SPB Mobile Shell is here…… V2

Picture the Scene in Mobilitysite Towers…

[Important announcement comming in for Psionandy… SPB Mobile Shell 2.0 is here]

What… It’s here…. 2.0 is here. Well I liked the old version but it it was a bit big, slow and didn’t really play that well with Pocket Plus.

Still I’ll just have a look before I put the news story up on mobilitysite..

 

(several hours later)

Oh My… I love this.. It’s a really nice UI for phone devices, (and other devices too) which is fast, well designed, has a nice WOW factor and Isn’t a pale imitation of that iPhone thingy..

Better post the press release I suppose so I can carry on playing with it..

Here we go.. details after the break

Spb Mobile Shell product page:
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/mobileshell/
[Read more]

Bluetooth Stereo headphones… only 10 quid!

Last year I thought i’d got a fantastic bargain… A pair of Jabra 320S bluetooth stereo headphones for £20.

 

This year you can go £10 better and get a pair of A2DP stereo earbuds (which you can plug your own headphones into) for only £10 including delivery.

Bluetooth compliance: Bluetooth 1.2 supporting A2DP and AVRCP profiles, headset (HSP) and hands-free (HFP) profiles Supported Bluetooth profiles: Handsfree (default) and Headset Bluetooth profiles.

 

• Supported special features: Pair with up to 8 devices, Answer calls, End calls, Reject calls, Voice dialing, Last number redialing, Call waiting, Place call on hold and Mute.
• Standard 3.5 mm plug to connect with your favourite headphones
• Phone and Music remote control in one clothing clip
• 2 different wearing styles: integrated clothing clip and lanyard carrying strap

Operating range: Up to 10 metres (30 feet)

• Talk time/music streaming: Up to 6h (subject to phone)
• Stand-by time: Up to 160h
• Charging time: Approximately 2 hour

For full details pop over to the Orange website

http://www.orangeaccessories.co.uk/bt320_stereo_bluetooth_headset.html

Iphone… Ireland… March..I4

 

If you’re in Ireland and

1. Are still excited about owning an iPhone
2. Haven’t got one of the millions of unlocked iPhones
3. Don’t mind paying O2 Ireland a lot more money than people are paying O2 UK

Then today is a good news day for you….

The Important details are

8 gig €399,16GB for €499.

Tariffs range from €45 for 175 minutes to €100 for 700 minutes, and all plans include 1GB of data

And you can find the full details at http://www.o2online.ie/wps/wcm/connect/O2/Home/Shop/Phones/iPhone/Find+out+more

Source: Engadget

Battery free MP3 player…. Spotted by Ma Psionandy

I was at a family party at the weekend, when my Mum said ‘Did you see the advert in The Times today about that new gadget’. She couldn’t remember the details but it did everything, got wound up and never needed batteries.  This was a surprise to me for a couple of reasons. Firstly it was a novel enough idea to get my Mum interested in it, and secondly I had no idea what she was talking about.

Well after a phone call today, she told me that it was called the Eco Media player and comes from Britain’s favourite inventor Trevor Baylis

[Read more]

Stephen Fry and the case of the Glofish…

Stephen Fry is a writer, actor, and all round clever chap. He’s also one of those people who’s opinion i’m interested in on just about any subject. That’s not to say that I agree with him on everything, but I know that his opinion is likely to be entertaining, informed and likely to get the brain working.

 

His latest string to the multi-stranded crossbow is a column in the Guardian newspaper,  called Dork Talk,  where he talks about various technology thingys that take his fancy.  He’s previously confessed to be a well informed smartphone junky, And today he’s looking at the Glofish x800 pocket pc phone.

 

I’ve often said that by definition it’s impossible to have the perfect PDA, and I’m happy to read that Stephen agrees…

Chasing the perfect smartphone is a frustrating game. This one is perfect but it doesn’t have Wi-Fi, that one would be ideal if only it had GPS. The other is OK but isn’t 3G. Aha, this is it! Oh bother, it can’t do video calls. And so on. Not that I actually need all those features, it’s just that for us Knights of the smartphone Grail the terms of the quest demand the One Device That Has It All.

 

But has he found his holy grail… is his quest over… will there be another smartphone column from him ever again????

 

Read all about it here

CBE for ARM CR8TOR

Stephen Furber has been recognised in the Queen’s New year honours list, and now becomes a CBE (Commander of the British Empire).  For those born in the UK,  the best known pieces of technology he worked on were the Acorn and BBC Microcomputer… But the rest of the world would be far more impressed by the fact that he was a designer of the ARM microprocessor

Yes THAT ARM microprocessor… the granddaddy of the ones that power Axims, Ipaqs, PSPs, Playstation 3, Video Camera’s and er… a little unknown device called the iPhone.

http://www.arm.com/markets/holidaygifts/index.html

Speaking in a BBC interview he said…

"The success story of the ARM is one that has built slowly but steadily," he said.

The first ARM chips came off the production line on the 26 April 1985.

"It was 10 years before it really started to emerge as a global success story and probably 15 years before it was recognised as such," he said.

