September 2005

Dell Axim X51v PDA Rolled Out
Dell has announced three updates to its popular Axim PDA series, headed up by the powerful, VGA-enabled X51v.
The flagship model is physically very similar to their existing X50v, but runs on the new Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system and comes with more memory and powerful features.
With a hefty 624 MHz Intel PXA270 processor lurking inside, the Dell Axim X51v incorporates a 3.7-inch 640 x 480 VGA TFT display, powered by an Intel 2700G Multimedia Accelerator offering 16 MB of dedicated video memory.
Onboard storage comes in the form of 256 MB of non-volatile memory, with expansion taken care of by SDIO compatible SD/MMC and CompactFlash Type II card slots.
One big difference from previous models is the use of non-volatile memory, which means that the new Axim X51v uses RAM exclusively for running programs and stores all programs and data in flash.
The good news is that this results in extended battery life and means that data stays intact when the battery goes dead, but there is a downside.
Because flash memory is slower than RAM, activities that involve shunting a lot of data between storage flash and operational RAM (like opening files or rebooting the device) become slower.
PC Magazine found that opening times on large Word documents were much slower than on earlier models, taking up to 18 seconds compared to the nippy 3 seconds on the X50v.
They also found that file writes to the default storage directory took three times as long as on the X50v, and reads took nearly eight times as long, but the machine performed well with video files and opening ClearVue PDF, Pocket Excel/Excel Mobile and Pocket Internet Explorer/IE Mobile documents.
Connectivity is taken care of with integrated Bluetooth 1.2 and Wi-Fi 802.11b support, with WPA and LEAP security for the latter.
Dell have bundled in a generous software bundle of games and applications including 3D mini-golf, Geo Rally 3D and full versions of the Battery Pack Lite utility and the excellent Resco Picture Viewer.
Looking down the range, Dell’s new Axim X51 and X51s devices offer 520 and 416 MHz processors respectively with smaller 3.5-inch QVGA displays and no Wi-Fi 802.11b connectivity in the X51s.
The Axim X51v is now available in the US and Europe, priced $500 USD (£271, €390) with the X51 and X51s knocking out for $400 USD (£220, €340) and $300 USD (£166, €280) respectively.
21 September, 2005
SPV M5000: Orange 3G Smartphone In The Shops
Orange has become the first UK operator to sell an own-brand Windows Mobile handset operating on 3G networks, with the launch of the SPV M5000 smartphone.
Manufactured by HTC of Taiwan, the phone goes under a host of pseudonyms and although o2 were the first to announce the launch of their version of the phone, the o2 Xda Exec, Orange appear to have beaten them to market (although the o2 phone looks way cooler in its neat black finish).
Aimed at business users on the move, Orange are hoping that the phone will provide a practical alternative to execs currently lugging a laptop, PDA and a phone around.
As we reported earlier this month, the phone combines 3G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth functionality in a chunky PDA-style device with a natty fold out keyboard and a mega-pixel camera onboard.
The silvery device stuffs in a loudspeaker and microphone for making conference calls, with a built-in modem and fax capability letting users blast off emails and check their appointments whilst making calls on the hands-free kit.
This new addition to Orange’s range reflects the company’s continuing support for Microsoft’s technology as part of its ‘Signature’ handset programme.
Philippe Bernard, Executive Vice President, Orange Business Solutions commented, “Mobility is unlocking the potential of the IT infrastructure by giving business people access to data when and where they need it. As mobile devices are increasingly aligned with personal computers, they must operate within that same environment. The SPV M5000 does exactly that by providing a powerful Microsoft Windows based connected PDA that has outstanding compatibility with IT software, hardware and powerful connectivity.”
Orange SPV M5000
21 September, 2005
Google WiFi In Testing. Free Service To Launch?
Are Google about to launch a free wireless Internet service?
The rumours are running at fever pitch as pundits scour around for clues and hints about a forthcoming Wi-Fi service by the Internet search engine giant.
What’s really excited us is a set of pages on Google describing a new test service called Google Wi-Fi, containing instructions on how to use its wireless desktop software, Google Secure Access, which sits on their subdomain wifi.google.com.
Listed as a set of answers to questions, the pages include a list of features and terms of the new service, with examples including:
Q. “Is there a fee for using Google Secure Access? A. No, Google Secure Access is free.”
Q. “Where can I go to download Google Secure Access? A. The program can currently be downloaded at certain Google Wi-Fi locations in the San Francisco Bay area.”
