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M8: The Chinese smartphone copycat of the iPhone
2007-02-16 05:42:04
If you though it was another picture of the Apple iPhone , look at the displayed icons and the navigation button. Although the resemblance of the whole device with the iPhone is striking, it’s different, it’s a smartphone. Meizu, based in China, currently calls the device M8 and will gear it in South-East Asia this year. The M8 has a screen resolution of 720×480, larger than Apple’s 320×480. It runs Win CE 6.0, provides GSM+TD-SCMA connectivity, offers Bluetooth as well as TV-Out wireless connectivity. The M8 also comes with a 3.0-megapixel camera on one side and a 0.3-megapixel camera on the other. (via vr-zone) The situation has changed since the first iPod. When the portable audio device was out, the competition wasn’t ready to mimic Apple. Now, there are already several replicas lining up even before the Apple iPhone is available. UPDATE: For its defense, Meizu said the original M8 design for a massive-touchscreen cellphone debuted four days b...
More About: Cat , Smartphone , Iphone , Smart

Skype 3.0 includes a spyware?
2007-02-16 05:42:04
Skype acknowledges it, the Skype 3.0 calling client has been spying on its Windows-based users since the middle of December by secretly accessing their system bios settings and recording the motherboard serial number. The snooper agent is the handiwork of a third-party program called EasyBits Software, which Skype uses to manage Skype plug-ins, the Register reports. Among other things like parental control, EasyBits offers DRM features that prevent the unauthorized use or distribution of plug-ins. The practice was discontinued, at least in the version 3.0.0.216 — since Skype learned that EasyBits DRM did not perform well on some newer platforms.
More About: Skype , Spyware , War , Ware

Mobile VoIP: Not that great, says T-Mobile CEO
2007-02-16 05:42:04
At the 3GSM show in Barcelona, Hamid Akhavan, CEO of T-Mobile International, asserted new mobile phone services based on the Internet Protocol won’t become nearly as prevalent as those running over PCs. Always-on connectivity, emergency phone services are among the technical issues making mobile VOIP services harder to implement. He also insisted on the concept of freeness intimately tied to the mobile Internet telephony: “With any mobile service provided over the Internet, you?re going to need to buy a data package.” All of these are true, plus the protocol competition in the mobile arena. Besides SIP and Skype, there’s no other major way to make a phone call from your desktop computer.
More About: T-Mobile , Great , Voip , Hat

Apple ripping off LG?s Prada phone?
2007-02-16 05:42:04
A few days after Apple unveiled the first pictures of its iPhone , Korean cellphone maker LG rolled out its Prada phone, a touchless candybar that according to Telecoms Korea, some Internet users argued that the phone has many similarities with LG Prada phone and LG, then, remained silent. LG’s position on the iPhone changed. It now accuses Apple of ripping off its design. Mr. Woo-Young Kwak, head of LG Mobile Handset R&D Center said “that Apple copycat Prada phone after the design was unveiled when it was presented in the iF Design Award and won the prize in September 2006.” For the record, Apple presented the iPhone at the MacWorld conference in mid-January, that would make it copy the design in just three months. (via textually)
More About: Prada Phone , Ping

Sign language on your cellphone
2007-02-14 17:40:07
The University of Washington and Cornell University are working on a video compression software able to transmit sign language using cellphones. The Mobile ASL (American Sign Language ) project, supported by the National Science Foundation, will change the current situation of more than one million deaf or hard of hearing Americans that cannot use the very basic of a cellphone (via textually). Technically, the project team is designing new ASL encoders that are compatible with the new H.264/AVC compression standard using x264. In short, those new codecs nearly double compression ratios of MPEG-2, the compression used on DVD for example. The result is showed in pictures, it will be a video compression metric that takes into account empirically validated visual and perceptual processes that occur during conversations in ASL. The project is great and could open new development for all. For example, imagine a video client for cellphones that only transmits moving part of a video. You s...
More About: Phone , Cell , Your , Cellphone

Second Life goes mobile
2007-02-14 17:40:07
At the 3GSM conference in Barcelona, Comverse is demonstrating a mobile version of Second Life than runs on Java-enabled cellphones. The client could also run on IPTV platforms, Reuters reports. Hardcore Second Life players will have the basic functions in this first version. They could hang out, instant message or send SMS. The application is ready for deployment, assured Comverse, but according to the demonstration, some cellular disconnections could occur, leading the player to abruptly leave the virtual world.
More About: Mobile , Mobi

21talks relaunched
2007-02-14 11:39:01
21talks changed its skin, it now adopts the dark suit and the white tie. We try to keep as simple as before, and took the darker background to enhance the readability, because eyes are less solicited, plus it gives more focus on images, something we’d like to improve in the future.
More About: Talk , Launch , Launched , Relaunch

