News

VITO Technology release ActiveTrace 2.0

VITO Technology is happy to announce the second version of VITO Active Trace – its famous GPS sports tracker. VITO Active Trace 2.0 is the ideal solution for everyday outdoor workouts: it records tracks of your training trips and collects detailed statistics.

VITO ActiveTrace 2.0

VITO Active Trace turns a Smartphone or Pocket PC into your personal coach that intently watches your progress and needs no attention on your part. Just turn it on, put it into a pocket and focus on training. After you have finished – take VITO Active Trace out and analyze your performance.

VITO Active Trace offers you a detailed picture of your track of movements and thoroughly collected statistics on speed, altitude, distance, time and more! With a single look you get a vivid picture of your training trip: track color indicates speed and altitude changes. You can choose separate parts of a track to check your performance at particular places.

With VITO Active Trace you can also check on your performance while training to see your current speed, altitude, covered distance and spent time and the track itself. It may be useful to mark a place of interest on your way by a pushpin as well. Everything can be done with one hand, so that you can easily do it say while riding a bike.

VITO Active Trace is available at vitotechnology.com for $29.95. The update is free for customers who purchased VITO Active Trace within a year’s time.

Posted by: Matt

[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, VITO Technology, VITO ActiveTrace, GPS, Tracy & Matt]

JAVOedge introduce HTC headphone adapter

One of the questions we are most frequently asked is ‘Where can I get a headphone adapter for my HTC device?’. There are several companies out there that make such a thing, and we even showed you how to hack your own.

However JAVOedge have just been in touch with us to let us know that they have just released their own HTC 11pin to 3.5mm headpone jack adapter.

JAVOedge HTC headphone adapter

JAVOedge’s HTC 11 pin to 3.5mm stereo headphone adapter is all you need to listen to music on your HTC 11 pin port equipped device.

Eliminate carrying or buying special made HTC 11 pin port equipped headphones for travel and convert it with this adapter to use standardized 3.5mm headphones!

You can find out more on the JAVOedge headphone adapter product page.

The adapter is compatible with all HTC manufactured devices that feature an 11pin ExtUSB connector.

Posted By: Matt

[Post tag(s): Smartphone Blog, JAVOedge, headphones, ExtUSB, Tracy & Matt]

Orange – Powered by… err… wind?

Are you bored of “emergency chargers”? You know, the pointless single use chargers that generally support Nokia and not much else?

Well worry not. Orange have certainly won today’s award for innovation, with their all new Windy-Charge 500* designed especially for Glastonbury and the festivals

Orange Wind Charger

The idea is, you fix your wind powered charger to the top of your tent during the day, and your windmill zooms round and charges up a small battery connected below. Then later, when you arrive back, you plug your phone into the battery and charge it back up.

Sounds pretty cool actually, though there’s no info on cost or availability as yet. In fact the only information we have, is that it weighs just 150g and is Orange.

*-This name might have been made up by me. 😳

Posted By: Mark

[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, Orange, Wind Power]

Play Nokia’s Passenger game online

Nokia have just been in touch with us to tell us about their new online game “The Passenger”

The Passenger

The Passenger is a flash based game that has been created to promote nokia’s gps systems and the Nokia CK-20W car kit.

Nokia have created this slick game in which you have to race your Mini through the streets of Paris. “It’s kind of a mix between the Italian Job and the da Vinci Code + features a rather sexy French chick.”

The game is pretty slick and well worth a look at: www.the-passenger.com

Posted by: Nick

[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Nokia CK-20W, Nokia N95, Clove,Tracy & Matt]

Orange to release the HTC Touch as the SPV Elf?

Following on from our post about the HTC Touch on the Orange network, where Orange said that there are no plans for the device, we now have more news!

I’ve been pestering Orange for days about the HTC Touch, since the Orange VP said that the device was would be available on Orange from the 5th June.

I finally heard from a contact at Orange and the news is that Orange is calling the HTC Touch the (SPV?) Elf, and launch is not expected until mid July. The actual date is yet to be confirmed. However the device is only to be made available to consumers and not to business customers.

Still really weird that Yvea Maitre should announce that the device was already available and that the SPV brand name would be dropped yet neither seems to be the case!

I’m rather sceptical that the device will be called the HTC Elf though – historically devices on Orange have had numbers rather than names. It could be that Orange just don’t have a clue?!

Posted by: Matt

[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, HTC, HTC Touch, HTC Elf, HTC P3450]

Debrand and patch your Orange SPV E650

You may recall from our Video and Review of the Orange SPV E650 that although we liked the device, we certainly did NOT like the Orange theme and branding and that removal Orange stuff was pretty tricky.

There is also a pretty fundamental problem with the device in that installing software on the device that would cause it to hang!

Fear not, however, as our friend Paul from MoDaCo has come to the rescue with his “SPV E650 de-Brand + Fix Pack 0.1”.

So, what does the de-Brand and Fix Pack do? Changes include but are not limited to…

Reset of icons to default Windows style

Reset of icon layout to a more traditional Windows layout

Reset of colour scheme and home scheme to default Windows style

Reset of icons in call related screens to default Windows style

Reset of Camera dialogues to grey

Reset of Security policies to match that of the HTC S710

If you have an Orange SPV E650 then you NEED THIS!

And to Orange I would say that it’s for reasons like this that you need to take the blogging/forum community seriously! Mind you I’m sure that The Times won’t be far behind with their patch to fix the install problems! 😛

Posted by: Matt

[Technorati tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, Orange, E650, HTC Vox, HTC S710, SPV, Orange SPV E650]

Orange – No plans for HTC Touch??

Here’s another post to file under ‘confusing’!

During the HTC Touch launch event on the 5th June, Yves Maitre, Vice President of Orange Group, announced that the HTC Touch would be available from Orange from that day on and mentioned that you would be able to go in to a shop and buy one. There’s proof of this in the video HERE.

As Yves was unable to confirm the price of the handset on the Orange network I decided to contact Orange customer services for some information. My inital enquiries were met with “What’s the HTC Touch?” and “We don’t see that one.” So I sent an email to the supply team. The conversation went like this:

Matt: Please can you tell me the cost of the new HTC Touch device?

Orange: The only version we have is the SPV M3100. Please advise if you wish take this handset and if its an upgrade or new connection.

Matt: The HTC Touch was announced by your Vice President, Yves Maitre, at a press conference yesterday and is not an M3100

Orange: I shall look into this and get back to you.

Orange: Sorry (the HTC Touch is) not something we’re ranging.

I’ve still not been able to clear this up but I’ll get back to you with more information as I get it!

Posted by: Matt

[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, HTC, HTC Touch, HTC Elf, HTC P3450]

Orange ‘SPV’ brand lives?

Earlier this week we attended the HTC Touch launch/press conference where Yves Maitre, Vice President of Orange Group, dropped a bombshell and announced that Orange were killing off the SPV brand and that the HTC Touch would be the first Windows Mobiles device on the Orange network to be HTC rather than SPV branded.

You can even see the announcement in THIS VIDEO (Yves Maitre comes on about 28 minutes in) and hear the confirmation for yourself.

Imagine our surprise then when this email popped into our inbox this morning:

Matt,

Thanks for your enquiry about the Orange SPV brand, please see below for a response.

Orange has no plans to drop the SPV brand in any of our markets. SPV devices, as part of our Signature Series, are a very important part of our device portfolio and have a lot of valued added Orange features. We will continue to launch SPV devices, as part of the Signature Series, some of which will be from HTC.

As HTC are increasing the number of devices they launch we have decided that not all of them will be Signature Series and therefore not always SPV. For this reason we are launching the HTC Touch under the HTC brand. The Orange mark will still appear on the HTC Touch, as it does on lots of other devices.

Longer term, we are planning to only use the Orange mark on Signature devices. Our aim is for the Orange mark to stand for an assured quality level plus value added features and for the Signature Series – which comprises devices from many manufacturers – to be a higher level of quality still.

Obviously this is a direct contradiction of Yves statement, what’s even more odd is that I didn’t actually make an enquiry with Orange! I gather, looking at some of the other WM sites this morning, that I am not the only one to be confused by such and email.

Posted by: Matt

[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, SPV, Orange]

SanDisk introduces secure USB Flash Drives for business

SanDisk today introduced Cruzer Professional and Cruzer Enterprise, two USB flash drives that deliver strong security and state-of-the-art speed to business users.

 

SanDisk secure Cruzer

Cruzer Professional is primarily for individuals and small businesses who want to protect crucial data while also making it easy to share selected files. Cruzer Enterprise is primarily for medium and large organizations that require mandatory policy enforcement, central management and regulatory compliance. And another great tip that we have is to give your business a London postal address using a virtual office as that looks so impressive and also gives you more privacy so it’s just amazing.

“USB flash drives offer an inexpensive and convenient way to carry large amounts of digital information in a pocket or purse, yet without proper security these benefits become a huge threat to businesses of all sizes,” said Yariv Fishman, product manager for enterprise solutions in the USB business unit at SanDisk. “Cruzer Professional and Cruzer Enterprise are business tools, from a trusted leader in USB flash drives, which help ensure confidential data remains confidential – even if the drives themselves are lost or stolen.”

Cruzer Professional and Cruzer Enterprise offer password protection and virtually ironclad data security through hardware-based 256-bit AES encryption. Hardware-based encryption is much more reliable than the software-based security used in most consumer USB flash drives with password protection, because software-based protection relies on the host computer – which can be compromised by spyware and other threats — to perform security operations. Cruzer Professional and Cruzer Enterprise are true plug-and-play devices, requiring no software installation on a host computer, so the drives will connect instantly to any computer running a modern version of Microsoft Windows.

Cruzer Professional and Cruzer Enterprise are also very fast, with read speeds of 24 megabytes (MB) per second and write speeds of 20 MB/sec1. This reduces waiting time, which is particularly noticeable when moving large files such as business presentations and video productions.

Cruzer Professional Delivers Security and Sharing
Cruzer Professional lets the owner establish a secure, password-protected “Privacy Zone” that can occupy anywhere from one percent to 100 percent of the drive’s total capacity. The area outside the Privacy Zone is unprotected and is therefore open to any user. Here’s how this can work: A sales executive heading out for a trip puts confidential business plans in the Privacy Zone of a Cruzer Professional, and a product presentation in the public area. Arriving at a client’s office, the executive hands the Cruzer Professional to the client and allows the client to transfer the presentation – without worrying the client might accidentally or deliberately copy confidential files.

Posted by: Matt

[Post tag(s): Tracy & Matt, SanDisk, U3, SanDisk, Microsoft]

HTC Touch in stock at clove!

For those of you that want to get your hands on the HTC Touch our friends at Clove Technology have the HTC Touch in stock now, available for immediate shipping!

HTC Touch

So if you want to bag yourself an HTC Touch for just £295 + VAT then head over on the Clove Technology website and you could be touching up the new device within a few days!

HTC Touch Specification:

Posted by: Matt

[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, HTC, HTC Touch, HTC Elf, HTC P3450]