The Really Mobile Project – Page 3

Vodafone Live!, not available on the N86 [UPDATED]

POST UPDATED 12/10/09 – Scroll to the bottom of the article for the latest…

Vodafone, oh Vodafone, why do you upset me so?

Regular readers of my work will know that I have an ongoing love affair with Vodafone UK, or ‘Big Red’ as I affectionately call her.

A mini Voda-moan

We’ve had our ups, our downs and our fallings-out, but over the years we’ve grown to appreciate our mutual quirks and subsequent relationship demands. Lo and verily,Â today we have another… hurdle to overcome.

Some of you may remember me wondering just where my handset of the moment, the N86, would land when it reached these shores. I speculated that it would be land on the lap of Big Red, but alas they passed and plumped instead for the N97.

Ah well.

So far, so what eh?

Being the Nokia aficionado that I am however, I wasn’t going to let a small thing like no carrier support prevent me from owning my handset of choice, so I promptly went out and bought one.

End of story, right? Wrong.

Thing is, among the myriad of reasons for me having been a Vodafone customer for the best part of 15yrs, one of them – today at least – is its home portal, currently going under the name of Vodafone Live!

It’s through this portal that I find music, games and mainly, my train times. I don’t drive and when I make plans, I keep them. I often plan my journeys with an almost military-like precision and Vodafone ‘My Trains’ is an invaluable service that I use pretty much every day, without fail.

From here I may choose to visit different parts of the Live! service… but this particular saved bookmark is nearly always my jumping off point.

Now, look at these two pictures….

Something’s wrong with the one on the right, right? Of course there is.

Even worse though is this, the Vodafone Live Homepage:

Both pages are from http://live.vodafone.com, both are connected using the Vodafone Live APN. The only difference is the handset I used; my old N95 8GB is on the left and on the right, my beloved N86.

I asked @VodafoneUK about a possible fix on Twitter, to which they replied (over three tweets):

Using the WAP access point will give you best chance of it rendering properly however it maybe a case of it not being Vodafone Live! compatible if it’s not rendering normally through the WAP access point. It may be worth posting your settings on the eForum to make sure everything is set up as much as it can be bearing in mind the N86 isn’t a phone we stock. Thanks.

The first part is fine. Naturally I’d check to make sure I was using VF Live as the default access point. I did. I am. The latter part, ‘bear in mind isn’t a phone we stock’… hmm. This was backed up and re-iterated by a couple of Vodafone staffers who also said ‘we don’t support phones we don’t range’.

This is also fine. A perfectly justifiable reason for not rendering your web pages. However, to me at least, this is EXACTLY the reason that you should be doing just that for these devices. Here I am, with a T-Mobile exclusive device (for argument’s sake) and I’m looking for a new network. I decide on Vodafone and sign on for a SIM-only deal. Then I discover that my phone isn’t supported on their webpages, so I decide to go somewhere else.

You see where I’m going with this, right?

The N86 is a similar screen size, build and design to the not-too-shabby (and Vodafone supported) Nokia N85. If it’s a simple case of switching the user agent* sniffer to present the N85 screens for the N86, then this is not a big job. Nor is it complex. Quick fix. Done.

*For the uninitiated, a user agent is basically the identifier string for the browser that you use when you browse the web (mobile or otherwise). For instance, the user agent string for the N85 looks something like this:

NokiaN85-1: Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.3; U; Series60/3.2 NokiaN85-1/11.047; Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 ) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413

Whereas the N86 user agent string looks a little something like this:

NokiaN86:Â Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.3; Series60/3.2 NokiaN86-1/10.086;; Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 ) AppleWebKit/525 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 BrowserNG/7.1.13380

(Thanks to friend of Really Mobile Richard Hyndman, CTO at Mippin for that extra detail)

A final thought…

Back in my youth, while working through college, I had a friend who spent a his time working at a rather large chain of fast-food restaurants. The Manager of which had a policy that meant that for any food voucher or special offer coupon presented at the counter, no matter for which chain (be it for McDonald’s, Burger King, Wimpy etc), if they could fulfil it then they would honour the voucher.

As he told me at the time:

“It is better to please someone else’s customer who might come back another day than to tell them you’re not interested and never see them again.”

————- UPDATED – 12/10/09 ————-

A member of @VodafoneUK’s PR team has literally just been in touch to let us know that the Vodafone Live! pages have now indeed been provisioned for the Nokia N86.