Text messages and IM go ideograms
2007-02-13 17:37:02
Global world, global writing techniques. Some ethnologists observed the rise of ideogram, which will be a kind of Esperanto for the future world. No more fight for a language hegemony, and symbols that conveys emotions and messages, now called emoticons.
More About: Essa , Message , Messages , Text , Sage

21talks new design coming soon
2007-02-12 23:36:01
We’ve silent these past days. But it was because we’re working on improving the 21talks layout you know, or used to know. By Wednesday this week, we’re launching the new version of the web site. It will pretty much correspond to our first anniversary. Already one year. During the period, our traffic grew from nothing to more than 140,000 monthly unique visitors, the page rank increased from nothing to a page rank 6. But above all, we made great contacts from other bloggers and people of the VoIP arena. We worked to give the same minimalism and simplicity to the new 21talks look-and-feel. It has a couple of visual effects, not created to impress you (even though we’d like too) but to enhance the readibility of the information and we hope the usability either. So if blogging will be a bit slow for an extra couple of days, think it’ll get back soon and in a better form.
More About: Design , Desi , Talk , Sign , Ming

Leaked document hints Apple iPhone not available until June 15
2007-02-08 17:32:04
Up to now, the released date of the iPhone was some time in the mid-year. It’s getting more precise. A leaked document filed by Apple and requesting the FCC to keep business details confidential provides a due date for the cellphone: June 15, 2007 — the final day of the Worldwide Developers Conference. Be patient until then.
More About: Iphone , Men

Facebook users have their IM: Mosoto
2007-02-08 17:32:04
Facebook users have a new way to share files they host in their account. Built on top of the API the student social network released last year, startup Mosoto has developed a nice interface that enables direct file, video and music sharing, chatting and discovering friends. As a logical user interface, “the chat client controls most of the action, listing which of your Facebook friends, friends of friends, and Facebook networks you?ve joined,” Techcrunch reports. “By hovering over the names, Mosoto alerts you to the similarities between your profiles. If you find someone that looks interesting, you can befriend and poke them right through the chat window. Chatting is one on one, with groups of friends, or even all of your friends within a network.”
More About: Ebook , Book , User , Face , Facebook

The latest version of Windows Mobile is ready
2007-02-08 17:32:04
Microsoft will roll out the latest version of Wind ows Mobile next week at the 3GSM show in Barcelona. This release shows a better user interface for Windows Mobile devices, a tighter integration with Windows Live services, especially the Windows Live Messenger. “You get three flavors of Windows Mobile 6 depending on what kind of device you have”, adds a blog of the Hive. “Pocket PC’s without phone capability are Windows Mobile 6 Classic. Smartphones are Windows Mobile 6 Standard and Pocket PC Phones are Windows Mobile 6 Professional. In Windows Mobile 5, phones without touchscreens (Smartphones) were a bit more limited than their high end Pocket PC phone brothers. In Windows Mobile 6, certain changes were made regarding making those limitations less of a problem. Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, and PowerPoint Mobile work on phones without touchscreens for instance.”
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Truphone adds Google Talk compatibility
2007-02-08 17:32:04
Truphone, a VoIP over WiFi provider, has tweaked its software. It now supports Google Talk and other Jabber-related VoIP clients. The company also plans to support more Symbian-powered handsets (understand Nokia E-series) by the end of 2007, including Windows Mobile-based smart phones. Calls to other numbers are at a discount over regular phone rates - currently with an offer of free calls to 40 countries from the UK, and free calls within the US and Canada for all US customers. Customers get a Truphone number for inbound calls, and can forward all these calls to the GSM number on their phone. The company based in Kent, UK is a hot one. It managed to grab $24 million from Wellington Partners, Independent News & Media and Burda. “This year 60% of our revenues will come from voice, and by next year (2008) we hope to bring that down to 40%,” said Truphone CEO James Tagg in a recent interview.
More About: Phone , Comp , Google Talk

Don?t expect Helio to be profitable until 2009
2007-02-08 17:32:04
Is Helio cool enough to interest their target users? The last financial results of the mobile virtual network operator (MNVO) for the MySpace generation is scary. Helio is expected to loose $300 million to $360 million in 2007, according to EarthLink’s chief financial officer. This will be almost twice the last year lost of $192.5 million ($74 million in the fourth quarter), and could be explained by a stiffer competition and the incoming iPhone roll-out. Will Earthlink and SK Telecom, the companies backing the MVNO, keep pouring money in the venture? Yes. As explained Dave Whetstone, co-founder of Virgin Mobile USA: “If you’re SK Telecom and you want to get into the U.S. mobile market, it might be less expensive to throw a couple hundred million dollars every year into Helio than to spend billions on spectrum or a nationwide operator.” Good sign: Helio reported monthly average revenue per user of about $100, well above the $40 to $50 a month the big carrie...
More About: Profit , Prof , Tabl , Expect