Reuters picked up on the story and first ran an article saying that Google was preparing to introduce its own wireless Internet service, but this was later amended to say that they’d only begun a limited test of the wireless service.
So far, Google have only introduced two wireless access points in Silicon Valley, at a pizzeria and a gymnastics centre, but it has been reported that the company were in talks with San Francisco officials about setting up public wireless networks in the city (Google currently share a single access point in Union Square in partnership with Feeva.)
Typically, the company are keeping tight lipped about their plans, but with Business 2.0 reporting that Google had “quietly been shopping for miles and miles of ‘dark,’ or unused, fibre optic cable across the country” last year, the Wi-Fi service is looking increasingly probable.
A free Google Wi-Fi service would make sound business sense, providing another way for Google to sell targeted advertising, big up the brand, maintain their popular reputation for dishing out free stuff and importantly adding location-based information to their adverts.
Although rolling out a nationwide Wi-Fi service would be a formidable task, with Google’s energy, enthusiasm (and zillions of $$$), it’s entirely possible and would no doubt be supremely popular.
Investment site Motley Fool.com are voicing doubts about Google claiming an even bigger chunk of our online life, with their article, Why I Fear Google WiFi, investigating Google’s “big and potentially scary news.”
wifi.google.com/faq.html
21 September, 2005
European In-flight Mobile Calls Next Year
British airline bmi and TAP Air Portugal have announced that they will be allowing passengers to use their own cellphones on commercial flights within western Europe from late next year.
The two European airlines will be introducing OnAir’s voice and text service for mobile phones in separate three-month trial runs.
The trials will give OnAir, a Geneva-based joint venture of Airbus and Netherlands-based technology company Sita Information Networking Computing, the chance to assess its service before a general release slated for 2007.
“With both airlines, initially there will be a couple of airplanes – two or three airplanes – equipped with this system,” OnAir’s chief executive George Cooper told The Associated Press.
“During that three months, we’ll all be evaluating how it’s going, what the usage is, how we handle the crew issues and so on,” he added.
The system will be used by TAP on its Airbus 321 model and by bmi on its Airbus 320s, with passengers able to make and receive calls using a base station within the airplane once it reaches 3,000m
“This trial will guide us on usage patterns and some of the social issues in using mobile phones on aircraft,” said bmi chief executive Nigel Turner. “It will also help us to confirm the business case for rolling the service out across the remainder of the fleet.”
There have been concerns that cellphones trying to connect to terrestrial networks might interfere with a plane’s navigation, but OnAir’s plane-based system ensures that cellphones and other devices operate at lower transmission power and thus avoid affecting avionics.
The company is also looking to sell its services to other airlines and hopes to clear regulatory hurdles for air traffic within Europe some time next year.
Cooper said the surcharge for cellphone use would be competitive with international roaming rates, costing around $2,30-$2,50 (€1,88-€2,04) per minute, with text messages charged at 50 US cents (41 € cents) to send or receive.
BMI chief executive Nigel Turner was enthusiastic about the new service, “Our research tells us that our premium passengers have two key concerns: getting quickly through the airport, and the ability to carry on working during their journey.”
“This trial will guide us on usage patterns and some of the social issues in using mobile phones on aircraft, and will help us to confirm the business case for rolling the service out across the remainder of the fleet,” he added.
Much as we love the idea of firing off texts while we’re quaffing champagne at 20,000 feet and chatting to earthbound chums, it’s worth pointing out that the demand for in-flight mobile calls hasn’t matched expectations.
In a recent poll by IDC, only 11 percent of its 50,000 survey respondents wanted the ban on using mobile phones on planes lifted.
20 September, 2005
Commodore Is Back With GPS Multimedia Player
Mention the name “Commodore” to old skool gamers of a certain age, and you might see a tear welling up in their eyes as they recall long, blissful hours playing Frontier Elite, Sensible Soccer and Lemmings on the legendary gaming platform.
After suffering a crushing fall from grace in the mid 1990s, Commodore’s new owners (Yeahronimo Media Ventures) have re-launched the brand, and announced a cutting-edge multimedia GPS Videpod.
Codenamed ‘The Navigator Combo’, the Windows CE-based handheld comes with a 30GB hard drive (preloaded with maps), a big 3.6in touch-screen display and an integrated GPS receiver, all packed into a refreshingly chunky case.
As well as providing satellite navigation, the portable media centre can also play back music in MP3 and WMA format and video in MPEG-4 and DivX formats.
