Archive for October, 2006

Verizon to Offer OTA Contact Sync

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

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Why is this man smiling? Because Verizon today announced it will be selling a service from Plaxo that allows its wireless customers to automagically sync up their contacts between their computers and mobile devices, over the air.
The Java BREW application

is compatible with most current Verizon handsets and costs $4.49 a month. While we’d rather […]

Nokia Going Tablet Crazy?

Sunday, October 29th, 2006

cell phoneThe Nokia , the first of its devices to truly be dubbed a multimedia computer, may be a link between the handset species and the tablet species, if new images surfacing of possible Nokia product are to be believed.

Darla Mack and a few others are showing images of both the and another strange-looking device, .

RAZR: Expensive Luxury or Mass-market Bling?

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

cell phoneAs I was walking through West LA the other day, an ad for the iconic Moto RAZR for $29.99 caught my eye. As I walked, I thought, “hang on, wasn't that a hugely expensive handset a year or two back?” Turns out was thinking the same thing. Now that RAZRs are everywhere, and cheap (and frankly getting a bit on the tacky side). And I quote:

Cingular Network Experiences Major Outage: Southwest and Eastern Regions Hardest Hit

Wednesday, October 25th, 2006

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customers, including your faithful author had a few frustrating hours during the middle of the work day today when Cingular began to experience some sort of network issue that resulted in connectivity problems over large sections of the US.

The limited information I was able to glean from initial discussions with their technical team left something to be desired as they would only divulge that the East and Southwest regions were hardest hit by the failures.

Cingular subscribers attempting to place calls were met with a variety of errors from receipt of “SIM registration failed” errors to “Network Busy” or even the ominous “No Network” and “Network Failure” messages that I received having tried numerous times to place a call during this period.

People attempting to call into the network to reach Cingular subscribers received messages to the effect of “no subscriber account at that number” or “the number you are calling does not exist on the system”

Who Needs Operators Anyhow?

Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

cell phoneI encourage you to and read a recent entry by Marek Pawlowski on how value is slowly draining away from the operators and toward application and handset developers. He describes how the main brands he sees now are the providers of the useful third-party applications he uses to make his mobile do the things he wants, as he wants them - from syncing contacts to uploading images and beyond. In his case, Vodafone is just a carrier signal underneath, and even then only when he can't pick up Wifi.

I can totally understand this feeling. I just got the Nokia N93, pictured here, and in the past five days have pretty much avoided Cingular, my operator, and loaded as many third-party apps as I needed on to the handset. The main brands I experience now? Nokia and Flickr. I run over Wifi every chance I get (though I still can't make voice calls with it, but all data is now going over hotspots, not my carrier's data service).

Let A Billion Mobiles Bloom

Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

636364_nokia_6230i_1.jpgA billion of anything is a lot, but for a billion additional mobiles in the near future. It predicts that the billion in question is the number of new handsets that will have been sold this year by year end, globally. This figure is driven by both new sales in emerging markets, which are beginning to enter the same fast growth curve the more developed markets saw in the past five years, while mature markets are turning over new handset sales as replacements for older ones as new capabilities are integrated into mobile handsets and services (duh).

That's good news not only for handset makers, but probably also for the hundreds of companies that make various tchotchkas for mobiles, from tacky faceplates to stick-on tattoos to unpardonable phone jewelry to flimsy cases and single-use chargers. Oh, and the trash man will have plenty of boxes and wrappers …

Lots of iPhone Concepts

Monday, October 23rd, 2006

cell phoneThere's a deep desire amongst some people for Apple to apply the magic dust they sprinkled on the iPod to a mobile phone - any mobile phone. Whilst there have been some not-quite-successful attempts to marry the ipod music function with mobile phones, nothing has yet been forthcoming from Apple.

Which of course hasn't stopped people interested in the idea from creating their own photoshopped mockups. So many have been created over time that someone called Okan Vardarova decided to purely dedicated to displaying these user concepts.

Via .

The Carnival Turns 50

Monday, October 23rd, 2006

cell phoneThe Carnival of the Mobilists has reached it's 50th, after wandering around the mobile blogosphere for the past long while.Welcome back to MobHappy for the jubilee 50th edition of the Carnival of the Mobilists. It was a year and a week or so ago that Russell kicked off the first Carnival, and it's good to see things still going strong - so many thanks are in order to all the hosts of the past year, and of course all the contributors. Without you, the Carnival is nothing. And of course Russell deserves some kudos for keeping the whole thing together.So head on over and enjoy some of the finest mobile-related writing currently gracing webpages.

Oh my…

Monday, October 23rd, 2006

cell phone

Well… perhaps the pretty part is stretching it a bit, but the big news is that we've been given the nod as one of the top 20 wireless industry blogs by , who are asking people within the industry to vote for their favourite sites in the Fierce Wireless Favourites.Now we are inviting you and other wireless industry insiders to vote for your favorite blogs. Choose up to five of the nominated blogs to the right and click “Vote!” to make your voice heard. As an extra incentive, one lucky voter will receive a Motorola Q in a random drawing! Feel free to nominate blogs not included on the list, and we will count your nomination as a vote.Voting ends at the end of the month, the the winning blog will be announced on November 7th.

Want To See What Googles Got For Mobile? Here Ya Go

Saturday, October 21st, 2006

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has a nice piece on Google’s recent update to their .

While I still don’t see the level of cohesion or organization that is delivering, Google nonetheless has some very useful and powerful mobile applications that would be a lot more useful to a lot more people if only they were easier to find.

Well, that problem is solved. Just go and you can see everything that Google is currently providing for mobile users as well as some very nice information (including some demonstration videos and turorials) that will help you get the most out of these handy mobile tools. Enjoy.cell phone has a nice piece on Google’s recent update to their .

While I still don’t see the level of cohesion or organization that is delivering, Google nonetheless has some very useful and powerful mobile applications that would be a lot more useful to a lot more people if only they were easier to find.