception.”

While people are learning to accept information posted to the social Web with a large grain of salt, they may not be able to distinguish between useful updates and fake ones during a crisis or disaster, which can become dangerous. Bad information might set off an irrational decision that could lead to panic, or worse, put them in harm’s way.

A search is on for promising technological solutions, but for the time being, it is up to users to police the service.

“Generally speaking, we don’t mediate or moderate and monitor the site and content on the site in an event, whether the debates or a natural disaster,” Rachael Horwitz, a Twitter spokeswoman, said in an interview. “Fact-checking Twitter is not scalable and not something we want to get involved with.”

Twitter does take steps to validate some of the information coursing through its service. It verifies the accounts of some prominent people by placing blue checkmarks next to those users’ names. It also suggests lists of reliable Twitter accounts and users to follow during big events, be they government officials or news reporters.

Ms. Horwitz compared Twitter to a self-cleaning oven, saying the company was pleased with how quickly vigilant at-home fact-checkers were able to establish which photographs and reports were not true.

Jack Stuef, a writer at BuzzFeed, exposed a Twitter user going by the moniker “ComfortablySmug,” who was deliberately spreading rumors and false reports late Monday night — one said the Coney Island Hospital was on fire — as the frenzy online was reaching its peak. Many of the rumors were unwittingly repeated and spread by others. (Twitter said it had no plans to suspend the account.)

A Web site, IsTwitterWrong, run by Tom Phillips, an international editor at MSN, collected and analyzed popular images floating around during the hurricane and tried to determine which were real and which were not.

Twitter should not be expected to moderate all messages on its site, Mr. Palfrey said, especially during a fast-paced, critical situation like a tremendous storm.

Twitter said it did not yet have official figures for the volume of messages during the height of the storm. Topsy, a third-party service that analyzes Twitter activity clustered around a specific topic, showed as many as 550,000 posts related to the storm.

Mr. Palfrey suggested that during a major event, Twitter could pick out certain posts containing valuable nuggets of information and promote them on its site and mobile application.

Relying on users to police the streams of information could be an effective solution, said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet law at Harvard.

“Don’t forget that the whole idea of a retweet was invented by users before Twitter was blessed with that functionality,” he said. “The digital realm could resolve this and not break the law of physics by doing so.”

He suggested an annotation, like “xTweet,” to signal something as false, or even a bit of metadata that would flag a message as inaccurate, even after a posting is passed around by others.

“We could harness the viral power of Twitter to keep up with its breathless self,” he said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 2, 2012

An article on Thursday about dealing with misinformation in Twitter posts misspelled the surname of a BuzzFeed writer who exposed a Twitter user who was spreading falsehoods. The BuzzFeed writer is Jack Stuef, not Steuf.

Kim See Through Skirt

Kim Kardashian is neither pregnant nor alone. But the latest issue of OK! Weekly makes it clear:

She’s afraid of being pregnant and alone!

Sources supposedly tell the tabloid that Kardashian really wants a child, but is “scared to raise a baby alone.”

And the motherly urges couldn’t come at a worse time because Kanye West has allegedly given Kim an “ultimatum.”

He has told her that she better “make some changes” or “he will dump her,” this anonymous insider claims, explaining:

“He’s laid down the law when it comes to her show… Kris [Jenner] is constantly trying to get Kanye to do appearances, and he thinks the show is beneath him.”

Of course, Kanye acted like anything but a distant boyfriend last night. He nearly attacked a photographer after she asked him about Kim’s ex-boyfriend Reggie Bush.

Such a reaction causes one to wonder: Would Kim’s imaginary child be better off with such a role model?

App Smart: Find Your Way Through the Airport Maze

As I planned our summer vacation this year, one of the critical issues I considered was how to shepherd two young children through the different airports where we would need to change flights.

Apps came to the rescue.

The iFly Pro app is probably the most widely known app of its kind. The app, which is $7 on iOS and Android, bills itself as an all-purpose airport guide for “the informed traveler.” It contains an airport guide for airports around the world — from Aalborg through Zurich — as well as flight timing data and other airline information. Inside the United States, it even alerts you to airport status, including departure delays and closings.

I used London Heathrow as a test case because it’s one of the most crowded and confusing airports I’ve ever been in, and the Olympics will probably increase traveler traffic even more.

The app’s clean, simple interface provides live information about flight arrivals and departures, and its terminal maps show in which direction the gates lie. But in terms of actually helping you navigate the warren of corridors and concourses, you’re on your own; the map of the building is a blue blob. But you can plot your location on the map and, using your phone’s GPS function, drop data on the map from a list of amenities, which helps find their approximate location.