Here’s a screen shot to prove it…

Huzzah! Its a-Live! — Huzzah! It's a-Live!

Congrats Vodafone, you’ve just earned 20 ReallyMobile points.

Keep it up! 🙂

Nokia & Dopplr, sitting in a tree…

K.I.S.S.I.N.G.

Ten days ago reports were coming in that Nokia had purchased the super smart online travel sharing service, Dopplr. The one liner that I dedicated to it in my last post ended with ‘apparently’. This was an addition which, at the time, made perfect sense.

You see, at the time of writing, the story itself had come from a source that TechCrunch described as ‘close to the deal’ but, no had yet come forward to confirm.

Then, one week ago, a rather short but sweet blog post appeared on Dopplr confirming the sale but not really releasing any further details on the intricacies of the deal.
However, there were some nuggets of information given away. The final paragraph in particular is key:

The acquisition does not change the current Dopplr service which is available at Dopplr.com and on platforms where Dopplr is integrated, like Flickr and Twitter. As always, if you so wish, you can get a copy of your data from your account.

See that?

First up. ‘The acquisition does not change the current Dopplr service…’. So this is good news right? Of course it is. I mean, you wouldn’t expect them to suddenly shut up shop right? All the users that currently exist aren’t going to all be poured into one large Nokia silo… are they?

The next thing to take away is the ‘…on platforms where Dopplr is integrated’ part of the sentence. Dopplr, my friends, is available on the iPhone.

But will it remain so?
According to the post from Dopplr themselves, we’re leaning towards ‘Yes’.
Time will tell.

Soon after the sale, Nokia also announced that Dopplr’s CEO, Marko Ahtissari, was to head up a new design and consumer experience unit within the Finnish HQ. Curiouser and curioser.

The big thing for me here is that as a service on it’s own Dopplr has never really proved that useful. Yes it’s fun to load in your trips on one of those dull days when there’s nothing going on on twitter and you’ve got a spare moment between emails, but has anyone here ever used it for what it is? Your ‘Social Atlas’?

Today, probably not.
But, in the future maybe? Yes. Maybe.

You see when the announcement was first made and the release landed on my desk, the first thing I instinctively said was ‘Makes perfect sense‘. Why? Well, you all remember Nokia announcing at Nokia World about their Social Location ambitions right?

You don’t? Let me remind you with the words from Nokia CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo:

â€œAutomatically lets you avert traffic jams or crowds. By putting together your location, your contacts, you get mashups. I love this idea. Imagine what can happen when we mash up social networking and your location, when your device knows where you are, where your friends are and what they are doing. Your social location, or SoLo will become your here-and-now-identity.â€

Combine that (ok admittedly rather vague) way of thinking into Ovi Maps (that’s the Ovi Maps that’s shipping on every mid-to-high-end Nokia device from now until forever by the way) which also, is now including their latest feature ‘Good Things’. You can begin to see where Nokia are going…

Good Things for those that missed it, is Nokia’s new way for Ovi Maps users to share their favourite places around the world. This is from the Nokia Conversations blog post:

Itâ€™s made up of three key elements. The first is the ability to spot Good Things on the map, where you can click on each one to find out more information, add it to a route or to your favourites. Thereâ€™s also a live Good Things feed which shows the latest good things, as theyâ€™re added. And of course the key part is the ability for you to add your own Good Things. Once youâ€™ve found where on the map youâ€™d like to add, you just drag a Good Things pin onto the map to add it. Fill in a couple of details, walk through the security check and youâ€™re good to go. Youâ€™ve made the mapped world a better place.

Make sense? Of course it does. User generated reviews populating your navigation. It’s all coming together nicely. Now let’s compare that to the contents of Dopplr’s about page:

Dopplr is a service for smart international travellers. Dopplr members share personal and business travel plans privately with their networks, and exchange tips on places to stay, eat and explore in cities around the world. Dopplr presents this collective intelligence – the travel patterns, tips and advice of the worldâ€™s most frequent travellers – as a Social Atlas.

What else can we add into this? Well, one of the really useful parts of Dopplr – one that I’ve been paying attention to of late, is the Carbon Calculator. Once your trips are complete, Dopplr, powered by AMEE, gives you an overview of your carbon emissions for that trip. Admittedly while there is no option currently to immediately recompense the climate for your travel, this information is handy for when you get round to doing it yourself.

