cell

Paymo offers payments using your cell phone, no credit card needed

Phones / By /

For those online vendors that want to reach out to more potential customers, particularly younger customers with no credit card, but a cell phone, Paymo may be the solution. Paymo has teamed up with a number of cell phone carriers and online vendors to allow a customer to pay for something by punching in their mobile # instead of a credit card.

Customers don’t even need a bank account. Paymo charges vendors between 3 and 5% for each transaction, so essentially, they would be swapping a credit card company for Paymo. Of course, Paymo isn’t the only player in the mobile payment business, so it’ll be interesting to see who wins out or if it just ends up being a divided market.

GrandCentral becomes Google Voice – unified messaging, the Google Way

Networking & Internet, Phones / By /

Sweet. I’ve been enjoying GrandCentral for some time now, but was wondering like everyone else what Google was doing with it for the past 2 years or so. Turns out they’ve been hard at work improving what was there and adding new features.

First a recap –

  • GrandCentral gave you 1 number that rang all of your ‘real’ #s: cell, home, work, etc.
  • screening of incoming calls
  • a single voicemail box with Web access to your voicemails;
  • caller-specific voicemail greetings
  • specify which phones rang when certain people called you
  • telemarketer blocking
  • off-times for certain phones

What’s new in Google Voice: …

GrandCentral becomes Google Voice – unified messaging, the Google WayRead More »

XLink BT System – Replace your Landline with your Cell

Gizmo of the Day, Phones / By /

XLink BT System

The XLink BT is a great innovation from XLink, designed to completely replace your telco landline with your cell. You can connect up to 3 cells to the XLink BT, and then, when a call comes to your cell, it is diverted to the BT system and forwarded to a house phone. This means that you don’t actually need a landline any more, allowing you to save on line rental – the company’s website states that this is $33 a year on average. This also works in reverse, by allowing you to make outgoing calls through the BT system via your cell.

Connected by Bluetooth, you are free to leave your cell wherever you want; you can have it plugged into a charger, or just the place where you get the best reception, and the BT system will be able to pick it up. Any cell phones with Bluetooth should work with this and any ordinary house phone can be connected to take the calls.

As well as the convenience aspect of the device allowing you to talk on more ergonomically designed handset, there’s also the safety aspect – talking on a cell phone generates a lot more harmful radioactivity than talking via a home phone!

Buy Now!

More info from the manufacturer

Price: $144.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

#CES09: Thoughts on the Palm Pre

3 Comments / CES, Phones, Portable / By /

Closely following Palm’s announcement of their brand new mobile handset, the Pre, and operating system (webOS), reaction was swift and unanimously exuberant. Palm has certainly hit this out of the park, and if the tech community’s reaction is any indication, this will certainly save the company for at least a little while to come.

My quick thoughts on the Pre and the OS:

  • the new webOS gets multitasking right
  • unified application for messaging (text, IM, Facebook, etc.) – Palm gets it
  • awesome that development for the platform is based solidly on ubiquitous, well-established technology (HTML, CSS & Javascript)
  • very sexy looking piece of hardware
  • love that they’ve retained the QWERTY keyboard and so maintain that link to their once solid Treo lifeline
  • disappointed that there’s no SD card slot
  • learned from Apple’s mistake of not including a user replaceable battery
  • hopefully they will upgrade the firmware quickly to enable video recording and Adobe Flash support.

One more cool photo for the road:

#CES09: Palm Announces Pre – raw specs

CES, Phones, Portable / By /

Here are the raw specs on the just announced, soon to be released cell phone handset from Palm. Stay tuned for another post on our thoughts on the product (hint: we love it!).

  • 3.1 inch HVGA (320x480px) capacitive multitouch touchscreen with gesture area
  • slide-out QWERTY keyboard
  • GPS
  • 3 Megapixel camera
  • 8GB internal memory
  • 802.11b/g Wifi
  • microUSB connector
  • user replaceable battery
  • new Web-centric Palm OS (named appropriately webOS) that offers true multitasking
  • integration of messaging (text, IM, Facebook, etc.) in 1 application without needing to switch between various apps
  • slide out QWERTY keyboard (yet still same weight as an iPhone)
  • development for apps uses HTML, CSS, & Javascript
  • curved shape (not perfectly flat)
  • Proximity sensor, which automatically disables the touch screen and turns off the display whenever you put the phone up to your ear
  • Light sensor, which dims the display if the ambient light is dark, such as at night or in a movie theater, to reduce power usage
  • Accelerometer, which automatically orients web pages and photos to your perspective

Palm probably announcing new OS, Nova, at CES 2009

CES, Phones, Portable, Software / By /

Palm is set to announce their next generation OS, codenamed Nova, at CES in Las Vegas next month. They’re being a little cagey about the announcement, but all signs point to it happening.

This is a welcome update to Palm’s offerings, with Nova most likely going to be a Linux-based mobile OS, with a focus on Internet and Web applications. Naturally.

I don’t understand why so-called experts want Palm out of the OS business. I think their CEO has it right that having the OS and hardware strongly tied leads to a better product. For now. I’m a big fan of standardization; for example, the PC platform that runs Windows, Linux or Solaris (and now, practically MacOS). But we’re not there yet with smartphones. Android is a good first step in that direction, but it’s not here yet. Over time, Palm will probably switch to making Android work well on their hardware.

I welcome “Palm OS 2.0”. I’m a bit saddened that I may not be able to update my existing Treo to this OS, but excited that there will be a refresh of a cool mobile OS.

CWatch – a Cell Phone Watch

1 Comment / Gizmo of the Day, Phones, Portable / By /

About time, right? A cell phone that you wear on your wrist, has a 1.3″ color LCD display that you can watch video/movies/photos on. Of course, you can listen to MP3s and take pictures with its 1.3 Megapixel camera.

The TFT screen is a touchscreen, and it has handwriting recognition similar to Palm’s gestures. For connectivity, there’s an integrated mini USB jack, a (1GB) microSD slot and it also has built-in Bluetooth.

Oh yes, lest we forget, it’s also a cell phone! GSM based with SIM cards, with a claimed 8-12 hr talk time. I’d like to see this available in typical retail outlets; currently uou have to call a toll-free # to order. I have to wonder what the quality of the phone calls is like.

You have to admit, the idea of a cell phone that sits on your wrist constantly does have its appeal.

More info from the manufacturer

Price: $249.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

Truphone – softphone for cell phones

Gizmo of the Day, Phones / By /

Truphone is a free software app for your mobile phone that routes your calls over the Internet. These calls are made using VoIP using your phone’s WiFi connection and even Nokia and Blackberrys can make calls via Truphone’s network without a WiFi conn.

In case you’re wondering what’s in it for Truphone, their business model is to charge lower rates than your mobile provider, particularly for international calls or calls made when you’re roaming abroad.

List of supported devices.

More info from the manufacturer

Price: Free for software. Call Rates start at $0.06/min.
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

Google G1 Phone announced

Miscellaneous / By /

The Google G1 phone is now available for pre-order on the T-Mobile network for $179.99. You may be able to get your hands on one as early as Oct 22.

So what can you expect in the HTC handset running Android, the Google-sponsored mobile OS? For starters, a touch screen, a slide-out screen that reveals a full QWERTY keyboard, a screen that displays in both landscape and portrait modes, a 3 Megapixel camera,  3G network and Wi-Fi access.

The G1 will come with a number of apps built-in, yes, all centered around Google applications, such as Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk. It will also thankfully have an IM application that is multi-platform.

Google has also already announced the Android Market which is analogous  to the iPhone Store, where you can download and/or buy apps for your Android-based phone.

It remains to be seen how successful Google will be with their handsets in terms of open sourcing the whole Android platform. My suspicion is yes they will, and I won’t be surprised if Apple ends up doing something similar with the iPhone OS within a year. After all, if both Google and Nokia/Symbian are running open source systems and have significant market share because of it, well… you can figure out the rest.

Charge your Mobile Phone by walking around

Phones, Portable / By /

M2E Power has announced that they will start selling a cell-phone charger that can convert your movements into power for your cell phone and/or other devices. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to buy this device until next year. The other letdown is that the upcoming gadget won’t be built directly into a cell phone. At least not yet.

M2E Power looks like an interesting company as they also take the same idea and extend it to quite a few other environments, such as to soldiers that have to walk around with lots of batteries. Imagine if those batteries were being recharged at the same time they were moving around.

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