IntoMobile » Random

Dentyne Chewing Gum: Tapping into the growing number of people discontent with social networks

Stefan Constantinescu — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:52:02 +0000

Few advertisements have the power to stop me in my tracks, make me think, and then smile. Dentyne, a manufacture of chewing gum, are running two advertisements in the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit that remind people that communicating with people digitally can never, and will never, reach the fidelity of “face time”. Since leaving Facebook over 3 months ago, and discussing the reasons why with several people in meat space, I’ve discovered that I’m not alone. Many have admitted that they share the same feelings of nostalgia, longing of the days before social networks, and frustration with the digital, you are my friend, you are not my friend, systems of today. The efficiency of which we can communicative with people today removes the effort that was once required to truly know someone.

Caption: close browser. open arms. make face time.

Now there are people who will argue that online social networking, in moderation, is healthy. The same can be said about masturbation, and that’s all social networking has become. Make a profile, find people you know, say how you feel, read what they said about how they feel, comment on their feelings, give their feelings a thumbs up; it’s remarkably easy to fool oneself into believing that you’re interacting with someone on a meaningful level. “Face time”, exposing your thoughts and feelings in real time, changing the tone, pace, and subject of a conversation based on the area you’re sitting, who is around, and most importantly how the other person moves their body in their seat and the features of their face; the challenges of recognizing, interpreting, and then reacting to someone during “face time” are what you use to discover friendship, truth, and compassion.

Caption: power down. pucker up. make face time.

A thumbs up doesn’t quite do it. Dentyne realizes this, and they know that many of you have these feelings, but you’re too comfortable in your online social network to take a risk. They’re pushing you to get back out into the world, to experience things without the safety of your laptop. They want you to be prepared for the people you’re going to meet, and to them that means having fresh breathe.

They sell gum, but in the process they try to remind you what life is all about.

[Images from Flickr user "acordova"]

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

Why don’t operators start charging for mobile data like the do for broadband at home?

Stefan Constantinescu — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:23:32 +0000

Many of you are surfing IntoMobile, downloading illegal torrents, and watching a YouTube video of a cat playing the keyboard, all at the same time thanks to broadband. I personally don’t know anyone who uses dialup, and I doubt you do as well. Have you ever stopped and thought to yourself why the business model for broadband delivery to your home isn’t the same as wireless data on your mobile device? All home broadband connections are offered with unlimited consumption, you simply pay for speed.

Take a look at AT&T’s plans for DSL:

And Comcasts’s plans for cable:

See how pricing plans are structured? You want more bits per second, you give us more dollars per month. Now why is it that mobile data is so analog in the USA and many other countries around the world? Usually there is only 1 package. You either have mobile internet on your device, or you don’t.

Check out how my Finnish operator, Saunalahti, charges for their mobile internet:

Notice how you pay more for speed, just like you do in America for broadband at home. What plan do you think I use? You’d be surprised to know I have the cheapest (slowest) package that only offers 384 KB/s. I use the living hell out of it thanks to Opera Mini, but at the same time I’m not hogging up all the bandwidth available at a cell tower. Why do you think AT&T’s network has been a steaming pile of shit after they launched the iPhone? There is no throttling, everyone gets the same big fat pipe.

If mobile data was priced in tiers based on speed, how many more people do you think would sign up? Some of us just do a lot of Twitter and email on the go, we don’t need 3G, and we don’t want to pay $30 a month just to tell our Facebook friends how we feel about a movie we just saw. Some of us like to surf full websites all day on our iPhone, and we want the snappiest experience possible, and we’re totally willing to pay for that.

More user choice (more packages) is all I’m asking for from operators. It helps move more people on to the internet, and it gives speed to the people who really want it, the people who want to pay, because all the cheapskates like me don’t use up all the bandwidth.

Discuss.

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

Follow-up: what’s the laggiest handset you’ve used?

Ben Robinson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:18:44 +0000

A few weeks back, I wrote a post, asking which the laggiest handset you have used is – this was following a try-out of the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre, and my own suggestion that the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N96 I used a good while back didn’t seem to be too fast at the time either!

Well, it generated some responses, and I thought I’d just take a quick look over what the responses were – here they are, in all their glory:

Nokia N95-3
HTC Fuze (HTC Touch Pro)
HTC Imagio
Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) P990i
HTC Mini S

Wowzer! Did anyone see three HTC devices in there? Ponderously, there’s a mixture of new AND old handsets, from Mini S, right through to the Imagio of today. But what’s more interesting is that they are all packing Windows Mobile – hmm, could that be the cause of the lagging?