It’s at this point that I’m reminded of several Nokia false start applications: Nokia viNe, Friendview and also, WE:OFFSET.

The former is a life-streaming service which was bascially a jazzed up version of Sports Tracker. Friendview, Nokia’s very own Google Latitude and of course WE:OFFSET, an application that monitors where you are and works out your emissions based on your methods of travel.

If Social Location really is the future as Nokia insist (and I’m leaning towards agreeing with them), what other mobile applications/services/experiments can they bring into the mix to really spice things up?

Your thoughts and comments as always, are welcome.

Nokia & Dopplr, sitting in a tree…

K.I.S.S.I.N.G.

You see, at the time of writing, the story itself had come from a source that TechCrunch described as ‘close to the deal’ but, no had yet come forward to confirm.

The acquisition does not change the current Dopplr service which is available at Dopplr.com and on platforms where Dopplr is integrated, like Flickr and Twitter. As always, if you so wish, you can get a copy of your data from your account.

See that?

The next thing to take away is the ‘…on platforms where Dopplr is integrated’ part of the sentence. Dopplr, my friends, is available on the iPhone.

But will it remain so?
According to the post from Dopplr themselves, we’re leaning towards ‘Yes’.
Time will tell.

Soon after the sale, Nokia also announced that Dopplr’s CEO, Marko Ahtissari, was to head up a new design and consumer experience unit within the Finnish HQ. Curiouser and curioser.

Today, probably not.
But, in the future maybe? Yes. Maybe.

You don’t? Let me remind you with the words from Nokia CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo:

â€œAutomatically lets you avert traffic jams or crowds. By putting together your location, your contacts, you get mashups. I love this idea. Imagine what can happen when we mash up social networking and your location, when your device knows where you are, where your friends are and what they are doing. Your social location, or SoLo will become your here-and-now-identity.â€

Good Things for those that missed it, is Nokia’s new way for Ovi Maps users to share their favourite places around the world. This is from the Nokia Conversations blog post:

Itâ€™s made up of three key elements. The first is the ability to spot Good Things on the map, where you can click on each one to find out more information, add it to a route or to your favourites. Thereâ€™s also a live Good Things feed which shows the latest good things, as theyâ€™re added. And of course the key part is the ability for you to add your own Good Things. Once youâ€™ve found where on the map youâ€™d like to add, you just drag a Good Things pin onto the map to add it. Fill in a couple of details, walk through the security check and youâ€™re good to go. Youâ€™ve made the mapped world a better place.

Make sense? Of course it does. User generated reviews populating your navigation. It’s all coming together nicely. Now let’s compare that to the contents of Dopplr’s about page:

Dopplr is a service for smart international travellers. Dopplr members share personal and business travel plans privately with their networks, and exchange tips on places to stay, eat and explore in cities around the world. Dopplr presents this collective intelligence – the travel patterns, tips and advice of the worldâ€™s most frequent travellers – as a Social Atlas.

It’s at this point that I’m reminded of several Nokia false start applications: Nokia viNe, Friendview and also, WE:OFFSET.

Your thoughts and comments as always, are welcome.

So much news, so little time…

After yesterday’s triple whammy from Ben, Vikki and Dan, it’s time for me to stroll back into Really Mobile town with three stories of my own that I’ve been watching unfold from afar.

Andy Warhol would be proud — Snap, snap, snap...

You see, I’m in Pittsburgh at the moment and, along with a certain Vikki Chowney, I’m helping cover the G20 Summit with Oxfam for the G20Voice project.

However, not only is it the week that the leaders of the world come together and try to do something about the World’s biggest issues (namely: Climate Change), it is also the week that EVERY SINGLE THING IN THE MOBILE WORLD has decided to happen!

First off we had the announcement of a new MVNO from our friends at o2 called, and I kid you not, ‘giffgaff‘. I’ll come back to this shortly.

On top of that, yesterday we also had three, count’em, three mobile development days, with Vodafone, Google and Nokia’s Ovi all wanting to play with our codes.
Google and Ovi we can come back to, there’s nothing new there – Vodafone however, that’s a new one.
(see our quite possibly extremely exclusive UI video for more)

Finally, Nokia went and bought Dopplr (apparently).

Like I said, much too much to talk about, much too much going on and much too much to catch up on. Let’s get on with it shall we?