Tired of small cellphone displays? Try the rolling screen phone
2007-02-07 23:30:05
If you’re not that fond of the two-finger-stretching-everything function of the iPhone , you may be more interested by this alternative: Instead of zooming, you roll the screen display of the handheld to expand its size. And there’s already a testing candidate, the Readius, that will be showcased at the upcoming 3GSM exhibition in Barcelona. The “maki sushi” cellphone comes with a black and white flexible screen display wrapping the processing unit. Its readability would be similar to printed paper claimed Polymer Vision, which took 16 years to develop the device, and should be available later this year, a Telegraph blog reports (via smart mobs). Us: Getting a large screen display would indeed fit the usual demand of Internet cellphone users. Browsing web pages becomes a lot easier. Other applications are eligible for the device, instant messengers for example. Video conferencing is not for tomorrow, as it’s unclear how the rolling screen could handle ...
More About: Screen , Play , Cell , Display

Kyte: The YouTube for Skype users
2007-02-07 23:30:05
While some companies are promoting the idea of broadcasting television over the Internet, Decentral sticks with the trend: You. Its service called Kyte enables web site owners and bloggers to create their broadcast channel. Through a widget, content editors can select and schedule what videos they want to show/share. Broadcasting can be made on the Web and on recent cellphones. But the great feature here is the instant messenger function which allows authors to interact with their audience in real-time. For example, imagine a video talk-show with questions of the public. Decentral’s idea has already interested many hot investors. Draper Fisher Jurveston and Niklas Zennstrom’s venture company have poured some $2.25 million in July 2006. Us: Kyte has a big potential to go viral. But its main drawback is the content. But be sure that YouTube is already preparing the same kind of broadcast-yourself toolbox, and Skype readying a video Skypecast for its VoIP calling applica...
More About: Youtube , User , Users

Chat softwares for Mac users
2007-02-07 11:29:01
Two cool chatting applications for Mac users. Adium hit the version 1.0 final release. Adium is a popular instant messenger client even in the beta stage. Besides the many improvements and bug corrections, the version 1.0 also adds QQ messaging support to its repertoire of 13 services which include AIM, MSN, Google Talk, and Yahoo. It is fast, lightweight, open source, highly customizable, and has now been translated into 20 languages in addition to its native English. For the anecdote, the Reddit guys love it, and celebrated the release with a sweet little ‘Reddit meets Adium’ logo. Xnet Communications has released the iSoftPhone, a client that couldn’t be anything else than a VoIP client (as the interface mimics the Apple iPhone). Users dial a phone number or choose them into their address book. They can also create private telephone networks by adding multiple SIP providers, and the application is a Mac-only implementation built on a telephony engine.
More About: Software , Chat , War , Ware

Chatting with pictures: PreClick
2007-02-07 11:29:01
A picture worths a thousand words, doesn’t it? So instead of text instant messenger, why not chatting with pictures. Right. PreClick launched a new app called Instant Photo Messenger which enables users to send/share pictures with their community in a chatting form. Everything is made up to let you think so. The user interface closely looks to any other chat clients. To chat, simply drag-and-drop the pictures. The lag time is reduced as pictures are resized before being sent. Its other functions mimic the regular IM toolbox: Friends are sorted in some contact lists; contacts are added automatically after the first time you send them some photos. PreClick’s IPM may make it easier to share and view photos, but requiring a Windows-only install on the recipient’s side. We hope they would develop a cross-browser widget. A suggestion: Users should be able to plug their IPM with their Flickr account, and search the Flickr database to find cool pictures to use in their c...
More About: Pictures , Chat , Picture , With

Chinese ?Second life? is on mobile
2007-02-07 11:29:01
We recently talked about Mini Friday, a virtual world for cellphone users designed and developed by Sulake, the company well known for its Habbo Hotel. The game is promoted as an experiment, a beta project to check if a virtual world on mobile would be interesting. Chine se company Tencent got this answer: It works. And it works very well. Tencent is the company behind QQ, the local and very popular instant messaging client with voice. According to the NY Times, QQ has reached “more than 100 million users, or nearly 80 percent of the market.” Based on this preference for chatting instead of emailing, Tencent has developed a virtual world on mobile phones for its users, mainly the Chinese MySpace generation, the NY Times reports. “Instant messaging and game-playing are major obsessions.” “They play games, form communities and even adopt virtual personas, or avatars, which requires selecting an online image or personality and then buying that character v...
More About: Life , Mobile , Second Life