Music tracks can be downloaded from online music stores like Napster and Virgin Digital, or from their very own Commodore Music Store.
Videos can also be downloaded from the Internet or transferred from PCs via USB 2.0, or stored on SD memory cards.
The new handheld forms part of a series of new products announced by Commodore at the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) in Berlin.
The company has entered into a partnership with SupportPlus Europe, for the distribution and sales of Commodore products in Europe.
The two companies presented a wide range of shiny new consumer electronic products for consumers and the retail market, including MP3/MP4-players, C64 gaming joysticks, multimedia download dispensers and home media centers.
The management of YNMO and SupportPlus anticipate gross revenues from the Commodore Products in the European market to exceed 162 Million Euros within 3 years.
“In the ’80s and ’90s the name Commodore represented successful, innovative and technically first-class products,” said Ben van Wijhe, CEO of YNMO.
Building up to the required mutual backslap, he added, “Therefore the management of Yeahronimo and SupportPlus believe it is an obligation, when using the Commodore name, to continue offering the electronics consumer with products that have a high-quality and are attractive in price. SupportPlus already has showed they are an excellent partner in the historic re-launch of Commodore.”
www.commodoreshop.com
www.commodoreworld.com
Commodore/Amiga history
20 September, 2005
GetMeThere: Pay As You Go Mobile GPS Launches in UK
GetMeThere.co.uk has launched what they are claiming is the first, free to install, Pay-as-you-go Mobile Satellite Navigation solution in the UK.
A joint venture between Toyota GB and IS Solutions, the TARA (Traffic Avoidance and Routing Application) Mobile SatNav is aimed at mobile and smart phone users in the UK.
Customers won’t have to buy expensive hardware or annual licences to use the Satellite Navigation system as the TARA Mobile SatNav works with any compatible mobile phone and a GPS receiver.
Instead, punters pay on a per-journey tariff, with TARA Mobile SatNav charging £1.50 ($2.70, €2.22) to the mobile phone bill for each destination, with users allowed to update their route to check traffic conditions, take an alternative route or to re-calculate the journey if they have the orienteering skills of an alcoholic amnesiac
The system offers a comprehensive suite of features, including full turn by turn navigation, voice commands, traffic avoidance, auto-zooming maps as a junction approaches, hands free use, European road network coverage with full address, house number, street and postcode search.
All route calculation and traffic avoidance is processed remotely, with the data automatically downloaded onto the mobile via GPRS.
Jon West, Director of GetMeThere.co.uk said “With over 4.5m navigationsystems expected to be sold this year across Europe, TARA Mobile SatNav has arrived just in time to provide a low cost, quality solution for the intelligent motorist. With GPS devices now available at around the £50 ($90, €74) mark, SatNav has become a must have for all motorists”.
TARA mobile SatNav is available as a free download from GetMeThere.co.uk and is compatible with a long list of mobiles including popular Nokia models such as 3650, 3660, 6260, 6600, 6670, and 7610,T-Mobile’s MDA II and Compact and O2’s XDA II range.
GetMeThere.co.uk
20 September, 2005
Opera Free: Browser Give Away Permanent
Following their free-for-24-hour offer at the end of August, Opera Software has permanently removed the ad banner and licensing fee from its award-winning Web browser.
In an attempt to shake up the browser market – and regain ground lost to Firefox – the Norwegian software house has made the ad-free, full-featured Opera browser available for download – completely free of charge – at opera.com.
“Today we invite the entire Internet community to use Opera and experience Web browsing as it should be,” said Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software.
“Removing the ad banner and licensing fee will encourage many new users to discover the speed, security and unmatched usability of the Opera browser.”
Previously, Opera was only available free if users were prepared to put up with a distracting ad banner stuck on the top of the browser interface, with the option to shell out for a $39 (£21.60, €32) licensing fee to remove the thing and receive premium support.
Not surprisingly, punters fed up with Internet Explorer’s well publicised security problems were far keener to try out the free Firefox browser than put up with Opera’s adverts. The Mozilla product now enjoys an 8 per cent market share.
Opera, however, can only muster 1 to 2 percent of the world’s Internet users, so they are hoping that by adopting Firefox’s freebie tactics they can substantially increase their user base.
“Our goal is to become on the desktop the number-two browser,” air-punched von Tetzchner.
The company expects to recoup lost sales revenue after striking deals with Google and other online search companies.