Got the goss on giffgaff? — giffgaff - bees make honey?

Riff Raff, sorry. Giff Gaff.. Sorry, giffgaff.
What do we have here?

giffgaff is a brand new mobile virtual network operator from deep within the bowels of o2â€™s HQ. The Really Mobile team had been invited to go along and meet the giffgaff team to see what itâ€™s all about but, what with half of us out of the country and the other half up to their eyeballs with actual work, alas â€“ time was not on our side.

From the press release and from the website so far we can gather that giffgaff will be the first â€˜people poweredâ€™ network.
Letâ€™s take another look at that release:

â€œgiffgaff, which means â€˜to give and receiveâ€™, will operate with a low cost base, without the overheads of high street stores, handset subsidies and running large call centres. It offers a simple SIM only tariff and a range of online tools to allow members to self-serve and suggest answers to each otherâ€™s questions in online user groups. As well as that, members will be rewarded for things like referring giffgaff to a friend or relative, creating user-generated marketing, or voting on business decisions. The more that members get involved the greater the reward and they will be able to get up to 100 per cent of top-ups back.
giffgaff members have a choice of what to do with their rebate; they can use it for mobile calls and texts, take the cash, or donate it to their preferred charity or fundraising group.â€

So far so good, but aside from that details are thin on the ground:

The Q&A gives little away –

Launch? Before Christmas

Costs? We don’t know

Will it work in my phone? “It will work in any â€˜unlockedâ€™ mobile. Find out more about unlocking by searching on Google.”

Coverage? We use o2

Can I pre-register? Not yet.

I’m not being picky, I know some of the folk behind this launch, I just feel there’s not much to go on right now. I’m hoping that we’ll find out more when we get to sit down with one of the fourteen members of staff behind the service. That’s right, fourteen. There’s no phone line support if you have a problem and well, that’s about it.

What we can commend giffgaff for is the seemingly open approach that they’re taking with this ‘launch’. The ‘gaffer’ Mike Fairman, is putting himself front and centre of the network’s communications strategy and is asking for as much feedback as possible. Their blog pages are young and Mike’s twitter profile is gaining followers fast so, what happens next – who knows…

For now, we’ll file this under ‘one to watch’.
But for how long, we’ll wait and see.

I seem to have written a bit more than I thought I would, I’ll come back to Vodafone and Nokia later on today.

Stay tuned.

So much news, so little time…

After yesterday’s triple whammy from Ben, Vikki and Dan, it’s time for me to stroll back into Really Mobile town with three stories of my own that I’ve been watching unfold from afar.

You see, I’m in Pittsburgh at the moment and, along with a certain Vikki Chowney, I’m helping cover the G20 Summit with Oxfam for the G20Voice project.

First off we had the announcement of a new MVNO from our friends at o2 called, and I kid you not, ‘giffgaff‘. I’ll come back to this shortly.

Finally, Nokia went and bought Dopplr (apparently).

Like I said, much too much to talk about, much too much going on and much too much to catch up on. Let’s get on with it shall we?

Riff Raff, sorry. Giff Gaff.. Sorry, giffgaff.
What do we have here?

From the press release and from the website so far we can gather that giffgaff will be the first â€˜people poweredâ€™ network.
Letâ€™s take another look at that release:

â€œgiffgaff, which means â€˜to give and receiveâ€™, will operate with a low cost base, without the overheads of high street stores, handset subsidies and running large call centres. It offers a simple SIM only tariff and a range of online tools to allow members to self-serve and suggest answers to each otherâ€™s questions in online user groups. As well as that, members will be rewarded for things like referring giffgaff to a friend or relative, creating user-generated marketing, or voting on business decisions. The more that members get involved the greater the reward and they will be able to get up to 100 per cent of top-ups back.
giffgaff members have a choice of what to do with their rebate; they can use it for mobile calls and texts, take the cash, or donate it to their preferred charity or fundraising group.â€

So far so good, but aside from that details are thin on the ground:

The Q&A gives little away –

Launch? Before Christmas

Costs? We don’t know

Will it work in my phone? “It will work in any â€˜unlockedâ€™ mobile. Find out more about unlocking by searching on Google.”

Coverage? We use o2

Can I pre-register? Not yet.

For now, we’ll file this under ‘one to watch’.
But for how long, we’ll wait and see.

I seem to have written a bit more than I thought I would, I’ll come back to Vodafone and Nokia later on today.

