Mobile

Things that aren’t static

Virgin Media Sign Mobile/Broadband UK Football Deal
As we all know Virgin Media and Sky TV have been having a little spat.
Now Virgin Media are taking a leaf out of Sky’s book and signing up rights to distribute sports.
The Football League have signed a deal that will see the Coca-Cola Football League matches will be delivered to Virgin Media’s broadband and mobile phone platforms for the first time.
Starting on 11 August and running for two seasons, the highlights of league 1 and 2 will be available to watch on-demand for up to one week after transmission.
No surprisingly, Malcolm Wall, chief executive officer of content at Virgin Media, earnestly sang, “We’re committed to investing in great content for our customers and this new partnership will give football fans a genuinely value-added service.”
The Championship, as it’s abbreviated to by those who follow it, is the step down from the UK Premier League, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a load of cash involved with it. Deloitte are on record as finding that, in 2004-05, it was the richest non-top flight football division in the world.
Why?
No matter how poor, or not, football teams are, they do a very loyal fans, so much so that making their matches available on on-demand may encourage people to change their mobile or broadband provider. Or that’s the bet that Virgin Media are making.
Commercial terms were not disclosed.
6 July, 2007
Fake iPhone From China: Video
Darn clever those Chinese. Not only have they copied the iPhone, but they went and did it _before_ the iPhone was released – this video dates back to 10 May.
The branding it a little confused, sometimes tPhone, other iPhone, but it looks very similar, even down to the much-publicised ‘green balls’ wallpaper.
Now the actual iPhone is out, we can only imagine the quality of the copies that are being bundled into boxes and making their way over to all corners of the world.
With the change of approach to IPR from the Chinese government – they now see their future as a creative nation, so want to protect ideas – copy products like this will be a thing of the past.
Video after the jump
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6 July, 2007
T-Mobile iPhone European Deal? Official “No Comment”
Where does the insanity of the iPhone coverage go now? The US hoopla is over, so the media needs another hook, and today sees it heighten – the battle of the European operators to have the exclusive for the iPhone.
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4 July, 2007
Nokia HF-300 Speakerphone Announced
Nokia, king of mobile phones, has announced a Speakerphone, the HF-300.
It’s a functional-looking device that isn’t going to set the catwalk-goers alight with whoops of joy.
They’ve done well in reducing the number of buttons to three on the battery-powered device, with two of those being volume controls. They’ve even missed off a power button, as it switches itself off when it’s not being used.
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4 July, 2007
iPhone Give 55% Margin Say iSupply: Apple Share Rise
iSupply did one of their usual Teardown’s on the Apple iPhone, estimating that they are on a 55% margin for each 8Gb phone that they sell.
The Teardown involves taking new consumer devices apart, as soon as they’re released, and working out how much they cost manufacturers to build and therefore how much profit – or loss – the sale of each device brings.
Such is the influence of iSupply these days, the news of the very healthy margin appeared to cause a rise in the value of Apple’s shares, up 4.9%.
The bill of materials and manufacturing costs totalled $265.83, with the iPhone selling for $599.
Given the close-to-lunatic media coverage (you’ll have noticed that we’ve been rather restrained, if not a little dismissive of the madness), we suspect that there’ll be triples all around at Apple’s 1 Infinite Loop office and some big celebrations over the 4 July holiday in the US today.
iSupply
4 July, 2007
Apple iPhone Launch Goes Hyperbolic
The most over-hyped event in the history of consumer electronics offered plenty of troubling insights into what happens when over-excited tech geeks come into contact with the object of their lust.
Starting with a mass public countdown on the street, the iPhone Launch TV channel coverage showed slavering first buyers for the iPhone gleefully charging into Apple’s New York Soho store and being treated like celebrities, with their every move being captured by banks of photographers and cameraman.
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2 July, 2007
Apple iPhone 2 Spotted
On the eve of the most hysterical launch known to mankind – the Apple iPhone (exceeding even the heavily spent-on Windows XP launch), we have an exclusive the Apple iPhone II.
I know it sounds crazy, but we just stumbled over it while at the RCA 2007 show.
While looking at the work of Alan Outten, we came across one of his projects, No Robots Please!
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28 June, 2007
Taking Gadgets To Glastonbury Festival (Part 2/2)
In Part One, we gave you the run down of what gadgets we decided to take along to Glastonbury 2007, now you can find out how we got on with them.
How the gadgets fared (more…)
28 June, 2007
Two Thousand Trees Festival, Mobile Tickets By TixMob
‘Green’ festival uses mobile tickets to save the world.
With the glorious … or was it gory-est … Glastonbury out of the way for at least another year (as well as the BBC’s over-coverage), the other festivals around the UK now have a chance of getting their messages out that 1) They’re on, 2) that they have everything that you heart desires.
Getting a new festival going these days is pretty hard as so many people are trying to do the same, realising that live music is where-it’s-at as people generally become ever-more atrophied by recorded music.
New festival, Two Thousand Trees, have a very ‘now’ idea, labeling it as a festival for ethical music fans – and a very worthy one it is in our book too. Beyond this they also have a much-to-be-supported goal of “not ripping people off and making sure everyone has an awesome time at our lovely festival.” Long may this ethos last.
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26 June, 2007
YouTube On iPhone: H.284 Encoded
With just over a week until the ~~whole of humanity is saved and we shall never have to worry about disease again~~ launch of the iPhone in the US, Apple have let it be known that they have been getting even closer to YouTube.
YouTube have been busily re-encoding lots of their videos to H.264 and the Apple iPhone (aka Mankind’s Saviour) will be the first phone to make use of them. The advantages to Apple is PR (You’re reading this) and the playback of H.264 should be more battery efficient, as it doesn’t need the whole of a Flash player to render the videos on the handset.
Over 10,000 video will be available on the 29 June (iPhone day) with all of the other videos following suit, it’s expected, by Autumn (Fall) this year.
By way of a lovely tie-up, it’s also the day that sees the YouTube on Apple TV go live – after they do the download update to their little boxes.
21 June, 2007