The deals will give Opera a cut of advertising revenues when, for example, a search typed into the browser’s built in search engine window is directed to Google advertising.
Von Tetzchner is confident that this advertising revenue will generate more than enough income to compensate for giving away Opera – if the company can persuade enough people to switch to their browser, of course.
As dry ice billowed around his feet and dramatic music filled the air, von Tetzchner bellowed out his pledge to the world: “As we grow our userbase, our mission and our promise remain steadfast: we will always offer the best Internet experience to our users – on any device. Today this mission gains new ground.”
It seems a bit of a gamble to us – both IE and Firefox are also available free of charge and without a huge marketing campaign we can’t see how they’re going to get enough users to switch from their far better known rival products.
Although we’re sticking with Firefox for now, there’s no denying that Opera is an excellent product and definitely worth downloading – especially now that it’s free!
The Opera browser is available in 20 languages and with the complete download weighing in at a bandwidth-unbothering 4MB, we recommend you give it a go!
20 September, 2005
Mobile Phone Subscriptions Pass Two Billion
There are now more than 2 billion mobile phone subscribers in the world, according to a report by Wireless Intelligence, a collaboration between analyst house Ovum and the GSM Association.
Martin Garner, director at Wireless Intelligence said, “The total number of mobile connections is now equivalent to nearly a third of the estimated world population of 6.5 billion.”
A large caveat should be added here. Although the numbers suggest that every third person on the planet is busy texting their chums and chatting away on a mobile, the figure is seriously skewed by the number of people owning multiple accounts (i.e. phones for work, home, posing and dodgy dealing) – so the actual number of individual subscribers will be substantially lower.
Garner was still impressed, “Although total connections are higher than the real number of users due to multiple connections, or inactive pre-paid connections, this is still a significant landmark for the industry.”
Not surprisingly, the bulk of the growth is happening from large, less well-developed markets such as China, India, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa.
Western Europe is pretty much overflowing with mobiles, with penetration expected to exceed 100 per cent in the region by 2007.
Although it took twenty years to reach the first billion mobile subscriptions, it’s only taken three years to double that figure to two billion.
World leading mobile manufacturers Nokia, who sold nearly 32 per cent of all phones in Q2 this year, have predicted than it will take another five years until mobile subscriptions total three billion.
19 September, 2005
Mobile Video And TV
With standards nearing finalisation for both DVB-H and MBMS and take-up of some current 3G video services doing well, this event is well timed to help operators build the business case, define their strategy and untap the revenue potential of mobile video and TV services.Hotel Berlin, Berlin http://www.iir-conferences.com/a.cfm?id=10729
19 September, 2005
UK Is Top Of The Bots
Once again, the UK has grabbed the number one slot on Top Of The Bots, possessing the world’s highest proportion of known bot-infected computers.
The figures from Symantec’s Global Internet Threat Report covers the first half of 2005 and reveals that almost a third (32 per cent) of virus-infected, zombie PCs- were located in the UK – substantially up on last year’s 26 per cent ranking.
Bots (short for ‘robots’) are software programs that sneakily install themselves on hapless users’ computers, allowing dastardly hackers to do beastly things remotely.
Infected computers can be used for malicious purposes such as phishing, spam, denial of service (DoS) attacks and other security risks such as spyware and adware.
Bot network activity is increasing faster than Wayne Rooney’s Yellow Card collection, with activity doubling from under 5,000 bots per day in December 2004 to an average of 10,352 in the report period.
Symantec puts this down to the huge rise in broadband subscriptions coupled with the delays in software patches for operating systems and software being made available.
Phishing continues to be a growth industry, with the daily average of phishing messages leaping from an average of 2.99 million messages a day to 5.70 million over the six month period covered by the report.
One out of every 125 e-mail messages scanned by Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam was a dodgy phishing attempt, up a thumping great 100 percent from the last half of 2004.
Dean Turner, senior manager of the Symantec Security Response team, commented: “Bot networks are valuable for a couple of reasons: One, because they allow for extremely rapid propagation, and two, because they provide a relatively high level of anonymity for providing attacks.”
Symantec’s biennial Internet Security Threat report revealed that London and Winsford (where?!), England, were the big cheeses of the bot-infected world, registering a shameful 8 percent and 5 percent of the world’s infected computers, respectively.
Seoul came in at third place with 4 percent, with the U.S. and China being the second and third largest providers of bot-infected systems, notching up 19 percent and 7 percent, respectively.
Symantec
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19 September, 2005