Mike Slocombe

Yahoo Buys DialPad VoIP Phone Service
Yahoo has whipped out its wallet and snapped up DialPad Communications, a company making VoIP software allowing users to make cut-price calls over the Internet.
Yahoo will use DialPad to expand its product array in the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) sector.
Based in California, DialPad is a six year-old company with around 40 employees competing in the hot potato sector of rerouting calls from computers to servers to telephones.
The company offers a selection of VoIP subscription plans to users – including prepaid VoIP calling cards – with charges ranging from as little as 1.7 cents per minute for calls to more than 200 countries.
DialPad has been offering calling plans for about two years and boasts more than 14 million users.
Although the specifics of the deal are yet to be released, Yahoo spokeswoman Joanna Stevens said that the new products integrating the DialPad technology could be debuting within a month. Pricing has yet to be announced.
In its announcement, Dialpad served up a bit more information about the deal: “Yahoo plans on leveraging Dialpad’s PSTN calling capabilities to add to Yahoo Messenger’s recently enhanced PC-to-PC voice calling offering. These products are very complementary and by combining our strengths, we are better positioned to take advantage of the fast growing IP telephony market and build a range of exciting new services.”
The acquisition comes hot on the heels of Yahoo introducing a test version of its instant messaging software which bundled an Internet telephony component that allowing users to make free computer-to-computer calls.
With rumours recently circulating the Web about Yahoo scooping up Skype, it now seems that Yahoo is looking to take on the VoIP upstart head on. Fight! Fight!
DialPad
Yahoo
15 June, 2005
BT Fusion Integrates Landline And Mobile Calls
BT has unveiled a smarty-pants phone designed to integrate landline and mobile phone technologies.
Called BT Fusion, the handset promises callers the “best of both worlds” and works like a regular mobile phone away from home, but when the rambling caller comes home, the clever stuff whirrs into action.
As soon as the user’s home broadband hub is detected, the call is transferred to a VoIP connection through the phone’s own Bluetooth software.
BT is hoping that the service (dubbed “Project Bluephone” during development) will tickle the fancy of consumers looking for the functionality of a cell phone with cheaper fixed-line prices.
“We know that many of our customers enjoy the convenience of their mobile phones when they’re out and about, but switch to using a landline phone when they arrive back home to save money or because they have little or no mobile coverage”, observed Ian Livingstone, chief executive of BT Retail.
BT Fusion is part of the company’s strategy to lure back customers wooed by mobile telephonic temptresses touting cheap calls.
The BT Fusion service – using adapted Motorola V560 GSM phones – will initially be trialled by 400 customers, with a more widespread consumer launch in September, followed up by a corporate package rollout in 2006.
BT was tight-lipped about how many customers it expected to sign up to the service, but was clearly eyeing up the 30 percent of their customers who make mobile phone calls from their homes.
“The future will be convergence”, insisted Livingstone. “This is going to be a market that grows fantastically over time even though it might take a while to get going. We still expect many millions of converged handsets by the end of the decade.”
BT’s monthly packages will come in two flavours, offering 100 cross-network minutes for £9.99 (US$18.07~ €15) or 200 minutes for £14.99 (US$27.12~ €22.5) for 200 minutes.
Calls to landlines originating in the home will be ratcheted up at BT’s regular rate of 5.5 p (10 cents, €0.08) for up to an hour.
Subscribers wanting to join the BT Fusion gang will need both a BT landline and access to BT broadband, with a special access point, called the BT Hub, being installed in the home.
Although currently using Bluetooth, BT is planning an upgrade to Wi-Fi technology and has already installed the necessary wireless equipment in the hubs.
Although Ian Livingstone, chief executive at BT Retail, has commented that the service could be used on any broadband service provider “if we decide to make it available”, subscribers will have to use BT’s own broadband service and Vodafone for now.
BT Fusion
Motorola’s RAZR Coming Soon to BT Fusion Service
15 June, 2005
Skype Voicemail Out Of Beta, Now Live
After several weeks in beta, Skype has officially launched the Skype Voicemail service, the company’s second pre-paid premium offering.
