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Curiouser and curiouser! That’s the only way to describe the latest twist in the fuss over Disconnect Mobile, an app designed by a former Googler and a former NSA engineer that purports to block ads that seek to track activities on your phone.

On Tuesday, [company]Disconnect[/company] co-founder Casey Oppenheim said by email that [company]Google[/company] has booted the app out of its Android Play Store without explanation. The unceremonious eviction came barely 20 hours after the app’s formal launch, and is the second time Google has banned it.

The first ban came in September when Disconnect Mobile appeared in the Play Store for 5 days, accruing over 5000 downloads despite any publicity. In its second short stint in the Play Store, Oppenheim says it was downloaded more than 20,000 times. He also confirmed that the app is still available on iTunes.

Disconnect Mobile is something of a hot item among privacy types, owing to the pedigree of its founders and to…

Ahead of Apple’s expected release of two iPhones with bigger screens, a fair question to ask is how many people actually want larger phones?

New data from apps analytics firm Flurry finds that big-screened phones — sometimes called “phablets” — are rapidly growing in popularity. Large-screened phones, defined by Flurry as devices with screens between 5- and 7-inches, comprised 6 percent of the nearly 60,000 active devices examined, a huge increase over the 3 percent spotted last year.

Not only are more users opting for larger phones, but bigger devices are being used more heavily, accounting for 11 percent of app sessions tracked by Flurry. It does appear that people that plan to really hammer their handsets are buying phones with bigger screens, although they may be opting for the faster processor and better cameras that usually come with big-screened phones.

Flurry didn’t find any evidence that big phones are eating into smaller…