I’m sure many of you have received a mobile bill and thought “Blimey, my SMS charges are astronomical!”
Little did you realise just how right you were..
A scientist at the University of Leicester has calculated that the cost of sending a text message is four times more expensive that that of transmitting the same data from the Hubble Space telescope.
As part of research conducted for Channel 4’s Dispatches programme “The Mobile Phone Rip-Off”, Dr Nigel Bannister contacted NASA who told him that it costs approximately £8.85 per megabyte (MB) to transmit data from Hubble to a receiving ground station on Earth. From there, there are further transmissions required to get the data to the right people in observatories and universities, etc. which can push the cost up to nearly £85 per MB.
A single SMS text message has a maximum size of 140 bytes (160 characters encoded at 7 bits per character) . There are 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte so it will take 7490 text messages to transmit one megabyte.
Assuming an average cost of 5p per text, that works out at a whopping £374.49 per MB - about 4.4 times more expensive than sending the same data from space.
Which rather begs the question - how much would it cost to text your mate on the International Space Station?
Crumbs, who knew the Pope was into his mobile messaging? I wonder what phone he has, and what ringtone it’s got. Probably not Cradle Of Filth, it’s fair to say. Okay, so the news that the Pope will send “daily inspirational text messages” to his Australian followers during a visit later this year probably doesn’t mean he’ll be tapping them into a Nokia N73 himself and pressing ‘Send’.However, His Holiness isn’t stopping there - he’ll also be social networking, using digital prayer walls and webcasting using local operator Telstra’s 3G network. And while it’s tempting to write this kind of thing of as a niche, think about the huge audience of Catholics there are worldwide who’d be interested in daily mobile services…(via SMS Text News)
Don’t worry, kids! Getting head lice is actually a sign that your hair’s clean, not filthy. Not that this is much comfort when you’re stuck at home with your head slathered in something that smells like toilet cleaner.
(I accept that lice treatments may have changed since my days as an infested child. Or perhaps my mum really was using toilet cleaner to teach me a lesson.)
Anyway, British parents are enlisting their mobile phones in the fight against head lice. A campaign called ‘Beat The Bugs’ is letting them sign up for text messages whenever there’s an infestation at their child’s school. They’re called ‘Outbreak Alerts’, which sounds very exciting. After a trial run in Northampton, 77% of parents said they were supportive of the idea.
I know, I know - just what the world needs, another IM/VOIP mobile app.
Octrotalk does look fairly standard, but it does have a couple of nice featuress.
Firstly, it is compatible with Google Talk (Jabber), MSN, AIM, ICQ and Yahoo chat protocols. It is cross platform - running on Symbian 3rd Edition, Windows Mobile and WM Smartphone as well as the Desktop version of Windows.
It also has a useful file sharing side - you can use it to access shared folders on PCs running the Windows client and there is some kind of P2P file sharing built in to boot.
The downside is… well, it’s yet another IM/VOIP app. Fring is probably a better bet for most yusers, particularly if you need Skype access. Take a look, though - it’s a free download, available here.
Ok this is a bit spooky. A widowed husband from Lancashire claims to be receiving text messages from his dead wife. Frank Jones who lives in a house which has a history of poltergeist-like disturbances began receiving calls from his home phone on his mobile when he knew nobody was home. Shortly after, he started getting strange text messages containing words that he claims sound like those of his late wife.
There is no number attributed to the texts which makes it all the stranger. According to Jones, his wife, Sadie, always had her mobile on her and was even buried with it when she died of a heart attack.
We can’t help but wonder what network she is on? We can see the advertising slogan now - ‘We even have reception on heaven’.
(Via The Register)
Ooh, this is a clever idea. If you use Google Mail you might be impressed by all that lovely storage space (6.5 GB at last count!) but somewhat stuck about what to use it all for.
