Mobile

Things that aren’t static

Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0 Beta Released
Yahoo! has launched a beta version of Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0, a customisable mobile search application designed to help users find stuff fast.
Employing a carousel-style interface, the application comes with Yahoo! Go ‘widgets’ offering e-mail, local information and maps, news, sports, finance, entertainment, weather, photo sharing and search functionality.
New for version two is Yahoo! oneSearch, a new mobile search service designed to give fast answers to perambulating punters.
Yahoo claims that oneSearch can recognise the ‘intent’ of a search term and present relevant content on the results page and not just a stream of links.
Yahoo! Go also makes it easy to get to other websites, without the need to faff about with al that fiddly http://www stuff – just type in the name of a website and you’ll be taken to the site.
The included Local & Maps widget looks to take on Google’s marvellous mobile mapping application and offers speedy access to interactive maps, driving directions and real time traffic updates, backed by local business directory information across the US, with ratings and reviews from the Yahoo! community.
Users can input their location and get relevant info, with local guides offering updated ‘what’s on’ listings with details of popular places to nosh, shop and visit.
News, Sports, Entertainment, Weather and Finance info can accessed via various widgets, with the ability to add new content via customised RSS feeds.
There’s also a Flickr widget to let users upload and manage snaps from their camera phone.
The Yahoo! Go 2.0 beta can be downloaded from their site, with support for over 70 other mobile devices, but not Palm (*shakes fist).
Yahoo! To Go
10 January, 2007
Apple Fans Are Nuts. The iPhone Launch Proves It
OK, we all know the details now. Apple are releasing a phone – and it’s a looker. Hurrah.
For anyone who has the slightest interest in technology, this isn’t shocking given their track record.
What we found strange watching the video of the iPhone event, even disturbing, was the reaction of the audience.
For an English, or perhaps more widely, a non-American audience, the reaction of the crowd at the MacWorld event is odd – religious even.
As Ryan Block of Engadget said when covering the event live
10:29 – People are rapt, everyone is actually literally leaning forward and on the edge of their seat. We’ve never seen a presentation like this before.
There’s a huge imbalance here.
Let’s try and get some perspective on this – these are just products. Objects that you buy and use.
Yes the phone looks great; Yes rumours of it have been circulating for years and the anticipation was high; Yes the usage of the phone looks well thought out – but it it just a phone.
The reaction of the crowd is as if The Steve was announcing a significant medical break through, or the end of a war.
Strangely, the most enthusiastic reaction from the crowd was before any of the details of this were known, it was just after the mention that they would be releasing a phone.
Apple is a master at PR, so a lot of this excitement has been managed … and it’s been built up for a long time – all designed for a reaction like this. And judging by the recording of the event, it’s worked well.
10 January, 2007
Nokia N800 Internet Tablet Announced
Nokia has announced an update to their 770 Nseries widget in the shape of the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, which comes decked out in a natty industrial chrome look.
Sporting a high resolution display, Nokia say that the tablet has been “optimised for enjoying the familiar Web experience anytime, anywhere,” and comes with support for internet calling, instant messaging and email.
Naturally, the thing’s stuffed full of multimedia gadgetry with stereo audio, media support and the ability to enjoy streamed content as you amble around your ~~Tower Hamlets bedsit~~ Hollywood-like mansion.
Boasting faster performance than its predecessor, the N800 comes with a full screen finger QWERTY keyboard (but not a proper pull-out hardware keyboard), easier connectivity via Wi-Fi or a Bluetooth phone, an integrated web camera packed up into a sleek new streamlined design.
Software wise, Nokia are claiming “Internet enhanced navigation” with Navicore, support for RealNetworks’ Rhapsody music service and a deal with Skype to let users make Internet calls from Nokia N800s. They added VoIP support to the 770 back in May last year. It was GTalk at the time.
“As the Internet becomes an ever more integral part of daily life, Nokia
N800 has been designed to offer quick and convenient access to your favourite Internet services regardless of location,” insisted Ari Virtanen, Vice President, Convergence Products, Multimedia, Nokia.
“The Nokia N800 takes our offering to the next level combining speed, performance and mobility into a stylish, compact design,” he added, nearly running out of superlatives.
The Nokia N800 Internet Tablet runs on Nokia’s desktop Linux based Operating System and should be available immediately in the US and Europe for around 399 EUR/USD (around 250 quid).
Nokia N800
8 January, 2007
SCH-V960: Samsung ‘Optical Joystick’ Phone Launched
Samsung has launched what it claims is the first mobile phone in the known universe to come with an optical joystick.
You may be wondering why you’d want one of those in the first place, but Samsung clearly thinks it’s on to a winner with its new SCH-V960 ‘Optical Joystick’ Phone.
As ever, Samsung have thoughtfully included a photo of some hotty demonstrating the joys of the optical interface, showing her little digit poised over the handset’s control.
Moving your digit over this control moves a cursor around the screen, just like a mouse about on a grown up PC.
The boffins at Samsung reckon that this will give users nippier access to frequently used menus and make it easy to skip through music track listings.