The iFly app also tells you which airlines fly from which terminals and includes a comprehensive list of shops. It also provides information about A.T.M.’s, playgrounds and places you can eat. Its comprehensive parking and transportation guides include prices.

But for “layover ideas” at Heathrow, the app is less helpful. It suggests you “obtain pamphlets and information about Central London” at the airport’s five terminals, which isn’t useful for planning your trip.

The app works a little better for a giant airport like Chicago O’Hare or Newark because it offers layover ideas and a bit more detail in each section. That’s the app’s main difficulty: it seems quality of information isn’t consistent. For the airport nearest my home, iFly lacks maps for the entire second terminal.

Some advice: make sure you use the app before you set off, exploring each subsection and terminal map you’re going to need. This might be necessary because it downloads some of its content from a server, which could be a problem if you’re in an airport with no data connection or only paid-access Wi-Fi.

IFly is also available free without live flight data.

One alternative is the free iOS and Android app, GateGuru. While this app does have simple maps for some, but not all, airports, it’s less about helping you navigate. Instead it tries to be a portal for crowdsourced reviews of services offered by airports and a guide for wait times at check in and security.

Though this information may be more useful because it is timely, it’s dependent on people actually using GateGuru to review cafes and report delays. Right now, the page for Los Angeles International tells me there’s an average wait time of 10 minutes at Terminal 5, which would be handy if I were going through that particular terminal, but there is no data for the other terminals.

The makers, aware of this, have tried to encourage users to submit data by making a game of it; a leader board ranks “highfliers” who take part. You may even find it fun to fill in the data yourself as you’re waiting, bored, for your flight. You’ll even be helping other travelers.

The GateGuru app is more aesthetically pleasing than iFly, and even has a flight tracking section where you can bookmark a one-glance summary of flights you want to keep an eye on. But the app’s navigation can be a bit tricky, an important factor when you’re stressed and struggling to get to your departure gate on time.

If airport maps are all you’re after, try Airport Maps, which is newly updated and free on iOS. It’s far less polished than the others, but it has more details on some airports’ facilities. You can pay to download more as the makers add them to the database.

Quick Calls

I joked about Frankfurt, but there’s a slick app just for this airport on Windows Phone for $1.29. For whiling away the hours in the airport, one of the simplest and most addictive games for Apple iOS devices, Tiny Wings, has just been upgraded to Version 2. It’s an upgrade so big, the maker could have sold it as a new app, but instead made it free for existing owners. Check it out for $1.

App Smart: Find Your Way Through the Airport Maze

As I planned our summer vacation this year, one of the critical issues I considered was how to shepherd two young children through the different airports where we would need to change flights.

Apps came to the rescue.

The iFly Pro app is probably the most widely known app of its kind. The app, which is $7 on iOS and Android, bills itself as an all-purpose airport guide for “the informed traveler.” It contains an airport guide for airports around the world — from Aalborg through Zurich — as well as flight timing data and other airline information. Inside the United States, it even alerts you to airport status, including departure delays and closings.

I used London Heathrow as a test case because it’s one of the most crowded and confusing airports I’ve ever been in, and the Olympics will probably increase traveler traffic even more.

The app’s clean, simple interface provides live information about flight arrivals and departures, and its terminal maps show in which direction the gates lie. But in terms of actually helping you navigate the warren of corridors and concourses, you’re on your own; the map of the building is a blue blob. But you can plot your location on the map and, using your phone’s GPS function, drop data on the map from a list of amenities, which helps find their approximate location.

The iFly app also tells you which airlines fly from which terminals and includes a comprehensive list of shops. It also provides information about A.T.M.’s, playgrounds and places you can eat. Its comprehensive parking and transportation guides include prices.

But for “layover ideas” at Heathrow, the app is less helpful. It suggests you “obtain pamphlets and information about Central London” at the airport’s five terminals, which isn’t useful for planning your trip.

The app works a little better for a giant airport like Chicago O’Hare or Newark because it offers layover ideas and a bit more detail in each section. That’s the app’s main difficulty: it seems quality of information isn’t consistent. For the airport nearest my home, iFly lacks maps for the entire second terminal.

Some advice: make sure you use the app before you set off, exploring each subsection and terminal map you’re going to need. This might be necessary because it downloads some of its content from a server, which could be a problem if you’re in an airport with no data connection or only paid-access Wi-Fi.

IFly is also available free without live flight data.

One alternative is the free iOS and Android app, GateGuru. While this app does have simple maps for some, but not all, airports, it’s less about helping you navigate. Instead it tries to be a portal for crowdsourced reviews of services offered by airports and a guide for wait times at check in and security.

