If you thought that beardy ham radio operators slurping tea in sheds full of wires and glowing valves had gone the same way as the Sinclair C5 and 8-track cartridges, think again.
f According to P. Surendran, secretary of Quilon Amateur Radio League in India, the huge growth of mobile phones poses no threat to the usefulness and popularity of Ham radio.
Speaking to the Hindu Times, Mr. Surendran extolled the benefit of ham radio over mobiles, “You can only communicate with one person on a cellphone, but on the Ham radio, you can talk to a large number of radio operators using the same frequency.”
Foxhunting
Mr. Surenderan and his chums had gathered to organise a ‘foxhunt’ competition.
Unlike the UK, this doesn’t involve a load of toffs in fancy dress trampling over crops in a bloodthirsty quest to pull a creature apart, but something rather more sedate.
It the gentle world of Ham operators’, their sport involves a ‘fox’ of the human kind going into hiding with wireless equipment and an external antenna.
Once burrowed away in a hidden location, the fox then sends out periodic ‘beep’ signals which participants in the foxhunt try and trace.
The winner is – surprise surprise! – the first person to unearth the fox.
There’s life left in the ‘umble ‘am
Mr. Surendran also explained the benefits of Ham radio over mobiles in more remote locations, pointing out that mobile charges made it a more expensive medium and that coverage was not always available.
Ham radio signals, on the other hand, could be sent to any part of the world wherever another Ham, operating on the same frequency, was located.
Moreover, Ham radio can provide an alternative way to communicate with people, especially during emergencies and disasters
But before you start clearing out your shed and practising your, “Alpha Alpha This is Dudley” call sign, bear in mind that some Ham leagues have stiff rules.
In the case of the Quilon Amateur Radio League, it’s a case of “No sex, no politics, no religion and no business.”
And that, sadly, looks rather like, ‘no fun’ in our book.
eHam.net Home – (Ham Radio Community Site
Radio Society of Great Britain
Search giant Google has announced a free, Web-based ‘shareable’ calendar service called, appropriately enough, Google Calendar, which allows users to post up events and share them with others.
Gmail Integration
Based on open calendar standards, events can be imported from popular programs like Microsoft Outlook and Apple iCal, while schedules can be viewed by any external application or device that accepts iCal or XML files.
After putting the book on subtle design through the shredder, Pure’s designers have come up with the dazzling new Pure One, a DAB digital radio for under £50 – in bright pink.
The scrolling text monochrome display shows station name, status icons, time and signal strength, with one touch tuning giving quick access to 20 DAB and FM (with RDS) stations.
Supported by a full 2-year warranty, the Pure One will be available from May 2006.
A clever new scheme from WifiTastic makes it pie-easy for home broadband users to turn their connections into revenue-generating wireless hotspots.
Although free shared connections tend to appeal to our right on ideals more, there’s no denying that this smart, simple system looks to benefit both owners and those who need Wi-Fi access and are prepared to pay for it. Other companies like the 
Telecom giants Orange have launched a new photography service that lets snapping mobile users back up and store their digital photos on the move.
Alternatively, users can select the ‘upload photos’ option and browse pics from the phone’s gallery for sending to their online album.
There’s also a £3 a month Photography 15 bundle available for Pay Monthly customers – this includes 15 photo messages but does not contain any inclusive data (for uploading photos and viewing album).
According to a new study by comScore Networks, 82 million people – that’s nearly half of the European online population – used IM applications to chat online during February.
In Latin America and Europe, Messenger ruled supreme, registering usage rates of 90 percent and 70 percent (respectively) of IM users.
The VoIP/IM client application is proving to be a real hit in the Asia Pacific, where it has already garnered 26 percent of IM users, although it’s a different story in North America, where Skype can only claim 3 percent of the online population.
We have to say that if we strutted down the local boozer with an MP3 player strapped on around our neck, we’d most likely be called a lot of things – some of which might just rhyme with ‘Anchor’ – but, hey! – what do we know about yoof product design?!
Dominating the iRiver is a large, 4 Line, 16 tone greyscale OLED screen, which displays EQ settings, track listings and folder views, and also doubles up as a clock/alarm clock.
There’s also an FM radio onboard – pretty crucial, that – with iRiver quoting a MP3 playback battery life of around 13 hours per charge (128kbps, MP3, volume level 20, EQ Normal, LCD Off).
Although a well equipped smartphone or PDA can let you leave the laptop at home, bashing away at those itty-bitty keypads or attempting to write lengthy emails with a fiddly stylus can soon become a chore.
Before use, a small driver has to be installed on your handheld device – as well as getting the two devices chatting to each other, it also lets you set up user programmable shortcut and command keys for fast access to applications.
Although we had no problem maintaining the IR link, one of our test units (a Treo 650) felt a little wobbly on the cradle – using an imate JAM Pocket PC in landscape mode felt a lot more secure, as did our Sony TH55 PDA (one of the best PDAs even invented, but that’s a different story).
Specifications
Spurred on by the huge rise of original content being created for computers and mobile devices, The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has decided to officially recognise the growing medium.
Donning our best party frock, we’re delighted to stand up to the podium and announce the nominees:
Live 8 on AOL – live feeds and on-demand footage of last year’s enormo charity gig.
Pioneer have announced their new AVIC-S1 pocket GPS system for the European market.
Built in microphone
AVIC-S1 specs