Archive for the 'Features' Category

20 ways your mobile phone can get you in trouble

Published by Stuart Dredge on April 8, 2008 in Culture and Features. 0 Comments

mobile-trouble.jpgMobile phones are a boon to humanity! A shining beacon of technological progress! Zeitgeist-surfing icons of 21st-century lifestyle! And stuff. But they can also cause you grief. See, the average handset isn’t just capable of making your life easier - it can ruin it too. How? Let me count the ways:

1. Your filthy bedroom camphone snaps find an audience they weren’t intended for. Whether this audience is your cuckolded wife/husband, or the entire readership of the News Of The World, depends on your level of fame.

2. Your Nokia N95’s GPS leads you nearly all the way to your destination, but the phone’s battery conks out just as you reach Birmingham’s famous spaghetti junction. Good luck with that.

3. Be warned, turning up 20 minutes late to a job interview because Tower Bloxx made you miss your tube stop is never an acceptable excuse. Even if you did beat your high score.

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Opinion: Mobile virtual worlds could be the next big thing

Published by Stuart Dredge on April 7, 2008 in Features. 0 Comments

i-citizen-3d.gifIn many people’s minds, virtual worlds mean one thing, and one thing only: Second Life. Such was the hype surrounding that virtual world last year, that it’s easy to forget that there are actually dozens - if not hundreds - of rivals, a number of which actually have more users. If you’re a parent, you might already know this, from seeing your kids use Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin or Webkinz.

However, all these virtual worlds are accessed on a PC - either through a dedicated application like Second Life, or through a Web browser. Mobile handsets haven’t had much of a look in, for obvious reasons such as their small screens and the cost of streaming lots of data to the phone as you move around a world.

This, however, is changing…

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Chris Leonard’s 2008 wishlist

Published by Chris Leonard on January 1, 2008 in Features. 0 Comments

2007 has been a pretty eventful year in mobile but then every year is pretty eventful – that’s why it’s so interesting.

I’ve been pretty underwhelmed by the iPhone but its hype and popularity show it’s a popular release that’s already kick started a revolution in touch-screen mobile UIs. But what do I want in 2008? Here’s my wishlist:

1.    Sony Ericsson W960i
sonyericsson-w960-003.jpgThe Walkman “iPhone killer” seems to have missed the boat in 2007 after being unfortunately delayed until this year. However, Sony Ericsson’s Walkman handsets are some of the best music handsets around with great ripping software, easy UI and quality manufacturing.

The thought of a high-end 3G touch-screen Walkman phone with 3.2-megpixel camera, oodles of memory and a huge colour screen puts this top of my wish list.

2.    Google’s Android to take off
google-oha.jpgGoogle’s first attempt at a mobile OS is an interesting one. The response to it hasn’t exactly been overwhelming, and with people like Nokia and Motorola initially sceptical, the fact that Google’s Open Handset Alliance got support from over 30 of the world’s top mobile companies to launch a completely open mobile OS is a promising one.

It’ll also be good to get an open alternative to Symbian, UIQ and Windows Mobiile, just to get them to raise their game.

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Pocket Picks Xmas Special: Messaging

Published by Chris Leonard on December 31, 2007 in Features and Messaging. 1 Comment

With all hype around social networking and file sharing sites, it’s easy to forget that once upon a time all mobiles did was make phone calls and send messages.

Thankfully, the humble art of texting and mobile emailing still shows no sign of dying just yet as these top messaging services show:

1. Mobikade
mobikade.jpgOriginally a Japanese mobile social networking site, Mobikade arrived on these shores this year.

The messaging aspect comes with Mobikade’s deal with BAM Student Marketing (who provide official student union (SU) websites), for free SMS messages via said websites.

The service went live in 30 UK university SU websites, letting the nation’s scholars/work dodgers send free texts to any other UK mobile. All the students have to do to get free SMS credits is use various features on Mobikade’s WAP site.

Great idea and naturally we wouldn’t expect these texts to be discussing the latest thesis on molecular biology…

2. Momail’s super inbox
momail_official_logo.jpgHaving previously only been available in Scandinavia, Momail launched in the UK this year with, well, no fanfare at all.

It’s a shame because it’s a useful service, gathering all your incoming emails from all your accounts, into one inbox on your mobile.

You don’t need special software because Momail uses your handset’s existing email platforms and will automatically configure picture and document attachments for viewing on your mobile.

When you reply to emails, Momail will automatically configure the answer to come from the email account to which they were sent.

It’s free to use, but there is a catch. As we found out to our cost – set it up to constantly check for emails and receive all your emails and you’ll see you data usage go through the roof!

3. Classified ads on mobile
upingme.pngClassified ads, you know – that section at the back of newspapers offering ‘massages’ and second-hand lawnmowers, went mobile this year with Upingme’s ‘Classified ads 2.0’ service.

Why ‘2.0’? Because it’s user generated in real time, just like ‘Web 2.0’ services.

Right… Upingme is free for users to post ads via a text message and the ad is then forwarded to people who have told the service they want what you’re offering.

You can post anything - within reason – and any mobile phone will work with the service. It’s not exactly huge at the moment, but then the more people who use the service the better it will be.
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Pocket Picks Xmas Special: Mobile Internet

Published by Chris Leonard on December 27, 2007 in Features and Mobile internet. 0 Comments

The big news this year in the mobile internet space was the beginnings of what might be a serious turf war as Nokia opened the ‘Ovi’ on providing its own direct links to its own mobile internet services, ahead of the operators.