Though this information may be more useful because it is timely, it’s dependent on people actually using GateGuru to review cafes and report delays. Right now, the page for Los Angeles International tells me there’s an average wait time of 10 minutes at Terminal 5, which would be handy if I were going through that particular terminal, but there is no data for the other terminals.

The makers, aware of this, have tried to encourage users to submit data by making a game of it; a leader board ranks “highfliers” who take part. You may even find it fun to fill in the data yourself as you’re waiting, bored, for your flight. You’ll even be helping other travelers.

The GateGuru app is more aesthetically pleasing than iFly, and even has a flight tracking section where you can bookmark a one-glance summary of flights you want to keep an eye on. But the app’s navigation can be a bit tricky, an important factor when you’re stressed and struggling to get to your departure gate on time.

If airport maps are all you’re after, try Airport Maps, which is newly updated and free on iOS. It’s far less polished than the others, but it has more details on some airports’ facilities. You can pay to download more as the makers add them to the database.

Quick Calls

I joked about Frankfurt, but there’s a slick app just for this airport on Windows Phone for $1.29. For whiling away the hours in the airport, one of the simplest and most addictive games for Apple iOS devices, Tiny Wings, has just been upgraded to Version 2. It’s an upgrade so big, the maker could have sold it as a new app, but instead made it free for existing owners. Check it out for $1.

App Smart: Find Your Way Through the Airport Maze

As I planned our summer vacation this year, one of the critical issues I considered was how to shepherd two young children through the different airports where we would need to change flights.

Apps came to the rescue.

The iFly Pro app is probably the most widely known app of its kind. The app, which is $7 on iOS and Android, bills itself as an all-purpose airport guide for “the informed traveler.” It contains an airport guide for airports around the world — from Aalborg through Zurich — as well as flight timing data and other airline information. Inside the United States, it even alerts you to airport status, including departure delays and closings.

I used London Heathrow as a test case because it’s one of the most crowded and confusing airports I’ve ever been in, and the Olympics will probably increase traveler traffic even more.

The app’s clean, simple interface provides live information about flight arrivals and departures, and its terminal maps show in which direction the gates lie. But in terms of actually helping you navigate the warren of corridors and concourses, you’re on your own; the map of the building is a blue blob. But you can plot your location on the map and, using your phone’s GPS function, drop data on the map from a list of amenities, which helps find their approximate location.

The iFly app also tells you which airlines fly from which terminals and includes a comprehensive list of shops. It also provides information about A.T.M.’s, playgrounds and places you can eat. Its comprehensive parking and transportation guides include prices.

But for “layover ideas” at Heathrow, the app is less helpful. It suggests you “obtain pamphlets and information about Central London” at the airport’s five terminals, which isn’t useful for planning your trip.

The app works a little better for a giant airport like Chicago O’Hare or Newark because it offers layover ideas and a bit more detail in each section. That’s the app’s main difficulty: it seems quality of information isn’t consistent. For the airport nearest my home, iFly lacks maps for the entire second terminal.

Some advice: make sure you use the app before you set off, exploring each subsection and terminal map you’re going to need. This might be necessary because it downloads some of its content from a server, which could be a problem if you’re in an airport with no data connection or only paid-access Wi-Fi.

IFly is also available free without live flight data.

One alternative is the free iOS and Android app, GateGuru. While this app does have simple maps for some, but not all, airports, it’s less about helping you navigate. Instead it tries to be a portal for crowdsourced reviews of services offered by airports and a guide for wait times at check in and security.

Though this information may be more useful because it is timely, it’s dependent on people actually using GateGuru to review cafes and report delays. Right now, the page for Los Angeles International tells me there’s an average wait time of 10 minutes at Terminal 5, which would be handy if I were going through that particular terminal, but there is no data for the other terminals.

The makers, aware of this, have tried to encourage users to submit data by making a game of it; a leader board ranks “highfliers” who take part. You may even find it fun to fill in the data yourself as you’re waiting, bored, for your flight. You’ll even be helping other travelers.

The GateGuru app is more aesthetically pleasing than iFly, and even has a flight tracking section where you can bookmark a one-glance summary of flights you want to keep an eye on. But the app’s navigation can be a bit tricky, an important factor when you’re stressed and struggling to get to your departure gate on time.

If airport maps are all you’re after, try Airport Maps, which is newly updated and free on iOS. It’s far less polished than the others, but it has more details on some airports’ facilities. You can pay to download more as the makers add them to the database.

Quick Calls

I joked about Frankfurt, but there’s a slick app just for this airport on Windows Phone for $1.29. For whiling away the hours in the airport, one of the simplest and most addictive games for Apple iOS devices, Tiny Wings, has just been upgraded to Version 2. It’s an upgrade so big, the maker could have sold it as a new app, but instead made it free for existing owners. Check it out for $1.