Well, it’s not likely to make too big a dent, but if you own a S60 3rd Edition mobile and have £9.95 burning a hole in your paypal account you could always spend it on GSync - a new product from Psiloc that lets you archive you SMS and MMS messages to your Google Mail inbox.
The app could barely be simpler to use - it just sits in the background and sends SMS/MMS messages to Google Mail at a specified schedule. Messages appear as emails (obvious, really) and the system makes full use of Google Mail’s ability to group together messages by the same person.
The software can only sync up to 200 messages per day - this appears to be a limit set by Google rather than Psiloc - any extra message are simply queued until the following day, and then uploaded.
But seriously, who gets more than 200 texts a day?
A few weeks ago we took a look at a handy little Nokia Beta Labs product called Text Messenger which displays and manages SMS messages via a couple of Windows desktop widgets.
Useful as it is, Text Messenger only works with Windows Vista.
If you are one of the thousands of Microsoft users who haven’t ‘upgraded’ to their latest OS, we wouldn’t want you to miss out so here is a rather similar bit of software from Psiloc - BlueText.
You will need a PC running Windows XP (or Vista) and some manner of BlueTooth capability through a USB dongle, etc. Once installed, you simply pair the software with you phone and get cracking.
The interface is a bit basic, but clean, and new texts can be read and replied to with the minimum of fuss.
BlueText costs $15 and is available here. One caveat is that the current version only works with Microsoft and Widdcomm BlueTooth drivers.
Touchscreen phones are very much the design of choice just now and with the tech becoming ever more ubiquitous it is unsurprising to see that handset manufactures are dreaming up kerrazy new ways to out-do one another.
One of the latest comes straight from the workbench of a very crafty designer named Sunman Kwon. Dubbed the Mooon+, the recently unveiled concept device is a very sleek looking touchscreen effort with the additon of an in-built detachable Bluetooth headset.
Design wise the Mooon+ is a triumph with its sleek lines and raised metallic accents about the screen but what’s really clever is how the Bluetooth headset has been seamlessly incorporated into the base of the device without making it look bulky. Indeed, when the Bluetooth headset is detached the Mooon+ looks a little bit lopsided and incomplete. In order to recharge the headset all you need to do is re-attach it to the bottom of your phone.
There are no other specs to speak of and seeing as this is just a concept there is no way of knowing whether the device will make it to market. Hopefully some design savvy manufacturer will snap up Kwon before long whose other designs include a wearable wrist phone that projects a keypad onto your hand. Hit the jump for more pictures.
Continue reading ‘Mooon+ touchscreen phone concept is sooo coool’
Continuing Nokia’s recent obsession with widgets, Nokia Beta Labs has released Nokia Text Messenger - an SMS display widget for Windows Vista desktop PCs.
As well as Microsoft’s most up to date OS, NTM requires Nokia PC Suite 6.85 or later in order to make the connection twixt phone and PC.
The widget sits as a window on your desktop or (in a smaller version) in your Sidebar and PC Suite acts as a conduit to pipe it full of fresh incoming SMS goodness.
Messages can be displayed five at a time in the flowting desktop windows with the compact Sidebar version showing three at at time.
As ever, with Beta Labs productions, the clue is in the website name and you should expect the odd bug, but this is a reasonably polished, if limited in funtion, piece of work.
One thing I find irritating about my Nokia N73 is the way the “You have 1 new message” popup doesn’t give any clue about who the message is from. The only way to find out is to open the message, or to cancel the popup and look in my inbox.
Yes, I know, it’s incredibly minor and petty, but admit it - you find it annoying too.
S60Ticker might be what I am looking for. This app runs in the background and - whenever you receive a text - displays a tickertape with the incoming number or contact name and the beginning of the message
Screen position, colours, font and duration are all configurable and there is a development kit available which holds out the possibility of plugins to display other info such as RSS feeds or news alerts.
S60Ticker is freeware from here, but unless your German is up to scratch you should go here for a Google Translation. Executive summary - install this (the main app), then this (the control panel).
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