Phones

The All Important Personal Mobile Device – How to Keep it Safe?

Miscellaneous, Phones / By /

It’s 2007 and cell phones can already do the following: access your e-mail, act as a pager, instant message, text message, take pictures and videos, play video games, browse the Web, play back music, videos and radio, wake you up, be your addressbook, be a map, with built-in GPS figure out where you are and give you directions, and there’s even one that has a built-in breathalyzer.

Nokia is already testing using phones as payment systems and electronic wallets. How long before our phones also act as your biometric ID or more? How about those keyless entry systems that are now common in cars and also available integrated into home security systems? Why can’t those be integrated into phones too?
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CES 2008: NFC – Get or Send Info by Swiping Your Phone

CES, Phones / By /

I reported last month on Nokia’s trials with payment and ticketing in London using NFC technology and was thrilled to see some working demos up close at CES. There were 8 vendors there, including Nokia and Visa, and this is probably just a taste of things to come, as the possibilities for NFC applications are more numerous than the demos shown. But even this handful of applications is enough to change our daily lives. As Nokia is a primary driver of NFC technology, all of the demos used a NFC-enabled Nokia phone.
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CES 2008: Simulscribe Lets You Read Your Voicemail

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At Digital Experience, Simulscribe showed off their voicemail to text service and we were really impressed by how accurate the voice to text recognition was. It even spelled my name correctly down to capitalizing it. We conducted a test right there in a very noisy environment and the accuracy was perfect. Read on for more info and a special offer. …

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CES 2008: GSM/WiFi Phone Running Google’s Phone OS called Android

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GSM/WiFi Phone Running Google’s Phone OS called AndroidWistron NeWeb Corp, a Taiwanese company, was selected as a CES Innovations 2008 Award Honoree for their Wireless Handset technology. Offering a full set of applications for creating and editing documents, email (via pull protocols only), PIM, PC sync and web browsing over GSM as well as WiFi and Bluetooth.

Using Google’s Android and offering built-in 128 MB high capacity memory and a memory card slot supporting up to 2GB for greater storage space, the device has a standard Qwerty Keyboard and features a large 2.5” QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) TFT-LCD Display with 262K Colors Touch Screen. The device has software that allows you to take still photos and MPEG4, H.263, and WMA video record and play with the built-in 2M pixels (1600 x 1200) Camera and plays MP3s for music support as well as having voice recording and playback capability.

Wistron NeWeb Corp GSM/WiFi Phone with Google MapsThe phone won’t be available anytime soon in the US (they couldn’t give us an estimate). From the demo unit the Geeks played with, we thought the unit was nice but that there could be a little additional work. For instance, even though the device had a touch screen, the Google map application would not allow you to scroll the map. Also, the device seemed a bit unresponsive and slow when pushing the various buttons.

The technology week in view: 4th Jan 2008

Miscellaneous, Networking & Internet, Phones, Site News / By /

First off, Happy New Year – the title should really have read “the technology fortnight in view” but frankly not a lot happened in my technological world over Christmas (except for a frightening increase in blobs of plastic lying around the place), and anyway – who’s counting? To kick off 2008 I found a great tip if you’ve ever lost the switch to classic view or switch to category view section in Windows XP, here it is: Classic View and Category View in Windows XP Control Panel. By the way did you hear about or take part in the Highlet campaign? It was fun while it lasted but hopefully, I’ve written The last word on Highlet … for now anyway. I also read on the news that a major high street retailer is filing a profit warning due to poor sales over Christmas. I wonder if this could have anything to do with an increase in online sales? Possibly.
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iPhone 1.1.3 Leak [video]

Phones / By /

Here it is… video evidence of the new unreleased iPhone 1.1.3 software improvements. The embedded video below is a nice and thorough walk-through of the unreleased iPhone 1.1.3 feature updates hosted by Andru from GearLive.com. Watch it fast before Apple’s lawyers take it down.

Anyone still think it’s fake?

If the embedded video above doesn’t load, then click here.

methodshop

TryPhone lets you Try Phones on the Web

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TryPhone beta TryPhone gives you the ability to try various phones before you buy. Using a fully interactive online virtual handsets to test-drive mobile devices, applications, content and services, as well as watch demos – right from the comfort and convenience of your own computer. No pressure, no salespeople, no product uncertainty and no features you don’t understand. Try it, then go buy it… on your terms.

Check out TryPhone beta.

The technology week in View: December 21st 2007

Networking & Internet, Phones / By /

Christmas is around the corner and the New Year only a few steps away. Busy times lie ahead for technology and IT but before that no doubt a number of gadgets are going to appear in stockings around Cristmas trees this year. Imagine my surprise when A missile launcher arrived in the post this morning. I actually got sent a USB missile launcher by McAfee as part of their ongoing promotion for their data protection products. It is a motorised soft-missile launcher that you can have endless fun targetting in on your chosen nemesis then releasing a barrage of fire upon them.
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Take notes on the go with kwiry

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kwiry
Recently launched web service kwiry (sounds like “query”) helps you to track your notes and thoughts as you move through your day with only your cell phone. It’s quite simple really. Text your note/thing to remember/thought to K-W-I-R-Y (59479) and that note is added to the rest of your notes (or kwirys as they call them) in your kwiry account. I took kwiry for a spin and wrote up my thoughts here (instead of kwiry’ing it).

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Nokia Testing NFC Phones in UK

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Nokia NFC

Futurists going back at least to the days of Star Trek have dreamed of having a single handheld device that was ‘smart’ as hell. That device should not only be a communicator, but be able to conduct science experiments too. Ok, so the 2nd part isn’t about to happen soon, but your phone may soon act as your wallet, particularly if Nokia’s current test is a success.

Nokia is running a 6-month pilot involving over 500 users who get to use their cell phones as Oyster cards. For the non-Brit readership, Oyster cards are electronic ticketing smartcards used by the Underground and National Rail systems in London. The Nokia phones use a technology that has a TLA (three-letter acronym) called NFC (Near Field Communications). NFC sounds just like what it is – a wireless comm that only works over very short distances. NFC operates on different frequencies from those used for phone calls, so I can just picture people on the phone bending their heads over to get within range of the card readers!

Of course, if your phone can act as an Oyster card and the Oyster card can act as a virtual wallet, then so can your cell phone! Take a look at this video to see some of the ways in which they are imagining using NFC. Makes sense. Only problem is the obvious one – what happens when your cell phone gets stolen?

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