Mobile companies want their Google
2007-02-05 23:27:02
Convergence. Internet companies take on the mobile phone market, and mobile operators do the same. After their intention to build their own open source operating system to power the next generation of cellphones, major cellphone carriers intend to build their own search engine. The starting group includes Vodafone, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia, Cingular and France Telecom/Orange, which is currently working with Google to develop a cellphone with the Google search engine enabled, among other services. They would gather at the upcoming 3GSM in Barcelona to discuss about the technology and the business model to adopt. “The networks may decide to go with an existing search engine and use their combined might to secure a majority slice of the income. Another idea up for discussion is the creation of a white label service, with a single advertising sales house and technical team, to which mobile networks could then apply their own brand,” t...
More About: Companies , Mobile , Comp , Want

IPhone: A full-page ad to gain public opinion approval
2007-02-05 23:27:02
Before to go to court, Cisco is battling for the public opinion approval about the iPhone trademark. Although the company agreed with Apple to extend the cease-fire by 2 weeks, it came out with a full-page ad in the New York Times last week (via textually). The ad shows a comparison table between the Apple’s iPhone and the Cisco’s iPhone, to insist on the trademark ownership one more time. It also promoted on the retro look as a cool feature of the WiFi Skype phone, something that would just reposition the comparison on a ‘old fashioned industry vs the cool and trendy company’. Not sure NY Times readers would be convinced by the Cisco’s initiative.
More About: Iphone , Public , Opinion , Page

Low-cost WiFi router maker Meraki grabbed $5 million
2007-02-05 23:27:02
Meraki Networks, the low-cost wireless router maker backed by Google, grabbed $5 million in a first round of funding. The round was led by Sequoia Capital, which also backs Fon wireless network. VentureBeat explains how it works. “A hundred routers were installed to cover 400 apartment units, housing about 1,000 people. A philanthropist paid $4,999 to supply the routers. The upside is, the project required only five DSL connections, and each person enjoyed the same broadband quality as they would normally from a single connection, chief executive Sanjit Biswas tells VentureBeat. The end result: Instead of each person paying $20 a month for a reliable Internet connection, they?re only paying about $1 a month, he says.” Although this sounds amazing, we wonder how the situation turns out when all of the 400 apartments are making VoIP phone calls, watching videos or downloading big files. Another point is Meraki routers are relying on the MIT’s Roofnet WiFi project, ...
More About: Cost , Wifi , Lion , Maker , Make

Click-to-call Sitofono service now accept cellphone calls
2007-02-05 23:27:02
Up to now, Abbeynet’s Sitofono was another click-to-call service. Business customers put a widget on their website, their website visitors click on it to make a direct phone call or request a call from the site owner. Cool, but what’s cooler is that the Italian company funded by Luca Filigheddu breaks into the mobile phone market. Sitofono now can allow direct cellphone calls. Customers don’t have any software download to do, they just need to point their cellphone’s browser at www.SomeNameCompany.sitofono.com, insert their mobile phone number in the edit box to call the company. Those SIP phone calls will be free. As part of the announcement, “any Sitofono’s customer in US and Canada can now make unlimited FREE calls worldwide from their mobile phone by using their Sitofono,” says Luca Filigheddu on his blog. Us: Enabling cellphone calls from cellphones is cool, although those phone calls should come after the visitors discover the compa...
More About: Phone , Cell , Service , Click , Calls

The iPhone might become the AT&T Unity symbol
2007-02-04 11:26:01
Everyone knows it, Apple has entangled its iPhone to AT&T through its Cingular partnership. But what plans has Ma Bell with the bright and shiny Internet tablet than can do iPod? Glenn Fleischman, in a MacWorld’s column, hints about the newly launched “Unity ” plans. “What AT&T will likely adopt, perhaps with the iPhone being the first device to be part of the plan, is fixed-mobile convergence (FMC), which is the merger of calling systems that are fixed (through a landline or wired broadband service in the home) and mobile, as with cellular networks,” he wrote. AT&T can do it via some UMA (unlicensed mobile access) connectivity, a technology already adopted by major cellphone makers like Nokia, Motorola and Samsung. “Any hardware engineering could already be built into the iPhone,” so any extra development will be needed. In this scenario, convergence, roaming capability and audio quality would be at least as good as competitor...
More About: Iphone , Come , The A