The new Skype Voicemail service allows callers to leave unlimited voicemail messages for Skype users when they are unavailable or offline.
Unlike bog-standard voicemail systems, Skype Voicemail also lets users send pre-recorded voice messages to other Skype users – even if they’re not a subscriber to the service.
The SkypeIn beta ran in eight countries, and testers in those countries can also receive Voicemail messages from ordinary fixed or mobile phones.
Users of the service can personalise their Skype Voicemail by setting their answer preferences, adding their own witty and kray-zee greeting and electing to receive messages up to 10 minutes long.
Skype Voicemail subscriptions are available for €5 (~US$7~£4.00~) for 3 months or €15 (~US$19~£11.00~) for one year. Orders may be pre-paid with a credit card or via PayPal or Moneybookers at the Skype Store.
Also rolling off the Skype production line is the latest Skype for Windows v1.3, incorporating several feature improvements, including enhancements for importing new contacts to contact lists and a more customisable user profile area.
Skype v1.3 allows bolts on the ability to populate Skype contact lists from desktop applications including MSN, and auto-populate exact matches from Microsoft Outlook.
Skype for Windows also offers an “enhanced visual experience” (whatever that is) with streamlined user interfaces and improved upgrade and premium notices.
There are also some new animated emoticons which, apparently, give instant messages “more expression”. Or maybe just irritate people more.
The company’s first premium offering, SkypeOut, allowed Skype users pre-paid calling to traditional and mobile phone numbers for local rates, attracted more than 1.5 million paid users since its launch in July 2004.
All of the company’s premium services – Skype Voicemail, SkypeOut, and the beta version of SkypeIn – are compatible with the latest versions of Skype for Linux, Mac OS X, Pocket PC and Windows platforms.
The company boasts more than 42 million registered users increasing by approximately 150,000 new users a day.
In the last few days, Internet rumours have been rife about Skype being the subject of a possible merger, commercial partnership or buy-out by Yahoo. Nothing’s been confirmed – or denied – yet, but we’ll keep you posted!
Skype
14 June, 2005
T-Mobile Wi-Fi Usage Soars
T-Mobile USA today revealed that nearly half a million are currently signed up to access their hotspots with hourly, daily, monthly or yearly accounts
The company’s figures revealed that 450,000 people accessed their high-speed Internet access at locations such as Starbucks coffee shops, airports and hotels in the past twelve weeks.
Although the company declined to provide year-on-year access figures, the figures showed that not only are there a lot more T-Mobile Hotspot users – they’re staying online longer too.
In the first quarter of 2005, users stayed logged on for an average of 64 minutes per login in 2005 – up from 45 minutes last year and just 23 minutes in 2003.
The total number of T-mobile Wi-Fi log-ins reached 3 million in the past three months against around 8 million for all of 2004. In this year’s first quarter alone, more people became customers than in all of 2003.
Although many early Wi-Fi adopters were laptop-toting business suits connecting in airports, hotel rooms and lobbies, the demographic is now far broader, with students, music fans, backpackers, silver surfers and others hitting the hotspots with their PDAs, smartphones and laptops.
T-Mobile’s figures show fast accelerating Wi-Fi usage, with 90 terabytes (i.e. 90 million megabytes) of Wi-Fi data flying across their network in 2004, with December accounting for 10 terabytes alone. By May 2005, 18 terabytes had swooshed across the ether.
T-Mobile dished out the stats as it announced an expansion in the provision of US and overseas hotspots.
New locations include the provision of roaming access throughout another 39 more airports in North America (making a total of 75 airports covered), with Wi-Fi guest room access being installed at 525 more hotels in the Marriott, Hilton, Ritz-Carlton, Doubletree and Renaissance chains.
In the US, every single Starbucks, FedEx, Kinko’s and Borders Books & Music store in the United States is covered by a T-Mobile hot spot, “unless they got built within the past five minutes,” quipped Joe Sims, VP and GM of the company’s hot-spot operations.
This brings T-Mobile’s hotspot tally to 5,700 locations in the US and 6,500 in Europe.
