RELEASE: Spb Online

Spb Software, the world’s leading maker of Windows Mobile software releases Spb Online to end-users. Spb Online is a set of attractive online services that share a practical user interface and make superior quality mobile entertainment available on handsets at a single fixed-price fee (no subscription). The services offered include Mobile TV, Online Radio, News, Weather, Online Games, and On-device Catalog — all subject to automatic updates and powered by Spb’s exclusive interface engine and patent-pending TV technology.

Spb Online is robust and easy to use even for novice smartphone users. All of Spb Online services support adaptive skins, smart scrolling, 3D transition effects, and one hand navigation.

[Read more]

Your life on the go

Lifecasting is a big thing at the moment. One step beyond blogging and tweeting is the ability to record and broadcast live video from a cellphone to share what you’re doing – and engage with your audience.

Qik is probably the best known of these, and is slowly rolling out an early beta service for Windows Mobile users. But Qik are not the only game in town – there are a couple of existing solutions that have great support for Windows Mobile users.

LiveCast provide a live video streaming platform for Windows Mobile and laptop or UMPC users. The video is synchronized with GPS position data so your viewers can see where you are when you’re broadcasting (or when they review archived footage where you were).

While the video quality on LiveCast (formerly known as PocketCaster from ComVu) is pretty good for high end phones the client is not the most intuitive (so expect to spend some time figuring it it), and the web site is a bit clunky. [Read more]

‘Directions’ expands service and adds events

Dial Directions today expanded its free, voice-activated ‘directions’ phone service to six metro areas, including Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Sacramento, San Diego and Washington, D.C. The service was already available in the San Francisco Bay area, and the greater metro areas of New York and Los Angeles.

On any cell phone, users simply dial “DIR-ECT-IONS” (347-328-4667), speak their starting location and destination (address/intersection, store or event), and the service instantly sends driving directions by text message.

“Whether you’re looking to get to an address, finding the nearest business chain, or attending a local event — it’s all just a simple, free call from any cell phone,” said Amit Desai, cofounder and chief product officer of Dial Directions. “Consumers from all walks of life are giving Dial Directions rave reviews, because they find the service easy to use, accessible and free.”

Dial Directions’ new ‘event’ feature lets any caller get directions to a local event from any starting point. Any organizer can have an event supported in Dial Directions simply by self-publishing the event location at Dial Directions. After posting, organizers can tell their audience to get directions by dialing DIRECTIONS and saying the event name. In addition to directions, the service also provides event details, such as date and time.

Dial Direction’s new event feature gives power to event social networking by providing speech-enabled directions on any cell phone. Many event social networking tools offer the ability for event search and sharing, but all lack an easy mechanism for providing directions to the event.

How it Works:  Any cell phone user can dial DIR-ECT-IONS, which is 347-328-4667, and say where they are and where they’d like to go — the service understands and texts back turn-by-turn directions. Users can give a specific destination address or intersection, ask for the closest location of any chain store, like Starbucks or Borders or an event, like the San Francisco Autumn Moon Festival.

For more information visit Dial Directions

Source: Dial Directions press release

3 Group to offer exclusive Purple K770 Cyber-shot phone

As part of their global agreement, 3 Group and Sony Ericsson today announced a striking purple version of the K770 Cyber-Shot phone. Exclusively available across the 3 Group from launch, this new phone combines the latest camera phone performance with the hottest colour to hit the high street.

The new Sony Ericsson K770 Cyber-Shot phone is a digital camera, a photo album and an elegant phone in-one, as well as the ideal gateway to 3’s suite of mobile media services. For Sony Ericsson and 3, enabling customers to take and immediately share photos with such a stylish phone is an exciting progression.

Features:

• 3.2 megapixel camera with Photo Fix
• Pocket-sized at less than 15mm thin
• Easy printing of photos to A4 size
• Vibrant purple colour - exclusive to the 3 Group

The K770 Cyber-shot phone has a sophisticated 3.2 megapixel camera with Auto focus and a range of advanced features which allow customers to take advantage of 3’s strong mobile media services. Yet despite the advanced features, the K770 is all about keeping things simple. To take a photo, just slide open the lens cover, point and shoot. If you take a snapshot and the light conditions are poor, simply select Photo Fix for PC-free photo editing.

The K770 is a 3G phone that will be available from autumn 2007. The purple colour variant is available exclusively with the 3 Group within selected markets.

For full specifications see Sony Ericsson K770

Source:3 Group press release

Virgin Mobile launches Super Slice

Virgin Mobile has just announced the Super Slice, a candybar style phone that is just 10.2mm thick. The Super Slice is the new model based on last years Slice from UTStarcom. It is Virgin’s first handset with bluetooth.

Features:

• VGA camera
• 270 minutes of talk time
• speakerphone
• Bluetooth

The Super Slice will be available later this month and will retail for $59.99.

Source:Boy Genius Report

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:

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

LG announces Viewty

LG announced today plans to launch ‘LG Viewty’ (Model: LG-KU990), its very first professional-level high feature camera phone. The ‘LG Viewty’, the first handset representing LG Mobile’s new feature-oriented category, combines ultimate functionality with sensational style that one can expect from LG Mobile. The name ‘LG Viewty’ has been chosen to encapsulate the enjoyment of viewing and sharing high-quality photos. This is made possible through the large LCD screen and extensive functionality of the camera phone.

Users of the ‘LG Viewty’ will be able to enjoy a complete mobile digital imagery experience. Boasting its 5.1 megapixel camera with manual focus and image stabilizer features, the ‘LG Viewty’ takes high quality photographs with endless possibilities to allow users to enhance their images through the extensive editing features of the phone. 

The sleek handset, whose size defies its amount of features, introduces world’s first 120 fps video recording feature in a mobile camera phone. A single-click connection to YouTube allows users to share their very own film moments with others on the internet.

The ‘LG Viewty’ which will be available for buy from October, will first be revealed during the IFA 2007 in Berlin on August 31, 2007. More technical specifications of the ‘LG Viewty’ will soon be announced, including details on the comprehensive editing capabilities.

Source: LG