Well, from my own personal experience of running an HTC TyTn, I can definitely say that it wasn’t the fastest thing ever, that’s for sure – and reviewing the Toshiba (OTCPK: TOSBF) TG01 recently (with a 1GHz CPU in it!), I was still seeing bad lagging issues in the WinMo camp. But all the fault can’t rest at the hands of the O/S (probably) – often if there’s a poor implementation on the hardware, that can create real issues too.

Fascinatingly though, HTC have been getting great reviews recently for their devices – and those have been packing both Android and WinMo – so apart from the Imagio, which is perhaps an anomaly (can anyone else confirm?), then maybe they have sorted the issues out…

Certainly I don’t think HTC are the only vendor out there with handset lag issues, there are some worse offenders for sure – so if you’ve got an opinion, hit us up for a comment and let us which device’s UI felt like swimming the wrong way in a river of treacle when you were using it!

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

Working iPhone Costumes Among The Best This Year

James Falconer — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:07:22 +0000

What would it take to put together 2 ‘working’ iPhone costumes? Apparently $2,000, a couple of 42″ plasma TV’s, a couple of iPhones, and a lot of work. Nothing else needed to be said here. Check out the video below.

I hope everyone had a very happy (and safe) Halloween this year!

[Via: MobileSyrup]

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

What is the ‘laggiest’ handset you have used?

Ben Robinson — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:15:25 +0000

Just the other day, I was in the local O2 (NYSE: TEF) shop, playing with the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre – having heard so much about it, but no opportunity to get hands-on, I was keen to see what the device could do.

Initially, I was really pleased to see an excellent implementation of both the capacitance screen sensitivity, but also of the UI – it really does look that nice, and in my mind at least, is a competitor for the iPhone UI for sure. A couple of swipes across the screen later, and I’d found the right way to control the UI for flipping between, and closing Apps.

Of course the next logical test was to see what the keyboard was like, and so I decided to add a new contact, called “bob”. Leaving aside what I thought of the keyboard for a minute (hint: not great), my main surprise came when I went to store the handset – there was an appreciable lag, as compared with the rest of my usage of the handset to that point.

To test what I immediately surmised could be the problem, I then opened a video, and also made a calendar entry – this confirmed my initial thinking that substantial read/writes to the memory, via the O/S, were being hit with a bit of a lag. Usage of the UI in general was super-smooth, but as soon as you called down to the OS (particularly if writing to memory), then there was definitely some slowdown.

Now I should put this in perspective: I’m used to being spoilt by the iPhone, which is incredibly fluid in it’s use, and rarely lags – only occasionally have I tripped it up. The Palm Pre was 90% good in this respect, and maybe just that 10% bad (slow) across certain invoked operations.

But that got me thinking – I have used some devices previously that were really not great in terms of the lag when you selected certain apps, or wanted to do certain things. And I bet the IntoMobile readership have had the same experience – therefore, can you remember the worst handset you ever had for lagging? And can you remember why the lag occurred (opening app, re-skinning etc)?

I’ll put forward the N96 as pretty laggy during general use…. I’m not sure it is the worst handset that I’ve ever used for lag (that title surely belongs to one of the WinMo devices I had in early y2k!), but I’m open to suggestion from our readers! So it’s:

What was the handset – make, model, if you can remember
What were you doing with the handset that made it lag – keep it clean!

Answers on a postcard … (or at least in the comments on this post!)

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

B.C. Government Ban on Cellphone Use While Driving to Commence January 1st, 2010

James Falconer — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:47:16 +0000

The government of British Columbia has made it all official. New legislation is going into effect January 1st, 2010 that bans drivers from sending or reading text or email messages… Plus, making or taking phone calls will be prohibited, unless a hands-free device with one-touch dialing is used. Thumbs B.C. I think you’ve got this right!

If you’re caught by the coppers, you’ll receive a $167 fine (starting next February) and receive penalties against your license.

Trace Acres of the BCAA commented on the matter:

“You should get in the habit of turning off your cellphone or other handheld electronic devices before getting in the car, or leaving them in a briefcase or in the trunk where it is out of reach and won’t tempt you. Then, when you reach your destination take a minute to check for messages. Also, change your voice message to say you’re currently unavailable or driving, and will return the call when it is safe to do so.”

Amen.

This is just another sign of the times. Where I’m from in Manitoba, our government is in the middle of an ‘awareness’ campaign warning commuters of the dangers of cellphones and driving. It’s of course the first step towards an all-out ban of the devices while behind the wheel.

