Did you just get to work, only to remember that you had forgotten to turn on BitTorrent before you left? Do you face an evening without your daily fix of pirated blockbusters perfectly legal public domain movies?
This nightmare scenario could be avoided if only there was some way to turn it on again without going home…
PCMobilizr is a remote desktop app that runs on Windows Mobile and Blackberry devices, and lets you operate your desktop PC remotely using your phone’s internet connection.
Your PC’s desktop is scaled down to fit on your phone screen, where it can be operated using the touchscreen or keypad. Response time depends on the speed of your connection, but the app uses some nifty compression tricks to only send the minimum amount of data.
Although there are a few other, free, apps (e.g. VNC) that do the same sort of job, PCMobilizr’s biggest advantage is the ease of setup and the fact that it uses HTTPS to communicate - making it compatible with most corporate and home firewalls, and secure to boot.
PCMobilzr is a 30-day trial download, price TBA.
GPSed is billed as ‘a location based service for trip tracking’. What this means in practice is another GPS-aware mobile app that connects to a web service.
There are versions of the app for Symbian, Windows Mobile/Pocket PC, Blackberry, Palm OS and Java that can work with either built in or external GOS units to track your movements in real time, updating a database on the GPSed site and displaying your progress via Google Maps.
In other words, this is Nokia Sports Tracker, but with the emphasis on travel and geo-blogging, rather than sweaty trainers and number crunching performance stats.
Once you have recorded your ‘tracks’ the site makes it easy to share them with family and friends and will even offer a real-time view of your position on the map.
GPSed also provide a windows photo album that associates photos with geo-data and displays them with a nice ‘pin board’ metaphor via Google Earth. This is currently offline-only but there are apparently plans to let users share geotagged photos via the GPSed site.
Toshiba’s always struggled to break into the top tier of phone makers but with its three new devices, unveiled a few days ago, it’s showing signs of ambition.
The G910 (right) is a clamshell smartphone looking suspiciously like a Nokia E90, albeit without a keypad on its front. To use it you really do have to open it up. The device itself does Windows Mobile 6 Professional (can you guess who it’s aimed at?), has all the usual quad-band, GPRS, HDSPA and GPS so beloved of smartphones these days. It’s expected Sim-free price is going to be around €600.
The second device, the G710 (right) is another business smartphone looking like a BlackBerry. It too has GPS and Windows Mobile (but only the standard version) and doesn’t have 3G. It does have a 2.4-inch screen though and will be cheaper at €300 Sim-free.
The third, and by no means least phone, is the G450 (below). This is by far the most interesting. It has 3G/HSDPA compatibility, but the tiny device (98×36x16mm) also doubles as a USB modem for computers, a MP3 player and has an OLED display and 160MB of memory. And it’s going to be dead cheap at only €100 Sim-free.
It’s been a couple of months now since the first rumours of new 9000-series touch-screen BlackBerry devices emerged.
At the time there was a not very convincing picture to go with the rumours. And now there’s another unconvincing shot (right) to accompany the latest speculation.
However, this time, it seems someone supposedly based in Waterloo – site of RIM’s Canadian headquarters – has posted a shot on a BlackBerry forum site.
RIM, of course, is keeping quieter than a mute monk in a library, but with the new year bound to herald some new devices from BlackBerry in the face of the iPhone’s success, we’re not ruling out a 9000-series device that might well look something like this shot.
[Via Pocket Lint]
You can go to a mobile store and ask to try out a new handset but it’s very problematic – the store staff are busy, there are too many customers, you don’t have the time to play around with the phone as you’d like…
What if you could try out all the phone’s features on your PC without leaving the house? How cool would that be?
Well, Tryphone’s launched a new website letting you test-drive a handset.
Unlike a lot of emulators and demo phones on websites, which are quite limited in terms of what you can try out, Typhone promises to let you do anything and everything on your desired handset.
It works a treat and is a great idea I’m sure will eventually be picked up by operators and retailers for their websites.
There is one catch though – it’s a US site and at the moment on the iPhone, Samsung Juke, LG Muziq and BlackBerry Pearl are online. However there is a ‘Suggestions’ link for you to ask very nicely for your desired handset to be uploaded.
You can check it out for yourself here.
Google has quietly released a new version of Google Maps Mobile with a nifty new feature that lets you pinpoint your location without a GPS device.
My Location uses the relative position of your phone to the nearest cell transmitters to triangulate your position and display it on a Google Map view.
Granted, when I tried it it could only ‘pinpoint’ my location to within 1700 metres (about a mile) so it is perhaps most useful to people who have blacked out and woken up in a strange landscape with absolutely no clue where they are.
Actually, given that this is the Christmas party season, perhaps Google are on to something after all?
Google Maps with My Location will run on Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 devices.
As users of the world’s biggest probably-correct encyclopedia - Wikipedia - will know, a Wiki is an easily-edited collection of linked web pages. What is less well known is how useful a personal wiki can be for organising notes and scraps of information.
Unyverse Mobile Wiki works as a client app for Wikipedia, allowing quick searches and offline browsing. It also lets you maintain a number of other public and private wikiwebs. These act as discussion groups, notepads and contact lists.
This is a lot for a mobile app to cope with (not to mention a lot of typing to perform on a tiny keypad) and so Unyverse works in tandem with a web app that lets you cut ‘n’ paste data and sync it to your mobile.
Unyverse is a free download for Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Java phones.
Everyone seems to be coming out with their own ‘iPhone killer’, whether it’s Sony Ericsson’s W960i or Nokia’s N82, and now even RIM’s developing its own BlackBerry version.
A US analyst, Carmi Levy at AR Communications, said RIM’s next range - the 9000-series - is ‘the future of the BlackBerry franchise’.
According to Levy, RIM’s preparing a 9000-series operating system and device platform, with the express aim of taking on Apple by targeting consumers normally attracted to the Pearl and Curve devices.
“The 9000 is supposed to be a touch-screen device, very similar in form factor to the iPhone,” Levy says.
The new-look BlackBerry devices won’t have QWERTY keyboards but instead will have a full-screen touch screen, better multimedia capabilities and the ubiquitous push-email.
The 9000-series devices are expected to appear early next year, a bit of a delay from the original target of late this year.
Mind you, RIM’s already pretty much sewn up the enterprise device market, and the Pearl and Curve have successfully bridged the consumer-business gap, so who would be against RIM making an impact, no matter when its 9000-series devices will eventually appear? Not us that’s for sure.
[Via Unstrung]
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