At the moment, it’s still early days, but considering that Vodafone was quick to sign an exclusive deal for Ovi handsets on its network, the ‘world’s biggest community’ obviously saw something in it.

1. Nokia Ovi
03ovi1n_purple_rgb_lowres1.jpgOvi (meaning ‘door’ in Finnish) was a huge announcement this year, taking the initiative in mobile internet services away from operators.

If that sounds a little overblown, bear in mind this was the first time in a long while that a manufacturer made its own services available direct from a handset on a par, or even ahead of an operator’s.

At first Ovi only(!) offers direct access to Music Store, N-Gage, Nokia Maps and the MOSH social networking service, although more will in time be available from your handset.

Obviously Nokia’s making a big play for mobile internet dominance and honestly, who would bet against it?

2. Vodafone takes on Nokia’s Ovi
vodafone-logo.jpgAs a measure of how big the Ovi news could be, Vodafone didn’t waste anytime jumping on the bandwagon.

Vodafone obviously saw the way things could be going and was the first (and only, so far) network to sign a deal for exclusive handsets with Ovi access included alongside its own Live! portal.

Considering how keen networks like Vodafone are to making their portals the first destination for mobile internet use, its support of Ovi shows there could be something in Nokia’s plans.
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Pocket Picks Xmas Special: Top Five Handsets

Published by Chris Leonard on December 26, 2007 in Features and Handsets. 0 Comments

2007 has dominated by two handsets – Apple’s iPhone and Nokia’s N95. One was a not particularly advanced mid-range handset without 3G/Wi-Fi or a particularly good camera. The other was a handheld PC on your phone with a five-megapixel camera and almost unlimited potential for mobile apps. Guess which dominated everyone’s attention.

1.    Apple iPhone
gallery1_200706211.pngNo mobile can ever have been hyped so much and got so much press attention as Apple’s first foray into mobiles. It looked great and featured innovative touch-screen controls with a huge colour screen. And yet. It wasn’t the best camera phone and you couldn’t send texts to more than one person at a time. And yet despite this, it’s safe to say that the iPhone was the biggest launch ever in mobile.

2.    Nokia N95/ Nokia N95 8GB
nokian951.jpgNokia’s self-styled ‘multimedia computer’ was an instant hit with consumers. It had the best of everything you could want in a handheld device including 3G, Wi-Fi, HSDPA, GPS connectivity and a five-megapixel camera. There was (is!) nothing this mass-market phone can’t do.

The fact that Nokia then made it even better with a lick of black paint and a massive 8GB of memory for music and video storage was just the icing on the cake for what is without doubt a true future-proof handset. It’s just a shame it was overshadowed by the iPhone.

3.    LG Viewty
viewty.jpgWe could have featured either this or LG’s Prada phone, but we’ve plumped for the Viewty, if only because of a cool advertising campaign and the fact that this was an instant hit with consumers  – so far over 300,000 sales in a few months and counting. It looks gorgeous, with a huge touch-screen and a five-megapixel camera. The Prada had the fashionable name tag, but the Viewty (despite the silly name) had the coolness.
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Top 5 iPhone Web apps of 2007

Published by Stuart Dredge on December 24, 2007 in Applications and Features. 0 Comments

iphone-facebook.jpg2008 should see a blizzard of innovative native applications for Apple’s iPhone, once the SDK gets into the hands of developers. Yet 2007 has already seen some innovative and usable web applications, accessible through the iPhone’s Safari browser. Here’s our pick of the bunch:

1. Facebook (http://iphone.facebook.com)
We already spend far too much time on the full Facebook website, but its iPhone-friendly version takes the addiction mobile. It does a great job of boiling down the key features of Facebook, particularly the connectivity, in a usable interface that’s perfect for finger-jabbing.

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Nokia confirms existence of new N-Gage format

Published by Ben Furfie on February 5, 2007 in Features and Handsets. 0 Comments

N-GageNokia is to launch the revamped N-Gage mobile gaming platform (old version pictured here) later this September. The post on Nokia’s official blog, Future Watch states that: “We expect EA Mobile and Gameloft to bring a number of top-selling, award winning titles to our platform between our launch in September and the end of 2007.”

Confirming the stories carried by our sister site PocketGamer and our friends over at Mobile Entertainment, the blog also states that EA and Gameloft aren’t the only publishers involved, and that many will be revealed over the coming months. You can read more about it over on PocketGamer.



Are ‘geo-stories’ the future of citizen journalism?

Published by Stuart Dredge on December 19, 2006 in Features. 1 Comment

As ever with question-based headlines, the answer is frankly ‘who knows?’. But a new mobile experiment being carried out by BBC Innovation, Nokia, new media firm Ymogen and the University of Brighton does sound interesting.

Geo-stories is a project looking at how photos, video clips and text can be combined with location and time information to create interesting narratives. 18 students from the university have been kitted out with Nokia phones and GPS accessories to see what kind of content they can put together – for example, examining how photos and video taken at a sporting event can be mapped in time and space automatically, to provide a more rounded report on the match.

The future of citizen reporting, or just an excuse for a bunch of skinflint students to blag into Stamford Bridge on a Saturday? We’ll have to wait and see…



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