Roberta Wiggins, a senior research fellow with the Yankee Group was impressed with figures: “The numbers show that Wi-Fi is no longer an obscure, upstart technology. It’s gaining credibility.”
T-Mobile hotspot
14 June, 2005
Frontier Announce “World’s First” DMB and DVB-H Mobile Digital TV chip
Frontier Silicon have announced the “world’s first multi-standard, multi-band mobile digital TV chip set”.
The new device, called Kino 3, is a new multi-standard and multi-band MDTV chip set which supports both the Korean and European digital multimedia broadcast (DMB) as well as the DVB-H standard for mobile TV reception.
Kino3 will be world’s first thingamabob to combine a silicon tuner with broad tuning range and a baseband processor utilising software defined radio techniques to address multiple MDTV reception standards.
Frontier claims that the Kino 3 will be able to compete in terms of cost, size and power consumption with devices that just support a single standard.
In a fug of industry-speak, Anthony Sethill, CEO of Frontier Silicon, told the Broadcast Asia Conference in Singapore, “We strongly believe that regulatory, spectrum allocation and installed infrastructure issues could considerably slow down the deployment of MDTV worldwide. With our experience in developing pioneering semiconductor solutions for digital broadcasting, we recognised this as a company early on and deployed resources to develop multi-standard ICs. Our aim is therefore to remove this barrier by quickly introducing a solution, and we are on course to introduce our Kino 3 solution in 2006”.
And here – as they say on shampoo adverts – is the science bit:
DMB is an extension of the Eureka 147 specification commonly referred to as DAB and used for digital radio broadcasts in much of Europe. DVB-H has been developed as an extension to the existing DVB-T standard which is widely used across Europe for digital TV broadcasts. Both DMB and DVB-H have been developed to provide the robust and high bandwidth data channels required to enable the reliable reception of digital video on handheld devices.
Korea is expected to see commercial MDTV services based on DMB rolling out during 2005, with the UK and Germany following in 2006.
Commercial services based on DVB-H will begin broadcasting in America during 2006 with parts of Europe adopting this standard during 2006 and 2007.
Fans of obscure spec sheets will have to wait until 2006 to discover the thrilling details of Frontier Silicon’s Kino 3 chip set, but we can inform you that it comprises of a state-of-the-art multi-standard baseband demodulator/decoder and multi-band (Band II, III, IV, V and L-band) RF tuner IC, and incorporates integrated microcontroller and memory. And possibly an onboard rear view dipstick.
Frontier Silicon
14 June, 2005
IE7 Adds Spyware Protection As Firefox Grows
Smarting daily from the soaring popularity of its upstart rival Firefox, Microsoft is hoping to stem the exodus by bolting on new security features to their next version of Internet Explorer browser.
According to Rob Franco, lead program manager for IE security at Microsoft, Internet Explorer 7 for Longhorn will contain a feature called “low rights IE”, designed to resist hijacking attempts by spyware and other malicious software.
The new feature effectively removes administrator rights, ensuring that unknown applications – like dodgy software, iffy code and lurking spyware – can’t be installed without express permission from the user.
“When users run programs with limited user privileges, they are safer from attack than when they run with administrator privileges, because Windows can restrict the malicious code from taking damaging actions”, wrote Franco in his personal blog.
“Any programs that the user downloads and runs will be limited by User Account Protection, unless the user explicitly gives the program administrator privileges”, he added.
The idea is that by restricting administrator rights for Web surfers, they’ll be protected even if they visit a bad bwoy website that tries to exploit vulnerabilities in their browser.
Without enough privileges to copy files to start-up folder, install software, hijack the browser’s homepage or search provider, the surfer should be protected.
Although IE7 will be made available for Windows XP SP2, the low rights browsing feature will be available only on the next version of Windows, known as Longhorn.
With Internet Explorer losing friends fast because of its unsavoury reputation as a honeypot for homepage hijackers and skulking spyware, these new security features can’t come too soon for Microsoft.
