Teknovis

I came across this fascinating map showing mobile phone types today – Mobile Devices + Twitter Use.

Tags: Mobile Phone, Twitter

I read an article during the week describing how several of the major mobile phone manufacturers have agreed to develop a standard mobile phone charger for use throughout the EU! I think that this would be very useful, and I am surprised that I never thought about this before now! The original article that I read is All change for mobile chargers.

I wonder what other aspects of consumer electronics could be standardised. The most obvious one that I can think of is laptop chargers.

Tags: Mobile Phone

I saw an interesting article on the news this evening describing how the Irish Government is currently investigating the issue of mobile phone bullying. For more details about this, including video footage, see Criticism of delay in mobile bullying measures.

The facility to block communication from certain numbers does not currently exist because there has not been a need for it until recently. This facility would be part of general policy management, and I expect that there will be many advancements in this area in the near future. There are many companies currently developing solutions in this area, including two Irish companies:

• Anam (which is supplying a solution to O2)
• Openet

So there should be policy management solutions deployed by the mobile phone network operators in Ireland very soon.

It really annoys me to hear politicians giving the impression that that know what they are talking about when it comes to technology!

Tags: Anam, Ireland, Mobile Phone, O2, Openet

One of the web sites that I visit most often using my PDA is Wikipedia.However, I only realised this week that there is an excellent version of the web site that is designed for mobile devices! The address is mobile.wikipedia.org.

m.wikipedia.org also works, but it gives an information rich web page that is more similar to the desktop version of the Wikipedia home page.

Tags: Mobile Phone, PDA, Wikipedia

I read earlier this week that a man was found guilty of a hit and run in which the victim ultimately died. The man did not deny that the car was involved in the incident, but he did claim that he sold the car before the incident occurred. Therefore, he claimed that it was the new, and unidentified, owner who was guilty of the hit and run.

However, the police presented evidence from a mobile phone company that the man’s mobile phone, and by extension the man, was in the area of the incident at the time of the incident. Indeed, they even knew that the man was on a call at the time of the incident. The full article is Man jailed for fatal Dublin hit and run, but you need to view the video in order to hear about the location based evidence.

I think that it is very interesting the way that mobile phone location information is being increasingly used to solve crime in Ireland.

The first investigation that highlighted the use of location information relating to a mobile phone was the disappearance and death of Robert Holohan. See Holohan search called off for the night for more information.

More recently, mobile phone evidence was used to successfully convict Joe O’Reilly of the murder of his wife. For more about this see Mobile record clashes with O’Reilly alibi and O’Reilly trial hears details of mobile calls. Indeed, in this case the location aspects of the mobile phone evidence were questioned in the unsucessful appeal case, as described in Joe O’Reilly’s appeal is dismissed.

Tags: Ireland, Mobile Phone, Police

The Irish Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) published a report earlier this week covering the attitudes of Irish residential customers to ICT. The report is very easy to read, and it contains many interesting findings. My favourite findings are:

• 79% have Eircom as their fixed line supplier
• The average monthly fixed line spend is 48.04€
• The average monthly mobile spend has decreased from 45.64€ to 41.64€
• Vodafone‘s share continues to decline, O2‘s share has seen a marginal increase, Meteor’s share continues to grow, and Three‘s share remains relatively unchanged.
• 56% own either a PC or laptop, and 11% own both
• There has been a continued increase in Internet usage, and penetration now stands at 64%
• 43% think that speed is the most important factor when using the Internet
• 50% of home broadband users do not know their contracted downloaded speed
• 44% have heard of VoIP, 35% of these have used it, and72% of these people use Skype
• 82% believe that technology has improved their lives
• Technology is used for entertainment purposes by 36% for more than 20 hours per week

The full report can be downloaded from ComReg Residential ICT Services Survey Q4 2008.

Tags: ComReg, Eircom, Ireland, Meteor, Mobile Phone, O2, Skype, Three, Vodafone

Another Christmas shopping article…

I noticed these Firefly mobile phones for sale in many main-street shops while I was doing some off-line Christmas shopping yesterday.

Firefly Mobile Phones

These mobile phones are designed for young children. Typically, the user (a child) is allowed to call Mum (big button with woman) and Dad (big button with man). Additionally, the user is only allowed to receive calls from numbers that are in the address book.