Stay tuned.

A Dongle Discovery

I write this to you from somewhere in the Caribbean while I complete the fifth and final Lucozade Challenge. Yesterday, Ben wrote about one of his new favourite pieces of kit – the Mi-Fi.

The Mi-Fi, for those of you who missed Mr Smith’s write up, is a nifty little gadget that creates an instant wi-fi hotspot wherever you are. Unlocked out of the box, all you need is a data SIM and you’re away… However, the device/service that Ben is currently reviewing is the 3 service and it would seem that this particular device is locked to their network.

Crapsticks.

As I’ve mentioned before though, I don’t think that these super-connected wonders are for everyone. I personally always carry around a data dongle for my MacBook Pro and when that doesn’t work, I have the rather fantastic, Joikuspot.

Coming back to the dongle part of my story, I spent most of last weekend playing around with all the various pieces of mobile tech (as well as their respective SIM cards) that I thought I might take away with me for my next trip.

Crashing through the cupboards full of old 3310s and old school Nokia chargers I happened upon an old o2 dongle that I used to have to use in a previous life. The end was missing and it still had it’s old (and now defunct) o2 SIM inside it and yet, I had a sneaky feeling that it might still work.

So at this point, you could be thinking:

“Awesome, all I have to now is go out and get a cheap o2 data bundle and hurrah! We’re away!”

Not so fast.

Turns out that that isn’t necessary. It turns out that an o2 SIM isn’t needed at ALL in fact. You see, when Lucozade asked me what essential piece(s) of kit that I needed for the Energy Challenges, along with my N86, I requested a super-reliable Vodafone data SIM. Something that could keep me online and in touch, wherever I was in the world.

I popped said SIM into said dongle, placed the dongle into the side of my mac and voila! It worked immediately! I thought I might have to install some kind of Vodafone specific software or at least have to add in the necessary information, but nope. The Sierra Wireless Watcher that was already onboard the mac found the SIM, downloaded the settings and within seconds I was up, running and online.

Awesomeness.

I’d wondered for sometime now if the networks went so far as to lock their own dongles, I can’t speak for any others but I can tell you now that the o2 one works fine.

Give it a go, would love to know how you get on..

Love your N95? Get the Nokia N86.

That’s right, I’m back… and I’m bringing my N86 review with me.
In short, as the title suggests, if you were a fan of the N95 – then the N86 is for you.

That’s right, I’m back… and I’m bringing my N86 review with me.
In short, as the title suggests, if you were a fan of the N95 – then the N86 is for you.

You may remember a few months back that fellow Really Mobile co-founder Ben Smith and I sat down to argue discuss the merits of Nokia’s much heralded saviour of 2009, the N97.

It’s a testament to the industry we watch, work and live in today that this now seems like such a long time ago. Here we are some eleven weeks since that post went live and already, I feel like I backed the wrong horse. You see, I was only impressed with the N97 for what is wasn’t. The firmware wasn’t buggy, the hardware wasn’t a let down and the camera wasn’t incapable.

But what did it really bring forward?
Aside from a new form factor, not much.

I said back in the Spring, way back before we launched Really Mobile, when discussing the N97 that I was in fact looking towards to the N86 more than anything else on the horizon…

“…to my mind the N86 is the true replacement for the N95 8GB.”
— James Whatley, April 19th 2009

…and I am very pleased to announce that I was not disappointed.

When it came to choosing a handset for the Lucozade Energy Challenge, the N86 was the only option. I’d read about it, seen videos about it, hell – I’d even taken some shots with an early prototype myself.
This handset has been everything my N95 8GB ever was and more.

Having used the N86 solidly now since the end of June I can safely say that this is my phone of choice and will be for many months to come. You all know I’m a Nokia fiend but of late, that love has waned. Especially in regards to the previously mentioned, N97.

However the N86, the beautiful Nokia N86 8MP – to give it its full name – that which we first glimpsed way back in February of this year at Mobile World Congress, is an excellent phone in the traditional sense.

And it’s this last part dear reader, that is the keystone to the whole of this piece.

You see – I doubt that we will ever see a phone like the N86 ever again. The sheer elegance and sophistication that goes into this perfect combination of this phone first, camera second device is as gorgeous as it was the first time you ever laid eyes on it.

