Here’s a concept that’s a bit odd. Take Twitter, a service that allows you to post a 140 character message that the people who follow you can read. No matter how many people follow you, you only see the tweets of the people who you want to pay attention to.

Now do the same thing, but for voice. That’s Bubbly. You dial a number, leave a message, the people following you are then notified via SMS, and they can call in and listen to whatever nonsense you had to say about the new Hannah Montana album.

The service is made for operators to purchase and deploy on their networks, meaning you can’t sign up for Bubbly on your own as an end user, but it’s an interesting concept none the less. While I’m not sure I’d find much use for this, since I’d rather just send out a mass text message, I can see how something like this would actually get me to start using my phone as a phone again, albeit asynchronously. That’s the problem with phone calls after all, they require your immediate attention.

The service has seen over 150,000 users sign up over the course of a week in India.

Full press release after the break.

Update: Headline updated after being contacted by the folks behind Bubbly. There is a recording limit: 60 seconds. That makes the service even more interesting in my opinion. One can say a lot in 60 seconds, but not enough to blather on and on.

Read the full article »

To the people who need to know code names, the next version of Android has officially been dubbed Gingerbread by Brian Swetland, a Google (NSDQ: GOOG) employee working on the Android kernel.

Feature list? Nein.

Release date? Between now and the end of the world, aka 2012.

[Via: Engadget]

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) makes phones in several countries spread out over the world, but Salo is special. It’s the only factory that the Finnish company has in Finland, and it’s mainly used for devices that are difficult to produce and require highly skilled workers. Yesterday Nokia announced that it’s cutting 285 people from that Salo factory, or practically 13% of the roughly 2,200 employees working there. With that bad news however also comes some good news, the temporary layoffs that the factory has been having for what feels like forever are coming to a stop by June of this year. The factory is also going to realign their focus to the “high-value smartphone market, especially in Europe”.

What does this mean for you? Well unless you’re one of those people that has to have a “Made in Finland” Nokia this really doesn’t mean anything. If you are one of the previously mentioned anal retentive characters, then you’re going to have an even better chance of getting a “Made in Finland” device.

The MBRN3300 might not exactly roll off the tongue, but it fits inside a product category that you’ll see become more and more prevalent as countries start realizing that burying copper or fiber optic is simply too expensive, and that deploying a wireless network is a much better idea from both a cost perspective, and from a KSP (key selling point) angle since you can offer your customers internet on the go. Now if you’re living in America you’re probably never going to see one of these, but for people in Europe and Asia, the idea of plugging in a box, powering it on, and getting internet access out of the air is glorious. No USB dongles, no software, just connect to a WiFi access point and enjoy a wireless network.

There will be 3 models available, the MBRN3300C that does 3.1 Mbps EVDO Rev A, the MBRN3300E that does 7.2 Mbps HSPA, and the MBRN3300H that does 21 Mbps HSPA+, all powered by Ericsson wireless technology so you know it’s robust and the best the industry has to offer. Each model spits out 802.11n and also has 4 ethernet ports.

No word on price, but Netgear say it’s available now, and I believe them since the MBRN3300 product sheet [PDF file] is dated November 25 2009.

[Via: Netgear Press Release, Ericsson Press Release]

Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) announced their WiLink 7.0 chip today, less than a week before Mobile World Congress starts, and it’s rather impressive for what it does. It’s the first chip that can receive FM radio, transmit FM radio, has WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n, and Bluetooth 3.0. It will also support WiFi Direct once that becomes a standard, but we’ll have to wait and see if that technology is going to take off since Bluetooth 3.0 pretty much does the exact same thing. TI claim it’s 50% smaller than “today’s existing solutions” and that it will cost 30% less too thanks to being built on 65 nanometer technology.

The image above is from a video TI made about the WiLink 7.0. They’ve uploaded it to this page which also has more information about the chip itself should you be interested in reading about it further. TI did confirm that the WiLink 7 is currently being sampled by various customers and should be in devices hitting the market by the end of this year.

[Via: Press Release; hat tip to Gizmodo]

Michael Gartenberg, Columnist at Engadget and Vice President of Strategy and Analysis at Interpret, posted these three tweets earlier tonight:

• Just received a mysterious invite to Google (NSDQ: GOOG) event on Wed. in Mountain View. #google
• “We’ll be unveiling some new product innovations and we’d like to invite you to join us” hmmmm #Google
• Oops. That Google event is tomorrow not Wed. #oops

Whether or not it’s Android related we can’t tell. Anything Google does is watched by everyone across multiple industries, for good reason too, so at least we’ll see something semi important.

