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
SMS: It’s Time To Get Pregnant
A new text-messaging service called EggAlert wants to help women to keep better track of their menstrual period. The service calculates a woman’s next ovulation time and sends a tet message (SMS) to her cell phone altering/warning her she at the hight of her fertility. While the Website of EggAlert focuses on women who want to become pregnant, we’re thinking the service could also be used as a form of contraception.
According to EggAlert.com the service can also be used both as a Notifier for the upcoming premenstrual symptom, to schedule certain events around the time of menstruation and as a reminder for women who want to do self breast examinations.
Some Questions are left open: According to the Website, the service is available worldwide, but seems only be on-hand for customers with a billing address in the US and Canada. That’s why we could not get through to the signing-up process to check if more than one cellphone number could be handled. As it would be nice to send a message to the partners cellphone too.
While claiming that the service “increases your ability to naturally select a boy or a girl.” PDA Healthware, Inc. does not provide any statistics about happy customers, nor any testimonials. We would love to hear about the first Text Message enabled pregnancy.
We can see a long term merging of with company will be a quick dating service when it’s linked with location-based data.
EggAlert
19 September, 2005
Nokia 6630 Music Edition Announced
Acting like they’re fearful of not appearing hip to the mobile music revolution, Nokia have added their own rival to the Apple/Motorola ROKR and Sony Walkman phones, a special edition of the highly rated Nokia 6630 – despite having had music-playing on their phones for yonks.
Shipping later this month, the Nokia 6630 Music Edition offers a new music player and a bundled memory card to offer “enhanced music functionality.”
The updated music player bundles in a 256mb RS-MMC (with memory card support up to 1 gig), which Nokia claims will hold up to 15CDs of music, giving it an edge over the 100 iTunes song limit on the Motorola ROKR.
Music can be transferred to the phone using the included Nokia PC Suite software or with the bundled Nokia USB MMC/SD reader, with the Nokia Audio Adapter letting users plug in their favourite headphones (or “cans” if you’re a DJ) into the standard 3.5 mm stereo jack.
“The Nokia 6630 Music Edition is a fantastic combination of music, smartphone and 3G,” frothed Tuula Rytilä-Uotila, Director, Imaging EMEA, Nokia.”
“You can carry a good portion of your music collection with you wherever you go and with the Nokia Audio Adapter, you can quickly connect your favourite set of music headphones,” Tuula added.
The phone comes in two colours – Aluminum Grey for hip, fast living, city slickers and Rustic Red for cow-bothering, straw chewing, country types.
Being based on the well-rated Nokia 6630, the phone also includes a 1.3 megapixel camera, mobile broadband access with WCDMA networks, mobile email and streaming video.
Nokia have also launched the Nokia Music Pack, a bundled package of enhancements for mobile music, which includes the Nokia Audio Adapter, the Nokia 256 MB MMC Card, the Nokia USB MMC/SD reader and Nokia Stereo Audio Cable.
The only question we’ve got – is where’s the Nokia N91 we got excited about last month?
Nokia
19 September, 2005
Vodafone Targets Mass Market With New 3G Phones
Vodafone plans to unleash a swarm of new 3G mobile handsets in the run-up to Christmas as the company tries to turbo charge mass market adoption of its third-generation (3G) mobile service.
The world’s biggest mobile operator will adding a total of 15 phones to their portfolio.
Ten of the new phones will be exclusive to Vodafone, with six targeted at entry-level customers in an attempt to encourage the mass market take-up of its 3G services.
“We are confident that this is going to be a 3G Christmas,” ho-ho’d Chief Marketing Officer Peter Bamford.
This rings (festive?) bells with us, giving us a very strong feeling of Deja Vu as we heard ‘Vodafone’s betting heavily on 3G this Christmas‘ in November 2004. Perhaps Vodafone thing that saying it two months earlier this year (Sept vs Nov) will ‘make it happen’.
The period before Christmas is traditionally a bumper trading period for mobile phone operators, and Vodafone is confident that its festive offering of MP3 playin’, video and audio streamin’, video call-makin’ 3G phones will send sales soaring.
The new phones
The entry-level phones will include two handsets each from Sharp and Samsung and one each from Motorola and Sony Ericsson – all exclusive to Motorola.
The non-exclusive handsets will include the hugely popular Motorola RAZR V3x phone, the Nokia N70 and 6280, and Samsung’s SGH-Z500V and SGH-Z140V phones.
Four of the new handsets – two each by Sharp and Toshiba – will be targeted at the well heeled, with the Limited edition Sharp 902 Ferrari serving up exclusive Ferrari content for those folks impressed with that kind of thing.
All of Vodafone new 3G phones will offer new services, with the company hoping to tempt users to regularly dip into their catalogue of 500,000 full-track music downloads and mobile TV services and content.
Vodafone launched their 3G service in November 2004, and was reporting 3.3 million 3G customers by June this year.
The company expects big things from their 3G service, forecasting 10 million customers across its businesses to be using 3G mobile video and picture phones and high-speed laptop cards by the end of this financial year in March 2006.
Vodafone
16 September, 2005