There really is not much I can say about this phone’s feature set that hasn’t already been said. One would imagine that most of you know that the N86 sports a rather fetching 8MP camera (which, on my recent travels around Africa, has yielded some spectacular results). It would be frivolous to assume that the amazing video output from this stunning piece of kit has completely passed by that of even the most casual of mobile fanatics. And I would certainly be completely mis-judging my audience if just for one second I assumed that none of you had noticed the glorious industrial design mixture of glass and metal, making the Nokia N86 one of the smoothest and cleanest handsets one could ever have the great fortune to hold.

Give it a silver finish and you could be forgiven for thinking that it was an E-Series.

Yes, it really does feel that good.

It is fantastic. It is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

What it makes me feel though, is sad – and not for the reasons you might think.

I just can’t help thinking that thanks to all sorts of things; the iPhone, the advent of Android, the upcoming Maemo war on Symbian. Phones like this will soon be consigned to the history books. I just have this horrible, dreadful feeling that what I’m using here, is an ending.

The phones of tomorrow are iPhones, are Androids… The N900 looks nice, but the 5MP camera doesn’t come to close to that of the N86. The new Nokia X6, with its capacitive (read: iPhone-esque) screen and its deep level music-based DNA still doesn’t match up to the content creativity skills of my beloved N-Series.

Yes, iPhones are lovely – we know this. Even the HTC Magic came close to swaying me from the Finnish fold some time ago too. But the days of just being able to push real and actual buttons will soon be gone. Relish in them while they’re still here. Remember that feeling. Take happiness from it. And treasure it.

Reading on Symbian-Guru this past week that, as of Nokia World 2009 – ‘Nokia is Touch’ – I shed a tear.
As the Finnish giant moves to embrace Maemo as well as further expand its Symbian 5th Edition range, it stands to reason that the N86 could very well be the last great N-Series device.

Get yours while you can.

“Where the hell is that Whatley guy?”

The short answer? Namibia (and more).
The longer answer is tad more complicated…

Some of the more observant Really Mobile followers out there may have noticed of late that Sir Ben of Smith has been running around keeping the lights on for all and sundry. While he has delivered some spectacular posts, it’s about time we pulled our socks up and got our hands dirty again.

Vikki laid the smack down yesterday with her ode to the Eseries (while giving the E75 a firm ‘thanks, but no thanks’ along the way), but now it’s time for yours truly to step up and take his true mantle today, on this day, Whatley Wednesday.

So, where have I been?

If you read my personal blog or if you heard the recent All About Symbian podcast, you might know that this Summer is going to get very busy indeed for the chap tapping the keys right now.

Very, very busy indeed.

Basically, I’m off around the world to cover the ‘Lucozade Energy Challenges‘ from a social media perspective. This means that I’ll be uploading photos, videos and blog posts for the next few months while at the same time tweeting my little heart out from the most remote of destinations.

I am taking a huge sack of equipment with me, a few things I’m going to list for you now…

First of all, what phone?

Given the nature of the project, the choice was simple: the Nokia N86

Yes I know that I’ve been fighting with Ben about how good the N97 is, but really, when it comes to creating content (video and/or photos) – the N86’s 8MP camera leaves the rest standing. A fantastic piece of kit that – so far – has managed to survive the heat of the Namibian desert as well as the danger-filled madness known as ‘the inside of my rucksack’.

Very, very impressed indeed. So that’s the handset sorted, but what about network? Well, the answer is two-fold.

In the areas that I actually had signal I switched between ‘NAM Cell One’ and ‘MTC Namibia’, neither of which allowed me to dial out using the Voda PAYG SIM that I was armed with. The former allowed me to use their data, and the latter I could at least send text messages, vice versa was not possible.

The second part of the ‘staying connected’ aspect of the trip came down to this bad boy –

The TT Explorer 500 BGAN Terminal Satphone.

According to the website:

“This high-bandwidth, highly portable device, weighing 1.3kg and measuring 218 x 217 x 52mm, is ideal for either mobile or semi-fixed use by individuals or small teams. Over a standard IP connection, it connects at up to 464kbps in the receive direction and 448kbps when sending. Streaming data is available at speeds of 32kbps, 64kbps or 128kbps for both send and receive. The terminal connects to a laptop computer via USB, Bluetooth or Ethernet. Voice is delivered via a standard desktop phone or a Bluetooth handset.”

Awesome.

