Blyk, the yoof-oriented MVNO, provides free voice minutes and texts to its 16-24 year old demographic in return for watching targeted adverts via their handsets. Once the free balance is used up, or if the user want to browse the web, the phone can be topped up like a regular pay-as-you-go SIM.
The UK Mobile blog SMS Text News has spotted a questionnaire on the Blyk website that suggests the company are considering extending their free service to include data.
Blyk want to know how important free data is to their customers, while making the point that other services might have to be sacrificed to fit the current advert/pricing model. They also want to know want kind of services are likely to be used the most - web access, social networking, chat etc.
Although Blyk are unlikely to be able to provide a huge amount of free data via advertising, this could still make a big difference to the amount their customers try to use and might even encourage some digital holdouts to give the mobile ‘net a try.
Here at Pocket Picks we are all far, far too old to be on the Blyk network and no amount of vitamins and moisturiser is going to change that. If you have given the service a whirl, why not take a break from drinking cheap cider and performing urban street dance and let us know what you think in the comments? Would the prospect of free data make putting up with adverts worthwhile?
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’
Californian developers SkyFire are running a private beta of a new mobile web browser that they claim will offer a ‘desktop’ browsing experience with full AJAX and Flash support.
Details are sketchy at the moment - the private beta is US-only and even there SkyFire are being pretty tight-fisted with the invites - but the browser seems to work a little like Opera Mobile, using a proxy server to compress and optimise pages to better suit a small screen and slow connection.
SkyFire currently works only on selected Windows Mobile devices, but full Windows Mobile and Symbian support is promised.
As soon as Pocket Picks can get it’s eager mitts on a copy we will give you a full review but until then, check out this demo video:
Confused by Windows Mobile? Don’t know your ActiveSync from your elbow? Help may be just a click (and a short sign-up process) away.
Microsoft has launched Windows Mobile Training - a free web site that offers tutorials in choosing and using Windows Mobile devices.
It’s all a bit corporate, and at heart is a promotional resource to push Windows Mobile 6, but there is a good selection of Flash tutorials on topics from using WinMo with Vodafone Live to installing third-party apps.
Also available are product demo videos, PDF documents featuring articles and howtos and resources for small businesses.
Personally, I think a community element would be even more useful. Although it may not give the desired party line on every issue, something like Ubuntu Forums would be really useful - more experienced Windows Mobile users offering advice to newbies.
You will need a Windows Live ID to log in - this can be created for free directly from the front page.
Ever wanted to copy a file from your PC onto your phone, but don’t fancy the hassle of connecting via USB and fiddling around with a file manager?
If your phone supports wifi and you have a Windows XP machine, Miniserver could be just what you need.
Miniserver is - as its name might suggest - a mini webserver.
Install it on your PC and tell it the directories that you want to share and then simply use your phone’s wifi connection to browse to a specially-created web page where you can download files from the shared directory to your phone, or vice-versa.
As well as an XP PC you will need a working wifi router that both the PC and phone can connect to. The app will autodetect your PC’s network settings and tell you the address to which you need to point your phone’s browser.
Although the app can be configured to run automatically when your PC starts up, it doesn’t seem to have much in the way of security so I would recommend not sharing any sensitive files and only enabling it when you need to copy a file - at least until that version number climbs a little higher.
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