Weighing a pocket-pleasing 102g, the V960 is a fully fledged phone too, coming with a 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, GPS, microSD memory slot and a sizeable 2.12-inch 240×320 262K colour TFT screen.
The slide-open phone also comes with an illumination sensor which automatically controls the brightness of the LCD screen and keypad, so you won’t be dazzled if the phone goes off in the middle of the night.
Kitae Lee, President of Samsung’s Telecommunication and Network Business was well chuffed with the new interface, “As the importance of user-friendly interface increases, Samsung is researching and developing methods that enhances intuitive use of mobile phones. Samsung will continue to combine innovative ideas and the latest technology that will benefit our end users.”
Coming in black and white versions, the V960 will be launched in the Korean market at the end of this year but – as ever- there’s ne’er a hint from Messrs and Missuses Samsung as to whether us Limeys will be getting a slice of the optical action.
Samsung SCH V960 Optical Joystick phone. How does it work? [unwired]
21 December, 2006
Sidekick 3: UK T-Mobile Launch
T-Mobile UK has announced the launch of the T-Mobile Sidekick 3, the number one accessory for users who can’t get enough of email and instant messaging on the move.
Already a huge hit in the States, the pocket-filling 131mm x 59mm x 23mm (5.2″ x 2.3″ x .9″) Sidekick comes with a flip out display which displays a full QWERTY keyboard and a large 65k colour, transflective TFT display supporting a 240×160 pixel resolution.
Sporting a trackball that lights up like a Christmas tree, the phone also packs a 1.3 Megapixel digital camera with LED flash and a media player for MP3 playback, supported by a mini-SD card slot for storing up to 2GB of music and party photo files.
Jet-setting socialites will appreciate its tri-band support (850/900/1800MHz), enabling them to keep up their vital text messaging on both sides of the pond, with EDGE offering extra nippy Web surfing.
The phone offers MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger connectivity, with support for up to 10 simultaneous active IM conversations. Perfect for teenagers!
The GSM Sidekick also comes with Bluetooth connectivity 1.2 for wireless headsets and vCard transfer and 64MB of SDRAM/64MB Flash memory.
The Sidekick is being offered with T-Mobile’s excellent web’n’walk unlimited data tariff for £7.50 per month in addition to a voice plan.
T-Mobile
Sidekick 3 (hugely over the top Flash promo site)
20 December, 2006
MySpace Mobile Announced For Cingular
MySpace and Cingular Wireless have pressed the flesh and announced an exclusive partnership to offer enhanced MySpace functionality to all Cingular mobile users.
The deal, MySpace’s biggest-ever mobile partnership, gives users on Cingular’s network the ability to post photos and blogs, access and edit MySpace profiles, view and add friends and send and receive MySpace messages.
The functionality is provided through a downloadable MySpace Mobile application for Cingular handsets, which lets users select photos taken or stored on their mobile devices and then upload them to their MySpace profile.
Fearful of yet more law suits from The Man, MySpace has already pointed out that the same terms of service apply to the mobile service, with inappropriate content and copyrighted material strictly verboten.
Cingular users will be able to read and reply to their MySpace messages as well as view and manage friend requests (let’s hope the interface is an improvement on the hideous full web version).
MySpace Mobile also lets users post to their MySpace blogs when they’re on the move, as well as add friends to a contact list for quick bookmarking.
All this fun won’t come for free though, with the service charging a $2.99 per month premium (plus standard data usage charges, which could turn out to be considerable if the user isn’t on an unlimited data deal).
Back in March, Cingular and MySpace first teamed up to create the MySpace Mobile Alerts service, which sends out text alerts to mobiles when the user receives a MySpace message or update.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the service has already notched up 75 million alerts which suggests the new service should be a veritable cash-spinner.
Cingular
19 December, 2006
gPhone: Google/Orange Phone Set To Take On Apple iPhone?
According to a report in yesterday’s Observer, Google has been cosying up to mobile giants Orange with a multi-billion-dollar plan to knock out a ‘Google phone,’ offering easy Web searches on the move.
The branded Google phone is expected to be manufactured by the Taiwanese smartphone/PDA makers, HTC, and come with a screen similar in size to a video iPod.
The phone will come with optimized Google software designed to speed up the notoriously cumbersome task of surfing and searching the Web on a handheld device, and offer mobile versions of Google applications such as Google Earth, Gmail and Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
Palm Treo users will already be familiar with some of these programs with the superb Google Maps for Treo application scoring full marks in our recent review.
The Observer reported that the phone could access Google’s databases to offer a wealth of location-based searches, including personalised listings of local cinemas, restaurants and other amenities, and maps and images from Google Earth.
Rumours of the Google/Orange partnership come as expectations of an Apple iPhone announcement are reaching fever pitch, with one Website suggesting that the leaking of the story could just be a cunning ruse to steal the thunder of an imminent Apple announcement.
The future for Orange could soon be Google in your pocket (Observer)
18 December, 2006
DRM-Interchange Alive And Living In Korea
As we’ve been covering for ages, Korea is super forward in many things electronic.