A new study by NetApplications revealed that Microsoft, the market leader, is fast losing ground to Firefox, with the open source browser now accounting for 8% of the global market; up from 7.38% in April.
The browser has eroded Microsoft’s market share by nearly one percentage, down to 87.23%, following month-on-month advances from Firefox.
Dan Shapero, the company’s chief operating officer commented that although Microsoft’s 87% share “may seem like market dominance,” the browser is suffering an average of 0.5 to 1% loss of users each and every month.
Shapero feels that Firefox is now appealing to a mainstream audience rather than early adopters and tech-savvy surfers: “FireFox is gaining traction with early adopters and its popularity and adoption rate are starting to tap into mass-market acceptance as buzz continues to build.”
“The message for Web masters is clear: Make sure your Web site is compatible with Firefox, because more and more of your visitors are using it to go to your Web site,” Shapero finger-wagged.
The only other browser to record significant gains is Apple’s Safari which extended its share by a tenth of a percentage.
Once Microsoft’s fiercest rival, Netscape is now humbled with a lamentable 1.64% market share, followed by Safari at 1.91% and Mozilla with 0.58%.
Microsoft Longhorn
NetApplications
14 June, 2005
Nokia And Apple Develop Series 60 Browser
Finnish mobile phone giants Nokia have launched a new Web browser for their Series 60 smartphones.
The browser was developed in partnership with Apple and uses the same open source components – WebCore and JavaScriptCore – that are used in Apple’s well-regarded Safari Internet browser.
The new Series 60 browser, based on KHTML and KJS from KDE’s “Konqueror” open source project, will let ambling Nokia mobile users enjoy “a rich Web browsing experience that takes full advantage of today’s fast wireless networks and advanced mobile devices”.
“Nokia is excited to enrich Series 60 with optimised mobile Web browsing. Open source software is an ideal basis for development since it enables Nokia to leverage and contribute to speedy software innovation and development. As a result, the entire Series 60 value chain, from manufacturers and operators to end-users, will benefit from the flexible architecture, full Web compliance and a truly enjoyable user experience,” enthused Pertti Korhonen, Chief Technology Officer, Nokia.
Web browsing on mobiles is a key money-spinner both for handset manufacturers, who need to keep producing punter-tempting feature-rich handsets, and for telecom operators who rely on revenues from mobile browsing.
With a Nokia-backed study among consumers declaring that over 50 percent of data traffic was generated by web browsing on mobiles, the quality of the handset’s browsing experience could become a critical purchasing factor.
Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing reckons the new browser is the dog’s nadgers: “The Safari Web Kit’s blazing performance, efficient code base and support for open standards make it an ideal open source technology for projects like Nokia’s new Series 60 browser.”
It seems that both Nokia and Apple enjoyed their mutual browser-based love in, with Nokia indicating that they intend to continue their collaboration and actively participate in the open source community.
The new Series 60 browser will be available to all Series 60 licensees during the first half of 2006.
Nokia
Series 60
13 June, 2005
Nokia Announce Seven New Phones
In a veritable orgy of mobile manufacturing, Nokia has launched a grand total of seven new handsets, including a dual camera 3G device and their most feature-rich CDMA phone yet.
Four of the models use the ‘Matrix-style’ sliding design, which features a keyboard which slides out from under the display.
The phones are powered by the somewhat elderly Series 40 user interface, although the latest version of the O/S cranks up the eye candy, adds a new “Active Standby” home screen and bundles in support for applications written in Macromedia Flash Lite.
The 3G multimedia-tastic 6280 is a compact WCDMA/EDGE sliding handset sporting a 320 x 240 pixel screen, a 2 megapixel camera (with a VGA front camera for video calls), a removable mini-SD card and a built-in FM radio. It’s expected to appear on the shelves in the fourth quarter 2005 for EUR375.
Next up is the 6270, a quadband 2.5G slide phone with a 2-megapixel camera. The phone has similar specs to its more expensive cousin, with the same size screen, music playback and a built-in FM radio. Price is estimated at EUR300.
