Usually the construction of new a new cell tower meets opposition from surrounding communities… At least, that has been the case in my area, and in other parts of Canada. However, the good folks of Cranbrook B.C. are welcoming the build of a new $1,000,000 TELUS (NYSE: TU) (NYSE: TU) cell tower. I’m hoping this is a sign of the times!

The new tower will provide residents in the area with access to TELUS’ new 3G+ network… something most folks in Cranbrook have wanted and will no doubt enjoy.

TELUS service manager Frank Mungiello commented on the situation:

“Finishing this project is very rewarding not only because of the tough construction challenges related to the geography, but because of the community support shown to us for bringing new wireless coverage to the region.”

Congrats Cranbrook residents. Enjoy your new tower and improved network performance.

Note to TELUS: If you want to throw up a tower in my back yard, yeah… that’s cool with me.

[Via: Media Newswire]

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.

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.

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"]

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.

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!

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]

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!)

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]

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:

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….

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.

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!