Now they’re leading in their treatment of DRM – making different DRM schemes interchangeable.
DRM systems are used to restrict what people can do with their digital media, normally audio and video. This pleases the content owners considerably, but consumers are finding it frustrating that media they are buying on one service will not play on all of their portable music players – eg music bought on iTunes cannot play on a non-iPod player.
By making DRM system interchangeable, the hope is that everyone remains happy – the content owner, because the content stays ‘protected’ by the DRM and the consumer because they have the freedom to move it to any playing device they have.
The Koreans are achieving this by the EXIM standard for online and mobile music service. EXIM stands for Export/Import which was developed Korea’s Electronic & Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) and INKA Entworks. It should be wide reaching as up to 90% of online music sites and 70% of portable music devices deployed in Korea at the moment use DRM solutions based on the EXIM standard.
What differentiates the Korean mobile music market is that all phones sold since 2003 have a USB connector, which is used to transfer music they download via their computers, to their mobiles. This is sometimes called sideloading.
SK Telecom, the largest mobile provider in Korea as finally agreed to open up their handsets and service to allow music from third party services to be used. Until now only content authorised by SK could be loaded onto their phones.
James Ahn, CEO of INKA Entworks, was clearly excited at the prospect, “SK Telecom’s decision to implement the EXIM standard is an important milestone because of its dominant position in the mobile phone services and online music services markets. We’re happy to have SK Telecom as a partner.”
ETRI
INKA
13 December, 2006
Napster Mobile: O2 Ireland Is First
O2 Ireland has become the first European mobile operator to offer Napster Mobile.
Napster Mobile lets people search, browse, preview and purchase content from Napster’s 2.2m+ track music catalogue.
The service is launching on O2’s 3G i-mode handsets with the hope that non i-mode handsets should be available by March 2007 on O2 Active.
From the beginning of next year O2 Ireland customers will also be able to access a copy of their mobile downloads on their personal computers giving them the flexibility of having their music downloads both on the go and at the PC, all from one universally recognised music brand.
One of the difficulties with moving a service like Napster from the large PC screen to a mobile handset could be the restrictions of the screen size. To alleviate the problems of navigating such a large number of tracks, the new Napster Mobile service also features a recommendation engine which makes content recommendations based on each customer’s personal taste in music. Nice.
Waking up to consumers demands, users of the service will also be able to access tracks that they purchase on the mobiles, on their PCs, from the beginning of next year.
Ericsson is powering the backend of the service – an interesting change from Nokia, who normally provide the technology to do this.
O2 has spend a considerable amount of money tying themselves to music, attempting to benefit from all of the ‘cool’ that it can bring. You only have to witness the party they threw at IFA last year to understand how successfully they’ve been with it – it was definitely the best party at IFA, rammed full of young things gyrating.
The service is already running at NTT DoCoMo in Japan (also i-mode), SunCom Wireless and Cingular in the US. Plans for further European operator are being finalised, with Portugal expecting to be the next.
O2 Ireland
Napster UK
13 December, 2006
BT Text Aid Track With Tom Baker
It’s good to see people aren’t forgetting charity at this time of year. In the UK BT are doing their bit by offering a track for sale, whose proceeds will go to the homeless charity, Shelter.They’ve got two offerings.
The first, Text Aid, as BT are labelling it, uses the dulcet tones of actor Tom Baker (he of Dr Who fame) to read text messages that are sent from mobiles to land-lines. The service will run from today (1.Dec) until 8 January 2007.
BT will donate 2p for each text sent – they say this is the money they make after costs have been removed.
Given behaviour in previous years, Xmas and New Year are the busiest time of the year for people texting festive ditties to each other.
We await the many quotes from Dr Who fans, probably featuring references to K9 and Sarah Jane, to be delivered to our landline.
The other offering also uses the velvety voice of Tom Baker, but this time as part of an updated version of the Kinks track, “You’ve really got me.” Tom speaks the words while a disco’d version of the track bumps along in the background.
It might not be our normal listening habits, but it’s for charridy for goodness sakes. The track was made by Mark Murphy, 34, a self-employed IT consultant and Dr Who fanatic.
With his typical humour Tom Baker said: “I’m delighted to have been asked back by BT as the voice of text-to-landline. It’s rather like being Santa Claus, delivering all your festive greetings – I only wish I could hear what I’m saying!
It can be pre-ordered from today on 7Digital and will generally be avilable on services like eMusic and iTunes from 18 December. Cost? A mere 79p.
This time all money will go to Shelter. They’re hoping to raise £100,000 from the whole jolly affair.
As you’d expect Shelter are planning to use the money raised wisely as Adam Sampson, chief executive of Shelter explained, “The £100,000 donation will allow us to fund an awareness-raising campaign in primary and secondary schools during 2007 as well as supporting frontline services to help vulnerable children and young people cope with housing problems.”
Do some good over xmas and pop over to Text Aid or place your order for the track at the Indie store.
1 December, 2006