The 6265 is Nokia’s most feature-rich CDMA phone, with a 2 megapixel camera – complete with flash – and 176×144 pixel resolution video recording. The Nokia 6265 can play streaming video of up to 15 frames per second, and offers music layback, Bluetooth and miniSD memory storage (up to 1 gigabyte).
CDMA (code division multiple access) is the world’s second most common mobile phone technology after GSM and Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia’s executive VP and GM for mobile phones, said the company were committed to growing its CDMA mobile business, particularly in Asia Pacific and China
“The growth prospects on the CDMA front are extremely encouraging. The CDMA market is expected to grow at pace with the overall handset market and the global CDMA handset volume is expected to increase by 10 to 15 percent year-on-year in 2005,” he said.
The last of the slider phones is the 6111, which has more than a passing resemblance to the hugely successful i-mate JAM phone, although the screen is much smaller at 128×160 pixels. The camera contains a 1-megapixel camera and 6x digital zoom and retails for around EUR270.
All of the slider phones are expected to ship in the fourth quarter.
Nokia have also announced two entry-level CDMA designs, the folding 2255 and the compact 2125 (due to ship in the fourth the third quarters, respectively) and the Nokia 6060, a GSM clamshell model for basic voice functions.
Nokia
13 June, 2005
Sony Announce Four New Phones
On the same day that Nokia went forth and multiplied with seven new phones, rivals Sony Ericsson announced four new handsets, aimed at increasing its presence in the low end and mid-market sectors.
Sony Ericsson K608i The K608i 3G handset employs Sony Ericsson’s now-familiar dual use format, with the phone being used vertically for calls and horizontally for taking pictures.
The 1.3 megapixel camera includes an active lens cover for swift activation, with video calls taken care of via a dedicated video telephony button.
There’s a reasonably large 1.8 inch 262k colour TFT screen onboard, and the K608 comes bundled with the usual suite of business applications, PIM and PC-synchronisation tools (via USB or Bluetooth).
Gameloft’s Vijay Singh Pro Golf 2005 comes preloaded with the phone in the hope that customers’ chequebooks will form a yawning chasm in the direction of Sony Ericsson’s Fun & Downloads portals.
There’s 32MB of memory space on the phone for shunting on ringtones, wallpapers, still shots and video footage, with a built in music player and FM radio taking care of multimedia.
Sony Ericsson S600
The all-swivelling Sony Ericsson S600 phone is claimed to be “ready to party” with features “to enhance the lifestyles of those who live their lives to the fullest”.
Like an expensive marital aid, the phone also promises “maximum fun and excitement in an ultra stylish package” according to Sony Ericsson. It almost makes you wary of putting it next to your ear.
The tri-band phone employs the same ‘jack-knife’ mechanism seen in last year’s S700, although there’s no ‘Mean Streets’ spring-action on offer, which kind of spoils the effect.
Inside, there’s 176×220 pixel, 1.8″ wide, 262 K colour TFT screen with two stereo loudspeakers and a MegaBass function enhancing the sound.
The S600 comes with 64MB of onboard memory, but sadly, there’s no memory card on offer – presumably it’s been left off so as to not compete with the higher spec’ed K750 model.
Gamers might be enticed by the S600’s widescreen mode which enables games to be played horizontally on screen. There’s also support for multi-player peer-2-peer gaming via Bluetooth.
Finishing off the package is Bluetooth and USB 2.0 connectivity, a 1.3 megapixel camera, NetFront web browser, 40-tone polyphonic alert and a RDS FM radio.
Sony Ericsson Z520
Described as possessing “cool curves in a smooth shell”, the Sony Ericsson Z520 is a compact quad-band phone “for the fashion conscious.”
With worrying sexual undertones, Sony Ericsson’s announcement salivates over the “smooth sleek body” of the clamshell which, apparently, creates “a small and inviting handset” with the added bonus of an illuminated “rim of blue lights” (stop tittering at the back).
“The new Z520 is specifically designed for the stylish younger generation, particularly young women, who want to carry an attractive accessory just as much as a mobile communications device,” purred Jan Wareby, Corporate Executive, Vice President and Head of Sales and Marketing of Sony Ericsson.