And he’s now busy using them to build computers that model the human brain…

The machine, nicknamed the "brain box", is designed to eventually contain one million ARM processors.

"We are using ARMs like we were using transistors 20 years ago," he said. Although the finished machine will pack a huge amount of processing power, it will still only model around 1% of the human brain, or around one billion neurons.

Source: BBC

Bad night for Apple in the UK

With iPhone sales slowing in the US, tonight was going to herald glorious sales in the UK, as the iPhone was launched by O2 and the Carphone warehouse (on O2).

Except it went badly

The planned queues of people never happened. And it didn’t get any better. After just one hour of sales the number of staff in the two branches of Carphone warehouse in Liverpool was more than the number of customers there. And they were customers who were looking rather than buying. The cash register was very quiet.

One poor sole was dressed up as Mowbli (right) in an attempt to attract peoples attention, while others tried to drag anyone into the store to just look at the iPhones. Huge stacks of leaflets went unused.

A CPW staff member later said that their target for the night had been halved to 36 at the last minute, although he didn’t think it had been reached. ‘I really hope tomorrow is better, it has to be’ he said.

The O2 store in Liverpool city center looked a bit better, with the number of people in it looking like an average Wednesday afternoon. But again not many people seemed to be leaving the store with carrier bags.

If this is reflected around the country then both Apple and O2 are in serious trouble… and may have  to change the whole iPhone business model

The Archers…. the world’s oldest, newest Podcast

For some people all I need to say is Dum Di Dum Di Dum Di Dum,

The worlds longest running soap opera has just joined the revolution that is podcasting. The Archers started in 1950 and has been running every week day ever since, clocking up  over 15,000 episodes.  Today over 1 million people worldwide listen to it on the Internet via the streamed ‘listen again service’ But now I can hear it on my Pocket PC through the combination of Newsbreak and the RSS feed.

(and I think its on iTunes too for you pod people)

All together now…

 

Dum-di-Dum didum didum, Dum-di-Dum di Dum dumm.

 

The RSS feed can be found at http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/archers/rss.xml

More details here

Whatever happened to SpiralFrog

About a year ago, an internet company threatened to turn the digital music scene on its head by giving away free music. Unlike the mighty iTunes SpiralFrog was going to be completely free but supported by advertising. They even said they had signed deals with Vivendi Universal for content to for the US and Canada…

 

Since then, SpiralFrog has seen its original executive team walk out and is eight months behind a self-imposed deadline for launching a Web site.

Providing free music has proved to be a pricey proposition for the New York company. To secure its licensing deal with Universal, SpiralFrog initially paid $2.2 million and since had to pony up an additional $1 million. Since signing that agreement with Universal, SpiralFrog has failed to land another major label. A spokesman for Universal declined to comment.

 

And with no customers… things are looking tough. Maybe Apple had it right all along

 

Source: CNET

Kaiser aka Vodafone v1615

Ok chaps…. and chappess… welcome to the Vodafone mobile phone range planning meeting. Now the first item on the Agenda is the HTC Kaiser. What shall we call it? HTC are going to sell it as the TyTnII, AT&T may be calling it the Tilt. And our spies say the blokes at T-Mobile are going to call it the VarioIII.

Now what we need is a super sexy name, that not only says what it is, but includes it’s major points and makes everyone want to come and buy it from us, any ideas? nobody? come on we need to sort this out? What’s that you say Jenkins? the v1615? well it doesn’t sound sexy, but  if it means we can leave a bit early and go down the pub…..

http://www.vodafonebusinessshop.co.uk/Details-Phone-Vodafone-v1615-2964.html

Astraware on the Foleo…

When Palm’s Folio was killed off last week, most people were surprised… some (including our own Citanic) were thankful that they’d put it out of it’s misery.

However, to be fair, nobody here at Mobilitysite had any real experience with the device at all… and apart from curiosity we had no investment in it at all. So imagine what it was like if you were a top Palm developer, and you found out at the same time as the rest of us.

Astraware were in that exact position, and their blog explains what happened. They  clearly liked the device, the idea, software development tools, and the support they got from the folio team… and it doesn’t sound like they’ve been soured by the experience…  And you can bet, when the new palm os comes out (if it’s PalmOSII or ALP) then they’ll come out with some great software for it.

 

it came as quite a shock yesterday when we heard that Palm had canceled the Foleo. It took a few minutes to sink in, but in the end we came to a conclusion: it was a brave move to make, and if the market feedback wasn’t overwhelmingly positive then Palm being distracted from its core smartphone market trying to convince them about a new type of product was probably going to damage them in the long run.

That said, we are sad to see it go, and hope that it will be back some time. Being a PDA and smartphone company Palm had come up with the best integrated and most power-efficient Linux device I’ve seen anywhere. I did find the lack of a wi-fi accessible email client strange, but what it did it did very well, with good office applications, a nice photo viewer and a decent web browser combined with easy to use wi-fi.

Read the full story on the Astraware Blog here

Oh, bop, do do do do do do do do Fa-fa-fa-fa-fashion

Welcome to “silly songs with Psionandy”.., the part of Mobilitysite where Psionandy sings a silly song.