Yodio: Make audio slides on the go
2007-02-04 11:26:01
Assuming several chapters make a book, several voicemails make a podcast show — and even more, if voicemails can be illustrated with photos. This is what Yodio, based in Seattle, intends to do with its auto-publishing platform for mobile podcasters. Here’s how it works: Users take a picture with their cellphone, dial the Yodio’s toll-free number and record a message. The system then syncs the voicemail with the picture, before storing both on users’ private space. The great feature here is that podcast trails can be created so that members will share a longer story instead of a collection of separate audio clips. Social sharing is the obvious community leverage of such a platform. But Yodio has also prepared a tool to allow ‘premium’ members to charge the access to their pictures or audiocasts. To us, this means cellphone users will have an enticing proposition to become citizen reporters, or more trendy, paparazzi.
More About: Audio , Audi , Slide , Make , Slides

Midomi: A search engine that listens you singing
2007-02-02 23:24:02
The voice search market welcomes another player. US company Midomi allows users who only know the tune but not its title, to sing it online and get the answer. They won’t need to be a great singer, the company claims its voice engine can recognize a tune even if users hum, sing or whistle into their computer microphone. “Midomi uses a proprietary Multimodal Adaptive Recognition System (MARS) Search developed by Melodis Corporation. The MARS Search analyzes each element independently and adapts to the stronger components,” Search Engine Watch reports. “For instance, MARS Search takes speech content into account if the user sings the lyrics and ignores speech content if the user hums or whistles the song.” Midomi also intends to become a social network. Users who have created a profile can sing their favorite songs, share them with others and add them to the search engine?s music database. The site provides users a system to rate the performances of oth...
More About: Hat , List , Listen

Fon hooked up with British Telecom
2007-02-02 23:24:02
When it comes to British Tele com s, you know it’s going to be something big. The telecoms company closed a deal with the Spanish WiFi network Fon to allow BT users to share their broadband access and BT Fusion users (the WiFi/GSM dual-mode service) to make VoIP phone calls via Fon members’ hotspots. With this partnership, Fon is gaining more grandeur and authority as a WiFi network. The deal will grant Fon the access to up to 100,000 customers, reports Reuters. A rather small user base compared to the other big deal the company made in France with Neuf-Cegetel, the second biggest ISP in France with over 1.2 million broadband users.
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A MP3 podcast is enough to hack Windows Vista
2007-02-02 17:23:03
Windows Vista is nicely design operating system but includes some dumb and dumber features. Why dumb? Because Microsoft has admitted that speech recognition functions could be hijacked, reports the BBC. The trick is a simple one. When a user plays an MP3 file of voice instructions while his microphone is on, Vista consider the recorded voice as the user’s one. Listening a podcast including commands like ‘Delete’, ‘Copy’, ‘Shutdown’ could then impact on the computer. But why dumber? Because those critical sequences of orders are not filtered or that there’s no blacklist users could create to fine tune the safety of the system. For its defense, Microsoft argued that voice commands could not be used for privileged functions such as creating a new user or formatting a drive… Is that enough?
More About: Windows , Pod , Windows Vista , Wind

Screen your voicemail on Windows Vista
2007-02-02 17:23:03
As Windows Vista was launched two days ago, you might want to have some cool gadgets to enhance its basic features. The Visual Voice mail gadget (or widget) is a good one. Developed by CallWave, it provides a visual notification when new messages arrive, whether a user?s handset is nearby or not. Users can view voicemail details, including message lengths and the time when each call was received, and can choose which message to listen to first. The widget works with most US carriers including Cingular, Verizon and T-Mobile, and could be freely downloaded on their site. Us: The idea is good, but we’d like to see more features like call filtering, or the killer function, speech to text conversion.
More About: Screen , Mail , Email

Fring is out, using Skype on a Symbian phone is now possible
2007-02-02 17:23:03
Fring, a British VoIP start-up that we interviewed three months ago, is one of the company banking on the (always) delayed Skype for Symbian -powered cellphones. It recently released its mobile client, a peer-to-peer platform that enables Skype and Google Talk users to make phone calls for free from their handsets. Cool stuff, same promise than competitors, and what is more interesting, reports the Register, lies in its business models, which is not the usual one. “Most VoIP providers make money by selling outside-network minutes and additional services: calls to anyone within that network are free, but outside calls are charged for at a cheap rate. But Fring doesn’t run the network, it simply provides access to Skype or Google Talk (or both), so when a Skype user calls a non-Skype user, using SkypeOut, they pay Skype, rather than Fring.” The Register listed three possible revenue streams. One: Fring becomes a mobile phone provider, selling its own minutes. Two: F...
More About: Phone , Ring , Sing