UK firm Censorit has been quick off the mark following the recent Byron Review, which looked at child safety and new technology, and spurred calls for more content filtering.
The company has launched a subscription-based filtering service aimed at web-enabled phones, portable media players and handheld games devices, which will let parents protect their kids from inappropriate content.
The phones angle is interesting, since Censorit is targeting handsets with built-in Wi-Fi, which get around the age-restrictions imposed by the mobile operators on their own networks. In theory, say, a child surfing the mobile Web through Vodafone can’t access porn and gambling sites, but if they switch to their phone’s Wi-Fi connection, they can. Continue reading ‘Censorit launches web-filtering service for iPod Touch, PSP, DS…’
If you haven’t come across the Webby Awards before, it is the leading international awards body, honoring the best and brightest of the Internet. The awards are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences which is a 550 strong group of Web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities who select the nominees and winners each year. Indeed, among the judges this year are David Bowie, Matt Groening and Jamie Oliver.
Of course, falling under the rather large umbrella of the internet these days is the mobile web and the Webby Awards has an entire section with several sub-categories devoted to it. The nominees have just been announced and the winners will be announced on May 6th. Nominees include Cellufun in the ‘GAMES’ category, Yahoo Mobile Web In ‘LISTINGS AND UPDATES’ and Reuters Mobile in ‘NEWS’. The full list of Nominees can be found here.
In keeping with the participatory ethos of the Internet, the Nominees are all eligible to win a People’s Voice Award, which as you might expect is voted for by you, the people. The voting opened yesterday and closes on May 1st so get over to the Webby Awards People’s Voice page and make your voice heard.
Course you do, you just didn’t know that such a thing existed. And why should you? Though online storage sites and services are nothing new, they have been skipped over in the potentially massive mobile space where storage is of much more concern than in the PC market.
Enter humyo.com a new mobile compatible online storage service that offers up to 30GB for free. Not only that, but you can share your space with friends, make use of automatic file synchronizing to avoid duplicates and even embed a humyo media player widget on your blog or personal website (we are hoping that means social networking sites like Facebook too) that streams content such as photos and music from your online archive.
How about three cheers for common sense? This is a fantastic idea as far as we are concerned and makes even more sense for mobiles than PCs. In fact we are pretty startled that nobody has gotten to this sooner so kudos to the folks at humyo for taking the first brave steps towards mobile. As mentioned before signing up is free and all users are entitled to 30GB of storage. As mobile phones become increasingly connected perhaps services like humyo could spell the end for expensive memory cards - who knows?
[Thanks to Marc for sending this in]
Say we’re behind the times and we’ll say just keep reading. But in the case of PocketSurfer2, the handy web-based device from wireless services/printer company Datawind and we might admit to some tardiness.
Launched before Christmas in the UK at the recommended retail price of £180, PocketSurfer2 is a mobile web device that lets you surf for free via GPRS for 20 hours per month. Traffic over this amount is charged at around £5 per month.
Perhaps the closeness comparison is the wi-fi-only Nokia N810 Web Tablet, which with a touchscreen and QWERTY keypad, retails for £280 (although PocketPicks recently picked up the earlier touchscreen-only N770 on eBay for £80 plus P&P).
As for PocketSurfer2, it’s a closed device that uses Internet Explorer as the browser on a Linux-based OS with some proprietary special compression sauce from Datawind combining to offer a “full internet experience” - at least as much as you can have on a 640 x 240 VGA backlit colour screen (i.e. it involves some side-to-side scrolling on most web pages).
Continue reading ‘PocketSurfer2 - the GPRS web device - Germany bound’
Doom, gloom and Armageddon are not topics exclusive to street corner demagogues and David Ike. They are also increasingly becoming the preserve of tech companies and researchers looking to utilize mobile phones as civilian-based surveillance tools.
One of the most recent is Purdue University who are developing radiation sensors designed to fit inside mobile phones. The small cheap sensors will be built into mobile devices with the idea that if enough of them detect radiation around the same area, they might help to pre-empt a terrorist attack.
Sounds a little Orwellian and fraught with complications if you ask us; how would such a system be policed and what about all of the false positives that would inevitably ensue? Still, if some people would feel safer with this tech in their phone then presumably they will soon have the choice.
(Via InfoWorld)
Apparently mobile IM adoption is set to triple in Europe over the next five years. A new report from Forrester Research suggests that mobile IM usage will grow from its current eight percent adoption rate to a much more substantial 24 percent by 2013.
That will push the subscriber base up from 26.7 million to 80 million and is apparently thanks to the familiarity that young people have with PC based IM applications combined with the continuous introduction of more IM capable handsets.
The inevitable upshot of this is that SMS revenues will suffer with a prediction that up to 13 percent of SMS traffic will be displaced by IM services in the next six years. Even so, it is not all doom and gloom for the humble SMS as the same report suggests that there is growth in that market too, with traffic expected to climb from 190 Billion messages in 2007 to 233 Billion by the end of 2013.
Big numbers indeed but it is about time that overpriced text messaging had some decent competition.
(Via mocoNews)
Having stuffed yourself silly on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, what better way to pass the time until drinking yourself silly on New Year’s Eve than downloading a new application for your mobile phone? Answers on a postcard please, but in the meantime, check out our pick of five top Java apps…
1. Gmail (pictured)
Google’s mobile Gmail app truly is a thing of beauty. Well, simplicity and efficiency anyway. It provides an excellent stripped-down interface to your Gmail webmail account, with all manner of keypad shortcuts to make it quick to archive and delete messages from your phone. It also has nifty features like allowing you to search your most-used contacts first when composing emails. Read more
Continue reading ‘Pocket Picks Xmas Special: Top 5 Java mobile apps’
MySpace looks set to go mobile in the US, with a little help from advertisers.
According to Mobile Entertainment, Fox Interactive – which is owned by Rupert Murdock as well as MySpace - will launch an ad-funded version of MySpace for American mobile users.
The new mobile version of MySpace will be offered as a downloadable application. It will let users do all they can normally do on MySpace such as send and receive messages, comment on pictures, post bulletins, update blogs and amend their mood status, all from their phones.
The application, which will be free to download, will feature adverts from selected companies while a version with more features will be available to AT&T and Helio subscribers.
Mobile Entertainment also said that versions of other sites such as as FoxSports.com, IGN.com and film review site Rotten Tomatoes will also launch as part of Fox Interactive’s strategy of taking its raft of websites onto mobile phones.
What is it with Transformers and mobiles just now? It is not like there is a logical reason that the two should be paired (not that we’re complaining mind) but it seems like there isn’t a week goes by when we don’t get a chance to mention them.
The latest excuse comes courtesy of Phone Daily who has come across a clever chap who has managed to turn a Motorola E6 into a very cool looking Transformers toy. We are fairly sure that it doesn’t actually function as a phone, but it is still pretty nifty. Hopefully some folks at Motorola will get wind of this guy’s handiwork and make it happen (unlikely).
If it does, our money is on this evil looking thing being a Decepticon (the baddies are always cooler). More pics after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Transformers: mobiles in disguise’
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