Archive for May 3rd, 2008
 There's a new service called TipSoft that grants crime witnesses to seamlessly help police to send anonymous tips via SMS, without revealing its identity to the authorities.
Users send a message to the central number that strips user's identifying data and forwards it to law enforcement. The anonymity is two way, so if the police want to ask for further details they can only do so by using the service in reverse.
Apparently, the service is already in use by Canadian CrimesStoppers, and the company plans to roll it out in the U.S. later this year and eventually in the UK soon after…
[Via: textually.org]
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Apple's flagship handset is at the moment only available in few countries but that doesn't stop Google from offering the iPhone-optimized version of its services to 33 markets! Do they know something we don't? Like, which markets iPhone will hit in the future? Or that's just their idea to provide iPhone globetrottin' customers with “Google local experience” wherever they are. In addition, they realize there are quite a few unlocked iPhones out there and they want to server these customers as well. Plus, let's not forget all the iPod Touch users.
Anyway, the new “integrated Google experience for the iPhone and iPod Touch” is now available in 33 new markets and 16 new languages — from Argentina to New Zealand, from Swedish to Chinese.
To try out the new Google interface, just point your iPhone or iPod Touch web browser to www.google.com and you're ready to go!
[Via: Google Blog]
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 File this under “we're so not sure about this,” but apparently T-Mobile (its parent company, actually) may pursue the acquisition of Sprint, which had certainly seen superior times. According to German paper Der Spiegel, which doesn't cite sources, the German telecom giant might pursue the deal, which would include snagging Nextel as well — a kind of hard sell for any investment bank that eventually get a chance to lead the deal.
Nevertheless, if there's some merit to this story — and reportedly formal negotiations have already started — we may see T-Mobile emerging on a strong third position in the U.S. carrier market. On the other hand, their quest to unify the two companies (or that's three if you count Nextel) may be the one ending like other famous German-American marriage - DaimlerChrystler. We'll see where this goes…
[Via: Engadget Mobile]
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Don't know about you, but I find the recently announced Nokia 6600 Fold to be the single ideal looking Nokia clamshell phone to date. The reason is obvious — Nokia isn't usually known for its good looking clamshell phones. Yeah, it's true and I'm sad that's the case, but so far I haven't seen a single clamshell device made by the Finnish giant that I would use. It's a matter of personal taste, so you might like some of the existing models, of course.
Anyway, what follows is the Nokia 6600 Fold design story. It's a 1:30 minute long clip and quite interesting. At least I find it so. Enjoy!
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O2 UK has announced it is launching Business Broadband, along with making their home broadband truly nationwide.
As you might know, O2 were later to market with their BBand offering, but, I take that as a sign of making sure things were tested fully, and dare I state it, working consistently (unlike some other notable providers who shall remain nameless!)
The business-grade service will allow Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs, as they are known) access rates of up to 20Mbps. Now I know that “up to” is an oft-misued phrase with BBand providers, but O2 have been good about clarifying things:
Customers inside the the O2 LLU (Local Loop Unbundling) network will top out at 20Mbps (O2 are busy fitting out their hardware with ADSL2+ capability), and those outside the LLU area will get up to 8Mbps. Of course, there are the usual key factors here - your distance from the exchange, and the quality of the wire between you and the exchange.
There's been quite a fuss about BBand speeds in the UK press of late, with the media are suggesting customers are being ripped off - personally I don't subscribe to that view at all - you get what the infrastructure can provide - but it's good to see O2 going the extra mile and trying to make things as clear as possible.
Some other details:
“The new service will include a free connection, unlimited data usage, a free wireless router, five McAfee security licences, a static IP address and 24 hour UK-based business support.
O2's Home Broadband service is now available throughout the UK using BT's wholesale network to reach potential customers in areas where the local BT telephone exchange has not been unbundled.”
It's an interesting time for O2 as they roll out both Fixed and Mobile BBand - I've not had opportunity to try the O2 “Mobile BBand” USB 3G stick (hint, hint, O2 PR!!), but I would assume it's of equally good quality as their Fixed offering!
[Via: vnunet.com]
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From previous posts, you might know that I’m always quite optimistic about Mobile TV - well a report from In-stat is a real humdinger in terms of good and bad news - the good being that the M-TV market could be worth $12bn in 2012, the bad being that the fragmented standards are here to stay. Here are some of the higlights:
- “DVB-H, ATSC-M/H, CMMB, ISDB-T, DVB-SH, T-DMB, and MediaFLO are just some of the most common standards currently in place or in development. And among these, there is even further disunion between free, pay-as-you-go, and subscription-based services”
- “The study shows that even though South Korea was the first country where mobile TV found a big audience, it is actually the European Union's chosen standard DVB-H that has the most widely used in terms of operator coverage”
- In terms of popularity (i.e. number of users) “Japan's OneSeg had reached over 20 million users in less than two years, and some userbase estimates of South Korea's long running T-DMB standard exceed 10 million“
There are also of course other “Mobile TV” services that don't rely on broadcast technologies. MBMS for example is a 3G-multicast technology, and there’s 3G unicast in both industry standard and bespoke flavours - an example of the last of these is MobiTV, which…”just announced breaking 4 million subscribers (it reached the three million mark in October 2007 after just under four years with Sprint.)“
As with a number of current reports I have read, the main “problem”, if you like, is monetization, or in other words, the “business case” - it seems most industry people just can't get it to work, especially when you factor in any kind of network build costs (all the broadcast scenarios require new hardware in the network, and in most cases, the handset).