[MobileSyrup via NewsWire]

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

giffgaff update: more details now known

Ben Robinson — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:44:29 +0000

Remember giffgaff? This is the new MVNO, that seeking differentiation by involving the subs (they call them members) in decisions – well they’ve already started that process now, and in addition we know some more facts – giffgaff is launching in beta this year, and they think there is some stuff we should know:

Key Facts On giffgaff Data Pricing During Beta

giffgaff won’t charge for data at launch and for approximately 6 months thereafter

All members will have access to free data on the launch tariff using giffgaff’s handset only SIM

giffgaff will launch later this year in ‘beta’ and one of the benefits of being in ‘beta’ is free data

Data will be free across the base on a pre pay model

giffgaff has a fair usage policy of 100mb per day, which doesn’t mean they’ll cut people off or triple rate them when they reach that limit, but they will keep an eye on usage

It won’t last forever and giffgaff hopes to talk with members over the course of the period to get input into the best value and fairest data policy they can provide

Members will only be able to use data from the UK, roaming data won’t be available

Kylie Evans, giffgaff’s Marketing Chief, will be kicking off wider discussions about giffgaff’s pricing model on giffgaff.com/blog here: http://www.giffgaff.com/blog/2009/10/a-bit-of-news-about-our-pricing/ those interested in joining the discussion are advised to leave a comment on the blog post above.

giffgaff will be releasing full pricing information very soon, but is interested in getting the wider mobile community’s thoughts on pricing to involve potential new members in contributing to key business decisions

Key Facts On giffgaff Data Pricing During Beta

giffgaff won’t charge for data at launch and for approximately 6 months thereafter
All members will have access to free data on the launch tariff using giffgaff’s handset only SIM
giffgaff will launch later this year in ‘beta’ and one of the benefits of being in ‘beta’ is free data
Data will be free across the base on a pre pay model
giffgaff has a fair usage policy of 100mb per day, which doesn’t mean they’ll cut people off or triple rate them when they reach that limit, but they will keep an eye on usage
It won’t last forever and giffgaff hopes to talk with members over the course of the period to get input into the best value and fairest data policy they can provide
Members will only be able to use data from the UK, roaming data won’t be available
Kylie Evans, giffgaff’s Marketing Chief, will be kicking off wider discussions about giffgaff’s pricing model on giffgaff.com/blog here. Those interested in joining the discussion are advised to leave a comment on the blog post above.
giffgaff will be releasing full pricing information very soon, but is interested in getting the wider mobile community’s thoughts on pricing to involve potential new members in contributing to key business decisions

So there you go – we know that data is going to be free for a while, and that if you want to shape the pricing policy you should get involved in the blog comments. More info as we get it….

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

Balloon Boy ‘Save Falcon’ Water Tower Wallpaper for iPhone

James Falconer — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:30:44 +0000

Sorry folks, I can’t help myself this morning. I get something stuck in my head and I have to run with it. If you still want to believe the ‘balloon boy‘ was trapped in that crazy balloon, download and use the wallpaper above to show your support.

Interestingly enough, the water tower pictured here is the same one used in ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off‘. You know, the one that read ‘Save Ferris’?

Ugh, enough silliness for me today. Hopefully a few folks get a kick out of this one and use it as their iPhone or iPod Touch wallpaper. Enjoy.

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

Balloon Boy Wallpaper for the iPhone

James Falconer — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:45:57 +0000

Commemorate one of the strangest/stupidest hoaxes of recent memory with the ‘Balloon Boy’ wallpaper for iPhone. Hand crafted with loving care, this wallpaper will awaken the gut-wrenching rage you felt in your gut upon learning the whole deal was a hoax. Download and share with your friends… Enjoy!

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

Newsy.com’s iPhone App Soars to #6 in the iTunes App Store

Ben Robinson — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:09:42 +0000

The Newsy app, which offers multi-source video news, is currently ranked #6 in the News category of free apps in the iTunes App Store.

A news analyzer, not a news aggregator, Newsy.com is the only multi-source video news service producing daily videos that analyze the key differences in how a story is being reported by various news organizations. In 2 to 3 minutes, users understand the nuances in coverage – offering context with convenience.

Well maybe getting to 6th position isn’t the pinnacle of stats, but, Newsy is a good app – the neat UI and to-the-point video sumamries are worth a look:

A slightly different take on presenting news, and one which I frequent. Obviously, you can get the App by typing ‘Newsy’ in to the search in the App Store/iTunes. Or you can visit the website here.

The Newsy app, which offers multi-source video news, is currently ranked #6 in the News category of free apps in the iTunes App Store.

