Author Archive: Gareth

iCatchall for iPhone – 27 apps in one – free today!

There are 2 kinds of “all-in-one” apps: one that take itself too seriously and the one that deliver also fun. iCatchall that is free for today, is the fun one:

Vodafone’s Twitter attack

Vodafone is looking into a ‘severe breach of rules’ by staff after an offensive ‘tweet’ was posted on its official Twitter account, Vodafone UK.

The offensive ‘tweet’ was posted at 15:47 and deleted shortly afterwards. Since then, the operator has sent out numerous apologies to its followers on the social networking site. Vodafone reacted quickly to the breach and posted an apology, just under an hour after the original post, which said: ‘We’re really sorry. A severe breach of rules by staff in out building, dealing with that internally. Please keep your faith in us.’

Only this week the operator was used as an example of a company using Twitter for good customer services by BBC programme Working Lunch. Followers of Vodafone UK on Twitter started ‘re-tweeting’ and asking Vodafone what had happened and have speculated that a disgruntled employee created the post.

One follower said: ‘Have I missed something???’

A Vodafone spokesman said: ‘This afternoon an employee posted an obscene message from the official Vodafone UK Twitter profile. The employee has been suspended immediately and we have started an internal investigation. This was not a hack and we apologise for any offence the tweet may have caused.’

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Major iPhone app store change: web pages for apps!

At last! So you want to show how cool some iPhone app is, including screenshots, to your friends who have no iPhone and no iTunes installed on their PCs? No problem anymore. Just send them a link and then instead of trying to open iTunes, a webpage with given app appears, like this:

Mobile Tech Addicts iPhone Application

Yup, we’ve done it. There is now a handy tool for downloading, streaming and enjoying the Mobile Tech Addicts Podcast on the iPhone. Over the next two weeks we will be implementing big changes to the podcast to make it all so much for interesting for you. Hope you enjoy it and look forward to hearing from you.

You can download it from iTunes directly here.

Short smartphone survey

Jon from Clove.co.uk is looking for folks interested in Smartphones to partake in a short survey in regards to their smartphone views and desires. The results of which will be feature in a report Jon is writing as a research project for his business degree. If you have a few moments, why not fire through the survey, I did and it’s harmless. Here is what Jon has to say:

You may not be aware that whilst working for Clove part-time, I am currently completing my 4th year studying Business at Bournemouth University. As part of my final year work I have to complete a research project, also known as a dissertation. I have chosen to focus on the following topic:

"Does innovation provide competitive advantage to manufacturers of smartphones, with particular focus on HTC."

The project requires me to obtain primary data to use to assist in the investigation of the relationship between innovation and competitive advantage in the smartphone industry through a survey and also interviews.
Could I kindly ask that you post a link to my survey on your blog/forum to assist me in obtaining the quality feedback that I need.

Please, do not feel obliged to say yes, you can say no!

If this request is possible (I think your readers may find it interesting), then if you could provide them with the following link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/smartphoneinnovation

I do hope, in April or soon after, to be able to provide a full copy of the project to you and your readers. It will be a big project, but some may find it of interest, and it is certainly a different news post.
A point to note is, that whilst I use your contact details (with approval) through my employment at Clove, this study is not financed by nor will be used by Clove or HTC in any way.

Thanks for your time, I look forward to your response!

T-Mobile admits importing iPhones

Whilst most of the networks currently offer the iPhone in the UK, one of the networks has been selling them, unofficially. T-mobile have been importing European iPhone to sell to UK customers. One dealer said, while support from T-Mobile had been “fantastic”, he faces losing customers to O2, Orange or Vodafone because of iPhone distribution.

T-Mobile area sales manager for the south Lee Wales said: “In the past we did buy some iPhones in Europe because we were concerned customers would leave if they didn’t get the iPhone.

“We took the decision and it might have backfired because Apple wasn’t very happy. But we decided that retaining those customers was important. But it’s not our policy, and it has been two quarters since we last did this.”

Nokia drops Symbian V2

Looks like Nokia is going to avoid Symbian version 2 and jump straight onto version 3 in the third quarter of 2010. To make thing more exciting Nokia states:

The Symbian version 4 is believed to be based on the Qt cross-platform application development framework developed by Trolltech, which Nokia acquired in June 2008, said industry sources. The Qt will allow software developers to develop application software supporting Symbian and Maemo platforms simultaneously, added the sources.

The multi-touch focused operating system will run alongside the Maemo-based devices, S60 smartphones and S40 feature phones.
Nokia also suggests they will launch Maemo 6-based devices in the second half of 2010.

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Fun rat game app for iPhone – free for limited time

Do you know that there are more rats in London than people? Anywho, iPhone developers sometimes reduce price of their apps to zero whenever Apple is featuring them, and the same happened with TerroRats – a fan iPhone game that you can get now for free for a limited time – just because the developers are celebrating being featured by Apple:

Nexus One gets multitouch and more

The new firmware update for Android 2.1 gives Nexus One has a whole bunch of added features and improvements. Check out this list of added functionality. Multitouch, Google Goggles, 3G fix, virtual keypad just got “smarter”, Android Mark II for the camera function, Chrome has html5 compatibility, merged inbox, speech to text box in everywhere, Gmail mobile client upgrade and more

Altogether this seems to be one top notch device now that can only get better.

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