In terms of technology there is nothing new in these mobile phones, because they are simply very restricted mobile phones. I think that the main novelty lies in the usage of the technology to satisfy a certain market. I think that it is a great idea!

I presume that there will soon be a GPS enabled Firefly that enables concerned parents to view their childrens’ locations!

Tags: Firefly, GPS, Mobile Phone

Nokia has unveiled its latest NSeries mobile phone, the N97, at Nokia World 2008 in Barcelona, Spain. This new mobile phone certainly seems to be causing a lot of excitement!

Nokia N97

For more details see the official press release, download the data sheet, or read Nokia Announces the N97 – The Holy Grail.

I am not really a Nokia fan. I think it is because it traditionally made mobile phones (once it finished making toilet paper of course), and since I had a computer long before I had a mobile phone I found its devices weak on features.

The thing that strikes me most about this new mobile phone is that it appears very like a PDA to me! I guess the distinctions between these two types of mobile devices will continue decreasing!

Tags: Mobile Phone, N97, Nokia, PDA, Spain

I spent several years (maybe even too many) working in the area of Location Based Services (LBSs). Indeed, I first started working in this area before it become the next “killer application” area! I spent my time working on both the technical enablers of LBSs, and the commercial groundwork for a start-up company. Happy memories ;)

This morning I read an article titled Location, location, location – geo-commerce is here and now. The article starts with the usual scenario describing how LBSs will revolutionise our lives by changing the way we make every decision. It also claims that now is the right time for LBSs to make an impact. Different people have been saying this for years now, so I suppose that somebody might be correct some day! Maybe I am just to cynical!

The article focuses on two Irish companies that are currently developing LBSs for mass market consumption based on mobile phone and PDA technology:

• ICAP Media has developed an “opt-in mobile-phone marketing platform” that supplies the user with discounts that can be redeemed in nearby businesses. Unfortunately, this just sounds like location aware spam to me :(
• Tagggit has developed a virtual tagging system that allows users to leave tags in specific locations. These tags can then be read by the same user at a later stage, or shared with other users who are in the same location. This seems like a commercial application of the Stick-e Note Architecture developed by University of Kent researchers in 1997!

There are many other companies also developing LBSs in Ireland.

Tags: ICAP Media, Ireland, Mobile Phone, PDA, Spam, Tagggit, University of Kent

I have always been a very organised person for most aspects of my life, regardless of whether these aspects are real-world or digital. Unfortunately, I am also quite a forgetful person :( So notebooks and diaries were always a big part of my life! These ingenious tools enabled me to know where I was supposed to be, when I was supposed to be there, and what I was supposed to be doing there!

So it made perfect sense for me to buy a PDA when they first became available. That was so long ago that I cannot even remember what make and model it was! I am probably one of the few people who had a PDA before I had a mobile phone! Since then I have had several, but I usually use each one for a few years. I normally wait until there is a significant technological advantage to me in having a new one. So the technological advantages that have caused me to upgrade to date are:

• The introduction of a colour screen (even if it was only 256 colours!)
• The ability to use the PDA as a mobile phone (and carry one less device)
• The ability to use WiFi (I cannot live without it now!)

Finally, I suspect the next technological advantage that will cause me to upgrade will be a touch-screen, mainly because it will only require one of my hands. The fact that they look so slick is an added bonus :)

So what do I currently use? A black HTC P3600 (otherwise known as the Trinity) running Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0. HTC actually make a lot of the branded PDAs for other well known manufacturers. This is what it looks like:

HTC P3600

I am not going to write a full review here, because there are already plenty of reviews online. Also, I do not think that it is still available to buy! Instead, what I will do is write about the features that I use most often, the useful applications that I have installed, and the bugs I have found in it that are not well documented anywhere else on the Internet!

Perhaps the single questions that I am asked most frequently about it is “Should I get one?“. My answer to this is always “Yes, if you are the sort of person that currently makes lists on paper and keeps a diary“.

In general, mobile phones and PDAs are devices that I have a strong personal interest in, and I have worked with them in the past in a professional capacity. So I expect to write about them a lot on this blog!

Tags: HTC, Microsoft, Mobile Phone, PDA, WiFi, Windows Mobile 5.0