A news analyzer, not a news aggregator, Newsy.com is the only multi-source video news service producing daily videos that analyze the key differences in how a story is being reported by various news organizations. In 2 to 3 minutes, users understand the nuances in coverage – offering context with convenience.

Well maybe getting to 6th position isn’t the pinnacle of stats, but, Newsy is a good app – the neat UI and to-the-point video sumamries are worth a look:

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

Giant ‘Eclair’ Arrives on Google Campus

James Falconer — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:15:56 +0000

A quickie here for the Android users/fans in the house. Looks like the team at the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) just had a new ‘Eclair’ delivered to their campus. As you can see in the videos after the jump (3 quick videos), the Eclair has joined ‘Cupcake’, ‘Robot’ and ‘Donut’ on the scene. At any rate, now that the official ‘Eclair’ has arrived, I think we can look forward to Android 2.0 coming down the pipes soon. 1.6 is good and all, but won’t 2.0 be sweeter? Sweet like an Eclair?

Check out the videos after the jump (it’ll only take you a minute). That eclair looks delicious.

[Via: TechCrunch]

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

Teen kicks mom in the throat, head butts brother, bites father, all because his fone was taken away

Stefan Constantinescu — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:08:33 +0000

In Falmouth, Massachusetts, some little punk bitch teenager kicked his mom in the throat, head butted his brother and took a bite out of his father, all because his mommy took away his mobile phone. Police said his mom took away his mobile phone after he hit his 15 year old brother. The 18 year old punk bitch also has a case of the dumb ass since his father is a corrections officer. He had a pair of hand cuffs on hand which he used to restrain the young man to prevent him from further committing acts of douche baggery. When police came to remove him from his home, they had to use leg cuffs as well because the little prick must’ve pounded too many Red Bulls that morning. He is being held on $1,000 bail.

His best friend is the famous angry German Counter Strike kid:

[Via: The Associated Press]

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

Video of the Day: Apache vs. Voodoo People

Stefan Constantinescu — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:43:53 +0000

This video was uploaded to YouTube on August 23, 2007. Why has it taken over 2 years to reach my eyes is beyond me:

The sad thing is that I really do dance like that in clubs. No wonder the women don’t talk to me. Thank science for inventing rohypnol.

[Hat tip to Anssi Mäkelä of Nokia]

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

Nextel International Awards Network Monitoring Contract to Astellia

James Falconer — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:37:28 +0000

In a move geared at complementing existing network management services, Nextel International has given a contract to Astellia to monitor networks in Latin America. New monitoring will be setup in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Chile. Congrats to Astellia for winning the big contract. It’s a biggie for the company, for sure.

CTO of Nextel International Alan Strauss commented that Astellia was selected because ‘they provide solutions that will enhance even further the quality that we deliver to our customers across our networks every day‘.

Well said. You can read more about Astellia on their website.

[Via: Cellular-News]

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

Saturday Silliness: T-Pain Auto-Tunes President Barack Obama

James Falconer — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:10:14 +0000

You may recall me telling you about a fun little app called ‘I Am T-Pain‘. The app makes full use of Auto-Tune technology to ensure even if you have no singing skills at all… you’ll sound half decent. The app is actually quite a bit of fun, and is absolute good times at parties.

Long story short, Jimmy Kimmel teamed up with T-Pain to put together a hilarious little piece above. No need to say anything else here. Just watch the video… and… enjoy

Note: For more on the ‘I Am T-Pain‘ app, check out my previous look at it here.

[Via: 9to5mac]

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

iPhone Busts Through to #1 on 2009 CoolBrands List

James Falconer — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:05:38 +0000

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has dominated the 2009 CoolBrands Rankings. With 3 of the top 5 brands belonging to Apple, the boys and girls down in Cupertino have to be pleased. The shortlist for the CoolBrands Rankings are compiled by 2,500 voters. From there, the final 20 brands are voted on by a panel. Interestingly enough, Aston Martin fell 1 place to #2 in this years poll, with the iPhone busting through to the top spot.

Below is the top 20:

iPhone
Aston Martin
Apple
iPod
Nintendo
YouTube
BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM)
Google (NSDQ: GOOG)
Bang & Olufsen
PlayStation 3
Xbox
Tate Modern
Dom Perignon
Virgin Atlantic
Ferrari
Sony
Mini
Vivienne Westwood
Rolex
BBC iPlayer

[Via: 9to5mac]

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

Terrible battery life and why we’re all going to have our own clouds in the future

Stefan Constantinescu — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:02:05 +0000

Megapixels, multitouch, haptics, gestures, ease of use, and revolutionary user experiences mean nothing if your mobile device is off thanks to a dead battery. As we expect our mobile phones to do more and more, and keep us connected to every facet of our digital lives, how are we going to get through a whole day without having to carry a charger in our bag and quickly scanning every building we walk into for a power outlet?

