Author Archive: Gareth

3 to sell HTC Hero with Spotify

Mobile operator 3 has unveiled a plan that is sure to appeal to music fans of all ages. The HTC Hero on 3 comes complete with the HTC Hero and unlimited access to the digital music service Spotify via your mobile or PC for an entire 24 months, this service alone is worth £240.

The HTC Hero will be included for free, but the package in full will cost £35 a month for a two year period as well as an upfront fee of £99. Other benefits of the Spotify Mobile tariff includes 750 minutes to other mobiles, unlimited texts, unlimited calls to other 3 customers, unlimited email, internet browsing and Facebook as well as free Skype-to-Skype calls.

Initially exclusive on the HTC Hero, 3 expects to extend the service across a range of products including Mobile Broadband. By having Spotify on your mobile, customers will have access to the extensive jukebox the service provides whenever they are in a 3G network. Even when offline you will be able to access any playlists you have created, great for listening on the Tube!

Spotify Mobile on 3 will be available from November. More info here.

Microsoft and Danger recover “most” Sidekick user data

These past two weeks have been one hell of an emotional roller coaster for Sidekick users, but it looks as if all isn’t lost as Roz Ho, Corporate Vice President of Premium Mobile Experiences for Microsoft posted this message on T-Mobile’s Sidekick forum:

We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those  Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage.  We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.

We now believe that data loss affected a minority of Sidekick users.  If your Sidekick account was among those affected, please continue to log into these forums for the latest updates about when data restoration will begin, and any steps you may need to take. We will work with T-Mobile to post the next update on data restoration timing no later than Saturday.

So just what was the cause of this who debacle? Oh you know, just another one of those “system failures” caused by a mischievous data gnome that triggered a “data loss in the core database and the back-up.” Oh well, it happens. At least you’re likely to get getting your data, one months free service and a $100 gift card for the inconvenience. Or maybe not the last two parts?

[Source via BGR]

The Blackberry … watch!

You might recall that RIM was rumored to be following down Sony Ericsson’s path of branded Bluetooth watches to accompany its phones, and now, it looks like we might have the first real renderings of the final product before our eyes. This here wrist candy is possibly called the "inPulse" (not to be confused with Verizon’s similarly-named prepaid offering), featuring an OLED display, real-time message preview, and presumably some sort of glance-able caller ID to make needlessly pulling your Tour out of its holster a thing of the past. Interestingly, it seems like the watch isn’t being developed in-house — instead, work has been farmed out to some company dedicated to the BlackBerry aftermarket with an official announcement expected "soon." As far as we know, Sony Ericsson’s watches — which arguably look nicer on account of their analog / digital hybrid design — haven’t been hot sellers, but who knows, maybe RIM’s got some neat tricks up its sleeve with this one.

Firefox heading to Android

With little or no chance of ever being able to make it through the draconian approval process of Apple’s iTunes App Store, Mozilla, the not-for-profit organization behind the Firefox browser, is betting on two major, if emerging, mobile operating platforms: Maemo, Nokia’s new Linux-based operating system, and Google’s Android OS. But don’t count on Mozilla supporting RIM’s BlackBerry OS anytime soon.

Nokia X6: Promotion Video

With the N900 stealing all the headlines there hasn’t been much news of the X6 since it’s announcement, but with this official promotional video hitting the wire, it will no doubt start a week of further info as the November release draws near.

Wolfram Alpha for iPhone released – amazing app but…

Stephen Wolfram was born in London, UK. Some people consider him to be a genius but critics say that his theories, like the one expressed in his book “New Kind of Science”: that universe is a cellular automaton – are totally not original but just rewriting of stuff that other people formulated and proved and generally in the era of simulation he is just justifying status quo and not presenting any new paradigm shift.

You might doubt in his theories but his program Mathematica (owned now by his company “Wolfram Research”) – for symbolic calculations and visualizations – really brought a breakthrough in science and engineering. Next major practical (not just another theory) endeavor of Wolfram Research is “Wolfram Alpha” – a search engine that is not just spitting out links to some dinky websites with good SEO, but a search engine that has knowledge engine built-in into itself!

Imagine asking a question in natural language or symbolic formula and getting visualizations and computation results! Wolfram Alpha is amazing. It’s much more than Google, it is like having an all-knowing genius whom can you ask stuff.

Now, Wolfram Alpha is available on the iPhone, as an app! But there is one tiny problem:

msmobiles.com Podcast No 302

msmobiles.com Podcast 302
(format: MP3)
(right click above to download the podcast)

You can listen to this podcast also from this web page, through the Flash player:

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In this episode Edward from msmobiles.com is chatting with: Alli fromJustAnotherGeekSite.com, Gareth from Mobile Tech Addicts and Andy.

Palm: A brief history

When a work colleague said to me “This new company Palm seem to have a nice looking phone coming out on O2” I was pretty taken aback. However, thinking about it now, why would someone who has used dumb phones, like lower end Nokia’s and Sony Ericsson phones, all their lives know the Palm brand. It’s essentially business users and most, when seeing one in a business users hand probably assumed it was a Blackberry.

To help update the masses pocket-link has written an excellent retrospective of Palm over the last 13 years. Well worth the read!

Back in 1996 a small division of US Robotics came up with a personal digital assistant portable pad that ran a touchscreen controlled OS on 128KB memory and just a serial port for connecting it to the rest of the world. So was invented the Palm 1000 – the very first PalmPilot. Continues here.

Samsung H1 on Vodafone 360

O2 launched the Palm Pre today so Vodafone counter attacked with … the Samsung H1. This is the first of two phones set to appear featuring the LiMO OS, a Linux based operating system. We discussed this phone in a recent podcast and it really seems to cut it as far as features go, however with most awaiting tariff info on the iPhone on Orange and Vodafone and heavy competition from the Palm Pre we think this little device is going to have a rough time. Read on for the specs.

Palm Pre arrives on O2 today

The Palm^® Pre™ phone is available today, exclusively on O2.¹
The first phone on the new Palm webOS™ platform allows you to keep multiple applications open at the same time so you can flow effortlessly between the people and events that make up your life. Plus, with Palm Synergy™, your contacts, emails and online calendars are brought together from different sources, giving you the information you need to keep you ahead of the game.

O2