Due to a mix-up between my MP3 player and my RSS reader, today’s news will be in the form of a song.. (with Apologies to David Bowie)

There’s some brand new phones
and you’ll all know their names

(Designer Ted Baker, Samsung, Carphone warehouse and HTC to team up to make Windows mobile fashion phones)

That people with no sense
Buy again and again

(Carphone warehouse to get exclusive rights to the Levi Phone for 3 months. £300 sim free. and nothing special about it apart from the label)

They’re big and they’re tasteless
Those fake Ipods this year

Following leaked photos of a faked fat Ipod Nano. Uniea has come up with a range of cases for the device that Apple say doesn’t exist.

They sell them over there, but we can’t buy them here
(and speaking of unloved MP3 players.. Still no Zune for Europe)

Fashion! Turn to the left

(Swarovski headphones and Flash drives anyone?)

Fashion! Turn to the right
(Nicole Richie leaves jail with her Blackberry)

Oooh, fashion!
(LG WM6 Prada 2 could land in the UK before the iPhone)

We are the phone squad
and we’re coming to town
(It’s the IFA consumer Electronics show in Berlin)

Beep-beep
Beep-beep
Listen to me - don’t listen to me
Text to me - don’t talk to me
(insert joke about Naomi Campbell and mobile phone here)

Dance with me - don’t dance with me, no
(From today, Westminster City Council will use Bluetooth technology to send a message about the dangers of Soho’s notorious clubs to the owners of mobile phones or BlackBerrys who wander within a 30-metre radius of three venues.)

Beep-beep

Tune in Next week to hear Psionandy sing… “Lets Dance… Pick up your Smartphone and Dance”

Sources: Jason Langridge, Yahoo, Mobile today, Celebrity blackberry sightings, Tech Digest: Daily Mail Pocket Lint, The Register, Gear digest , Slashgear:

How much is that Aibo in the Window…..

… I do hope that Aibo’s for sale

Rumors that Toyota were about to buy the famous Sony dog were denied by Sony today. It was rumored that Toyota wanted the technology as a means of competing against Honda’s robotics division.

Despite having closed down the Aibo Puppy farm, and having no immediate plans for the K-9, Sony want to keep the technology in their dog basket.

Source: Akihabaranews

Scott Adams’s dream GPS Camera

In my News reader, I have a folder reserved for ‘GOLD’ class blogs. Between the Aximsite and  Mobilitysite feeds is The Dilbert Blog and its associated rss feed, which is ALWAYS worth reading.

Today, His Scott-ness has come up with a corker of an idea for a digital camera, which I’d buy in an instant if I could.

It goes something like this.

1. Take Digital camera and add GPS unit to tag all photos with GPS location
2. When photo is uploaded on your computer it loads them onto a Google map type backdrop to form a digital scrapbook
3. It would also tie into credit card details of what he purchased
4. With some facial recognition software to identify the people in the software we’d then have everything it needs for step 5

And Step 5 is

Automatically labeling your photographs for you as it files them in your online digital scrapbook.

let’s say you take a picture of a family member standing in front of the hotel where you are staying. The GPS from your camera would provide the approximate location, and when the scrapbook system compared it to your credit card receipts, it would know you stayed at the hotel near those coordinates. Your digital photo would be automatically labeled “Bob at the Hilton in Cleveland, April 15, 2008.” And it would store those pictures at a labeled location on the Google map.

When the vacation is over, the scrapbook is 85% complete. You just have to check its assumptions and add/correct any descriptors you want.

Scott Explains this far better than I’ve done.. (he knows proper words and everything) but I’m hoping that someone is reading this and offers it as a service.. (but maybe without the credit card stuff)

All the pieces of technology are there… all we really need is for someone to join them up.

Can’t wait to see what he’s going to write about tomorrow

Source: The Dilbert Blog

The Best Phone Ever (to take to the Pub)

We’re a fickle lot at Mobiltysite when it comes to shiny new phones. Jack is busy dreaming of the day he can have a PSP phone, Johno is busy working out what he can buy from Sprint, Chris is thinking about Google Phones , and a large chunk of the news team are working out how they are going to manage to wait for the TyTn II.

But all of these phones have a major design flaw… Not one of them is Beer proof. In fact any ‘beer related incident’ isn’t likely to be covered by the standard warranty and may cost a bundle of cash to fix.

Enter the Alcatel E201… the best phone in the world to take to the pub. It’s range of features is impressive.

• No touch screen to get scratched
• No stylus to loose in bowls of peanuts
• No expensive electronics to break when you bounce it off the floor
• No Internet to stop you purchasing expensive junk from eBay while under the influence
• No camera to provide incriminating evidence the next day

Pretty much all you can do with it is talk and text.

But it’s killer feature is the price.. £8 from Woolworths.. on a PAYG tariff.

So if you loose it/break it/get it stolen/drop it in a pint of Guinness/Throw it at the annoying karaoke singers.. It doesn’t matter. 

This could be the future of Mobility

Source t3