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) had the right idea, a phrase you’re not going to hear me say very often, when they launched push notifications. The concept was that instead of having your device ping Flickr to see if your friends uploaded new photos, ping ESPN to see if the Yankees won, ping GMail to see if you have new email, ping Twitter to see if you have any new @ replies, etc., your device would have a single connection to an Apple server that would handle all your traffic requests and then spit out the results.

Imagine your instant messaging program, in my case Skype, but instead of having a list of friends in your list of contacts, you have a list of services you use. Instead of keeping a persistent connection to each and every one of the companies in your list of contacts, you have a single connection to a central server, Skype, who handles requests on your behalf and just serves you the results. That central server can be your own personal cloud, running in some data center somewhere, and constantly connected to your mobile phone.

Every time your mobile phone powers on the radio and transmits/receives data, the battery takes a hit. In the Motorola (NYSE: MOT) CLIQ preview posted on The Boy Genius Report, here is what BG had to say about the battery life:

Not even joking when I say this — the Motorola CLIQ has possibly the worst battery life of any phone I’ve tested in recent memory with the current software. Maybe Motorola’s BLUR back-end isn’t optimized yet, maybe the phone software isn’t final, but this is ridiculously bad. Especially since it doesn’t even deliver your status updates when you want them, it just sits there pulling in data constantly updating in batches. I haven’t used the device as a primary device so I couldn’t give hard statistics on battery life when phone calling, but with on and off usage, it’s ridiculously bad.

Now what about just pushing the data versus polling for it? Internet geeks are currently fighting over which push protocol we should all be using, RSSCloud or PubSubHubbub, but we can all agree that push enabling data is the future. Now we just have to wait for all the services and blogs to start transmitting data in real time, versus having to poll them at a set interval of time.

Why should we each have our own cloud versus letting the device receive push requests from newly enabled push services? Because not every service we use is going to be push enabled over night. Adoption is always slow, and there will be some sites that never even make the switch. Having one central location, in the cloud, that we can all log into to manage our information flow just seems like the right way to go forward.

Am I nuts or do you think we’re heading in this direction?

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

Video: Social Media Addicts Association

Stefan Constantinescu — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 07:09:54 +0000

This video is brilliant. No other word to describe it, just brilliant. Deep inside every single group of friends, there is some ass flute tweeting, facebooking, and flickring every 30 seconds. This video is for you. Get. A. Life.

[Hat tip to @HannaManna]

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

NetLingo: beepilepsy

Ben Robinson — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:07:09 +0000

Another word of the today from tech dictionary site NetLingo – this time it’s:

beepilepsy

The brief seizure people sometimes suffer when their beepers go off, especially in vibrator mode. Characterized by physical spasms, goofy facial expressions, and stopping speech in mid-sentence.

Ha ha ha! This one made me chuckle, mainly because I’ve seen it SO many times in meetings! Not so much with beepers these days of course, but with phones that people have set to silent, for fear incurring the wrath of their boss! The random body jerks that occur always liven up a dull meeting

You can check out all that is tech-terminology, from the site that is Netlingo, here.

[Via: NetLingo]

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this:

New Zealand’s Upcoming Ban on Mobiles While Driving to Include Ban on GPS Navigation

James Falconer — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:44:50 +0000

In just another sign of the times, New Zealand’s Transport Ministry has clarified terms on a new ban on mobile phones while driving. Starting in November, the use of mobile phones while behind the wheel will be strictly prohibited, along with the use of any GPS navigation systems from a mobile device. If you enjoy using your GPS-enabled cellphone to help you navigate… Looks like you’re going to be out of luck shortly, at least in New Zealand.

Before anyone gets up in a tizzy, here are some important points to consider:

You can use a mobile phone while driving as long as its held in a cradle… and you can only use it to make, receive or end a call.
Use of GPS navigation on any mobile phone in any way is prohibited.
Navigation systems with no mobile phone functionality will remain ‘all good’ for use.
Reading or composing of email and texts will be banned.

With November fast approaching, folks in New Zealand will no doubt have to adjust their mobile phone habits while behind the wheel. My suggestion? Put your phone in silent mode, and leave it out-of-reach. When driving you should be driving. Nothing else.

[Via: Stuff.co.nz]

Related News from IntoMobile:

Share this: