mobile

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.

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

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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

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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

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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.

First look at the Nokia N96

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I recently got a good look at the Nokia N96 which brought my attention to the accelerometer in particular the moving ball and light sabre application which are cool novelties – my kids love swishing the light sabre around even though they have never seen Star Wars (come on – they are under 3!).

My current phones of choice are the Nokia E71 for business and the Nokia N95 8GB for personal use so it was interesting to look at this new device which is a mild step up from the N95 8GB.

One of the most striking differences is the cleaner, flatter interface and the more streamlined design of the device – it looks a lot more attractive and a step up from the N95 but still has some way to go to meet the solid feel of the E71. The keypad buttons are another major difference – this time following the flat clean design that is becoming popular in new devices. Internally the 16GB memory and the memory card slot are welcome additions but the Micro USB type B interface is a new replacement for the previous standard Micro USB connector.

Click the link to read more about my first impressions of the Nokia N96.

First impressions of the Nokia E71

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Having been quite happy with the Nokia e61i in our organisation it was with a little trepidation that we approached its new sibling, the Nokia E71. We use these devices in our organization primarily for their email messaging abilities (using Mail for Exchange) though we are starting to see more interest in the application of mobile broadband technology.

From the brief information we received about the Nokia E71 from our supplier it seemed a small step up with some added refinements, so we pressed ahead, but when it arrived it turned out to be a little different from our expectations.

I have to say, to hold this phone, it is quite beautiful and feels really comfortable in the hand. It is physically smaller than the e61i and as a result the screen size has had to shrink to 2.4 inches from 2.8 inches which I really am in two minds about (as our preference is for emailing). In comparison, it is physically larger than the more commercial Nokia N95 but heavier and more substantial.

The display interface feels quite different from the e61i though it does feel a little more responsive (the problem with the e61i was at times it could feel a little sluggish). You can read more about our first impressions of the Nokia E71 here: Getting hands on with the Nokia E71: First impressions

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.

Openmoko launches Neo, Open Source Linux Mobile Phone

Gizmo of the Day, GPS, Phones, Portable / By /

If you’re in the market for a smartphone that you can extend with potentially unlimited applications, are intrigued by the iPhone, really want an Android phone, but can’t wait, then take a look at the Neo FreeRunner which hits the (virtual e-commerce) street this weekend.

The Neo is arguably the first open mobile computing platform that is based on Linux. The 6.5oz phone itself boasts GSM (805/900MHz) network connectivity, a 480×640 VGA touchscreen, 802.11b/g WiFi, GPRS 2.5, Bluetooth 2.0, 128MB RAM and 256MB Flash, along with a microSD slot.

Openmoko expects to launch a full suite of applications next month that will go along with the dialing & SMS capabilities that the phone will initially ship with.

Gimme!

More info from the manufacturer

Price: $399.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

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