Here I am, in the middle of the desert – Damaraland, Namibia to be precise – four hours drive from any kind of hint of civilisation and… I have Internet connection!

Look, there I am.

This thing is bad-ass. A snip at Â£2,276.64, the TT Explorer can get you an Internet signal pretty much ANYWHERE in the world and (according to my sources) only has real problems when it’s placed near the North or South poles.

However, if you think that the price stated above is too high then you can rent the satphone at the following rates.

Short Term Satellite Rental:

Â£20 a day or Â£500 per calendar month
Data costs are Â£7 per MB
Voice calls are Â£1.20 per minute

Compare this to, I don’t know, say Vodafone for instance and you get the following:

Â£35 per calendar month
Data costs are Â£10 per MB
Voice calls are Â£1.65 per minute

Admittedly you don’t have to pay the huge rental fee for a normal networked handset, but still.
If a satphone can beat the data costs of the Vodafone – especially when I’m pointing the damn thing at an actual satellite, then surely something must be going wrong somewhere, no? **

Not the good radiation either — Not that good radiation either

We’ll leave that one to the comments shall we?

The point of this post is that, thanks to some rather awesome technology, yours truly is going to be filing his Really Mobile postings from some very far flung corners from the world indeed…

If you have any questions, now’s the time to ask them…

I may be some time 😉

**that is of course forgetting the small matter of the radiation.

You’re charging how much?!

As you may know, recently I trialled the Vodafone HTC Magic. This I found to be a thorughly enjoyable experience and I’ve had no problems since recommending this handset to those to whom it would fit.

One thing I didn’t touch upon during the review however was the rather awesome pleasure of being able to charge my handset via USB.

Over-charging? — The Nokia CA-100: Guilty of over-charging?

This is not a new feature.

Many handsets have had this functionality built-in for years. Nokia however have only recently started to roll this out across their device range.

First dabbling with the 6500 and then later the E75, the two latest flagship devices – the N86 and the N97 – both come with USB charging out of the box.

So far so what?

Well, what about the other 30 or so million of us out there that don’t have a one of these devces?

What about us?

How do we charge our respective not-quite top-of-the-range-but-still-pretty-kick-ass-thank-you-very-much Nokias?

“Just use the blimmin’ charger you get in the box!” – I hear you cry.

Yes. Quite.

That’s all well and good but I don’t want to carry a standard Nokia charger around with me everywhere I go. No, I want to charge via USB.
The good news is that help is at hand in the rather slim shape of the Nokia CA-100 USB charger (pictured above) – Huzzah!

This is not a new accessory.

The pricing however, that’s a different story.
Allow me to explain.

I’ve owned several of these funky little things. Often just throwing them in my bag for later use and/or living with one constantly about my person wherever I go.
When I first bought one of these, it was back in August ’08 and at just Â£10, it was perfect; small, branded and guaranteed to get the job done.

Thing is, because they’re so damn small I got into the habit of losing them.
So I bought more. I bought them two at a time. I bought them for other people.
Ten English Pounds is Ten English Pounds and for someone like me, who doesn’t ever want to worry about where his next charge is coming from, the CA-100 is an essential piece of kit.

Recently I ran out (again) and so, off I trotted to my nearest Nokia store to stock up my latest bag of gadgets with USB charger loveliness to discover the price had been whacked up by a staggering 110%!

I’m sorry, what?

Why has something that was only Â£10 just under a year ago suddenly shot up in price like this?

I accosted one of the Sales Assistants in store and asked them what on Earth was going on.

“Er… Shipping and delivery costs have gone up.”

“What? And have ramped up the price by over 100%?”

“Er… Yeah. Sorry.”

I stormed out. Fuming.

You would think in this day and age the price of chargers would be decreasing not going up!

What to do next? Well, like any good mobile citizen I immediately jumped on the internet and got myself to the Nokia online store.

Obviously, what with there being very small overheads with any online marketplace, the price is bound to be fixed there… Surely?!

No.

Â£14.00 + Delivery

With delivery options as follows: Standard (3-5 Days) – Â£3.99. Express (1-2 Days) – Â£9.99.

So that’ll be Â£17.99 or Â£23.99 please, thank you very much.

I give up!

I’m going travelling very, very soon and I need something to keep me charged on the go. I simply cannot justfy paying DOUBLE for this accessory. I can’t.

Ridiculous.

Yes I know I can get a dodgy, knock-off version from eBay – but they’re dodgy and unreliable.