Flipped open, the twin-display phone offers a 1.8″ 128 x 160 pixel, 65k colour, TFT main screen, supported by a 101 x 80 pixel, colour secondary display on the outside.
The phone supports Bluetooth, music playback, SMS, e-mail, video/photo MMS and web browsing.
In keeping with its intended audience, the Z520 can be accessorised with covers in Pale Blue, Sandy Grey, Ceramic White, Espresso Brown, Peach, Mint, Pale Yellow and Pale Pink. But no Death Metal Black.
Sony Ericsson J210
Last and, quite frankly, least is the J210, a no-frills, bargain basement handset, aimed at “practical phoners who value simplicity and reliability” according to Jan Wareby, Sony Ericsson’s Corporate Executive Vice President & Head of Sales and Marketing.
The tri-band handset offers a basic set of features with a near-microscopic 600KB of user memory onboard.
Sony Ericsson
13 June, 2005
Resco Photo Viewer For Pocket PC Review
These days, a smartphone/PDA isn’t worth sniffing at unless it comes with a built in camera and a shedload of internal/external memory for storing mobile snaps on.
With many devices now sporting expansion card slots capable of storing hundreds of pics, Resco is hoping that their Photo Viewer application will prove an invaluable organisational and editing tool for keen mobile snappers.
The program – available in various flavours on the Windows Mobile, Windows Smartphone, Windows CE, Palm and Symbian operating systems – offers an easy way to browse, edit and organise photographs, set up user-defined albums, watch MPEG1 movies and slide shows and view received faxes.
For super-sleek execs out to score swotty points, it’s even possible to run a business presentation from a Pocket PC by connecting a VGA card to a projector and running a PowerPoint presentation directly from Resco Photo Viewer.
Installing the program on an i-mate JAM Pocket PC 2003 phone was simplicity itself, with a double click on the downloaded .exe file transferring the software to the handheld via ActiveSync.
When you install the Pocket PC program, there’s also an option to install the Resco Album Generator on your desktop PC – this program lets you create photo albums ON your desktop and then have the pictures and the album information transferred to your handheld device on the next sync.
Before firing up the program, Photo Viewer asks which file formats it should open by default, with tick boxes offering an impressive selection of formats: MPEG1, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, MS PowerPoint (converted by Desktop Album Generator), BMP, CFX, PCX, GIF, RAB, RAW, PGM, PPM and even PSD, Photoshop’s native format.
Once up and running, the program’s ‘home page’ presents users with the choice to open a photo album, browse a folder, browse a memory card, open the last viewed image, pull up the help files or have a rummage around the options on offer.
When it comes to options, Resco certainly haven’t short-changed their customers, with a multitude of tabs, tick boxes and drop down menus letting users set up the application the way they like it.
Once I’d tweaked, twiddled and fiddled the app to my heart’s desire, I was happy to find that browsing photos with the Photo Viewer was a pleasingly nippy experience, with a selection of thumbnail display options popping up on-screen in double quick time.
Clicking on a thumbnail bought up a large preview image, while clicking again resulted in a full screen picture, automatically orientated for the screen, Very fast and very smooth. Nice.
In full screen mode, the keypad can be used to scroll through picture collections manually, or users with tired fingers can set up a slide show and choose from a selection of transition fades and effects.
It’s also possible to add sound (WAV, MP3) and text annotations to each image or set background music to a slide show.
Usefully, the program also offers basic image editing tools, with users able to tweak brightness, contrast and gamma RGB values and resize and crop images to specified pixel sizes – great for mobile bloggers wanting to trim images down for uploading.
For snap-happy camera-phone photographers, bloggers or folks who just like to carry around lots of photos on their mobile device, Resco Photo Viewer is an ideal product, offering fast browsing and viewing tools in a straightforward interface.
With a comprehensive feature set wrapped up in an attractive interface, Resco Photo Viewer represents excellent value at just US$25 (~£13.70~€20.50). We like it. Highly recommended.
(5/5)
Resco Photo Viewer
13 June, 2005