Update: It’s probably related to Google adding status update features to Gmail.

[Hat tip to @mobile_divide]

What you’re looking at below are supposed images of the next iPhone. It’s 1/4 inch taller than previous iPhones, but similar to the original aluminium backed iPhone, the screen is glued to the multi touch screen digitizer. There’s also a tiny reflective surface right above the ear piece, which could be there for video calls, but that’s just my guess, it could be anything.

With the release of the iPad, my admiration for Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s ability to innovate was dramatically reduced, so my expectations are not that high for the next iPhone. That being said, Steve and the rest of the crew have between now and June 28th, the day of the next Worldwide Developers Conference, to come up with something new and exciting. Crossing my fingers that the NFC rumour is true.

When images like these turn up, always take them with a grain of salt.

[Via: iResQ, MacRumors]

Myriad, a company you and I have never heard of, is a member of the OHA (Open Handset Alliance). The OHA was created to bring companies together and have them contribute code that eventually becomes a part of Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s mobile operating system, Android. A critcal part of any smartphone platform is 3rd party developers. Android third party developers write their applications in a specially optimized version of Java known as Dalvik. Myriad tweaked and optimized Dalvik and have claimed to make existing applications run 3x faster, while also improving battery life. They call it Dalvik Turbo and are going to be showing it off next week at Mobile World Congress.

When will Davlik Turbo be integrated into Android itself? Will existing devices be upgraded to Dalvik Turbo? How much battery life is gained in real world scenarios by switching to Dalvik Turbo? I’ve emailed Myriad asking them these questions, and if they don’t answer because they’re too busy getting ready for Barcelona, then I’ll be swing by their booth and ask again.

[Via: Press Release; hat tip to Unwired View]

The mystery of Symbian’s countdown timer has finally been solved. Tomorrow Symbian will announce that their operating system has completed transitioning from closed source to open source and that anyone can download their code, for free. This is big news. It’s like Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) announcing that Windows is going open source. Say what you will about how old Symbian is, and how their UI is busted and unintuitive, but 4 out of every 10 smartphones shipped run some flavor of Symbian. With Nokia prepared to announce their Cseries at Mobile World Congress too, bringing Symbian to even lower price points, expect Symbian’s share of the smartphone pie to increase and only become more relevant with time.

Will people care is another question all together. Android is getting people all hot and bothered because the types of people who buy smartphones are already addicted to Google (NSDQ: GOOG). Building an Android device is more about standing next to Google’s brand than anything else. Symbian doesn’t have that prestige, and while yes, the Symbian Foundation is “independent” from any one corporation, most, if not all, of Symbian code is written by people getting paid by Nokia (NYSE: NOK).

Note: This post will be updated once the relevant press release and additional details go live tomorrow. It’s probably Symbian 2, not Symbian 3.

Update: It’s official, and I was wrong, it’s Symbian 3 that is now open source, not Symbian 2! Watch a video here for more info. Can’t embed it here, sorry.

[Via: Wired]

Apple launched the iPad exactly 1 week ago today, and although they said it wasn’t going to be shipping for another 60 days, they were nice enough to post a new version of the iPhone SDK (3.2) so that developers can start working on their new higher definition versions of iFart. Inside that SDK there just so happens to be some information about the next iPhone.

Codenamed N89, the next iPhone has support for 720p video recording and version 3.1 of the AVC codec according to the MediaValidator.plist file that stores what types of media a device can handle. Does this mean the iPhone can record 720p video or simply be able to play it back? Is Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) going to increase the current 320 x 480 screen resolution to something like 800 x 480 to deliver more of that wholesome goodness that is HD video?

These are questions we’re going to have to wait until the summer to get the answers to, probably June 8th at the Worldwide Developer’s Conference.

One more thing … a bit of news via Digitimes, so take it with a grain of salt, they say that Apple is going to add Pegatron as an OEM to build their iPhone. Right now the iPhone is made by Foxconn, so this move could be seen as wanting to start a price war, or providing additional capacity, or as Engadget predicts: make one model of the iPhone in one factory, make another model, the newer one, at another factory.

Yes boys and girls, the world of Apple rumours never stop turning, and frankly it’s making me sick to my stomach.