Why oh why are these things a) so damn expensive and b) so damn expensive TODAY when they were so damn cheap LAST YEAR.

Answers on a postcard please…

STOP PRESS: ShoZu to start charging!

Really Mobile’s favourite sharing application announced today that “going forward”, it will begin charging for its initial download…

There’s a lot going on today at the Really Mobile offices, what with the recent N97 shenanigans and the Mobile Web 2.0 Summit to cover, there’s a lot for us to get through. I myself have two (actually make that three) stories/features that I need to write up and to be honest, there really doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day!

How much will you pay? — Stay connected, but at what cost?

However, sometimes something comes along that simply bumps everything else down the line. Something so important that you simply have to drop everything and get the news up on the site. It happened a few weeks back with the Palm Pre, and today it’s happened again with ShoZu.

That’s right, ShoZu.

Really Mobile’s favourite sharing application announced today that “going forward”, it will begin charging for its initial download. The news, arriving via email this evening, sparks what would seem like a new attempt at monetization from them.
It goes:

Hello,

We’d like to start by saying thank you for using ShoZu. We have had the pleasure of communicating with several of you who have told us about your experiences using ShoZu and your thoughts for improving the service moving forward. That feedback from hundreds of ShoZu users has led us to develop a series of new features and changes to both the ShoZu user experience and the manner in which we distribute ShoZu. We wanted to let you know about a few of these updates.

You’ve got lots of flexibility in using ShoZu to upload photos and video. In addition to using the ShoZu mobile application, you can now use ShoZu to upload in new ways via:

picture messaging (MMS)

mobile email

PC and Mac Desktop application

any PC or Mac email client or webmail service

ShoZu’s mobile application takes the uploading experience to higher levels of functionality and two-way interactivity, with:

the ability to receive updates as well as read and reply to comments directly on your phone in near real-time

the ability to geo-tag uploads automatically

the ability to update your status, download feeds, and add tags and descriptions before or after uploading

Going forward, we will begin charging for the mobile application. If you’re already a ShoZu user, you’ll be happy to know that there’s no charge to continue using it. If you’re new to ShoZu’s mobile application, then there is a one-time charge to download the application and join thousands of happy ShoZu users.

ShoZu’s mobile application is available through our website, http://www.shozu.com and mobile website m.shozu.com, in Apple’s iTunes Store and will be available soon from other leading mobile application stores. We hope you continue to enjoy your ShoZu experience. We look forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions.

Many Thanks,

The ShoZu team

So there you have it, ShoZu have made their move. As soon as I saw the news I threw it out onto Twitter to get some raw and instant reaction, the verdict?
Nicht Gut.

“Pixelpipe FTW!!!” – Ricky Cadden, Symbian Guru
“Nice knowing you, ShoZu” – Carlo Longino, Mob Happy
“I’ve pretty much replaced it with Pixelpipe anyway” – Kevin Neely, Astro Turf Garden
“What do they mean by “going forward”? Surely they mean “â‚¬5 on Ovi Store now” – Conor O’Neill, Louder Voice
“Need it to be stable first guys” – Kip Hakes, KCJH Design

At the time of writing you can still download the app for free from http://m.shozu.com. The iPhone app store also currently lists the app as ‘FREE’, although this may change over the coming weeks. Within the Ovi Store, however, it’s a different story. A quick search returns no results, even though Conor, quoted above, reports that the app is already available for â‚¬5. See compare and contrast images below, (we can save the comment on Ovi Store for another day).

Where do we go from here?

This is a shrewd move from ShoZu. Timed with the launch of the Ovi Store, it seems like they wish to capitalise on the global roll out of Nokia’s much commented on venture into the application market. Fingers crossed it’ll pay off for them. We all love them and – in fairness – they do state quite clearly that:

“If you’re already a ShoZu user, you’ll be happy to know that there’s no charge to continue using it.”

No doubt if you’re reading this, you’ve heard of ShoZu before. Maybe, just maybe you’ve downloaded the app already.
For you? No charge. Newbies coming in? â‚¬5 or, if my memory serves me rightly, Â£4 in the UK.

Pixelpipe have been mentioned as up and coming competitors and, what with their rather awesome Share Online integration, I’m not surprised.

Only time will tell who will win out.

Comments?
Thoughts?

Ladies and gentlemen the floor, is yours.