The report goes on to state that handsets are a really big issue too - for something to work mass-market, the massive five handset vendors at least need to get behind it - whilst all of them are behind M-TV as a concept, they’re divergent in their thinking about which technology they support to deliver it.
I’m not so sure that the fragmented nature of the standards is the worst thing in the world - just as some trends, content, and ideas are region or culture-specific, so can the practical deployment of the technology be - for me, at the moment, the real issue is making Mobile Television pay….
[Via: betanews.com]
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O2 UK has announced it is launching Business Broadband, along with making their home broadband truly nationwide.
As you might know, O2 were later to market with their BBand offering, but, I take that as a sign of making sure things were tested fully, and dare I state it, working consistently (unlike some other notable providers who shall remain nameless!)
The business-grade service will allow Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs, as they are known) access rates of up to 20Mbps. Now I know that “up to” is an oft-misued phrase with BBand providers, but O2 have been good about clarifying things:
Customers inside the the O2 LLU (Local Loop Unbundling) network will top out at 20Mbps (O2 are busy fitting out their hardware with ADSL2+ capability), and those outside the LLU area will get up to 8Mbps. Of course, there are the usual key factors here - your distance from the exchange, and the quality of the wire between you and the exchange.
There's been quite a fuss about BBand speeds in the UK press of late, with the media are suggesting customers are being ripped off - personally I don't subscribe to that view at all - you get what the infrastructure can provide - but it's good to see O2 going the extra mile and trying to make things as clear as possible.
Some other details:
“The new service will include a free connection, unlimited data usage, a free wireless router, five McAfee security licences, a static IP address and 24 hour UK-based business support.
O2's Home Broadband service is now available throughout the UK using BT's wholesale network to reach potential customers in areas where the local BT telephone exchange has not been unbundled.”
It's an interesting time for O2 as they roll out both Fixed and Mobile BBand - I've not had opportunity to try the O2 “Mobile BBand” USB 3G stick (hint, hint, O2 PR!!), but I would assume it's of equally good quality as their Fixed offering!
[Via: vnunet.com]
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(BTW, the chap in the cup is a SpinVox “Mobster”….)
My favourite VTT (Voice-to-text) company, SpinVox, have raised an interesting thread for conversation in their blog (read it here). More accurately, James Whatley, their “chief of interweb wizardry and bloggery“, has written an inciteful and thought provoking piece on where “voice” (as in one of the ways we communicate) is headed - it had my two brain cells buzzing away for hours thinking about it - some thoughts below…
They state that people are predominantly either visual, aural, or kinaesthetic learners - that means, the way you ideal take in information is either by seeing, by hearing, or by feeling - so what happens when you can “see” your voice? As James neatly puts it, “I’m not talking about sound waves or pretty patterns on an oscilloscope, but your actual VOICE. The words you use to articulate your thoughts are similar and yet also absolutely different to those of the person sitting beside you.” Does someone who is an aural learner start to change the ways in which they represent their world? Could intelligent conversion of some of the many “data feeds” which we experience cause a paradigm shift in our learning/understanding?
Another thought: the ways in which we are “authenticated” or “identified” in many areas of our lives is often visual (e.g. Photo). Occasionally, other techniques are used such as textual (e.g. signature). Where more security is required, some kind of psychometric information is sometimes used (e.g. a “fact” that only you might know). But with VTT, another form of authentication becomes possible - allowed, these sorts of advanced ID schemes are available, and have been for some time, to the likes of government agencies, but they have not been “mass-market” - with a good (or superior still, excellent) voice conversion algorithm and pattern-matcher, you can search for phrases, quirks, or “tells”, that can ID someone - yes, that next-gen voice analyser in 24 could become real!
Searching your voice - no, this isn't you ideal deciding how you might hit that high “A” that Mariah can do in all her records, but you can't quite get to, it's about a new kind of search, using you voice pattern as metadata. Just like the current advances in image searching (you don't type a text string, you supply image data), searching voice has the potential to be massive - it unlocks another kind of content that’s plentiful, constantly being updated, and probably very valuable - essentially most of the things that make the interweb go round!
Wow, some deeper thoughts there on VTT - but, as James points out in his blog, “We’ve enabled the notion of ‘voice to content’ – now what does that empower you to do?“
Thoughts are most welcome!
(Note: on a less high-brow note, there are 10 IntoMobile points up for grabs for the ideal caption to the picture above - I’m going for “When Mobster was told for 100th time he was a really sweet guy, he decided to find out how sweet….”)
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Update time for y'all - remember I spoke about the very very cool Moto Z10 competition that's happening? If not, read here. Well, I've just been informed that the YouTube channel, to submit videos to, is up and running - you can find it here:
http://www.youtube.com/motoroladirectorme
If you’re stil none the wiser, check out my previous post here, and get yo' act together to win a Z10 and £10K!
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